from Hacker News

Happy Public Domain Day

by sacrosanct on 1/1/24, 4:57 PM with 38 comments

• by dang on 1/1/24, 8:02 PM

  Related:

  2024's public domain is a banger - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38833881 - Jan 2024 (27 comments)

  Disney's earliest Mickey Mouse enters public domain as US copyright expires - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38830264 - Jan 2024 (162 comments)

  January 1, 2024 is Public Domain Day - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38823973 - Dec 2023 (15 comments)

  Copyright for original Mickey Mouse persona to run out 1 January 2024 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38799484 - Dec 2023 (10 comments)

  Mickey Mouse to Enter Public Domain: "It's Finally Happening'" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38737164 - Dec 2023 (7 comments)

  Mickey, Disney, and the public domain: A 95-year love triangle - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38678021 - Dec 2023 (208 comments)

  Public Domain Day 2024 Is Coming: Here's What to Know - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38586978 - Dec 2023 (6 comments)

  The Mickey Mouse Copyright Runs Out in 2024 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36559037 - July 2023 (64 comments)

• by wk_end on 1/2/24, 7:10 AM

  Last night someone was streaming Steamboat Willie on Twitch, with captions in the sidebar winkingly gloating “This is completely legal! I am profiting off of Steamboat Willie without Disney’s permission!”

  I was amused. And then as I watched, it started to feel kind of beautiful. We’re now free to do what we want with Steamboat Willie, yes. But in another sense, it's free too now. No longer a product, this little cartoon that changed the world is now just a part of our history and our culture, the water we swim in, as it has been and as it should’ve been for so long.

• by blacksqr on 1/1/24, 10:56 PM

  Regrettably, thanks to the international nature of the internet, it may still be legally hazardous to make works in the public domain in one's own country available on the internet.

  The legal question of whether putting something on an internet server constitutes publication in all countries simultaneously or just in the country where the server exists is still unsettled. So for example a UK citizen may wish to put Tolkien's works on the internet now that they are in the public domain there, but Tolkien's estate might decide to sue from the United States, or from many countries in Europe. Individuals and small entities are likely unwilling to bear the legal risk.

  So the effective public domain date, from the viewpoint of the internet, is set by the countries with the longest protection terms, which appear to be Spain (80 years) and the US (95 years for works made for hire).

• by xela79 on 1/12/24, 1:50 PM

  so according to his, Asian & African LOTR incoming?

  J. R. R. Tolkien United Kingdom 3 January 1892 2 September 1973 Writer The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings

• by k__ on 1/2/24, 7:33 AM

  This is your reminder that online piracy isn't about "stealing" from small artists, bout about "preventing" big corps to gatekeep human culture.

• by sjfjsjdjwvwvc on 1/1/24, 7:54 PM

  Copyright is broken and needs drastic changes.

  It is not fulfilling its purpose for a long time now and is holding back humanity as a whole.

• by fuzztester on 1/1/24, 9:01 PM

  There is also System Administrator Appreciation Day. There was a good post on some site, some years ago, about the many ways in which they quietly go about their work, which is so essential to much of modern life, not just to software organisations, but still remain under-appreciated or even not understood.