Thoughts on Public Domain

The 1st of January is one of my favourite holidays, public domain day. Its when many works of art and entertainment enter the public domain and are now free to use, recycle and remix as we see fit. Public domain day 2019 was extra special as it was the first time in decades that our American cousins get to celebrate it.

Copyright and Intellectual Property (IP) is in a word confusing, and this is largely by design as corporations around the world have lobbied and spent to ensure copyright remains restrictive and last as long as possible.

In parts of the world such as the UK work is copyrighted for the life of the creator plus 70 years, in the US it is the life of the creator plus 120 years!. Thanks to the Sony Bono act. Even worse as part of the act there was a 20 year freeze on the public domain in the United States meaning that for years works published in January 1st 1923 or after remained the exclusive property of estates and publishers decades after the people who worked on the IP have passed away.

That freeze is now over though, which means that now works published in the year of our lord Nineteen Hundred and Twenty Three are now entering the public domain.

Works such as The Pilgrim by Charlie Chaplin, the last film he made before moving onto United Artists.

Link https://youtu.be/_8pohntQgjI

A silent film directed by Charlie Chaplin and released in 1923 by the First National Film Company.

The Pilgrim, an escaped convict, steals a minister's clothes to replace his prison uniform. At a train station, he encounters an eloping couple who want him to marry them. The woman's father shows up and takes her away.

Though of course, capitalism being capitalism this upload was still hit with a copyright claim by MK2 an entity that bought up the entirety of Chaplin's work. So far the dispute is progressing but in case it fails the film is also on archive.org https://archive.org/details/CharlieChaplinThePilgrim1923

Why is this a big deal for people who don't live in these United States? Well because the United States is a global power, especially in terms of media and entertainment. Youtube and many other major websites are registered in the United States and so US IP laws hold sway over there, that's why when searching for things on google you'll sometimes see this message "several search results are hidden due to a DMCA claim".

That youtube and most other online platforms are located in America also severely bottlenecks the use of work in the public domain elsewhere in the world. For example in the UK all works published by anyone who died in the year 1948 or before is in the public domain, including the works of Steinbeck, if you live in Canada where copyright is life of creator plus 50 years, you get to enjoy the work of anyone who died in 1968.

So if you live outside the US you can torrent Steinbeck's complete bibliogrpahy in peace, if your Canadian you can also enjoy the works of MLK Jnr. But if you are an American, you better check the date of publication first.

This is a bit ghoulish, having to double check when a favourite author, film maker or singer died before to consider homaging or remixing some of their work, but at least it means cheaper reproductions, re-imaginings and parodies can be enjoyed without lengthy negotiations with mega corporation or someone who happens to share the family name, and their attached fees.

Here's a few lists of what is now in the public domain and where you may find them.

Duke University Center for the Study of the Public Domain

https://law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/2019/

The Public Domain Review Class of 2019

https://publicdomainreview.org/collections/class-of-2019/

Motherboards guide to public domain sources

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/qvq99b/how-to-download-the-books-that-just-entered-the-public-domain

In addition there is a 800 Gigabyte torrent full of scientific articles published in 1923,

 https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/abld5g/800_gib_torrents_with_1500k_public_domain/


As negative as I'm being, there is one advantage to the US system even with the recent extensions. Unlike most other countries the USA dates copyright to publication date, not the life or death of the author. So while its heavily restricted there are still some works that are only in the public domain in the United States because the author (or main author in the case of films and music) was long lived. Including Charlie Chaplin, in the UK his work won't be Public Domain for a long time since he lived into the 1970s.

Celebrations aside I've noticed something interesting. The constant extending of Public Domain around the world with the US being only the most egregious example has created something of a backlash, even amongst people broadly in favour of the status quo.

This is a positive development, but of course it needs to go much further. Abolishing intellectual property alone (assuming that's even possible) won't help much it'd largely damage creators of intellectual work. But its good that the naked avarice of companies to exploit revenue streams decades, centuries after the authors are dead has exposed the exploitive nature of capitalist economics.

Anyway, let's enjoy this years gifts.