Artists and writers whose works enter the public domain in 2018

http://publicdomainreview.org/collections/class-of-2018

by benbreen • 9 years ago

224 42 9 years ago

publicdomainreview.org

slazaro• 9 years ago

Is there a list of all the artists whose works won't but should, thanks to Disney, corrupt politicians, et al?

pavlov• 9 years ago

Yes, the Center for Study of the Public Domain at Duke Law School publishes exactly such a list every year.

Here's the one for 2017:

https://law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/2017/pre-1976/

rusk• 9 years ago

and since this seems to be down, here's a mirror:

https://web.archive.org/web/20170201214420/https://law.duke....

hmhrex• 9 years ago

I find this list to be way more interesting. Thanks!

cableshaft• 9 years ago

Once/if Dr. Seuss enters public domain you're going to see that everywhere. The entire world will turn into a Seuss wonderland. Or at least I can dream it will.

alberto_ol• 9 years ago

I live in Italy. Can I get (legally) the works of Willa Cather and G. H. Hardy (the mathematician)? According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_in_public_domain they enter the public domain in 2018 as well.

robin_reala5• 9 years ago

(I often drop this into PD threads so sorry if you’ve seen this before, but) the Standard Ebooks project[1] that I contribute to takes PD texts, updates them with better markup and a high quality house style, adds PD cover artwork, then releases them again back into the public domain. Although I’m outside the US the project is US-based, so I’d love to see a yearly update interval again there for both texts to produce and sources of cover art.

[1] https://standardebooks.org/

krylon• 9 years ago

Thank you for the link, and thank you for your effort! I will certainly look into this!

robin_reala5• 9 years ago

No thanks needed: it’s fun, reuses my front-end skills, teaches me Python (I’ve been helping out with the build system as well), and gets me reading a bunch of books I’ve not touched before. The best sort of hobby :)

jventura2• 9 years ago

Thanks for your project, I've downloaded some ebooks and it was great to read them. I would just like to let you that, at least on my ereader (sony prs t1), the book covers do not show at all. I looked at the epub source and I think I saw some svg in the cover, it was probably that.. It's an old ereader..

robin_reala5• 9 years ago

Maybe you could file a bug at https://github.com/standardebooks/tools ? Alternatively, I had a similar problem with my Kobo and Calibre, which was messing with the file in some way even though I had all conversion options disabled. I just use Finder to copy them over now.

yoran• 9 years ago

Thanks for this project! If not for this, I probably wouldn't have read The Communist Manifesto.

I wonder, if the translation of a book is in the US public domain, does that imply that the original is also in the US public domain? I'm curious because as a native French speaker, I would love to see the original French books there too.

JKCalhoun2• 9 years ago

I wonder why the "Through the Looking Glass" does not have the Tenniel art. It's in the public domain.

robin_reala5• 9 years ago

There was some discussion about this: https://groups.google.com/d/topic/standardebooks/WTEIRmRmmDs...

tl;dr: it was felt that for the quality of available scans it wasn’t worth including them. That’s not to say they couldn’t be added in a later edition though were better quality scans to become available.

I’m currently working on Edwin A. Abbott’s Flatland, for which the images are essential. Planning to try and trace and hand-amend the images into high quality SVG as part of the production process.

b3lvedere• 9 years ago

"Wondering what will enter the public domain through copyright expiration in the U.S.? Like last year, and the year before… Nothing"

(sigh)

walterbell• 9 years ago

What is expected to happen with US law in 2019 - another Disney extension?

jccalhoun• 9 years ago

I wouldn't be surprised. I am kind of surprised that we haven't heard rumbling already but with all the moves Disney has made maybe they are afraid of drawing too much attention to themselves and will wait.

mortenjorck• 9 years ago

I still don't understand why Disney has historically been so paranoid of Steamboat Willie entering the public domain anyway - Isn't Mickey protected well enough by trademark (which is perpetual so long as it's defended) that copyright on a 1928 cartoon is no longer instrumental in maintaining the proprietary protection of the character?

regulation_d2• 9 years ago

Just a reminder: the Constitution requires that copyrights be of a "limited times".

If we keep pushing the year back in perpetuity, we should be honest about the fact that we're violating the Constitution.

shams93• 9 years ago

Well thanks to the generosity of the OTO basically all of Crowley's public works have been available for 20 years now. They basically allow people to share his works because sharing has encouraged more sales of his physical books which they earn income from producing.

vinceguidry• 9 years ago

Mere sharing is quite different from the ability to produce derivative works. Crowley works entering the public domain should be a boon for his accessibility as fanfic anthologies become publishable.

drpgq• 9 years ago

Hoping that Canada sticks with 50.

caiob• 9 years ago

How exactly does CHE GUEVARA not make it into the picture list?

justincormack• 9 years ago

The most famous picture of him is presumably not out of copyright...

sudouser• 9 years ago

shower thought: now that Disney owns Star Wars, it will never be public domain

sjs382• 9 years ago

I've had this Slashdot comment bookmarked since 2009: https://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1306857&cid=2873632...

  In the USA Copyright lengths are very simple. Anything
  older than Mickey Mouse is public domain and everything
  else is still copyrighted.

Edit: Typo--fixed the year.

Z-Widwil• 9 years ago

Thank you for sharing this. I legitimately hope that something will change, and I won't have to share your comment in 2035.

beloch• 9 years ago

Honestly, I wish they'd just issue a special exception for Disney instead of screwing up the entire system because they don't want to appear nakedly corrupt.

diggernet• 9 years ago

My idea for Disney-appeasement without special exemptions: Let copyrights be extended for 14 years at a time, indefinitely, with the requirement of registration and a token filing fee. Anyone who cares can keep their copyright for as long as they want, if they just care enough to fill out a 1 page form. Anyone who doesn't care that much (or no heirs, or whatever), the copyright expires. Bonus side effect: for everything still in copyright, there is a database you can look up current contact info for licensing.

regulation_d2• 9 years ago

Pretty sure that would violate the Equal Protection Clause.

wiz21c• 9 years ago

Now that Disney absorbed 20th Century Fox, is there a way to know what movies' copyright are controlled by them ?

Joakal• 9 years ago

Let creators enjoy the full benefits of copyright by returning the ownership back to creator after 10 years.

After a decade, it is expected that creators will be able to command bigger cut as compensation for popular works and thus, inspire more creators to publicly deliver works due to the expectation of more appropriate and fair level of compensation from interested distributors. Otherwise, creators are discouraged from independent creation of works if it's believed that they will suffer perpetual loss of copyright ownership in exchange for a minuscule payment.

Similar scheme exists in Europe: http://evolver.fm/2012/02/29/why-mastered-for-itunes-wont-de...

As it stands, distributors can say "well, sell us the copyright for a dollar and we might give you a cut. No, not a licence, the copyright! At least you'll get a lot of exposure? Hehehe"

The current scheme has a lot of economic encouragement for indy creators to aim for live music, book signings, etc. Where creators need can be present and needed.

BeetleB• 9 years ago

Hmm... Not sure what to think about this.

The real question is: What role should publishers/distributors have, and be allowed to have?

From a writer's standpoint, I think it was common not to grant the publisher a perpetual license. The publisher would offer the author an advance and get exclusivity. If the book made enough money to cover that advance, the copyright would revert to the author (publisher may still have license to keep publishing, but not exclusivity).

In today's world, people can and do make big money self publishing on Amazon, so the hold publishers had has reduced. The argument makes less sense now than 20 years ago.

If you want to argue that self publishing is still a crap shoot compared to traditional publishers, then we have to recognize the great value publishers can bring to the author, and discuss why government intervention (i.e. law) is necessary in this case.

Artists and writers whose works enter the public domain in 2018

Related Stories