> “why Tintin is trending at the moment”
The Tintin character entered public domain in many countries in January 2025.
I think this “What a week” image is from a 1930 album (“The Crab with the Golden Claws”), so it’s part of the public domain now and can legally be used for things like this meme generator.
The situation in EU is different though. Hergé died in 1983, and I think his entire oeuvre has 75 years of protection after his death. I’m not 100% sure.
Update: Wikipedia's copyright notes regarding a Tintin file... is definitely not what I've expected https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tintin_and_Snowy_from_Tin...
> Also note that this image may not be in the public domain in the 9th Circuit if it was first published on or after July 1, 1909 in noncompliance with US formalities, unless the author is known to have died in 1954 or earlier (more than 70 years ago) or the work was created in 1904 or earlier (more than 120 years ago.)
And links to this footnote (https://guides.library.cornell.edu/copyright/publicdomain#Fo...):
> The differing dates is a product of the question of controversial Twin Books v. Walt Disney Co. decision by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in 1996. The question at issue is the copyright status of a work only published in a foreign language outside of the United States and without a copyright notice. It had long been assumed that failure to comply with U.S. formalities placed these works in the public domain in the United States and, as such, were subject to copyright restoration under URAA (see note 10). The court in Twin Books, however, concluded "publication without a copyright notice in a foreign country did not put the work in the public domain in the United States." According to the court, these foreign publications were in effect "unpublished" in the United States, and hence have the same copyright term as unpublished works. The decision has been harshly criticized in Nimmer on Copyright, the leading treatise on copyright, as being incompatible with previous decisions and the intent of Congress when it restored foreign copyrights. The Copyright Office as well ignores the Twin Books decision in its circular on restored copyrights. Nevertheless, the decision is currently applicable in all of the 9th Judicial Circuit (Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, and Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands), and it may apply in the rest of the country.
Also, Disney lost here (Accordingly, we reverse the summary judgment in favor of [Disney & co.]). It might not even PD in the US if this is upheld (and it seems so).
Being public domain decreases the liklihood that I will meme a given piece of IP
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> The Tintin character entered public domain in many countries in January 2025.
Many countries or only US (which uses the publication date)? Considering that the original publication is in Belgium and that almost all countries use the author's death as the benchmark, I am not so sure (even with the rule of the shorter term).