What Could Have Entered the Public Domain on January 1, 2013? Under the law that existed until 1978 … Works from 1956
From The Duke Law School Center for the Study of the Public Domain:
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 1956 would enter the public domain on January 1, 2013, where they would be “free as the air to common use.” Under current copyright law, we’ll have to wait until 2052.
. . . .
What books would be entering the public domain if we had the pre-1978 copyright laws? You might recognize some of the titles below.
- Winston Churchill, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, Volume I and Volume II
- Philip K. Dick, Minority Report
- Ian Fleming, Diamonds are Forever
- Fred Gibson, Old Yeller
- Billie Holiday, Lady Sings the Blues
- Alan Lerner, My Fair Lady
- Eugene O’Neill, Long Day’s Journey into Night
- John Osborne, Look Back in Anger
- Dodie Smith, 101 Dalmatians
Link to the rest at Center for the Study of the Public Domain and thanks to B.S. for the tip.
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Someone please correct me if I am wrong. I worked for the Copyright Office for four years but I was a cataloger/librarian, not a copyright law specialist. I am under the impression that the new law was NOT retroactive but only covered new works appearing after it became effective on January 1, 1978.
I do know that while I was there in the early 1980s we were processing applications filing for renewal after the works had run through their original 28-year coverage and were claiming eligibility for the renewal for an additional 28 years.
OTOH, who am I to argue with the Duke Law School Center for the Study of the Public Domain?
Parts of it were and parts of it were not. For instance, if a work had passed into the public domain for failure to renew prior to the passage of the 1976 Act, the removal of the renewal requirement did not in general recreate those copyrights. (Or for failure of notice requirements, etc. Much to John Romero’s eternal frustration, I’m sure.) In general, though, there’s no question that it extended the terms of some copyrights which would otherwise have expired on works created before 1976.
Okay. However, if this is true, why were we receiving (and processing) renewal paperwork six years (or more) after the new law theoretically made such renewal unnecessary? I specifically remember scads of episodes for various soap operas and other television programs. The forms had been sent in, in bulk, to cover entire seasons, I believe. I guess you have to be a lawyer to comprehend how the law works.
My first guess would be “bureaucratic inertia.” However, it would depend on all kinds of timing questions.
Maybe because better to have unnecessary or invalid paperwork than to go to court & let a judge & jury sort it out? And the first course does cost less than the second.
Duke made a small boo-boo. The author of Old Yeller is Fred Gipson.
Their heirs are laughing all the way to the bank.
Im reading the brief. The article appears to over=reach the point in that respect. I’d suggest given the fairly flat nature of most offerings mentioned in the article, that there’s no reason to mourn that most of these works remain in un-public domain (with the exception of the iconic MAD mag).
Some artists can make an interesting installation of salvaged parts. But over the eons, the light is often brightly noted when people do the opposite: create new and often off the wall, not derivative. Alfred E. Neuman’s genesis [sp] being a case in point.
This excerpt from the article does not appear to take a moral stance on whether the emergence of a work into public domain is a good thing or a bad thing. (I haven’t read the entire article). There are people who take what might be described as the Project Gutenberg view, that everyone has the right to own everything and that the faster we get everything into the public domain, the better. Then there are their intellectual cousins, who grab every pirated copy of everything they can find and don’t feel they should ever have to pay for anything. The artists who are trying to make a leaving by writing or performing have a somewhat different viewpoint.
Seventy years? Seven hundred would be better.
Yep. It would be much better to keep everything copyrighted forever and ever. Make it really hard for people to get copies, let the copies rot, and everybody has to start from scratch.
Like your name, for instance. Terence/Terrence/Toirdhealbhach is a name that has been borne by far too many of us O’Briens, including the blessed martyr-bishop executed by the English on Halloween. Obviously your parents should have been forced to form your name (and surname) randomly, from a string of numbers and letters, so that nobody could possibly confuse you with anybody else. Originality is all!