Who owns Shakespeare's work?

[lissener]

This is actually something a bone for me, contentionwise. My reading group reads mostly old stuff, a lot of it not originally in English. One way to squeeze a little more milk out of a public domain cow is to produce a new translation. This is then, of course, marketed as the “definitive” translation, thus relegating all previous translations to red-headed stepchild status. So, when my group recently read The Hunger by Knut Hamsun, in order to be on the same page (I hate that phrase as business-speak; I mean it quite literally here) as the rest of my group, I had to buy the Robert Bly translation, for $14, even though there was a perfectly good (and not actually all that different) translation available at Gutenberg, for around $0.

There’s a similar situation with Emily Dickinson’s poetry, IIRC, regarding high dairy content. Whoever owns the manuscripts (Harvard? maybe? anyone know? a cursory google and I remain in the dark) of her poems issues a new edition every few years; moving a comma here and a dash there; thus maintaining a hold on rights to the “definitive” edition. Like software that comes out in a new version, and everybody has to buy it just to keep up.

Aside: Many cheap “reissues” of public domain works are actually visual scans of old editions, page for page, typo for typo, reprinted cheaply and marked up obscenely.

[scotandrsn]

@N9IWP

I dunno, with the Sonny Bono act (basically lengthening existing copyrights 10 years), it might come to that some day. (I will not be suprised if copyrights are extended ANOTHER 10 years, and ANOTHER … )

But already PD works are probably safe…

Brian

Actually, the Sonny Bono Act was to trade barbs with his ex-wife…

No, wait…

The Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act extended copyright terms by twenty years.

The general trend in US copyright law is to leave things that have entered the public domain in the public domain.

[Una_Persson]

@Polycarp

Or intentionally and voluntarily placed in the public domain. It happens rarely (especially regarding translation, which is what EM’s comment references), but it does happen.

As an aside, I need to check my sources, but I do not believe there is any statutory way a person can designate that their work be “in the public domain”, except in the specific case of computer software. IIRC, it’s only a defense that an author claimed that a work of theirs was in the public domain, but that you’re not 100% safe if they come back and try to sue you. I am also unaware of anyone successfully bringing any action after having stated unambiguously that a work was in the public domain. But I could be mistaken; my specialty is 2D artwork copyright, not literary.

[Exapno_Mapcase]

I believe putting a work into the public domain is more of a political statement by the “information wants to be free” types than a true legal procedure. Effectively, if authors want to proclaim that anyone can use a work with no penalties then they’re free to do so. But there is no explicit legal provision for doing so. That’s why the concept of “copyleft” came into being.

http://encyclopedia.laborlawtalk.com/Copyleft

Copyleft describes a group of licenses applied to works such as software, documents, and art. Where copyright law is seen by the original proponents of copyleft as a way to restrict the right to make and redistribute copies of a particular work, a copyleft license uses copyright law in order to ensure that every person who receives a copy or derived version of a work, can use, modify, and also redistribute both the work, and derived versions of the work. Thus, in a non-legal sense, copyleft is the opposite of copyright.

Authors should of course be free to allow any or no controls over their own work. Both sides are morally equal. There is a huge political battle going on between the two sides that is not a suitable topic for GQ. AFAIK, though, all current works are copyrighted under the law of the land and “public domain” is just a political slogan.

[Derleth]

I was thinking about starting a thread asking whether it is possible under US law for an author to put his creation in the public domain. If all the copyright experts are converging on this thread, however, I’ll probably hold off and watch the fun here.

[Walloon]

Under federal code, no. Under case law, yes. Others can provide the legal citations.

[Walloon]

Although Edward Samuels, writing in 1993, did see a statutory method of abandoning a copyright:

Under section 204 [of the U.S. Copyright Law], a transfer of ownership of copyright “is not valid unless an instrument of conveyance . . . is in writing and signed by the owner of the rights conveyed.” If this statute of frauds prevents a verbal assignment of a copyright, even for consideration, then the much more severe relinquishment of copyright to the public at large — probably without consideration — should require no less than such a writing.

[Derleth]

Walloon: So if the work is digital and the statement that the author releases the work into the public domain is part of the work’s preamble, the copyright still resides with the author at full legal force?

This would come as a shock to many people who have distributed software and other files on the Internet and various dial-up BBS systems for years.

[Walloon]

No. What I just quoted above states the opposite of what you seem to think it does.

In any case, there is an exception in the U.S. copyright code for placing software into the public domain.

[Derleth]

Walloon: I reread it and I cannot make out the interpretation you seem to expect me to.

Here is what I parse it as:

Under section 204 [of the U.S. Copyright Law], a transfer of ownership of copyright “is not valid unless an instrument of conveyance . . . is in writing and signed by the owner of the rights conveyed.”

A direct quote from the US Copyright Law, stating that a verbal transfer of ownership of copyright is not valid. It states that any transfer of ownership of copyright must be in writing and signed by the owner of the copyright.

This seems quite straightforward: Under the cited law, handing your copyright ownership over to someone else requires an instrument that is written and signed by the person who currently owns the copyright. Thus, a line in a computer text file can’t accomplish the goal. Which was my question, or at least within spitting distance of it. The only flaw is if releasing all ownership (that is, placing it into the public domain) is a special case under the US Copyright Law.

If this statute of frauds prevents a verbal assignment of a copyright, even for consideration, then the much more severe relinquishment of copyright to the public at large — probably without consideration — should require no less than such a writing.

This is where I get confused. Why is this guy talking about the statute of frauds? Why does it sound like he’s talking about the section of the US Copyright Law he just cited? And why, instead of citing anything relevant, is he stating what he thinks ought to be required?

I don’t think my reading skills are that rusty. I think this is a bizarre passage, especially in context. I am still probably wrong, which is why so many programmers punt the issue by releasing their source code into the world with the words “Share and Enjoy!” in the comments.