"Hi Planet Money, today is public domain day. I see that Fritz Lang's classic Metropolis is now in the "public domain." I was curious what that meant at a practical level for a German language silent film.
If Planet Money Movies wanted to release their own version of Metropolis, how would they do it? Can you just go to Amazon, buy the Blu Ray, and somehow release your own? What about the anti-piracy measures on the Blu Ray? What about the work that Transit Film did in restoring the film from the original negative? Does that count as some sort of newly original work? It's a silent film and a foreign film. How does the soundtrack and translation work?
If you have to make a new copy from the original reels, what if someone is hoarding them? Does that mean you could buy all the copies and prevent someone from releasing a public domain version?"
Restoration itself does not grant a new copyright. Other elements included in a restoration may be copyrighted e.g. new music or the graphic design of intertitles. A new translation is also copyrightable; essentially it's only the "original elements" that enter the public domain. Working around the anti-piracy measures of a blu-ray might be a crime, idk, but that's irrelevant to the copyright discussion; once you have a copy even if it came from an 'illicit' source, you're free to copy & distribute as you wish.
But yes, you need to acquire a copy first; if you can't find a work at all, how would you copy it, practically?
Yes.
For example, wikipedia has a copy of Metrpolis and that's basically what happened
This part at least, yes. A work being in the public domain doesn't mean someone is obligated to help you redistribute it.
This is a legitimate problem in public domain releasing. If you're trying to release a really good public domain version then you might need access to very high quality source materials. With a movie it would obviously be nice to scan the camera negatives. If the studio has those negatives in a vault, then you're cooked.
Didn't Bill Gates or some others buy up thousands of old artworks and put them on ice so they could paywall the scans?
In the US, bypassing DRM is a crime even if the intended use is legal. There are exceptions for things like criticism and accessibility, but I don't believe they'd be relevant.
Maybe it'd be as simple as selling your new copies as "for review purposes" and it'd be legal, I'm not sure.
I don't care much about Betty Boop and I don't really care about Pluto and Mickey all that much, but I'm very excited for The Maltese Falcon's novel being available, since I think that that one could actually be adapted into something pretty modern.
Also, All Quiet on the Western Front is very arguably one of the very best movies ever made, and certainly one of the very best of the 30's if nothing else, so I am very much looking forward to fan restorations.
Do you mean for humans? We have this weird asymmetry where copyright law applies to humans but a large company training an LLM is not subject to copyright law at all.
The article mentions that Charlie (Bird) Parker's music is now public domain in most of the world (life + 70 years), but most of his records are collaborations with other artists like Dizzy Gillespie who died much later, less than 50 years ago. I also wonder if that even matters if the records are owned by corporations.
In those cases, how would I know if a record is public domain or not?
Someone would retort that patent is not same as copyright. But really dude that's all just made up stuff by politicians and corporations. In the end Tesla died pennyless and these corporations and entities get to hoard all the human creativity till what it looks like an eternity for my meagre life span.
I am aware that this is not realistic, for many reasons, but just like Richard Stallman, or the right to repair movement (e. g. Louis Rossmann) being vocal about it, or scientists who will prefer to publish with open access rather than be subject to the greedy Elsevier paywall, after the public already paid for the research - we need to strive for ideals here. So, all must be in the public domain. I actually think it should be without delay; seems usually the waiting time before it gets into the public domain is ... 75 years? Or any number where I am definitely no longer alive. So that is bad.
Thus - public domain the everything. \o/
95 years for works owned by corporations (long enough to become lost and/or irrelevant).
For the vast majority of things yes. But thankfully the cream of the crop that does stand the test of time eventually makes it to the public.
What will enter the public domain in 2026?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46118808
> I love the original 14+14. I’ve heard proposals for exponentially growing fees to allow truly big enterprises to stay copywritten longer, like 14+14 with filing and $100, another 14 for $100,000, another 14 for $10M, another 14 for $100M. That would allow 70 years or protection for a few key pieces of IP that are worth it, which seems like an okay trade off?
I've always been a fan of this, but here's a great detraction:
> I think would diminish independent author rights. Quite often, a novel will become popular only decades after publishing, and I think the author should be able to profit on the fruits of their labour without wealthy corporations tarnishing their original IP, or creating TV shows and the link with no reperations to the creator. Fantasy book are a good example. A Games of Thrones was first released in 1996 but had middling success. It was only after 2011 that the series exploded in popularity. Good Omens main peak was ~15 years after release. Hell, some books like Handmaiden's Tale were published in 1985 but only reached their peak in 2010. IP law was originally to protect artist and authors from the wealthy, but now it seems to have the opposite intent.
This is a very solid point. Works sometimes only become popular decades after their initial release.
Perhaps a way to protect individual artists would be to limit the number of copyrights held by a particular entity. The more you aggregate or hold on to, the steeper the cost to maintain the copyright. I'm sure loopholes like "we're a holding company of holding companies" might be invented to counter this, but if we tied this to real people rather than corporations it might work.
Copyrights shouldn't last longer than humans.
Game of Thrones was originally published in 1996, but the more recent books are more recent. I think that GRR Martin's books would be giving him sizeable profit, even if someone else were able to make GoT fanfiction in the same universe, and the GoT TV Series would still have to pay him to use the more recent copyrighted books, not just the settings and characters from the original.
There is already intrinsic value in having written the original work, and that intrinsic value will make you the best person to consult on a TV adaption or make sequels, even if the original work is public domain and in theory anyone could adapt it.
If an author makes something 20 years ago, doesn't build on the universe any more beyond that, and is unable to compete in their own universe they built against other authors once it goes public domain and becomes popular, well, then tough luck for the author.
Let's look at how this works for software: every piece of open-source software out there is something that in theory another company could take and sell as their own. Red Hat Linux is Open Source, so sure anyone can make their own... and yet Red Hat can sell consulting services and new versions of it because they're the only group with proper expertise there.
> limit the number of copyrights held by a particular entity
Entities are unfortunately quite easy to fake and difficult to define in a fool-proof way.
If you can still license copyrights, then holding companies would become the norm. Like, right now LucasArts owns StarWars, and LucasArts is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Disney, but if we had a limit on how many copyrights an entity can hold, Disney wouldn't acquire LucasArts, and would instead pay for an exclusive copyright license.
28+28+... might be a better model. I know there's a bunch of decent stuff from the 1990s which will never again have any real economic value, but would be fine for soundtracks or tictoks or MAME or etc.
1. Anyone can use anything that is in the public domain.
2. Any creation that uses elements from the public domain is also, automatically, in the public domain.
3. Activate retroactively: When the first book in a series (for example) gets into the public domain, then the whole series (and franchise) becomes public domain.
(3) depends on what the initial rule is for something to get into the public domain.P.S: It's a thought experiment, not an actual "let's implement it now!" thing.
1. People still do software based on the GNU license. What's the difference?
2. I'm a mathematician - math is not copyrighted, yet it's still being done.
3. Is it really so important for society that copyrighted movies be based on old stories? Won't society benefit from new stories and characters?
To be clear, I don't propose to really implement it. But the existing system also sucks. I'm thinking that maybe incorporating such an idea into the existing system - limiting what you can do with public domain work - can be beneficial.
Life + 70 can mean the work is protected 120 years (publish at 40, dies at 90)?
For example, lyrics to The Internationale were composed in 1871 and music in 1888. They fully entered public domain... in 2014 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Internationale#Authorship_... Over 140 years of copyright.
That could be 150 years of copyright.
US laws are looser on paper but viciously enforced.
> The nation becomes enslaved to the Chinese leader Murti Bing. His emissaries give everyone a special pill called DAVAMESK B 2 which takes away their abilities to think and to mentally resist.
Interesting. That's quite a bit before 1984 was written.
Published in 1924, it’s a short read, I would recommend, I personally find it more compelling than Orwell’s work
Somewhat ironically, what seems to have survived in the public consciousness is actually the critique of all those efforts (1984, We, etc). The Western mainstream seems to have abandoned any attempt to create a rational, enduring order from social chaos. Somehow we just accepted that things are fucked up and there is no hope of meaningfully unfuck them.
(I’m happy to have contributed three to the launch this year, hope you enjoy them.)
Been meaning to do a Kafka for a while but the Gutenberg editions are later translations that aren’t actually public domain. This is the first time a Kafka novel has entered the US PD.
The other two I picked from the list of “works Standard Ebooks wants for public domain day” back in October. We’re reasonably organised about this.
Catalog of Copyright Entries, New Series. Part 1, Group 2: Pamphlets, Leaflets, Contributions to Newspapers or Periodicals, Etc. Maps 1929: Vol 26 No 1-12
It is eerily similar to our times, too, unfortunately.
https://reason.com/2026/01/01/betty-boop-enters-the-public-d...
Just like with "Steamboat Willie" Mickey, it's only the very first iteration of the character.
The Divorcee - Norma Shearer won best actress for this performance of a sophisticated woman. She evens the score after her husband has a brief affair, and as this is pre-Hays code, she isn't punished for it.
Hell's Angels - produced by Howard Hughes, is worth watching for the dogfighting stunts alone. 4 people died filming them.
Holiday - Inferior to the later Hepburn/Grant remake, but still a solid rendition of the play.
L'age d'Or - Luis Buñuel's surrealist showcase
Animal Crackers - the Marx brothers, it's still funny
