Browse: Home / The Heady Madness of New Public Domain Works

Menu

Skip to content
  • Home
  • Who We Are
  • About
  • Privacy
  • Contact Us
  • Login

The-SoluteLogo

A Film Site By Lovers of Film

Menu

Skip to content
  • Features
  • Reviews
  • Long Reviews
  • News
  • Articles and Opinions
  • Other Media
  • The Friday Article Roundup: Writer's Blocks
  • Lunch Links: MOOMIN
  • Film on the Internet: BASKET CASE
  • New on DVD and Blu-Ray
  • Taco Break: Overplayed But Still Funny

The Heady Madness of New Public Domain Works

Posted By Gillianren on January 2, 2019 in Short Articles | 9 Responses

As an author, copyright does matter to me. Not that I make any money from it, you understand, but I don’t want anyone else making money from my writing, either. (A few of us are making mumbly noises about maybe starting a Solute store with some Cafepress items so we can make something, but the money would first go to paying the server bill!) There are some people who want to abolish it entirely, and I think the practical result of that would be that mass art would come to a grinding halt. Why produce it if it’s not going to be worth your time? I can’t quite see Disney or Warner Bros. or whoever putting millions of dollars into a movie out of the goodness of their hearts.

But, yeah, that freakin’ mouse. Who still won’t be public domain this year, even without getting into issues of whether he could be considered a trademark and so forth, which I expect Disney to litigate approximately until the heat death of the universe, but the first Mickey Mouse cartoons will theoretically become public domain in another five years. The twenty-year freeze on copyright and what’s public domain, though named after then-Congressman Sonny Bono, was all about keeping the mouse under Disney corporate control.

That, to me, is a sticking point. Walt’s dead. Walt’s daughters are dead. And they were both born well after the mouse, true, but still. The younger one would’ve turned eighty-three this week. I think that is an age when she wouldn’t have needed the royalties from “Steamboat Willie” and “Plane Crazy” to survive. Dorothy L. Sayers, considerably less well-off than Walt, had one son (the circumstances of which are amazing and which I’ll have to write about at some point), who died in 1984; he didn’t need the royalties from Whose Body?, which enters the public domain this week. Even if you think the heirs have a reasonable claim to the work, for how many generations?

Assuming there are heirs, of course, which there aren’t always. I’m not saying all Prince music should now be in the public domain, but he died intestate. A court will be making decisions about who controls his music for decades to come. His only acknowledged child died a week after birth; he was not married at the time of his death. The courts have apparently allocated quite a large chunk of the estate, relatively speaking to pay for DNA testing, which I’m not sure is in the spirit of the idea of copyright in the first place. “I should control ‘Batdance’ until 2086 [or whenever; I’m not sure if it counts as a “work for hire”] because Prince had a one-night stand with my mom in 1992″ is not the same as “I should be able to make a living on my work.”

And, yes, part of me hopes that having certain works released into public domain will mean adaptations. I didn’t realize that Whose Body? was on the list, and now I’m getting my hopes up about a Lord Peter Wimsey movie again, or at least an audio book not read by Ian Carmichael. We could get an adaptation of Zane Grey’s “The Vanishing American” short story; I’m not familiar with Grey outside of “Colonel Potter’s preferred bedtime reading,” but apparently the original story has harsh things to say about the treatment of the Native population. The Chip Woman’s Fortune, by Willis Richardson, could spark a renaissance of treatments of the work of Jazz Era black writers. Jeeves and Tarzan and Bambi are all on the list.

It is also apparently true that “in public domain” tends to mean “more accessible.” Think all those dire collections of fifty movies for three dollars that you find wherever DVDs are sold—all of those movies are public domain. (Often because no one filed an extension back when that was still something you had to do; several quite prominent films are public domain for weird reasons, like To Kill a Mockingbird and Night of the Living Dead.) As public domain expands, more movies will be available on collections like that, there to be seen by anyone with a few dollars to spare. In theory, they’ll be dumped onto streaming services, too. Project Gutenberg is on the books. Musicians are tuning up “We Have No Bananas” as we speak. 1923 hasn’t been this fashionable since 1924.

Help me make a living on my work; consider supporting my Patreon!

Posted in Short Articles | Tagged copyright, public domain

About the Author

gillianmadeira@hotmail.com'

Gillianren

Gillianren is a forty-something bipolar woman living in the Pacific Northwest after growing up in Los Angeles County. She and her boyfriend have one son and one daughter, and she gave a daughter up for adoption. She fills her days by watching her local library system’s DVD collection in alphabetical order, watching everything that looks interesting. She particularly enjoys pre-Code films, blaxploitation, and live-action Disney movies of the ’60s and ’70s. She has a Patreon account at https://www.patreon.com/gillianren

Related Posts

How 'bout let's not go for one of the blackface stills!Gillian’s Giant Public Domain Round-Up 2023→

Finally, the time for my "Steamboat Willie" porno script has arrived (it is also called "Steamboat Willie").The Friday Article Roundup: End of an Era, Start of the Next→

This version of the bear is free to use!Public Domain Also Rises→

Dagon... dagoff. Dagon... dagoff.The Friday Article Roundup: Redemption and Revenge→

  • Comments
  • Popular
  • Most Recent
  • j*****@yahoo.com'
    mr_apollo on Year of the Month: Mon OncleWonderful piece, Sam. It's made…
  • j*****@yahoo.com'
    mr_apollo on Year of the Month: Mon OncleFellow heretic here. I've never…
  • n***********@gmail.com'
    Ruck Cohlchez on Film on the Internet: AN AMERICAN CRIMEI wouldn't have called it…
  • j***********@gmail.com'
    Son of Griff on LIFE ITSELFGlad to hear back from…
  • n*********@gmail.com'
    Jake Gittes on Film on the Internet: AN AMERICAN CRIMEThis is the single most…
  • “The End” of SAVAGES

    33851 views / Posted November 10, 2014
  • What the fuck did I just watch? SPHERE

    27453 views / Posted March 19, 2015
  • The Untalented Mr. Ripley: The Craft of Standup Comedy and the Non-Comedy of TOM MYERS

    25068 views / Posted June 26, 2018
  • Scenic Routes: SHOWGIRLS (1995)

    20096 views / Posted November 20, 2014
  • Yvonne, or: CASABLANCA In One Character and Three Scenes

    11141 views / Posted August 21, 2014
  • Oh, to have the straight line just hovering over your shoulder for when you need it.

    The Friday Article Roundup: Writer’s Blocks

    March 24, 2023 / The Ploughman
  • This was a tough one to find a properly formatted header image for.

    Lunch Links: MOOMIN

    March 23, 2023 / The Ploughman
  • Film on the Internet: BASKET CASE

    March 22, 2023 / ZoeZ
  • New on DVD and Blu-Ray

    March 21, 2023 / Greta Taylor
  • Taco Break: Overplayed But Still Funny

    March 20, 2023 / Tristan "Drunk Napoleon" Nankervis

Last Tweets

  • The Friday Article Roundup: Writer’s Blocks - https://t.co/3a4Sy0roVA, 11 hours ago
  • The witty and bittersweet short film MOOMIN doesn't require a smartphone to watch, but it helps. https://t.co/gMMYZWtxgb, Mar 23
  • Film on the Internet: BASKET CASE - https://t.co/ncsoMwqyRT, Mar 22

©2014 - 2016 The-Solute | Hosted, Developed and Maintained by Bellingham WP LogoBellinghamWP.com.

Menu

  • Home
  • Who We Are
  • About
  • Privacy
  • Contact Us
  • Login
Do NOT follow this link or you will be banned from the site!