Today is Public Domain Day!

[thewayne]

An interesting array of materials are losing their copyright chains in the USA today, including The Marx Brothers, Agatha Christie, Dashiell Hammett, Mickey Mouse, and Tintin and Popeye, amongst others.

The Slashdot summary:
Thousands of copyrighted works from 1929, including Mickey Mouse's first speaking appearance and original versions of comic

Comments

[fairy69version2]

Interesting and hey, where ya been?

[thewayne]

Still posting on DW, decided to try to copy posts to LJ more. There's no way the copypost feature will be re-enabled until the war is over and the leadership in Russia changes, along with the direction of the government, so this is the only way that my posts will appear over here.

[schnee]

I'm surprised it was disabled for political reasons in the first place. By who/on which side?

[thewayne]

I don't know. It might have been at the beginning of Russia's war with Ukraine, the cross-post link stopped working. At the same time, people in many places lost their ability to buy paid memberships to LJ, even in England, because of sanctions against Russia. LJ extended paid subscriptions to those who had a history of them before, but could only do it so far.

[thespian15]

I know we've been through this before, but I still find it bizarre that somebody can lose the rights to something they have created. :o :o :o
Makes you work harder to make sure you are getting the correct product for what you want. :o
Hugs, Jon

[thewayne]

The people who made them are long since dead. And in most cases, so are their direct heirs. How long should this material be locked up?

[thespian15]

The people may be gone, but their companies remain.

[schnee]

I know we've been through this before, but I still find it bizarre that somebody can lose the rights to something they have created.Very, VERY briefly

[schnee]

The Wikimedia projects also used to have coverage; I seem to recall that Wikisource had a page with a list of authors whose works could now be posted to that site, for instance. I don't know if that still exists.