Showing posts with label public domain works. Show all posts
Showing posts with label public domain works. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 2, 2024

Mickey Mouse Gets First Horror Parody Film as Steamboat Willie Enters Public Domain; CBR, January 1, 2024

JEREMY DICK, CBR ; Mickey Mouse Gets First Horror Parody Film as Steamboat Willie Enters Public Domain

"Filmmakers are not wasting any time with putting a dark spin on Mickey Mouse following the character entering the public domain.

As of Jan. 1, 2024, Mickey's very first cartoon, Steamboat Williebecame part of the public domain. While modern versions of Mickey Mouse are still protected by copyright, the classic black-and-white version seen in the Steamboat Willie cartoon is now available to be used by filmmakers outside of the Disney umbrella. On the very day that the copyright lifted for Steamboat Willie, it was announced that the character will be spoofed in an upcoming horror movie titled Mickey's Mouse Trap. The first trailer and poster have also been released for the film, which can be viewed below."

Mickey Mouse Copyright Expiration Has Internet Scrambling For Steamboat Willie Horror Movie; ScreenRant, January 1, 2024

HANNAH GEARAN , ScreenRant; Mickey Mouse Copyright Expiration Has Internet Scrambling For Steamboat Willie Horror Movie

"The copyright for a specific version of Mickey Mouse has expired, which is leaving the internet urging for a Steamboat Willie-based horror movie. Mickey Mouse first became copyrighted by the Walt Disney Company in 1928 through the movie Steamboat Willie.

At the dawn of the new year, the Steamboat Willie Mickey Mouse has entered the public domain, and the internet is pushing for a horror movie based on the character."

Monday, January 1, 2024

Mickey Mouse is finally in the public domain. Here’s what that means.; The Washington Post, January 1, 2024

 , The Washington Post; Mickey Mouse is finally in the public domain. Here’s what that means.

"Jennifer Jenkins, a law professor and director of Duke University’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain, says that from a copyright angle — trademark considerations are a different matter — “You can use Mickey and Minnie 1.0 from ‘Steamboat Willie’ and ‘Plane Crazy,’ but you cannot use the aggregated later Mickey that, for example, appears in one of my favorite films, ‘Fantasia.’ You cannot use the copyrightable aspect of the character from later, still-in-copyright works.”"

These Classic Characters Are Losing Copyright Protection. They May Never Be the Same.; The New York Times, January 1, 2024

 Sopan Deb, The New York Times; These Classic Characters Are Losing Copyright Protection. They May Never Be the Same.

"In 2024, thousands of copyrighted works published in 1928 are entering the public domain, after their 95-year term expires...

The crème de la crème of this year’s public domain class are Mickey Mouse and, of course, Minnie, or at least black-and-white versions of our favorite squeaky rodents that appeared in “Steamboat Willie.” Disney is famously litigious, and this copyright only covers the original versions of the character.

The New York Times reached out to some writers, producers and directors to give you a taste of what might be unleashed in this strange new world."

Wednesday, December 27, 2023

Classical Musicians Victimized by Erroneous Copyright Claims; Violinist.com, December 19, 2023

Laurie Niles, Violinist.com; Classical Musicians Victimized by Erroneous Copyright Claims

""One or more actions were applied to your video because of a copyright match."

This was just one of two copyright claims that Amy Beth Horman received from Facebook Thursday, disputing ownership of videos of her daughter's violin performances. First, she received a copyright claim for a video of Ava's live performance of the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto this week. Then, she got another for video she had posted in 2020 of then-10-year-old Ava performing "Meditation from Thais." These are both classical works that are in the public domain - not subject to copyright.

Nonetheless, classical musicians receive these kinds of dreaded messages on a regular basis if they post videos of their performances on social media outlets such as Facebook, Instagram or YouTube.

Has the musician violated anyone's copyright? Almost never. These are automated copyright claims created by bots on behalf of big companies like Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group or Universal Music. If the bot finds that your performance has approximately the same notes and timing as one in their catalogue, they then claim that they own rights to your recording. But musicians have every right to perform and post a public domain work. Even so, musicians often find their recordings muted, earnings from ads on their performances given instead to the company filing the erroneous claim, and threats of having their accounts suspended or banned."

Tuesday, May 3, 2022

The Seizure of Jewish Intellectual Property Ahead of World War II; Library of Congress, April 28, 2022

, Library of Congress; The Seizure of Jewish Intellectual Property Ahead of World War II

"The following is a guest post by Marilyn Creswell, information resources assistant at the University of Michigan Law School. She served as Librarian-in-Residence at the U.S. Copyright Office from July 2020 to April 2021.

As the United States enters the Days of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holocaust, we remember the many hardships Jewish people have overcome. In this blog we specifically explore the lesser-known area of intellectual property (IP) leading up to and during World War II. Beginning in 1933, the Nazi German state began pressuring Jewish business owners to sell their businesses far below market value. By 1938, a majority of Jewish-owned businesses were already sold or out of business when this process, called Aryanization, became compulsory after Kristallnacht.1 As part of the seizure of businesses and personal property, the ability of Jewish people to benefit from their intellectual property was also severely restricted. A 1939 executive order required all Jewish men to add “Israel” as a second name and women to add “Sara.”2 This made it easier for Nazi officials to deny intellectual property registrations and renewals to Jewish applicants, cutting them off from the IP system.3 While the loss of IP rights pales in comparison to the horrific death tolls during World War II, its loss is another indignity the Jewish people suffered and source of wealth extracted at the hands of the Nazis.

In some instances, works by Jewish authors were nearly completely reproduced and distributed by others without their consent. One example of an Aryanized work is Alice Urbach’s So kocht man in Wien!, a Viennese cookbook. Urbach was forced to transfer the rights to her book, which was then republished with new authorial credit to “Rudolf Rösch.” The new work kept most of the original texts and photographs of her cooking demonstrations but removed elements celebrating Vienna’s diversity.4 In the field of medicine, Dr. Josef Löbel’s Knaurs Gesundheitslexikon was a health encyclopedia that, after the Otto Liebmann publishing house was taken over by a Nazi publisher, was republished by the author Herbert Volkmann under the pseudonym “Peter Hiron.” Volkmann even added new sections on race, homosexuality, and prison psychology. He similarly usurped authorship for Dr. Walter Guttman’s Medizinische Terminologie and its ongoing publications.5

Public domain works were revised to remove references to Jewish people and culture. For example, Fritz Stein presented a new version of Handel’s Occasional Oratorio (Gelegenheits Oratorium) in 1935 that added state-promoting verses and removed references to Jacob, Jehovah, and the full aria “When Israel, like the bounteous Nile.” In 1941, Handel’s Jephtha was renamed Das Opfer and changed so its Jewish history was reframed as a broader narrative about nationalism. The text of his Judas Maccabeus was not only rewritten to omit Jewish references, but it went so far as to make it into a “patriotic fold oratorio” and eventually transplanted Judas with a Field Marshall, a powerful military dictator analogous to the Führer.6 Also in 1941, all theatrical productions required permission from the Reich Dramaturgy, which banned Shakespeare’s historical plays but encouraged the broadcast and production of the anti-Semitic Merchant of Venice.7"

Sunday, January 2, 2022

This Bear’s For You! (Or, Is It?) Can Companies Use Copyright and Trademark To Claim Rights to Public Domain Works?; Duke’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain

Jennifer Jenkins, Duke’s Center for the Study of the Public DomainThis Bear’s For You! (Or, Is It?)

Can Companies Use Copyright and Trademark To Claim Rights to Public Domain Works?


"The original Winnie-the-Pooh book from 1926 is in the public domain. However, Disney still owns copyrights over later works, and trademark rights for “Winnie the Pooh” on a variety of products. Hopefully they will not follow the example of the Sherlock Holmes, Tarzan, or Zorro rights holders and try to use residual rights to prevent what copyright expiation allows. This could lead to unnecessary litigation, and even the threat of lawsuits could chill the creative reuse the public domain is designed to promote.


In fact, Disney’s own beloved works show just how valuable the public domain is. Many of its animated classics were remakes of public domain books and folk tales. Works from Alexandre Dumas, Charles Dickens, Gabrielle-Suzanne de Villeneuve, Jules Verne, Lewis Carroll, The Brothers Grimm, Victor Hugo, Charles Perrault, Hans Christian Anderson, Carlo Collodi, Mark Twain, English folklore, and The Book of One Thousand and One Nights fed Disney’s The Three MuskateersA Christmas CarolBeauty and the BeastAround the World in 80 DaysAlice in WonderlandSnow WhiteThe Hunchback of Notre DameSleeping Beauty and CinderellaThe Little MermaidPinocchioHuck FinnRobin Hood, and Aladdin, to name a few. When it got into a dispute with the rightsholders of Bambi, Disney even filed an unsuccessful lawsuit claiming that the book had gone into the public domain much earlier. Let us hope that Disney remembers its own debt to the public domain when Pooh, and later the Steamboat Willie version of Mickey Mouse, enter the realm from which it has drawn so heavily!"

Thursday, August 17, 2017

With ‘Open Access,’ the Met Museum’s Digital Operation Has a Bona Fide Hit on Its Hands; artnetnews, August 10, 2017

Sarah Cascone, artnetnews; With ‘Open Access,’ the Met Museum’s Digital Operation Has a Bona Fide Hit on Its Hands

"In February, New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art announced that it was pursuing a new Open Access policy—releasing high-resolution imagery of all its public-domain works (over 375,000 in total). Six months later, the new initiative has had a major impact on sites such as Wikimedia and Creative Commons, and the museum is continuing to branch out. This week, the Met announced a partnership with Google’s data analytics platform, BigQuery.

“During what is just the dawn of this new initiative, the responses so far have been incredible,” wrote Loic Tallon, the museum’s chief digital officer, in a blog post.

The numbers speak for themselves. According to Tallon, the Met’s website has seen a 64 percent increase in image downloads since Open Access was implemented, as well as a 17 percent bump in traffic to the online collection. Users who download photographs are now spending five times as long on the site."

Thursday, September 8, 2011

Michael Hart, Project Gutenberg's e-book loving founder, passes away; ArsTechnica.com, 9/8/11

Nate Anderson, ArsTechnica.com; Michael Hart, Project Gutenberg's e-book loving founder, passes away:

"Michael Hart, the founder of Project Gutenberg, has died at his home in Urbana, Illinois at the age of 64. The project he started back in 1971 lives on, however, producing quality public domain texts now readable on devices that could only have been imagined when Project Gutenberg began."

Thursday, March 24, 2011

A Digital Library Better Than Google’s; New York Times, 3/23/11

Robert Darnton, New York Times; A Digital Library Better Than Google’s:

"Perhaps Google itself could be enlisted to the cause of the digital public library. It has scanned about 15 million books; two million of that total are in the public domain and could be turned over to the library as the foundation of its collection. The company would lose nothing by this generosity, and might win admiration for its good deed."

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Once in the Public’s Hands, Now Back in Picasso’s; New York Times, 3/21/11

Adam Liptak, New York Times; Once in the Public’s Hands, Now Back in Picasso’s:

"The new case asks whether Congress acted constitutionally in 1994 by restoring copyrights in foreign works that had belonged to the public, including films by Alfred Hitchcock and Federico Fellini, books by C. S. Lewis and Virginia Woolf, symphonies by Prokofiev and Stravinsky and paintings by Picasso, including “Guernica.”"

Saturday, March 19, 2011

Next chapter in recopyright law: Supreme Court; Denver Post, 3/8/11

John Ingold, Denver Post; Next chapter in recopyright law: Supreme Court:

"Although the case involves an obscure subject, it raises important constitutional issues, said Anthony Falzone, executive director of the Stanford University law school's Fair Use Project and another attorney on the case. Copyright, the plaintiffs argue, is like the spike strips in a car-rental parking lot: Once a work crosses over into the public domain, it can't back up...

The government, though, argues the recopyrighting law is necessary to comply with an international treaty, which in turn protects the copyrights of American works in foreign countries."

Monday, January 3, 2011

Counting on Google Books; Chronicle of Higher Education, 12/16/10

Geoffrey Nunberg, Chronicle of Higher Education; Counting on Google Books:

"Scholars can't download the entire corpus right now, but the impediments are legal and commercial rather than technological. (Google could make available a corpus of all the public-domain works published through 1922 without raising any copyright issues, but it has decided not to do that.) In the meantime, scholars have access to the corpus via the Web sites Ngrams.GoogleLabs.com, and culturomics.org."

Saturday, September 4, 2010

Lost in translation: why have we declared war on foreign dramatists?; (London) Guardian, 9/1/10

John M. Morrison; (London) Guardian; Lost in translation: why have we declared war on foreign dramatists?: Classic plays in foreign languages are being rewritten for modern audiences who have no idea that what they're seeing is quite different from, and vastly inferior to, the originals:

"Whatever will these silly foreigners get up to next? Did you hear about the Chinese version of Hamlet that gave the play a happy ending? Surely we all know you can't rewrite the classics, and my Chinese example is imaginary. But British theatre commits artistic assault and battery of this kind on an increasingly regular basis. The victims, sprawled in the wings with their scripts torn to shreds are invariably playwrights who had the misfortune not to write in English...

One can argue that in the theatre anything goes, particularly when the author is safely dead and long out of copyright. But one of the principles that marks off theatre from film is respect for the artistic integrity of the author's text, even when he or she is no longer around to complain. That's why we squirm to think of Nahum Tate reworking King Lear in the 1680s to give Shakespeare's tragedy a happy ending."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatreblog/2010/sep/01/lost-translation-war-foreign-dramatists

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Why Google's deal with Italy is a good thing for readers; Christian Science Monitor, 3/11/10

Marjorie Kehe, Christian Science Monitor; Why Google's deal with Italy is a good thing for readers:

"Good news for Google and also for readers hoping to brush up on their Dante: The Italian government and the search-engine giant have agreed that Google will digitize up to 1 million books from the national libraries in Florence and Rome. The books to be digitized were all published before 1868 (which means that copyright laws do not apply) and will include antiquarian texts, including works by Dante, Machiavelli, and Galileo.

Although Google has struck similar deals with universities in England and Spain and a state museum in Germany, The Wall Street Journal notes that this is Google's "first publishing partnership with a national government."

It's a good deal for Google, which will be able to expand the offerings – and particularly the non-English-language offerings – of its Book Project, which currently lists about 12 million books. The deal also means a win in Europe where recent Google-related headlines have been unfortunate for the company. (A French court has ruled that Google committed copyright violation by scanning certain French-language titles, and an Italian court recently slapped Google officials with jail sentences in connection with an ugly abuse-related video made popular on YouTube.)

It's also a good deal for the Italian government. Google will bear all costs for the project just at a moment when budget cuts are making it harder for Italian libraries to preserve their valuable texts. The Italian libraries will also be able to share digitized copies of the scanned books with readers on other platforms, including Europeana, the online publishing project of the European Commission.

But most of all it's a good deal for readers. A million years ago (well, in the 1980s), when I was at grad school in New York studying Italian renaissance poetry, I went to the New York Public Library to consult an antiquarian text. Holding my credit card as collateral, they gave me a pair of gloves, ushered me into the Rare Book room, and let me handle (very carefully) a yellowing text printed in Naples several centuries earlier.

It was a thrill I will never forget. There is no substitute for laying your hands on a text like that.

However, for every bibliophile and/or Italophile who does not live in the shadow of a major cultural institution with the stature and holdings of the New York Public Library (and that now includes me), the Google deal is a very good thing."

http://www.csmonitor.com/Books/chapter-and-verse/2010/0311/Why-Google-s-deal-with-Italy-is-a-good-thing-for-readers

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Cornell Library Lifts Restrictions on Public Domain Works; Library Journal.com, 5/14/09

Josh Hadro via Library Journal.com; Cornell Library Lifts Restrictions on Public Domain Works: 70,000 public domain works contributed to the Internet Archive:

"Coinciding with the donation of 70,000 public domain works to the Internet Archive, the Cornell University Library has announced that it will no longer requires users to seek permission to reuse public domain materials for any purpose.

According to the library's statement, the shift in practice stems from a desire to be consistent with the library and faculty's commitment to Open Access...

Because the materials in question are already in the public domain, and because no new rights to restrict usage of the material are granted during the digitization process, researchers technically had the legal right to use and republish the materials. Indeed, the announcement acknowledges that the tension between institutional licensing policies and users rights can lead to charges of copyfraud, something Cornell hopes to avoid with the codification of this new policy."

http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6658219.html