What will enter the public domain in 2026?
(publicdomainreview.org)486 points by herbertl a day ago
486 points by herbertl a day ago
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?
So many ideas better than the current regime.
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.
> IP law was originally to protect artist and authors from the wealthy, but now it seems to have the opposite intent.
I like Cory Doctorow's analogy: Artists are, to a large degree, at the mercy of big companies (publishers, music labels, etc), who have the leverage to force artists to sign over all of their rights. Giving artists more rights is like giving your kid more lunch money when it's being stolen by a bully: no matter how much money you give your kid in that situation it's not going to give him any lunch.
I don't know that A Game of Thrones is a good example, at all.
The series was already remarkable commercial success before the TV adaptation. A Feast for Crows debuted at #1 on the NYT list in 2005.
The series sold millions of copies prior to the TV series. That's more successful than the average successful Fantasy novel by orders of magnitude.
If the books sold even more copies after being adapted, that's because HBO put the story on TV, not because of anything the author did.
And, of course, even if the first book in the series lost it's copyright after 28 years (nearly three decades!), the all the rest of books in the series would still under copyright, and the HBO wouldn't be able to access the ending without the authors help, as it hasn't even been published yet. The most HBO could have done without Martin's involvement would have been to create glorified fan fiction, while leaving themselves open to lawsuits about any similarities to any later books in the series under copyright.
Almost all the money almost any artist makes comes in the first 28 years. It is hard to see why we should deprive all of society from benefiting from using, building on, or remixing culture, to slightly increase the leverage that a handful of exceptionally rare winners get.
An of course, there is a huge gap between 14+14 and today's maximalist copyright regime.
> 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.
Using your example and the rules suggested in the grandparent post, GRRM's copyright would have been set to initially expire in 2024, where he would be able to pay $100k to renew it until 2038. Handmaiden's Tale works in a similar way, with the initial expiration in 2013.
This still seems very reasonable to me.
So add another 14 to the original 14+14, giving 42 years of maximum protection. That would cover your examples and require active renewal to send abandonware to the public domain earlier. I'd love to see shorter terms, but active renewal would already greatly enrich the public domain.
> Hell, some books like Handmaiden's Tale were published in 1985
It was already a classic by the year 2000 and Margaret Atwood has made more than enough money and was an icon even back then. I say this as a fan and someone who paid to meet her.
Copyright should ensure that artists make a living, not enable them to make a killing.
A person who wants to coast off the success of a single creation for eternity and not feel compelled to make future creations is not an artist.
They are a capitalist.
Artists create, despite the destitution, because they want to create and feel strongly compelled to create. Art is about that compulsion.
An artist wants enough money to pay rent/mortgage, raise a family, have a hobby, not be in debt, etc. But when Daniel Hardcastle received 0 pounds from his book because the publisher was a scammy cunt, he doesn't stop writing because there's no money in it, he continues to write despite the lack of profit. Because that's what he feels compelled to do.
When youtube made it impossible for animators to make money on Youtube, Arin Hanson (Egoraptor) started paying people to make animations out of his content, including people who started out doing it entirely without their permission. When many channels make pure profit from creating clip shows or compilations of their content, instead of throwing lawyers or the Youtube machine at those people, he paid someone to make official versions.
Compare how those two jackwads acted (the fine brothers), trying to trademark the concept of a "reaction video", to all the different channels and groups that do "Power Hour" or variety content like Good Mythical Morning. They even joke about how they are all stealing from each other. They know that their audience is looking for their unique output, not a specific format, and that protecting such a format would be a waste for everyone.
Because a real artist does not say "How dare you make better product with my formula", a real artist says "Aww man they used my formula to make something great, I should figure out how to make something great and up my game".
The sin in artistry is someone taking your style or content and shamelessly stealing it because it's a profitable business, rather than riffing on it or iterating on it.
Weird Al generally gets permission to do his work despite the law being clear that he does not have to because artistry is about respect and effort and collaboration.
More importantly for copyright law, despite no legal protection for a "Power hour" format, many groups are able to profit off it simultaneously, because art is not some winner takes all market. Copyright is not about enabling you to profit off of a work indefinitely, copyright is about ensuring that Greedy McBusinessman cannot take your book and sell it for cheaper because he doesn't have to pay your rent and does that for a hundred other artists. It's about who owns the Rights to Copy a work.
If a novel you wrote 15 years ago becomes hugely successful you can capitalize with a sequel. Maybe GRRM would have written them a little faster in that universe.
Game of Thrones and Good Omens would easily fit in the 14+14 model. Even Handmaid's Tale would be fine, although the new TV series would be outside of copyright. 28 years is still a long time in human terms, timespans longer than that are mostly beneficial only for effectively immortal corporations.
14+14=28 years. That minimum being proposed here is longer than a patent lasts for.
Why should we protect the work of an author for a lengthier term than that of an inventor?
(And remember: It's really not my problem, as a regular Joe, when an author or inventor creates something that doesn't catch on right away -- if at all. Success is not guaranteed.)
> A Games of Thrones was first released in 1996 but had middling success. It was only after 2011 that the series exploded in popularity.
Sorry, but this is nonsense. Way before 2011 all my friends were telling me to read it. It was so popular that Neil Gaiman - before 2011 - wrote a famous blog post criticizing R R Martin fans for being upset that R R Martin was not giving a timeline for writing his next book (and implied he may never complete the series).
It also consistently won some of the top awards prior to 2011.
14+14 seems to cover these two scenarios? Lifetime+whatever is far too on the other end of this seesaw.
> IP law was originally to protect artist and authors from the wealthy
IP laws were created on the Modern Age (that is not, you know, our modern one) arguably to protect the technique of book copyists, and very probably to improve kingdoms taxation and control what knowledge the bourgeoisie could access... at that time when the bourgeoisie was a persecuted fringe group.
> A Games of Thrones was first released in 1996 but had middling success. It was only after 2011 that the series exploded in popularity
Yes - the catalyst was the amazing (early on) TV series, and not the book.
> IP law was originally to protect artist and authors from the wealthy, but now it seems to have the opposite intent.
In the case of GoT, if the TV series had never happened then the popularity wouldn't have happened. The author's books got popularity based on other people's efforts.
"Quite often" = actually quite rare. I think you greatly underestimate the number of new novels published each year.
Your first two examples would have been covered under a 14+14 copyright period.
I do not think a 28-year copyright period would have kept Atwood from writing The Handmaiden's Tale, do you? She was a millionaire by the time that copyright expired.
I don't think looking at peak sales for outlying cases should affect copyright limits. When were peak sales for Shakespeare's Hamlet? Darwin's On the Origin of Species? Marx's Das Kapital?
The justification for US copyright is "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." The problem you point out is that right can be transferred to publishers and others. Note that since 1978 it's possible for an author to terminate that transfer after 35 years, which is well after those peaks you mentioned.
What you've not mentioned is the ability for other authors to build on existing ideas. Disney famously profited by re-telling public domain stories, but will come down on you if you re-tell their stories. Speaking of fantasy, you can now write stories which take place in Oz, but make sure it doesn't have ruby slippers as that's a detail from the movie, which is still under copyright.
14 years is already too long.
Also, IP is not real. It is a term we should avoid. Copyright and trademark have nothing to do with each other.
It should be the opposite. Independent artists should keep their rights for their natural lives, but if they sell their rights to a corporation the work will fall into public domain a reasonable number of years after that sale.
I like it because Peter S. Beagle definitely didn't get screwed over enough in this world, in this other better world he would take it good and proper.
https://www.cartoonbrew.com/law/the-last-unicorn-author-pete...
Aside from that your way to help big corporations make sure they could keep their prime pieces of worthwhile IP just is, something else, let's put something in so big corporations can continue screwing people over if they think it is worthwhile, but the people who made something probably won't be able to afford to keep control, unless their last name were Rowling obviously.
finally, as always have to point out that while the argument about the purpose of copyright that is the stand of the U.S is not that which holds in the rest of the world, and as such it seems unlikely to translate to other countries - specifically EU ones - lowering their copyright rules and thus seems unlikely to have any practical effect since Media is an international business nowadays.
I think we should mix in some compulsory licensing: IE, the copyright holder has exclusive rights for a period of time, and then afterwards there is a formula that's used to allow anyone to re-publish.
It will help handle abandonware where the rightsholder can't be bothered to publish something; tries to limit where something is published; or otherwise tries to hold the fee artificially high.
(This could be used, for example, to force a luddite to publish a book in electronic form, force a show that's locked into a single app to print a bluray, ect, ect. A copyright holder shouldn't have exclusive control over which media and stores sell their work.)
Let's work through this statutory licensing concept.
A work is published. Sometime later, the entity that created it falls off the face of the earth. The work is thus very much abandoned, and it remains copyrighted anyway.
But tomorrow, that work will enter the timeframe where anyone can pay to license and publish it however they wish. And it just so happens that you wish to license this work and publish it as an ebook because you're feeling trite or something.
Who do you pay? How do you pay them?
A reasonable copyright term makes abandonware not a thing
If copyright is hard stopped after 14 (or even 28) years, it doesn't matter whether the initial rightsholder dies or hates the world or refuses to do the legwork to make it accessible, they cannot stop anyone from distributing it anymore full stop.
Abandonware is only a thing because of copyright.
>A copyright holder shouldn't have exclusive control over which media and stores sell their work.
This is the entire point of copyright. Abandonware is an intentional right of copyright. A creative SHOULD be able to say "Actually I don't want to sell this anymore"... at least until their rights run out after a decade or two. Copyright is NOT about giving third generation descendants of a creative profit from something that was made a century ago. Copyright is NOT about preventing people from playing around with intellectual property of an entire previous generation.
Disney's existence is basically because of a formerly correct and right implementation of copyright. If Disney's copyright existed when they first started, they would have likely failed to be big. Large copyright timescales only hurt artists and the public.
It's basically a compromise. Many people hate the current situation (90 years for works-for-hire, life + 70 for people), and would love to return it to something like 14+14. But is that realistic? The money behind not doing that is massive, and I think most of the population have been conditioned by forever copyright to a degree that there will never be populist support for it.
But there might be populist support for releasing old stuff that nobody's using. More people would agree, for instance, that it's preposterous that some game from the 80's can't be sold because nobody knows who owns it (but those who think they might own some part of it threaten to sue).
And who knows, once people get used to the idea that copyrights aren't naturally forever, they'll be more amenable to the idea that they should be something more reasonable.
> So many ideas better than the current regime.
Almost every idea is better than the current regime. Maybe even completely cancelling the concept. The same applies to patents, where there's no "maybe", cancelling the concept is clearly better than what we have.
The governments all over the world have been so incredibly corrupt since the 80s, that they managed to confiscate almost every public good in existence.
Good luck with that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Domain_Enhancement_Act
>exponentially growing fees to allow truly big enterprises to stay copywritten longer
The problem with this concept is that things which are "worth it" to pay absurd fees to maintain long copyrights are the exact things which copyright is meant to revert to the public domain to mix in to future culture.
That's the point.
The idea that richer or more resourced members of a community should have more protections in the law is absurd. If you accidentally created a hit, too bad, you don't get to solely milk it for the rest of your life, and that's a good thing for economies and societies.
Letting you profit immensely for 90 years off a single work or creation is called stagnation and is bad, in the same way that we shouldn't be willing to let someone extend a patent forever just because it was effective.
Copyright ought to be for the little guy. The little guy should never have the resources to extend it past a short time frame. A little guy creative who is satisfied with milking the same thing for 30 years is, frankly, not a creative or artist and copyright is not intended to protect them.
Copyright is so you can live off the proceeds for a short while to spend time creating your next work. Copyright is not so you can profit for multiple generations off your work.
A reminder that any sort of inheritance of value or resources at all is inherently anti-meritocratic.
I like this system but it will make the rich richer. Disney will never have a problem paying the $100k or even $10M from something that is generating revenue. But the heirs of a mildly successful author won’t be able to, leaving those works to be harvested for free by Disney et al.
The current system, for all its faults, gives rich and poor the same benefits.
Keeping The Fellowship of the Ring by JRR Tolkien (published 1954) would have forced the Tolkien estate to pay $100k in 1982 on minimal revenues. Then $10M in 1996 in the hope that they would recoup it in a future film licensing agreement. Except no one would pay $10M+ to license it when they could just wait until 2010 to pay $0 and make it without any conditions being stipulated by the Tolkien estate.
So the Tolkien Estate would have let copyright lapse in 1996 and the eventual adaption would have grossed $900 million, of which they’d have seen $0. Followed by 2 more adaptations that grossed $1 billion each.
Edit: downvote if you want, but nothing I’ve said is inaccurate or incorrect.
Did you mean to reply to someone else? I agreed with Disney paying more. My issue is with small time authors being unable to afford the fee and people wanting to license the content just waiting out each 14 year term out to see if the author will renew instead of simply licensing it. The example I gave is the Lord of the Rings.
The proposed system doesn’t affect Disney that much, but it will negatively affect small timers.
> Corporations have hijacked a concept that should exist on human timescales.
I feel like this is true, but anytime I speak with colleagues in the arts (even UX and visual designers), they all say they are happy with copyright being lifetime of the owner + XX years. They (a) want the income for their legacy in case their products are still in use or appreciated decades later and (b) they want to control the output of their intellect.
As for the sniffling of creativity? They don't see that. If you can produce something, it's easy to only focus on the finer aspects.
An example would be software developers thinking only of code copyright as meaningfully applying to full applications but the functions that make up the codebase are just concepts easily reproduced, so it doesn't matter that technically the functions are also copyright protected.
> I feel like this is true, but anytime I speak with colleagues in the arts (even UX and visual designers), they all say they are happy with copyright being lifetime of the owner + XX years. They (a) want the income for their legacy in case their products are still in use or appreciated decades later and (b) they want to control the output of their intellect.
If I'm an (e.g.) accountant, my work does not generate income for my offspring after I pass.
Having children (and even grandchildren) coast on work that was created decades ago is ludicrous IMHO. If you can't profit off your work after 14+14 years (as per above) then I'm not sure what you're doing, but it's not (economically) beneficial to society.
> If I'm an (e.g.) accountant, my work does not generate income for my offspring after I pass.
Because an accountant’s work is timely and transactional. Creative works may have lasting value for multiple customers.
As a contrasting example: pretty much all other income generating assets can be passed down.
Copyright is a compromise between society and authors, and I think that’s the right way to frame things.
(Also some countries have this same compromise for assets such as land, where land “ownership” is subject to time limits)
> They (a) want the income for their legacy in case their products are still in use or appreciated decades later and (b) they want to control the output of their intellect.
Copyright is a practical compromise between society and them; their interests are not absolute.
> their interests are not absolute
The question of interests is a cultural debate, and also not an absolute either direction. In one culture the interests of the author could be held as an absolute; in another culture the exact opposite could be held as the value: no copyrights at all.
That's up to the society to debate. We see considerable cultural variance across the globe on the matter.
When asked "do you want more or less income?", most people, including me, will answer "more".
That doesn't mean it's always the right decision.
Of course they do, their bias is to keep all the cards in their favor. Our (the consumer's) bias is to shorten copyright.
Remember, ultimately it is the consumer who pays the creator; thus the consumer has a vested interest in negotiating how long copyright should last.
However, ultimately, few people really are holding any cards. Most will have to compromise a great deal, to be able to generate income and benefit from existing publishing infrastructure.
Which is absurd, because most creators would benefit hugely from an expanded public domain.
Sounds a bit unlikely, that most of them will make a living with stuff older than 14 or 28 years, their legacy creations. Sounds more like they are chasing a dream, which most likely will not be achieved by most of them.
Maybe, but their economic role might be more like an angel investor or VC— fund a hundred failed efforts and hang on for dear life to the few runaway successes.
The sweet spot would have been an initial term of 14years or something like that, and generous duration thereafter, limited to works that are registered and re-registered on a regular basis.
Mmmm..
I don’t know man?
I actually don’t mind 14+14 for corps. Because corps could conceivably never “die”. (In fact, I wouldn’t even be too opposed to getting rid of the +14 part).
But for individual people who make things, I think if they’re alive, it should be theirs. And I’m a guy who’s not a creative.
I just think if you come up with a painting, or story, or video game, why should a big corporate be able to swoop in and just copy it while you’re alive without paying you?
The copyright should lapse after a reasonable amount of time following your death. But while you’re alive, what you made should be yours.
Yeah, this sounds very similar to people who vote as if they're temporarily embarrassed billionaires. "There's a minuscule chance my work will become super lucrative for decades, so I want a super long copyright" when they don't realize that a much shorter copyright can help them creatively in the near term.
Lot's of people are short sighted, like children who would consume candy every day if their parents didn't tell them no. Current copyright laws allowed Disney to essentially buy up all of popular culture. This has not been a good thing for the world.
Its a shame that people who supposedly work "in the arts" can be so blind to the world.
> they all say they are happy with copyright being lifetime of the owner + XX years
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something
when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
~Upton Sinclair
Would the original creator prefer to rest on his laurels and collect checks instead? yep.
Would all the hundreds of people out there wanting to innovate on that copyrighted idea also like to make a buck? yep.
It's all a balance of competing interests.
Well. It's supposed to be.
Copyright has nothing to do with innovation. That's patents (publish your tech secrets in exchange for exclusive use for a period of time). Copyright is about protecting creative works, which are, by their nature, much much easier to copy than to make. If I write a book, and bring it to book printer to print 10,000 copies, I think we can all agree we prefer the world where that printshop can't turn around and print as many copies as they want, selling them themselves, and never paying me a dime. So I need some legal concept that says my creative work is mine alone to copy, that I can sell exceptions to.
Comparatively, society loses out on a lot less with long copyright terms compared to long patent terms. Long patent terms stifle innovation, long copyright terms just mean I can't freely distribute my own copies of others' art.
IMO, the happy compromise would be a tapering of copyright over time. For the first, say, 2 decades, you have contemporary copyrights. You can choose who to license your rights to, including the production of derivative works and the like. For the next 2 decades after that, a price is codified such that you still are guaranteed a cut (variable on whether the work is a verbatim copy, an adaption, or something significantly different). For the next 2 decades after THAT, you get a smaller cut, and non-commercial use becomes a free-for-all. After 80 years, it's a free-for-all.
Of course they are happy with that, they are not the ones affected by the problem and even benefit financially from it.
Of course they are. If I could arrange for someone to hand me money over the course of my entire life for work I did 25 years ago, I'd absolutely take that deal.
... it may not be in society's best interest to offer it to me though.
(Honestly, the better deal would be for society to hand all of us money from a giant taxation pool monthly and, freed up from the need to put so many hours into working to eat, we could do a lot more writing, performing, and general making-of-art and fundamental-no-capitalist-benefit scientific exploration).
Lawrence Lessig’s book Free Culture is a great read in this space. It discusses all the societal issues with long copyright terms. Mostly, long copyright terms are driven by Mickey Mouse. Every time Mickey is near going into the public domain, Disney lobbies Congress for an extension. This has an impact on culture in that culture is a mashup of all the things that have gone before. Disney, for instance, made a fortune making animated movies based on stories that were existing fairy tales and legends and therefore out of copyright. Now, Disney wants to prevent others from doing the same with its characters. Yes, we want creators compensated. But we can do that without letting copyright policy be driven by the special interests of a global mega corporation like Disney.
This is largely a moot point unless the US wants to withdraw from TRIPS (and implicitly the WTO) and join the list of countries that don't observe it such as... Eritrea, Kiribati, North Korea, South Sudan, and Turkmenistan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIPS_Agreement
> Copyright terms must extend at least 50 years, unless based on the life of the author. (Art. 12 and 14)
> Copyright must be granted automatically, and not based upon any "formality", such as registrations, as specified in the Berne Convention. (Art. 9)
---
14+14 itself isn't a bad idea, however it also implies that all of the other countries in the WTO agree to it.
Given concerns about companies based in the US being carless with copyright, that might be a hard sell.
Perhaps Trumpian madness will do something good for once.
Under the 14+14 law, even if an author chose to renew the copyright, most people could remix games (that had gone into the public domain) that were released when they were in their teens, with their kids (if they had any), which sounds amazing - I'd love to do that with my kids, or hit up my parents and find a game from their childhood and mess around with it.
Being able to riff on something in the public domain that was only made 28 years ago is categorically different than something made 70-120 years ago. I think the impact to the commons would be huge.
I like the idea I heard about taxing based on the owner's view of value.
Give 14 years free.
Every year after that, the copyright holder has to tell you how much they think the work is worth to them. Then you tax them some (smallish) percentage of that.
Or, you can run some public fund-raiser to raise the amount of money they said it was worth, pay off the copyright holder, and then the work is in the public domain.
Citizens united maybe? when corporations have liability they’re a group and no one is responsible. when they want to assert rights and make $ “they’re an individual” it’s complete corruption
This whole thing pisses me off so much. I would be fine with an absolute anarchy in which copyright and patents no longer exist but these same dickheads have been terrorizing the entire planet with lawsuits and DRM for downloading Metallica CDs for the last 30 years and even now they don't actually want to reform the copyright system, just grant themselves a special exception because everything is supposed to unconditionally work in their favor regardless of circumstances.
We've endlessly talked about it here on HN and I think most people agree. I'm in favor of charging the copyright holder and increasing amount (doubles every 5 years or so), which eventually forces them to give up paying for so many different copyrighted works, and also if the work is insanely old, they would cost way above ROI.
Alternatively sell "Subscription Copyright" licenses that renew every 10 years at 10 million dollars, that's per story, so Disney would have to renew for all of their movies, every 10 years. Could probably put that revenue to better use somewhere else anyway.
Why not just consume public-domain IP to begin with? The "Classics" of Western literature used to be viewed as the necessary foundation of a proper education in the humanities; and today you could add "classic" works from other literary traditions (India, China, etc.) for an even more well-rounded approach.
Classics absolutely matter and we should read more of them, but relying only on public domain works ignores how cultural participation is driven by shared contemporary moments. The ever-changing stream of new content is critical for our social experience.
It's also it's necessary that we have culture that is recognisable in our own lives. Pride and Prejudice is a great book, but it's arguably more alien than Star Trek.
At some point I looked into it, and if the laws were what they are today, Disney wouldn't have been able to make Alice in Wonderland (1951) without paying Lewis Carroll's (d. 1898) estate until 1968. The Little Mermaid (1989) was safe though, since Hans Christian Andersen died in 1875 (so his copyright would have expired in 1950).
While your end goal is admirable, it’s more fun to share new experiences with others.
Also, there’s a lot of really good albums from the past 70 years you’d be missing out on.
I used to be a patient video gamer, waiting for games to go on deep discount before buying them. Somehow it never occurred to me that I was missing out on the experiencing with everyone else at launch. I bought one game at launch and it was an absolute blast. We’re social animals, so of course sharing a new experience with others makes it more fun. I’m just surprised I couldn’t figure this simple fact out before hand.
"I’m just surprised I couldn’t figure this simple fact out before hand."
Maybe you should have enjoyed more xkcd:
My friends and I have been doing a book club like this online for years, where we only read books in the public domain. It’s been an amazing experience and I think we look forward to it each week. https://b00k.club
In A Sinking Island, the critic Hugh Kenner makes the case that the British Copyright Act of 1911, extending copyright from 42 years after first publication, or seven years after the author's death, to fifty years after the author's death, had an arresting effect on public perception of what literature was:
By inhibiting cheap reprints of everything published after 1870, the Act helped reinforce a genteel impression that English literature itself had stopped about that date...Lord of the Rings (1954-1955) has only recently entered the public domain for life+50 countries due to JRR Tolkien dying in 1973, despite the work being over 70 years old. It won't enter the public domain in life+70 countries until 2044.
Only recently are works written in the early to mid 1900s being released in the public domain. This limits the works to around the first world war. For example:
- HG Wells (Died 1946, Life+70 in 2017), works like War of the Worlds and The Time Machine.
- LM Montgomery (Died 1942, Life+70 in 2013), works like Anne of Green Gables -- In the US where publication + 90 years is in effect, her later works (after ~1925) are not yet in the public domain there.
With comic IPs, most are not yet in the public domain:
- Superman (1938, P+95 of 2034) and will only cover that incarnation of the character.
- Batman (1939, P+95 of 2035) and will only cover that incarnation of the character.
So the current copyright terms are very limiting for IPs that are nearly a decade old.
Because then you miss out on a lot of more recent content that'll become a classic in the future. Also, translations are copyrighted. There's 500 year old public domain stuff that's been translated in the past few decades and those aren't in the public domain. Older translations may be, but even going back 30 years, people would translate every foreign work in the style of the King James Bible. Translations in natural, modern speech are an oddly new thing.
> even going back 30 years, people would translate every foreign work in the style of the King James Bible. Translations in natural, modern speech are an oddly new thing.
And yet, people used to read those older translations just fine. It's just a matter of literary style, it doesn't really impact the understanding of the text.
Especially now in a world where creating and publicizing abstract ideas is easier than ever, anything we're worried about people losing in duration they can make up for in volume.
And given that the actual purpose of copyright (in the US at least) is promoting the sciences and "useful" arts, making people a little "hungrier" by loosening the protection seems to be the way society should tilt.
>Ideally, a child could legally provide their own spin on IP they consumed by the time they reach adulthood.
Why?
True, but wouldn't a sliding scale based on commercial success make more sense? How would you measure "worth it" for smaller creators?
> Ideally, a child could legally provide their own spin on IP they consumed by the time they reach adulthood.
Why though? Do we really need that many more commercial attempts at Star Wars and Harry Potter?
(I do think copyright times are too long, but I do wonder what a "good timescale" would be, and what the benefits and arguments would be.)
What about making people profit and enjoy life without having to push propaganda that this or that work they contributed to make them worth having them alive?
The premise that if they are not highly pressured to produce something people will just do nothing or only wrong things is such a creepy one.
Universal income or something in that spirit would make far more sense to get rid of this concern of having people not to worry about being able to live, whatever occupation they might chose to pursue on top of that.
The main issue is that the meritocratic narrative is like the opium of the most favored in power imbalance. Information can cure that kind of plague according to literature[1], but there is no insensitive to go on cure when other will pay all the negative effects of our addictions.
[1] https://academic.oup.com/oep/article/77/4/1128/8172634?login...
If I would need to choose only between UBI and high taxes on the rich I would choose the latter, because it would reduce the risk of entrenching the differences or giving too much power to a few.
I find more important what is the society's perceived "success" in life. For US (one of the two countries in the study), as a foreigner, I perceive that "success" is considered to be "the self made man". So people feel valuable if they have stuff. I doubt UBI will fix that - and unhappy / depressed people is not great, even if they are not homeless and starving.
In other countries "success" can be considered also about "just" living a nice life, enjoying food, or friends, or sport (even if you are not top). And these countries will try to offer paths to some stability, even for the ones that are not the greatest, such that as many people as possible in the society feel good. Makes a nicer environment for all...
>If I would need to choose only between UBI and high taxes on the rich I would choose the latter
There no need to be exclusive, and actually having concentration of wealth in a few hands is already a social construct. A society can also thrive without high income disparities. Taxing the rich is just taxing on what was captured from the non-rich.
Success isn't real. All things are internal, but we make/pretend they are external. I dont care at all of your accolades or accomplishments. Exactly like you dont care of mine. If we ever do care about others' success, its not bc of the other people. We are just playing games with ourselves and calling it stuff like expectations, admiration, respect, and responsibility - its all bullshit.
UBI allows a different life. You can only fail so much, only fall so far - rather than people being lazy, it will be a huge boon for creativity. The 9-5 for 45 is creative death.
We'll be celebrating this at the Internet Archive! As a lead-up, we're again hosting our Public Domain Film Remix Contest: https://blog.archive.org/2025/12/01/2026-public-domain-day-r...
We'll be having an in-person celebration at our SF HQ later in January as well, details to come!
Does the Internet Archive provide any instruction to uploaders and users about how to go about uploading and downloading copyright-expired public domain works legally, given the geographical differences from region to region on copyright expiration? For example, does the Internet Archive host its servers in USA, and would that make the US copyright expiry law operative? Or does it have servers in Europe or Asia (more lenient copyright expiration laws) that can be intentionally uploaded to, and leaving it to users to download from their respective regional locations on their own cognizances (i.e. at their own risk)?
To avoid the advent calendar, this may be more useful:
What really sends home just how ridiculously long it takes public domain to kick in to me is that Mein Kampf is on that list.
It feels like something that even in 1996 would have been a bit eye-raisingly overdue.
Because that table is "Entering the public domain in countries with life + 80 years".
Neat! I just discovered that Carolyn Keene's first Nancy Drew story, "The Secret of the Old Clock", will be in the public domain next year. I remember reading this in elementary school when I was on a big mystery kick for a while (I had some of the computer games, too). I had no idea it was that old.
I see that How to Win Friends and Influence People is on there. I'm looking forward to the inevitable And Zombies adaptation coming in 2027.
So is the Diary of Anne Frank, that will surely get some sort of zombie remix in poor taste, I’m sure.
There's already the new musical, Slam Frank, which gives the story of Ann Frank the Hamilton treatment.
Is this a reference to a public domain zombie reboot that already happened, or just sounds like something Hollywood would do?
pretty sad you don't realize non-profits need money to keep running and "shenanigans" help with funding
Do they? Do they really think I'm going to come back each day to see what the new reveal is, and on the 17th day I'm going to decide "Oh, hey, maybe I should send them some money"?
No. No, I'm not. I'm gone and I'm not coming back. Ain't nobody got time for games like this.
For a literature-focused list of items entering the US public domain on 2026, Standard Ebooks has 20 ebooks prepared for release on January 1: https://standardebooks.org/blog/public-domain-day-2026
I don't think that they are allowed to prepare copyrighted items for release in advance of them being in the public domain.
I prepared three of the works listed here for Standard Ebooks, and I’m not in the US so I’m definitely not covered by US copyright law on my own machine.
Why would that be the case? Copyright (at least in the US) only restricts distribution, performance and derivation.
> works by people who died in 1955
70 years. After death.
The rules have to change. 70 years is way too long.
They did. Before it was 50 years and get extended several times just before Mickey would enter public domain.
Sure, the term of copyright protection is quite long; but the amount of works that are legally 100% in the public domain and even Internet-accessible in some form but simply languishing in obscurity and have yet to be made comprehensively accessible to the general public (via digitizing, transcribing, indexing and comprehensive classification) may well be orders-of-magnitude larger! There's a whole lot of low-hanging fruit that's effectively free for the taking, should anyone be interested enough to put in the work; consider the huge amount of serialized publications that might have been issued throughout the 19th century, many of which are so obscure as to be essentially unknown.
Not sure why the amount of works in the public domain has any relevance to how long copyright protection is. Seems to me like they're two orthogonal issues.
Because every-time this comes up it is the same Mickey mouse complaints over and over. If you're young and your read this the first time I'm sure you're outraged.
Meanwhile there are 1000's of works that people are free to take. Better yet, there are 1000's of works that will be destroyed and not preserved that are open that should be preserved and used.
Offtopic.
Want to see something cool?
Run the following prompt through your favorite LLM:
"Does the following comment make logical sense:
<insert OP comment above>"
The model will agree the argument is valid, logical and coherent (chatgpt, claude and gemini 3 pro all agreed).
THEN
run this prompt:
"let's not be too hasty here.
we have "the term of copyright protection is quite long; but the amount of works [...is large enough...]"
p1: the term of copyright protection is quite long
p2: the amount of works [...is large enough...]
it doesn't seem to me that p1 and p2 are logically connected. As an absurd case: if the amount of works in the public domain gets large enough, would that mean that evern larger (infinite) terms of copyright protection are ok?"
Enjoy!
FastGPT (+ Notepad for maintaining context):
===
Does the following comment make logical sense? "Sure, the term of copyright protection is quite long; but the amount of works that are legally 100% in the public domain and even Internet-accessible in some form but simply languishing in obscurity and have yet to be made comprehensively accessible to the general public (via digitizing, transcribing, indexing and comprehensive classification) may well be orders-of-magnitude larger! There's a whole lot of low-hanging fruit that's effectively free for the taking, should anyone be interested enough to put in the work; consider the huge amount of serialized publications that might have been issued throughout the 19th century, many of which are so obscure as to be essentially unknown."
---
Yes, the comment makes logical sense. It argues that while copyright terms are long, there's a vast amount of public domain material that is not easily accessible due to lack of digitization and organization. The commenter suggests focusing on making this "low-hanging fruit" accessible instead of solely focusing on copyright issues.
===
let's not be too hasty here.
we have "the term of copyright protection is quite long; but the amount of works [...is large enough...]"
p1: the term of copyright protection is quite long
p2: the amount of works [...is large enough...]
it doesn't seem to me that p1 and p2 are logically connected. As an absurd case: if the amount of works in the public domain gets large enough, would that mean that evern larger (infinite) terms of copyright protection are ok?
---
The comment does present a logical argument, although it's an argument by juxtaposition rather than direct logical entailment. Here's a breakdown:
P1: Copyright terms are long. This is a statement of fact/opinion about the duration of copyright protection. P2: A vast amount of public domain work is inaccessible. This highlights the existence of a large, underutilized resource. Implicit Argument: The commenter implies that effort might be better spent on making existing public domain works accessible rather than focusing solely on the length of copyright terms. The "but" signals a contrast and a suggested alternative focus. You're right that P1 and P2 aren't directly logically connected in a way that P1 causes P2 or vice versa. The connection is more pragmatic:
Opportunity Cost: The commenter suggests that focusing on copyright reform might divert attention and resources from the readily available opportunity to make existing public domain works more accessible. Practical Benefit: Making public domain works accessible provides immediate cultural and educational benefits, regardless of copyright law. The commenter isn't saying long copyright terms are okay because of the amount of public domain work. They're saying that focusing solely on copyright is perhaps missing a big, easily addressable opportunity. The absurdity you introduce (infinite copyright terms being okay) doesn't follow because the commenter isn't trying to justify long copyright terms. They're shifting the focus to a different, potentially more immediately beneficial area.
As do people. Which ends up weakening copyright even further as it becomes a law everyone ignores, on the level of speeding or jaywalking. The same knock-on effects as Prohibition, we become a nation of scofflaws.
People don't know copyright law. They think they do and are alright with the construct they made up in their heads. But they don't actually know what it says and does and means, otherwise they'd hate it much more.
> They think they do and are alright with the construct they made up in their heads. But they don't actually know what it says and does and means, otherwise they'd hate it much more.
This is also why companies have slowed down on enforcing it too much: if people actually understood copyright, there would be too much pushback.
Interesting case in point is Argentina. The Falklands War happened in 1982, so well within some people's lifetimes. I learnt a few years ago that photographs and writings from Argentina from 1982 are already out of copyright. Photographs from the UK are not, and won't be until seventy years after the deaths of the people who took them. So total contrast between the two jurisdictions and reflected in publications about the conflict.
In the former Soviet Union, pre-1973 material is out of copyright. Again within living memory. I don't know what Russia etc have done with copyright since then.
Keep in mind in Argentina public domain works are not free (free as beer) of use, you have to pay a fee to the government, for example if you play Beethoven music in your short film or any work you created.
This is likely going to change since the organism responsible for collecting the fees is undergoing a big restructuring.
I would love to see a public poll on how long people think that copyright should be. I'm betting that the majority of the answers from normal people will be less than the current "author's lifetime plus 70 years" but also greater than 5 years. This is probably not a very profitable poll for Gallup to do, though...
My answer is "a generation". There's so many ideas and behaviors that don't persist between generations that it seems as natural of a division as you could have.
The median age of new mothers is 27 around here, which seems about right.
The article has a link to
https://blog.okfn.org/2012/10/08/do-bad-things-happen-when-w... (Do Bad things happen when works enter the public domain?)
There are answer is no, but they’re ignoring the fact that when works enter the public domain they will invariably spawn horror movies “based” on the work. Pooh: Blood and Honey is the warning sign we all ignored to our detriment and now we’ll all have to watch the slasher version of T. S. Eliot’s “Ash Wednesday” in 2026.
I hope you’re happy.
Entering PD at death+70y usually means a 100+-20y duration. Does anyone respect this silly timescale? Does any fine been imposed for a forgotten old work?
Compare that with a drug's IP: total of 20 years after the molecule patent, of which 8-10y in clinical trials and only 10-12y in profitable life. But everyone respects that until the last day and it brings billions back.
A short IP time would favor the small/poor creators that could earn something during their lifetime when the work is fresh, while a long one favors companies like Disney which can protect the copyright with their group of lawyers.
As others have noted copyright duration is ridiculous. But more importantly it lacks severe counter-forces to balance out the explicit monopoly.
Since the point of copyright is to offer an incentive (to profit) from works it should be tightly tied to the market value of said works and the willingness of its owner to present them for sale.
If nobody keeps selling X there's no reason to let X enjoy the protection of copyright.
If X is kept for sale for the sake of keeping copyright alive but it's not really selling much that should also affect the nature of the copyright. For example, a minimum fee you have to pay annually to keep copyright going would cull out the works that are no longer commercially viable.
The fee could be proportional to the overall sales of the works so that if your works were a huge hit in the 80's but sales have trickled down to a minimum you'd have to pay more (from the profits you've obviously received over time) to keep it copyrighted (which would force you to balance your copyrights to your net income from current sales), but if you published an obscure album decades ago that never got much traction your fees would be negligible (but you'd still have a minimum fee you'd have to pay regardless) so you would be incentivized to give up the "protection" and make it cheaper for everyone to let it fall in public domain.
Further, the various aspects of copyright could be torn down in different timeframes. Let's say you wrote a successful book in 1963 which made money but no longer sells much. You probably wouldn't mind letting the copies of the book fall in public domain but if you could keep the option to hold onto copyright for derivative works in case someone wants to make a film out of the book you could do that (again, with annual fees, but these could be lower if the original book could be freely copied).
Or some other scheme. I could soon think of dozens if I wanted to but you get the idea. How about a tax on the sales of copyrighted works that starts from 0% but increases by some percentage point each year. You can profit first but as years go by you will have to start paying more and more to keep it going as the overall balance approaches unprofitability.
Copyright doesn't have to be a complete monopoly, it could have shades of gray. Sure there are exemptions already (such as fair use, in some countries, or right to make backups under certain conditions) but none of them address the commercial stronghold copyright allows for companies to keep works of art hostage for decades and eventually, for centuries.
At the very least a system like this might force publishers to not drop ebooks from their stores just because.
But others would point out that being able to not distribute a work is part of having the copyright. If a corporation doesn't want to sell old works because they want to encourage people to only buy new works then that's their right. The government saying that it's fair game simply because there's no legal option to purchase it is an infringement on their right to withhold the work from the public. They could even have a policy of destroying all copies of the work once it goes off sale to make sure it never enters the public domain, that's also within their rights.
> Since the point of copyright is to offer an incentive (to profit) from works it should be tightly tied to the market value of said works and the willingness of its owner to present them for sale.
> If nobody keeps selling X there's no reason to let X enjoy the protection of copyright.
Suppose Lucy paints original portraits of Barbra Streisand and sells them on eBay. She makes no copies of them; there are no copies of them for her to sell.
And Lucy is just a painter. She's not a printer. She's not a publisher. Again: Lucy only paints portraits of Barbra Streisand and sells them on eBay. That's all that she does.
But because Lucy isn't selling copies, then the portraits become public domain and anyone is free to copy them.
Why would that ever be a thing that encourages Lucy to paint more portraits of Barbra Streisand?
Something about this page doesn't seem to work for me. Clicking the tiles doesn't do anything. It's not ad-blocker-related, I disabled those to test.
The entire page is underwhelming. For someone in the US, I walked away with basically no new information other than some stuff will enter public domain at new years.
> In our advent-style calendar below, find our top pick of what lies in store for 2026. Each day, as we move through December, we’ll open a new window to reveal our highlights! By public domain day on January 1st they will all be unveiled — look out for a special blogpost from us on that day. (And, of course, if you want to dive straight in and explore the vast swathe of new entrants for yourself, just visit the links above).
If you want to skip to December 31st, you can enter the following into your browser console to make all the tiles/doors openable:
const elements = document.querySelectorAll(".countdown-calendar__door");
elements.forEach(element => {
element.classList.add("will-open");
});I just noticed the site contains a very misleading description of what a Community Interest Company is. They are not necessarily not for profits (a certain proportion of profits has to be used for the stated purpose) and they are not as tightly regulated as charities (they do not get the tax breaks charities do either) .
That is not to say this particular company is a bad thing (I have not problem with people getting reasonable remuneration) but if you want to know (e.g. if you are considering donating) its something you need to find out on a case by case basis.
This is not well known in the UK, let along outside the UK.
This article seems to imply that when works enter into the public domain depend on where they were published. This is not true! It's based on where you are and when it was published.I E, if you're in the USA and some work published in a death+50 year country is in the public domain in said country, it would still be illegal to distribute in the US.
Similarly, some works that are published in the US but are not in the public domain there could be perfectly legal to publish in a death+50 year country.
The length of copyright is absurd. Corporations have hijacked a concept that should exist on human timescales.
Ideally, a child could legally provide their own spin on IP they consumed by the time they reach adulthood. But also, people need to make a living.
I actually think the original 14+14 year copyright is the right balance. It gives people time to make their profits, but also guarantees the right of people to tweak and modify content they consume within their lifetime. It's a balanced time scale rather than one that exists solely to serve mega corporations giving them the capability to hold cultural icons hostage.