Congress Shrugged

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SquidInk
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Congress Shrugged

Post by SquidInk » 12-31-2013 12:07 PM

http://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdoma ... 4/pre-1976
Congress Shrugged

Current US law extends copyright for 70 years after the date of the author’s death, and corporate “works-for-hire” are copyrighted for 95 years after publication. But prior to the 1976 Copyright Act (which became effective in 1978), the maximum copyright term was 56 years – an initial term of 28 years, renewable for another 28 years. Under those laws, works published in 1957 would enter the public domain on January 1, 2014, where they would be “free as the air to common use.” (Mouse over any of the links below to see gorgeous cover art from 1957.) Under current copyright law, we’ll have to wait until 2053. And no published works will enter our public domain until 2019. The laws in Canada and the EU are different – thousands of works are entering their public domains on January 1.

What books and plays would be entering the public domain if we had the pre-1978 copyright laws? You might recognize some of the titles below.
  • Samuel Beckett, Endgame (“Fin de partie”, the original French version)
  • Jack Kerouac, On the Road (completed 1951, published 1957)
  • Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
  • Margret Rey and H.A. Rey, Curious George Gets a Medal
  • Dr. Seuss (Theodor Geisel), How the Grinch Stole Christmas and The Cat in the Hat
  • Eliot Ness and Oscar Fraley, The Untouchables
  • Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays
  • Walter Lord, Day of Infamy
  • Studs Terkel, Giants of Jazz
  • Corbett H. Thigpen and Hervey M. Cleckley, The Three Faces of Eve
  • Ian Fleming, From Russia, with Love
  • Ann Weldy (as Ann Bannon), Odd Girl Out
  • A.E. Van Vogt, Empire of the Atom
You would be free to translate these books into other languages, create Braille or audio versions for visually impaired readers (if you think that publishers wouldn’t object to this, you would be wrong), or adapt them for film. You could read them online or buy cheaper print editions, because others were free to republish them. (Empirical studies have shown that public domain books are less expensive, available in more editions and formats, and more likely to be in print – see here, here, and here.) Imagine a digital Library of Alexandria containing all of the world’s books from 1957 and earlier, where, thanks to technology, you can search, link, index, annotate, copy and paste. (Google Books has brought us closer to this reality, but for copyrighted books where there is no separate agreement with the copyright holder, it only shows three short snippets, not the whole book.) Instead of seeing these literary works enter the public domain in 2014, we will have to wait until 2053.

Endgame – “The end is in the beginning and yet you go on. . .”

Think about the movies and television shows from 1957 that would have become available this year. Fans could share clips with friends or incorporate them into fantastic homages. (There are certainly some good candidates.) Local theaters could show the full features. Libraries and archivists would be free to digitize and preserve them. Here are a few of the works that we won’t see in the public domain for another 39 years.
  • The Incredible Shrinking Man (Based on Richard
  • Matheson’s 1956 book The Shrinking Man)
  • The Bridge on the River Kwai (Best Picture, Best Director (David Lean), Best Actor (Alec Guinness); also starring William Holden, Jack Hawkins and Sessue Hayakawa)
  • A Farewell to Arms (Rock Hudson and Jennifer Jones)
  • Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas)
  • 3:10 to Yuma (1957 original starring Glenn Ford and Van Heflin)
  • Island in the Sun (James Mason, Joan Fontaine, Dorothy Dandridge, and introducing Harry Belafonte)
  • Witness for the Prosecution (Tyrone Power, Marlene Dietrich, Charles Laughton, Elsa Lanchester)
  • 12 Angry Men (Henry Fonda, Lee J. Cobb, Jack Klugman, Ed Begley, and more)
  • Sweet Smell of Success (Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis)
  • Jailhouse Rock (Elvis Presley)
  • The Prince and the Showgirl (Laurence Olivier and Marilyn Monroe)
  • Funny Face (Audrey Hepburn and Fred Astaire . . . and Paris as only Hollywood can imagine it)
  • An Affair to Remember (Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr . . . and the Empire State Building)
  • Nights of Cabiria (written and directed by Federico Fellini and starring Giulietta Masina)
  • The Seventh Seal (written and directed by Ingmar Bergman and starring Max von Sydow and Bengt Ekerot)
  • What’s Opera, Doc? (Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd do Wagner)
  • The first episodes of Leave It to Beaver and Perry Mason
  • Elvis Presley’s third and final appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show on January 6, 1957.
These works are famous, so we’re not likely to lose them entirely – the true tragedy is that of forgotten films that are literally disintegrating while preservationists wait for their copyright terms to expire.
Unfortunate.
For if it profit, none dare call it Treason.

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kbot
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Post by kbot » 12-31-2013 12:24 PM

I read (perhaps here on FF) that the earliest original episodes of Dr Who were found in Africa, long after all the originals in Great Britain were destroyed by the BBC and that these newlydiscovered copies had been restored so that they could be viewed again.

My wife is a huge fan of old movies (not so much silent movies though), so we watch a lot of old movies on Turner Classic Movies channel and the people on that channel who host the various movie showings comment regularly on all that is being lost - precisely for the reasons you've shown. It's a shame really........

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Post by SquidInk » 12-31-2013 01:11 PM

For if it profit, none dare call it Treason.

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Post by SquidInk » 12-31-2013 01:14 PM

Oddly, most of this is driven by a single company which was founded on the reproduction of works in the public domain.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the ... -it-again/
For most of history, a great character or story or song has passed from its original creator into the public domain. Shakespeare and Charles Dickens and Beethoven are long dead, but Macbeth and Oliver Twist and the Fifth Symphony are part of our shared cultural heritage, free to be used or re-invented by anyone on the planet who is so inclined. But 15 years ago this Sunday, President Clinton signed the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, which retroactively extended copyright protection. As a result, the great creative output of the 20th century, from Superman to "Gone With the Wind" to Gershwin’s "Rhapsody in Blue," were locked down for an extra 20 years.

Without the 1998 Copyright Term Extension Act, the book Gone with the Wind would have fallen into the public domain at the end of 2011, and the film would fall into the public domain at the end of 2014.

It was a windfall to the families and corporations that owned these lucrative copyrights. But it meant these iconic works would be off-limits to those who wanted to reuse or reinvent them without permission. And hundreds of thousands of lesser-known works aren’t available at all, because there's no cost-effective way to obtain permission to republish them.

The copyright extension Clinton signed will expire in five years. Copyright holders like the Disney Corp. and the Gershwin estate have a strong incentive to try to extend copyright extension yet further into the future. But with the emergence of the Internet as a political organizing tool, opponents of copyright extension will be much better prepared. The question for the coming legislative battle on copyright is who will prevail: those who would profit from continuing to lock up the great works of the 20th century, or those who believe Bugs Bunny should be as freely available for reuse as Little Red Riding Hood.
For if it profit, none dare call it Treason.

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