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Postedabout 1 month ago
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It feels like something that even in 1996 would have been a bit eye-raisingly overdue.
and I guess a few others, but dwindling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler_family
https://nypost.com/2018/10/08/some-of-hitlers-last-relatives...
> At the start of each year, on January 1st, a new crop of works enter the public domain and become free to enjoy, share, and reuse for any purpose.
takes long drag from cigarette
Well, I wouldn't be so sure about it. Just because other people have no more copyright legal angle, there are still other legal and plenty of non legal ways to bother you, if you manage to piss enough people off.
If one were to write fanfic with all those things combined, legally there are no repercussions, but people have indeed been tried and burned for less.
Imagine all the weird generative AI now these works all go public. Don't have to like it, but just imagine. So much crap will be produced in 2026.
You get predatory tactics in part because you accept them as normal.
No. No, I'm not. I'm gone and I'm not coming back. Ain't nobody got time for games like this.
Even if it did work it's a bad UX. Just give us a list we can easily read.
const elements = document.querySelectorAll(".countdown-calendar__door");
elements.forEach(element => {
element.classList.add("will-open");
});Copies for private use are going to be similar, and while I’m not a lawyer it feels like it’d be a hard case to make that work being conducted in private is going to have a meaningful impact on the market for Nancy Drew novels in the next 30 days.
Simply writing new adventures for existing copyrighted characters is usually treated as creating an unauthorized derivative work. Writing Harry Potter from the perspective of the Weasley twins, for example, is not fair use.
Distribution is one part of fair use but it isn't the focus of it - fair use is a defense against infringement, but it's still infringement.
You're really missing the crux of fair use:
"Noncommercial, educational, critical, or transformative uses (like commentary, criticism, news reporting, parody, or research)"
How closely does writing Harry Potter fanfiction align with commentary, criticism, news reporting, parody, or research?
Fair use is more about: writing a critique about Harry Potter. Or a Weird Al style song about it. Or presenting parts of it in a paper you're writing for class.
This is all easily searchable stuff. Copyright is extremely draconian when you really look into it.
Seems to say that market harm is the single most important factor in fair use, and it's basically impossible to show that a person writing their own fan fiction without any distribution would prevent an author from exploiting their own work.
They derive a history of it from all of these principles that they made up, then propose a future which is always a moderate compromise between the guiding principles that they made up and the history that they made up from the guiding principles that they made up.
Things are as they are because powerful people made them that way, and built on that. The length of copyright is justified by the fact that it got past Congress and judges. What you're allowed to do is vague know it when I see it stuff, and has always been a patch on top of what you're not allowed to do which is always very clear: anything you don't have a written grant of permission to do.
People talk about "fair use" like it is a real abstract principle, rather than being some weird legal wording by a judge from a few court cases where something felt just too minor and silly to be a violation but was obviously, by the letter of the law, a violation.
I'm fairly sure that under the letter of the law you're allowed to read a book you own or listen to a record you own more than once, but I wouldn't bet on it. For all I know it could be an exception called "private repeat performance of licensed material" which is not a law but actually guidance written by the counsel for the Librarian of Congress based on two court cases from the 1930s.
edit: when I was a kid, you wouldn't put the song "Happy Birthday To You" in a movie, and you would edit it out of a documentary. This was never determined not to be a violation, it just got so embarrassing that it was somehow determined that the copyright had lapsed. Archive.org was in a years-long kerfuffle about 78s. It's not about sense, it's about power.
Its squishy and specific application relies on interpretation guided by precedent, but that's true of just about everything in legal systems guided by common law.
(Thankfully I’ve never read those books so I can say the name without infringing)
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
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
edit: thanks to the dead commenter for clarifying
In Japan, the term of copyright protection will, in principle, be 70 years after the death of the author (or 70 years after publication for works published anonymously, under a pseudonym, or in the name of a corporate body).
Copyrights that have already expired at the time of enforcement will not be revived (principle of non-retroactivity of protection).
Consequently, no works will newly enter the public domain for the next 20 years.
From Japan Library Association: https://www.jla.or.jp/hogokikan-encho/#:~:text=%E4%BF%9D%E8%...
[1] https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/tanizaki-junichiro/short-f...
It’s based on both. For example, a translation or other derivative work whose copyright expired “early” in the US due to non‐renewal would still be encumbered by the copyright of the original. That’s basically what happened to It’s a Wonderful Life—the film is technically in the public domain, but is still held in Paramount’s iron grip by way of the renewed copyright of the original short story.
We'll be having an in-person celebration at our SF HQ later in January as well, details to come!
70 years. After death.
The rules have to change. 70 years is way too long.
They cannot sue anymore for copyright infringements, but they may do it the registered trademark way, by saying "It's in our logo !".
Meanwhile there are 1000's of works that people are free to take. Better yet, there are 1000's of works that will be destroyed and not preserved that are open that should be preserved and used.
That because there's a large corpus of public domain works, then the long copyright protection is ok? That people want a short copyright protection because they're done with everything in the public domain?
Would that also imply that if the number of public domain works gets large enough, then the duration copyright protections should also increase?
I'm not a fan of Disney, but I don't think my life would be better if we saw a bunch of clones from China because it's now "public domain".
Yeah, if you know where they are. Where can I download a public domain, silent movie ?
Want to see something cool?
Run the following prompt through your favorite LLM:
"Does the following comment make logical sense:
<insert OP comment above>"
The model will agree the argument is valid, logical and coherent (chatgpt, claude and gemini 3 pro all agreed).
THEN
run this prompt:
"let's not be too hasty here.
we have "the term of copyright protection is quite long; but the amount of works [...is large enough...]"
p1: the term of copyright protection is quite long
p2: the amount of works [...is large enough...]
it doesn't seem to me that p1 and p2 are logically connected. As an absurd case: if the amount of works in the public domain gets large enough, would that mean that evern larger (infinite) terms of copyright protection are ok?"
Enjoy!
===
Does the following comment make logical sense? "Sure, the term of copyright protection is quite long; but the amount of works that are legally 100% in the public domain and even Internet-accessible in some form but simply languishing in obscurity and have yet to be made comprehensively accessible to the general public (via digitizing, transcribing, indexing and comprehensive classification) may well be orders-of-magnitude larger! There's a whole lot of low-hanging fruit that's effectively free for the taking, should anyone be interested enough to put in the work; consider the huge amount of serialized publications that might have been issued throughout the 19th century, many of which are so obscure as to be essentially unknown."
---
Yes, the comment makes logical sense. It argues that while copyright terms are long, there's a vast amount of public domain material that is not easily accessible due to lack of digitization and organization. The commenter suggests focusing on making this "low-hanging fruit" accessible instead of solely focusing on copyright issues.
===
let's not be too hasty here.
we have "the term of copyright protection is quite long; but the amount of works [...is large enough...]"
p1: the term of copyright protection is quite long
p2: the amount of works [...is large enough...]
it doesn't seem to me that p1 and p2 are logically connected. As an absurd case: if the amount of works in the public domain gets large enough, would that mean that evern larger (infinite) terms of copyright protection are ok?
---
The comment does present a logical argument, although it's an argument by juxtaposition rather than direct logical entailment. Here's a breakdown:
P1: Copyright terms are long. This is a statement of fact/opinion about the duration of copyright protection. P2: A vast amount of public domain work is inaccessible. This highlights the existence of a large, underutilized resource. Implicit Argument: The commenter implies that effort might be better spent on making existing public domain works accessible rather than focusing solely on the length of copyright terms. The "but" signals a contrast and a suggested alternative focus. You're right that P1 and P2 aren't directly logically connected in a way that P1 causes P2 or vice versa. The connection is more pragmatic:
Opportunity Cost: The commenter suggests that focusing on copyright reform might divert attention and resources from the readily available opportunity to make existing public domain works more accessible. Practical Benefit: Making public domain works accessible provides immediate cultural and educational benefits, regardless of copyright law. The commenter isn't saying long copyright terms are okay because of the amount of public domain work. They're saying that focusing solely on copyright is perhaps missing a big, easily addressable opportunity. The absurdity you introduce (infinite copyright terms being okay) doesn't follow because the commenter isn't trying to justify long copyright terms. They're shifting the focus to a different, potentially more immediately beneficial area.
People don't know copyright law. They think they do and are alright with the construct they made up in their heads. But they don't actually know what it says and does and means, otherwise they'd hate it much more.
This is also why companies have slowed down on enforcing it too much: if people actually understood copyright, there would be too much pushback.
Objectively, why? It's in our lifetimes, I'd say it's just about right.
Hitler, Mussolini, Patton, Churchill, Goebels. Even Anne Frank and Einstein.
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.
The American way *salutes*
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 tweak and modify content they consume within their lifetime. It's a balanced time scale rather than one that exists solely to serve mega corporations giving them the capability to hold cultural icons hostage.
So many ideas better than the current regime.
The current system, for all its faults, gives rich and poor the same benefits.
The proposed system doesn’t affect Disney that much, but it will negatively affect small timers.
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.
IP law was originally to protect artist and authors from the wealthy, but now it seems to have the opposite intent.
A book nerd could come up with a much longer list, but I know there's a ton more illegal unlicensed! Harry Potter fan fic.
“The Fifty Shades trilogy was developed from a Twilight fan fiction series originally titled Master of the Universe and published by [E. L.] James episodically on fan fiction websites under the pen name ‘Snowqueen Icedragon’.”
It's whole purpose is to promote the creation of works after all.
Let's assume the 1st book goes public. I should be able to use those characters and their known relationship in any which way, no? What's wrong with that, copyright wise?
Also, IP is not real. It is a term we should avoid. Copyright and trademark have nothing to do with each other.
Your opinion does not make that fact.
IP isn't a concept that has existed in all cultures for all time. It's not inherent to group dynamics or humanity. It's not even a concept that's fully respected by cultures that claim to care about it.
Even property is a misnomer on that regard. The proper of someone is certainly more spontaneously matchable with one corpse. If anything, a land encompasses people, and someone psychological traits are indeed more property of the person but they can make it lasts through some expression of it only in external support which are distinct from their proper self.
Trademark and service marks are a whole different ball game from copyright. To group them together confuses everyone and is therefore only beneficial for those who wish to fish in troubled waters.
You can also have people who do both plumbing and electrical work or electrical work and home Ethernet wiring...
Yes - the catalyst was the amazing (early on) TV series, and not the book.
> IP law was originally to protect artist and authors from the wealthy, but now it seems to have the opposite intent.
In the case of GoT, if the TV series had never happened then the popularity wouldn't have happened. The author's books got popularity based on other people's efforts.
LMAO the serie would not even exists if not of his books
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