After a long dry period thanks to increasingly screwed-up copyright laws, works are at last entering the Public Domain again. This year such diverse works as the first
Winnie-the-Pooh book, Hemingway's
The Sun Also Rises, and hundreds of thousands of pre-1922 sound recordings (finally!) belong to the world. Here is a brief article, with links to more detailed ones, outlining the situation:
https://boingboing.net/2022/01/01/winnie-the-pooh-is-now-officially-public-domain.htmlAgatha Christie fans will note they can finally adapt
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd into a graphic novel. Provided they want to do such a thing, of course.
The Public Domain has been under relentless attack by corporate entities, led by the likes of Disney and Sony, who want to own everything forever (in many cases stuff they never owned in the first place). For any of you who are working with, or plan to work with, Public Domain characters and works, here is a link to an explainer by
Duke University's Center for the Study of the Public Domain. This goldmine of information is a
very long read but I urge you to follow it through. It sets out the limits of PD-derived works, details various strategies by the likes of Disney, Zorro, and the Conan Doyle Estate to circumvent the Public Domain using copyright and trademark tricks, and describes corporate attempts to create bogus interpretations of the law to maintain their hold over PD characters. It also clarifies the difference between copyright and trademark protection and what each can or cannot do.
https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/2022/bcvpd/The Public Domain has won a number of important battles, but it's been an uphill fight. "Steamboat Willie" is scheduled for liberation in a couple of years, which means the film's version of The Mouse could be used by others without bowing before the Disney Machine. You can bet they'll deploy every lawyer they have to try extending its already over-extended copyright into eternity. The explainer's author writes, somewhat naively:
The original Winnie-the-Pooh
book from 1926 is in the public domain. However, Disney still owns copyrights over later works, and trademark rights for ?Winnie the Pooh? on a variety of products. Hopefully they will not follow the example of the Sherlock Holmes, Tarzan, or Zorro rights holders and try to use residual rights to prevent what copyright expiation allows. This could lead to unnecessary litigation, and even the threat of lawsuits could chill the creative reuse the public domain is designed to promote.That, of course, is precisely the idea. In battles like these the side with the deepest pockets usually wins. But not always. In the meantime, do your bit to keep the Public Domain humming. Get out there and collect, distribute, adapt, reanimate!
