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What will enter the public domain in 2026?

publicdomainreview.org

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Re: What will enter the public domain in 2026?

#211
post #198
post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fantasy book are a good example. A Games of Thrones was first released in 1996 but had middling success. It was only after 2011 that the series exploded in popularity. Good Omens main peak was ~15 years after release. Hell, some books like Handmaiden's Tale were published in 1985 but only reached their peak in 2010. Using your example and the rules suggested in the grandparent post, GRRM's copyright would have been…

Keep in mind that under such a system, corporations would have a financial incentive to wait just a bit longer to do an adaptation

I find it strange how people are so invested in spiting $BigCorpThatMightDoBadThing that they're willing to harm the public at large as well.

Re: What will enter the public domain in 2026?

#212

The length of copyright is absurd. Corporations have hijacked a concept that should exist on human timescales. Ideally, a child could legally provide their own spin on IP they consumed by the time they reach adulthood. But also, people need to make a living. I actually think the original 14+14 year copyright is the right balance. It gives people time to make their profits, but also guarantees the right of people to t…

Under the 14+14 law, even if an author chose to renew the copyright, most people could remix games (that had gone into the public domain) that were released when they were in their teens, with their kids (if they had any), which sounds amazing - I'd love to do that with my kids, or hit up my parents and find a game from their childhood and mess around with it.

Being able to riff on something in the public domain that was only made 28 years ago is categorically different than something made 70-120 years ago. I think the impact to the commons would be huge.

Re: What will enter the public domain in 2026?

#213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People that can be taxed at several order of magnitude of wealth compared to a median income obviously didn’t work several degree of magnitude harder/longer/smarter. They more "efficiently" capture the benefits, certainly, but that’s it. And even there, mainly through network effect and pre-existing social forces. If instead distribution of wealth was flatter in an equally wealthy society, a tax could still capture j…

This is great in theory, but not practice and not practiced anywhere. You could site some EU countries with a very homogeneous population and a GDP I don't think we currently have the most efficient tax vs productivity situation now, but I don't agree with equality being the goal.

Obviously no argument can convince a party which say literally that proofs will be rejected, even those which might be provided on some concrete example. All the more when this party doesn’t align with the underlying praised values anyway.

Re: What will enter the public domain in 2026?

#214

I would love to see a public poll on how long people think that copyright should be. I'm betting that the majority of the answers from normal people will be less than the current "author's lifetime plus 70 years" but also greater than 5 years. This is probably not a very profitable poll for Gallup to do, though...

"What I need should be copyrighted zero years and what I sell should be copyrighter indefinitely", this is an answer you will get.

Re: What will enter the public domain in 2026?

#215
post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone who buys books at Barnes & Noble is not going to print online fan fiction on demand. If you think this is something a “mainstream consumer” would do, I think you’re very out of touch with the average person.

Isn’t reading stuff on the internet more mainstream than buying things at Barnes and Noble? Not necessarily those specific things, but the notion that something needs to be physically available at a bookstore to be relevant is at best dated.

If you spend a lot of time online, it would certainly seem that way.

Re: What will enter the public domain in 2026?

#216
post #198
post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fantasy book are a good example. A Games of Thrones was first released in 1996 but had middling success. It was only after 2011 that the series exploded in popularity. Good Omens main peak was ~15 years after release. Hell, some books like Handmaiden's Tale were published in 1985 but only reached their peak in 2010. Using your example and the rules suggested in the grandparent post, GRRM's copyright would have been…

Keep in mind that under such a system, corporations would have a financial incentive to wait just a bit longer to do an adaptation

GRRM is already beating them at that game by publishing a new book in the series every couple decades. That might become a common tactic in such a copyright environment

Re: What will enter the public domain in 2026?

#217

I would love to see a public poll on how long people think that copyright should be. I'm betting that the majority of the answers from normal people will be less than the current "author's lifetime plus 70 years" but also greater than 5 years. This is probably not a very profitable poll for Gallup to do, though...

Wasn't it 14+14 at some point? I wonder if that would be above or below the average response

Re: What will enter the public domain in 2026?

#218
post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't correct. It is infringement, for example, to write Harry Potter fan fiction in private on a typewriter, even if another soul never sees it. Copyright includes creation, not just distribution

Not sure why this is downvoted. It's factually correct and is said in what I believe to be a fairly neutral way?

Is it factually correct? Has anyone been able to prove infringement or apply a fine for writing fanfiction in your own journal or something?

Re: What will enter the public domain in 2026?

#219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you noticed how the abundance of fan fictions have completely killed famous book series? Me neither.

No, but I think it might happen if copyright lapsed in 14 years.

Presumably people would consider a Song of Ice and Fire sequel by GRRM to be "official" and everything else "fanfiction", even if the fanfiction manages to appear in bookstores

Re: What will enter the public domain in 2026?

#220

The length of copyright is absurd. Corporations have hijacked a concept that should exist on human timescales. Ideally, a child could legally provide their own spin on IP they consumed by the time they reach adulthood. But also, people need to make a living. I actually think the original 14+14 year copyright is the right balance. It gives people time to make their profits, but also guarantees the right of people to t…

This is largely a moot point unless the US wants to withdraw from TRIPS (and implicitly the WTO) and join the list of countries that don't observe it such as... Eritrea, Kiribati, North Korea, South Sudan, and Turkmenistan.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIPS_Agreement

> Copyright terms must extend at least 50 years, unless based on the life of the author. (Art. 12 and 14)

> Copyright must be granted automatically, and not based upon any "formality", such as registrations, as specified in the Berne Convention. (Art. 9)

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14+14 itself isn't a bad idea, however it also implies that all of the other countries in the WTO agree to it.

Given concerns about companies based in the US being carless with copyright, that might be a hard sell.

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