A Massive Amount of Iconic Works Will Enter the Public Domain on New Year's Eve

[riversedge]

Should be interesting



Public Domain
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by Sarah Emerson
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Dec 26 2018, 10:00am


b]
A Massive Amount of Iconic Works Will Enter the Public Domain on New Year’s Eve

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/bjek4z/a-massive-amount-of-iconic-works-will-enter-the-public-domain-on-new-years-eve




Why the copyright terms on a goldmine of works from 1923 are about to expire.


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Felix the Cat. Image: Wikimedia Commons

When the clock strikes midnight on New Year’s Eve, movies, songs, and books created in the United States in 1923—even beloved cartoons such as Felix the Cat—will be eligible for anyone to adapt, repurpose, or distribute as they please.

A 20-year freeze on copyright expirations has prevented a cache of 1923 works from entering the public domain, including Paramount Pictures’ The Ten Commandments, Charlie Chaplin’s The Pilgrim, and novels by Aldous Huxley.

Such a massive release of iconic works is unprecedented, experts say—especially in the digital age, as the last big dump predated Google.


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Yet copyright rules are complex, and exceptions exist. The terms for thousands of works published between 1923 and 1963 weren’t renewed as according to the law, and consequently lapsed into public domain. Sometimes authors will intentionally dedicate works to the public domain. Other times, a collection of works may be protected by copyright, even though the individual works themselves are not...........................

[edhopper]

1. The actual works will be public domain

but many of the characters, like Mickey Mouse or Tarzan or Felix, will remain trademarked.