Comment by zozbot234 a day ago
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.
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.
With vocabulary and grammatical changes over time, it does majorly affect understanding. People prefer to read things in a language and dialect they understand. Archaic English diverges pretty heavily from modern dialects of English.
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.