What Could Have Been Entering the Public Domain on January 1, 2011? • Hacker News Board

Re: What Could Have Been Entering the Public Domain on January 1, 2011?

#51

Post by gridspy » Sun, Jan 02, 2011, 11:11 PM UTC

patio11 wrote: post #33

griftah wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why having Lord of the Rings in public domain is so important?

This is a good question . LOTR is being actively commercially exploited and the commercial exploitations are darn good . Meanwhile, it's cultural impact hasn't been noticeably blunted by copyright -- that novel launched at least one industry , to say nothing of being repurposed by virtually every book in adjacent genres.

Worth noting here that new works such as the LOTR movies would get a fresh copyright term.

Re: What Could Have Been Entering the Public Domain on January 1, 2011?

#52

Post by gridspy » Sun, Jan 02, 2011, 11:14 PM UTC

praptak wrote: post #18

The deal between copyright holders and society was changed retroactively in favor of the former. Why then should the latter uphold their end of the deal, i.e. not pirate?

The issue isn't getting a copy of the original work for free. Of greater concern is the penalty for creating derivative works - so we can't have http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pride_and_Prejudice_and_Zombies

Re: What Could Have Been Entering the Public Domain on January 1, 2011?

#53

Post by a_m_kelly » Sun, Jan 02, 2011, 11:16 PM UTC

forensic wrote: post #42

How do international books fit into this? Lord of the Flies and Tolkien among others are British books. If they enter the public domain in Britain, does that enable Americans to use them even if they are still copyrighted in the US?

That's an interesting question. My [minimal] understanding of copyright law suggests that whether the book's in public domain in Britain has no bearing on the rights granted to Americans to use it.

If it is in the public domain in Britain, that doesn't give you a free license to start photocopying the book and reselling it here in the US. Those rights are assigned to a party here in the US. (and thanks to some oddness in the publishing world (or laws that help curb uncompetitive practices, the same company can't own the rights to a work in both the UK and US.)

I don't know enough about this to speculate on your importation and use of a book in the public domain elsewhere. I suspect personal use of the materials is fine. You could likely import a public domain copy of the work from England and as long as you don't adapt, resell, translate or otherwise re-purpose the work you'd be in the clear. I've got a friend who works for a company that does a lot of international rights work in publishing. I'll ask him and post back here, since now I'm curious.

(these sorts of byzantine international arrangements are one of several ways, along with translations, that authors of books have been able to make a reasonable living, selling the rights to the same book several times and being able to quickly drum up a blog post for slow news days with pictures of the Czechoslovakian cover of their most recent book.)

Re: What Could Have Been Entering the Public Domain on January 1, 2011?

#54

Post by Helianthus16 » Sun, Jan 02, 2011, 11:16 PM UTC

patio11 wrote: post #33

griftah wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why having Lord of the Rings in public domain is so important?

This is a good question . LOTR is being actively commercially exploited and the commercial exploitations are darn good . Meanwhile, it's cultural impact hasn't been noticeably blunted by copyright -- that novel launched at least one industry , to say nothing of being repurposed by virtually every book in adjacent genres.

>LOTR is being actively commercially exploited and the commercial exploitations are darn good.

Darn good, but not perfect. We are now denied the right to re-interpret LOTR, perhaps because we want to include the Scouring of the Shire--not because the movie was necessarily worse without it, but because we _want_ to.

And heck, take a better example: the Harry Potter movies are in great need of re-interpretation, but don't expect to see independent film-makers getting a bite at that apple anytime soon.

Re: What Could Have Been Entering the Public Domain on January 1, 2011?

#55

Post by jleyank » Sun, Jan 02, 2011, 11:16 PM UTC

I might be mis-remembering, but doesn't (L)GPL rely on copyright law for its status? If so, then there's at least one bit of IP that's "properly protected" by copyright law.

Re: What Could Have Been Entering the Public Domain on January 1, 2011?

#56

Post by blasdel » Sun, Jan 02, 2011, 11:21 PM UTC

avdempsey wrote: post #39

xenophanes wrote: post #19

About copyright in general: Micky Mouse is still in active use. Can anyone tell me some reason that Warner Brothers should be allowed to make a Mickey Mouse movie just because it's old now? One other example: sales of Ayn Rand's books currently help fund the spreading of the ideas from the books, after her death. That seems fair enough to me. Why shouldn't books sales be able to fund promotion of the book's ideas as…

I'll bite. I don't care if WB makes a Mickey Mouse movie. Walt is dead. We're not talking about the state stealing "Rearden Metal" shortly after its invention. Generations have grown up with this character and it seems just as outrageous as state-based exploitation to hold this character captive forever. How does inifinite copyright extension do anything but favor the sad corporatism you oppose? Entire generations wi…

I wouldn't even consider Mickey Mouse to be a character - he hasn't been used that way by Disney for at least 50 years, and never had much character development to begin with even when he 'starred' in minstrel cartoons.

Mickey Mouse is a logo, deserving of trademark protection and nothing more.

Re: What Could Have Been Entering the Public Domain on January 1, 2011?

#57

Post by xenophanes » Sun, Jan 02, 2011, 11:27 PM UTC

gjm11 wrote: post #41

xenophanes wrote: post #19

About copyright in general: Micky Mouse is still in active use. Can anyone tell me some reason that Warner Brothers should be allowed to make a Mickey Mouse movie just because it's old now? One other example: sales of Ayn Rand's books currently help fund the spreading of the ideas from the books, after her death. That seems fair enough to me. Why shouldn't books sales be able to fund promotion of the book's ideas as…

Book sales themselves already promote the book's ideas as long as readers keep buying it. Why should they also fund further promotion?

It wouldn't exist at all without its creator so why should its creators' rights (including transferable rights) ever end? The idea of rights with a time limit is kind of strange, isn't it?

Re: What Could Have Been Entering the Public Domain on January 1, 2011?

#58

Post by follower » Sun, Jan 02, 2011, 11:28 PM UTC

I wonder if anyone has ever considered that existing copyright legislation puts authors' lives at risk by making the term: date of death + N years? There's a short story in that at least but now I'm too afraid for my life to write it. :)

Re: What Could Have Been Entering the Public Domain on January 1, 2011?

#59

Post by Helianthus16 » Sun, Jan 02, 2011, 11:30 PM UTC

javert wrote: post #9

ajays wrote: post #7

The current copyright law is a prime example of the impotence of the electorate in the face of the power of Big Money. It is in the public interest to have works move into the public domain, so that others can build upon them (I'll refrain from linking to the myriad talks by Lessig and others about how the current copyright system is broken). And yet Hollywood keeps buying the legislators and perpetuates this broken…

There is a compelling natural rights justification for intellectual property. It typically gets ignored (e.g. by people like Lessig). Basically: The product of a human being's work is rightfully his property; that's part and parcel of living in a civilized society. Doesn't matter if that work is entirely "intellectual" or not. The fact that it's physically easy to steal intellectual property does not make it right. P…

Previously compelling, no longer convincing.

Lessig didn't ignore it, he overruled it.

Re: What Could Have Been Entering the Public Domain on January 1, 2011?

#60

Post by xenophanes » Sun, Jan 02, 2011, 11:30 PM UTC

avdempsey wrote: post #39

xenophanes wrote: post #19

About copyright in general: Micky Mouse is still in active use. Can anyone tell me some reason that Warner Brothers should be allowed to make a Mickey Mouse movie just because it's old now? One other example: sales of Ayn Rand's books currently help fund the spreading of the ideas from the books, after her death. That seems fair enough to me. Why shouldn't books sales be able to fund promotion of the book's ideas as…

I'll bite. I don't care if WB makes a Mickey Mouse movie. Walt is dead. We're not talking about the state stealing "Rearden Metal" shortly after its invention. Generations have grown up with this character and it seems just as outrageous as state-based exploitation to hold this character captive forever. How does inifinite copyright extension do anything but favor the sad corporatism you oppose? Entire generations wi…

One thing I don't agree with here is the concept of generations. Immortality is coming and the idea of generations, and the expectation that authors will die, will become outmoded. The philosophically correct view has to be able to deal with that, not be based on parochial, temporary conditions.

That said, I don't see that Micky is "captive". No one has a right to Micky. Micky's creator created him and he would not exist otherwise. This isn't like a math formula, or a medicine, that if one guy didn't invent it then someone else would have invented it later. It would never exist at all without its creator, so even if the creator has full rights over it forever the world hasn't lost anything that it would have had otherwise.