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https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20220103/12164148225/great-that-winnie-pooh-is-public-domain-he-should-have-been-free-1982-earlier.shtml>
"It's been four years now since the US
finally started allowing old works to
enter the public domain after decades in which cultural landlords continually
moved to actively remove works from the public domain. Every year since the US
got back into the public domain business, we've happily run a game jam,
encouraging people to make use of these newly public domain works, and this
year is no different (check out the Gaming Like It's 1926 game jam page if
you're interested!).
I'm not entirely sure why, but this year, people seem even more interested than
in the past few years. We've received way more initial signups than in the
past, and more community activity as well. I'm also seeing (outside of the game
jam), more public awareness of these newly public domain works than in the
past, when it sometimes felt like a more muted public level of interest. Hell,
even Ryan Reynolds was quick to jump on the newly public domain to help promote
the MVNO Mint Mobile, in which he owns the largest stake.
Perhaps some of the excitement over this year's public domain entries is the
fact that the public are now getting used to the fact that every January 1st,
new works enter the public domain. Or, perhaps it just has to do with the
prominence of some of this year's works. When the 1923 class of the public
domain came around, many people noted that there weren't very many "big"
cultural touchstones in that batch — and to some extent the same has been true
over the last few years' batches as well. The Great Gatsby had name
recognition, but still felt kind of old and a bit stuffy.
This year's inclusion of the first Winnie-the-Pooh book seems to have changed
some of that. But, as Alan Cole rightly points out, it's a complete travesty
that Pooh wasn't in the public domain decades ago.
As we've explained at length before,
copyright term extension makes no sense,
legally, ethically, or morally. The entire point of copyright law (in the US)
is that it is an economic incentive to creators: if you create something
creative and new, we give you an exclusive right to copy it for this length of
time. If the work was then created, the incentive was enough. The deal was
made. Clearly, the copyright term at the date of creation served its purpose —
to make sure there was enough incentive to create that work.
Extending the
term of works already created does absolutely nothing to re-incentivize those
old works. They were already made. All it does is take things away from the
public. The public promised you an exclusive right for a certain number of
years, and at the end the public was supposed to get access to those works."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
