To be honest I’m not entirely sure how international copyright law works in terms of which books are allowed to be reproduced online for free or, for example, downloaded my Kindle for free. But presumably whatever the metric is, there are new works entering it each year.
I’d be interested to see a list of works that have entered the public domain in the past few years, as well as ones that are scheduled to enter it in 2012 and 2013.
As long as Disney stays in business, it’s unlikely that much will fall into the public domain in the United States without the consent of the copyright owner for the foreseeable future.
Besides the CTEA problem, there’s a problem with your premise. Nowhere is there a list of all the works published in 1923, much less those for which copyright was not renewed prior to the 1976 act.
There is no such thing.
It’s difficult enough determining the copyright status of a single work, not to mention all them.
That’s also one of the reasons we have an “orphaned works” problem. Even when you know (or suspect) that a work is not in the public domain, there’s no guarantee that you can figure out who does hold the rights or whether you will be able to contact them in order to seek a license.
I’m asking about the kind of books that can be put online or on an eBook shop without having to pay rights - books like Shakespeare and Jane Austen.
I’m not fussed if it’s still in copyright in the US as long as it’s in the public domain most other places (or even just in the UK, really).
Ascenray, I’m very confused as your post seems to imply there is no such thing as public domain? Or that no one can ever know what’s in it or out of it? I’m sure that’s not what you’re saying but I can’t figure out what you mean, sorry.
No, I’m not saying that there’s no such thing as public domain. I’m saying that the status of any work has to be determined on a case-by-case basis and that it’s not always easy. It’s pretty much impossible to compile a list of everything that’s in the public domain.
In which jurisdiction? Different countries have different copyright laws. Various international treaties establish minimum terms, but national governments frequently grant longer ones; the extension may be automatic or upon application. And exactly which sorts of works can be copyrighted also varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. I might create such a work tomorrow and find that it’s automatically in the public domain in country A but protected under copyright for my lifetime plus 75 years in country B.
Yes, that’s another good point. Every country’s laws are different. Not only do you have to determine the status of each work individually, you also have to determine each work’s status individually in every country that you want to distribute in.
There’s the overall quick answer and the nitpicky slow answer.
The quick answer is that everything published in the U.S. before Jan. 1, 1923 is in the public domain because current law keeps it under copyright for 95 years after the publication date. Nothing else will be entering the public domain until 2019, when all works published in 1924 will enter the public domain. 1925 works become public in 2020 etc.
So that takes care of the OP’s question, which nobody bothered to address. Nothing enters the public domain this year or next.
When I say that everything published in 1924, I mean everything published in 1924. That’s not merely books, but newspapers, magazines, music, architectural drawings, anything and everything that is copyrightable. Nobody has that information.
The OP is probably thinking about books, though. There’s no master list of that either but the Library of Congress is useful place to start. Go to their guided search page, enter 1924 into Keyword and select Publication Info (KPUB) from the drop down list. You will get the first 10,000 hits of authors in alphabetical order. That only takes you up to F. And there will be many false hits in there. You can ask how to get the next 10,000, and the next. They’re good for such things. Somebody is already looking into that huge pile of stuff that will become free to reprint in 2019.
I’m not going to get deep into the nitpicky answer. The short version is that copyrighted material could be renewed under older copyright acts. Many things were, many things weren’t. It is extremely difficult to determine this because the Library of Congress doesn’t have full records. Each item has to be researched individually. They’ll do it for you but will charge appropriately. However, the legal presumption - no matter what people say on eBay - is that works are still in copyright unless known otherwise.
We’ve gone over the nonsense that Alley Dweller wrote in a dozen other threads so I don’t need to go into it thoroughly here. In short, the U.S. lengthened its term to conform with the European Union’s and would have done so even if Disney hated it. Mickey Mouse is a trademarked character and trademarks don’t expire. All that will happen is that the individual cartoon named Steamboat Willie will be allowed to be reproduced freely. In 2024.
Ah, thank you - I assumed there must be some international standard because of the internet, but it appears there isn’t - thanks for clarifying. I suppose I’m just interested in the UK and EU, then.
Sorry Expano Mapcase, thank you for taking the time to look that up but I’m not fussed about US law.
The general rules about U.K. and E.U. copyright term will be very similar to those in the U.S. Indeed, the U.S. extended its copyright term in order to conform to what the U.K. and E.U. already had in place.
But that’s not the critical question. No jurisdiction will have a comprehensive list of what’s in the public domain and what isn’t, for many reasons, including that
(1) Under the Berne Convention, which is now in effect in most of the countries you’re interested in, registration is not required, so there’s no way for the copyright authorities to even know comprehensively what works exist, not to mention which ones are in the public domain.
(2) In all countries, the rules have changed multiple times over the last century, so you can’t know a priori which set of rules applies until you research the history of a particular work.
Generally speaking, copyright laws are written with the interests of the creator in mind. The burden falls on the user to determine whether any particular work is protected by copyright law and, if so, bears the burden to get the necessary permissions to use it. The burden falls on the user if he or she thinks something is a public domain work, but turns out to be mistaken.
No problem. I shouldn’t have just assumed.
However, the general approach will be similar. The British Library has an advanced search page similar to, if simpler than, the Library of Congress’. Putting in 1924 brings up tens of thousands of hits for books published in 1924.
I’m not familiar enough with the EU or individual European country’s main libraries, but no doubt they have similar capabilities.
Just so you know, there are already several major firms in the U.S. that make a business out of reprinting public domain books. The expense and difficulty comes from finding copies of an original print copy so that it can be scanned in page by page, so these books are expensive and have a limited market.
Google has already done all the necessary scans and will have all the 1924 books ready to go on Google Books as soon as it’s legal. I’m pretty sure they’ve been working with non-US libraries as well. I don’t know if these are transferable to Kindle.
This is absolutely false. Despite pretenses to the contrary, copyright laws are for the benefit of the publisher, not the author.
Not true. They are for the benefit of the copyright holder – that many authors assign their copyright to the publisher is not really part of the law. The recent change in the law was distinctly in favor of the author, definitely anti- public domain and somewhat anti-publisher. I’m referring to the reversion rights. Copyright sold before 1978 can be taken back by authors or their heirs. Copyrights sold after 1978 can be reacquired 35 years after the original sale. And reacquired here means legal paperwork not buying back.
It is possible for a law to be implicitly unfair without being explicitly unfair. In this case, content creators, who for the most part do not own their own printing presses, CD manufacturing plants, and other means of distribution of creative works, are compelled to sell or licence their copyright to a publisher who does. In exchange they may receive enough money to support themselves while they produce their next saleable creative work, while the publisher keeps the profits.
The law gives the creator the rights. Whatever unfairness might exist in the balance between an author and a publisher is neither implicitly nor explicitly due to the law. It is due to the nature of capitalism and commerce, not law.
And, as others have mentioned, authors now have “termination” rights, which allows them to seize back any works they might have assigned rights to when they had weak bargaining power in order to seek a new deal.
And in today’s world, printing presses and CD manufacturing plants are quickly becoming irrelevant.
In any case, my comment was contrasting creators to users. “Creator,” in this case, was merely a stand-in for the holder of rights under copyright law.
Nuts. I’m an author and I say this is blather.