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What will enter the public domain in 2026?

publicdomainreview.org

61–70 of 383 posts

Re: What will enter the public domain in 2026?

#61

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…

Why not just consume public-domain IP to begin with? The "Classics" of Western literature used to be viewed as the necessary foundation of a proper education in the humanities; and today you could add "classic" works from other literary traditions (India, China, etc.) for an even more well-rounded approach.

Re: What will enter the public domain in 2026?

#62
post #40
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Copying” here refers to distribution and derivation, at least in the US. It is entirely legal to create copies of media for personal usage for instance (so long as you aren’t circumventing DRM, thanks DMCA).

from the about page: Standard Ebooks is organized as a “low-profit L.L.C.,” or “L3C,” a kind of legal entity that blends the charitable focus of a traditional not-for-profit with the ease of organization and maintenance of a regular L.L.C. corporations cannot make "personal copies" of copyrighted works, otherwise they'd buy just one copy of microsoft office

> corporations cannot make "personal copies" of copyrighted works, otherwise they'd buy just one copy of microsoft office

That would surely be a license violation, not a copyright violation?

They absolutely can (and do) make copies of the Microsoft office binary and shuttle it around their network/backups/etc, activating licenses only when they need to assign a copy to a particular user

Re: What will enter the public domain in 2026?

#65
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sad that even a well intentioned non profit thinks it has to resort to "engagement" shenanigans.

[flagged]

They need money to recover the money they spent on “engagement” “experts”?

You get predatory tactics in part because you accept them as normal.

Re: What will enter the public domain in 2026?

#67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see that How to Win Friends and Influence People is on there. I'm looking forward to the inevitable And Zombies adaptation coming in 2027.

So is the Diary of Anne Frank, that will surely get some sort of zombie remix in poor taste, I’m sure.

One could even combine How to Win Friends and Influence People, the Diary of Anne Frank, the works of Einstein and Adolf Hitler into a some strange gory anime and others could do nothing about that. The possibilities are endless.

Re: What will enter the public domain in 2026?

#68
post #56
post #39

A lot of WW2 heavyhitters from all sides: Hitler, Mussolini, Patton, Churchill, Goebels. Even Anne Frank and Einstein.

Weird Question, but who would even collect the royalties from Hitler or Goebels?

For Hitler, the rights to the original text of Mein Kampf (and probably many of his other writings) went to Bavaria after he died.

However various translations and abridgements were made with their own copyright.

Houghton Mifflin owns the rights to the US version of Mein Kampf, which was published in the 30s with a lot of the Hitler-iest parts removed (the rights are separate from the British version even though the text is identical). During WW2 and even up until the 1970s, the US government confiscated the royalties that were owed to Hitler.

Houghton Mifflin was eventually able to purchase the full rights. After an article in 2000 about how profitable it was, they started donating the profits to Holocaust-related charities. A few years ago they decided to go back to pocketing the money.

Re: What will enter the public domain in 2026?

#69

Something about this page doesn't seem to work for me. Clicking the tiles doesn't do anything. It's not ad-blocker-related, I disabled those to test.

The entire page is underwhelming. For someone in the US, I walked away with basically no new information other than some stuff will enter public domain at new years.

The comments here seem to link many better lists (in case they didn't before).

Re: What will enter the public domain in 2026?

#70

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…

Why not just consume public-domain IP to begin with? The "Classics" of Western literature used to be viewed as the necessary foundation of a proper education in the humanities; and today you could add "classic" works from other literary traditions (India, China, etc.) for an even more well-rounded approach.

While your end goal is admirable, it’s more fun to share new experiences with others.

Also, there’s a lot of really good albums from the past 70 years you’d be missing out on.

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