That's an awesome video; I remember watching it when it came out and thinking, "Damn." All the talk about copyright in Gitelman made me think of how something that technology made necessary soon shifted into a twisted beast that solely exists to keep Disney's intellectual property from slipping into the public domain. Of course, we have Sonny Bono to thank for this, but he's dead now. Fitting punishment?
Let me move on to quote from the lazy man's resarch guide (Wikipedia) about the changes made to Copyright Law in 1998 (the same time that Gitelman was writing her book:
This law effectively 'froze' the advancement date of the public domain in the United States for works covered by the older fixed term copyright rules. Under this Act, additional works made in 1923 or afterwards that were still copyrighted in 1998 will not enter the public domain until 2019 or afterwards (depending on the date of the product) unless the owner of the copyright releases them into the public domain prior to that or if the copyright gets extended again.
I always assumed that the point of the public domain was that it gave people an incentive to come up with new works, seeing as they (or their estates) couldn't possibly profit off of old material for all eternity. It's a nice idea, isn't it? But it doesn't really pan out in a world where Winnie the Pooh merchandise continues to be made and A.A. Milne spins in his grave until at least 2026.
1 comment:
That's an awesome video; I remember watching it when it came out and thinking, "Damn." All the talk about copyright in Gitelman made me think of how something that technology made necessary soon shifted into a twisted beast that solely exists to keep Disney's intellectual property from slipping into the public domain. Of course, we have Sonny Bono to thank for this, but he's dead now. Fitting punishment?
Let me move on to quote from the lazy man's resarch guide (Wikipedia) about the changes made to Copyright Law in 1998 (the same time that Gitelman was writing her book:
This law effectively 'froze' the advancement date of the public domain in the United States for works covered by the older fixed term copyright rules. Under this Act, additional works made in 1923 or afterwards that were still copyrighted in 1998 will not enter the public domain until 2019 or afterwards (depending on the date of the product) unless the owner of the copyright releases them into the public domain prior to that or if the copyright gets extended again.
I always assumed that the point of the public domain was that it gave people an incentive to come up with new works, seeing as they (or their estates) couldn't possibly profit off of old material for all eternity. It's a nice idea, isn't it? But it doesn't really pan out in a world where Winnie the Pooh merchandise continues to be made and A.A. Milne spins in his grave until at least 2026.
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