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>On 10/8/08 8:21 PM, "Pamela Silvestri" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>ok whoa a second here. Please follow my [general] interpretation here, and I'd appreciate any comment.
>I see nothing that states that under the current law...if one were to create a copyrighted work today (and thus life+70) that once that expires...that work enters the public >domain. I believe that if the work is eligible, the heirs may register a renewal a copyright the?. Anything about renewal in these links...refers to that which was required (the >28 years) to register a renewal for works created during a certain period of time and another law that allowed for an automatic renewal (for which registration of that was/is >not required).
>I see nothing about a work automatically entering the public domain unless a required renewal wasn't registered for the laws that apply to one time period...and I see nothing >about works automatically being entered into the public domain at the expiration of the automatic renewal -not being eligible for any extended registration of renewal of the >copyright.
>Pam
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Copyright essentially gives the creator an exclusive monopoly over the copying or reproduction of their created work for a limited period of time. But once that period is over, it automatically enters the Public Domain – the rights to copy that work (not the actual work itself, but the copy rights) become the property of everyone.
In the past, over the life of copyright law in, say, the last 100 years or so that period was initially quite short – 28 years or so (I can’t recall the actual times offhand). As Copyright law developed and changed over this period various ways of increasing the period of the creator’s monopoly were introduced. One was allowing for a renewal of copyright for a period of XX years when the initial period expired (of course not everyone took advantage of it). Over time though, the period of copyright protection was gradually increased – 47 years... 50 years... 75 years, which is what we basically have now – life of the creator + 75 years.
(There have also been times when the changes in the legislation and ways of doing this have meant there have had to be transition periods, or that works created before a certain date were grandfathered in or excluded from the new legislation – which is why those “when does a work become Public Domain” flowcharts are a little complicated. Along with the fact that different kinds of work often had slightly different protection – photographs, sound recordings, text etc...).
But, once the period of Copyright protection ends for a work, then the work automatically becomes Public Domain – which means exactly that. Anyone is free to copy or reproduce the work for any purpose they want. The only way to prevent this is physical control. If you own the work and don’t want it copied, then you have to physically not let people make copies of it (or if you do, allow them, to do so only under very strict conditions). Whereas, prior to the work becoming Public Domain, you had the full weight of Copyright Law (for better or worse), protecting your work. So that even if it was “out there” in one form or another, people couldn’t just make copies of it and use the.
So if you look at that chart I posted the other day, you can pretty much tell when a work passes into the Public Domain in the US. And for current, new works it is life of the creator + 75 years. Once that period is up, it’s available for anyone to copy – as long as they can get legitimate access to it.
http://www.copyright.cornell.edu/public_domain/
Likewise, if you have have a photograph that was published in the US before 1923, then it is now Public Domain and you (or anyone else who has access to it) can pretty much do what you want with it – sell t-shirts, publish it an anthology, make a huge light box transparency of it for Grand Central Station.
In addition, there are currently no options for renewing copyright in the US – once the period of protection is up, it’s up – during the 1990’s, the law moved from allowing a renewal period, to having an automatic renewal period, to doing away with renewal periods and just having a longer initial period of copyright protection – currently the 75 years. (Though there are some of those complicated transitory regulations for works created between 1964 to 1977 etc et)
Finally, most works created for or in the employ of the Federal Government (I think States vary on adopting this?), are automatically in the Public Domain – (essentially they belong to “the people”). There are a number of exceptions and complications to this, but it’s why we can have full and free access to NASA’s Hubble deep space photographs (and why there are so many postcards, websites, postcards of those pictures out there). The same with DoD photos from Iraq or wherever – they are usually freely available in hi-res files these days. Many photo agencies will actually access and download them and then provide them to their clients – newspapers and magazines, for a fee (what they a actually paying the agencies for is accessibility, and organisation – all the pictures are filed, captioned and easily available in one place). It’s the same reason you can download Hi-res files of some of the most iconic photographs of the 20th century from the Library of Congress – Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother and Child, Walker Evans’ Bethlehem, Pen. Steelworks and cemetery (along with thousands of others). They worked for the US Government at the FSA and the photos have always been Public Domain. You can download the files, makes an 11x14 print for your wall, or sell prints in your store or on ebay, make coffee mugs of them or whatever.
That’s Public Domain in a nutshell (not..) . Well, it’s the gist of it – but as always with copyright, there are always exceptions, grey areas and so on.
tim a
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Tim Atherton
Assistant Curator
Musée Héritage Museum, St. Albert
(780) 459-1594
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