If you're excited that things are entering the #PublicDomain — which you should be! — perhaps it's worth considering reforming copyright.
In many places currently it's 70 years after the death of the author, or longer. This is insanity.
An important piece of culture made by a young author could be locked behind copyright (with rights usually held by publishers, not authors themselves anyway) for over a *century*.
That's how you get #Disney to own almost everything.
Reform #copyright!
@rysiek The thing that gets me is all the claims that we can't relax copyright, not even after the creator's death, because it 'protects' creators.
When... there are so, so, so many cases of copyright laws actively or passively screwing creators over. Even more cases of creators being bullied or tricked into signing away the rights, or never really holding them to begin with.
And in all of these fights? The courts don't give a shit about creators. The law doesn't. Public outcry rarely goes anywhere either.
I went looking for examples and honestly it's worse than I even remembered.
@rysiek Like, this is just a selection from little things I vaguely half-remembered:
- the Disney Must Pay campaign, which started with one writer and has now ballooned beyond a joke. But that's just one of the big cases that's blown up how badly work-for-hire screws creators - Marvel is under fire from the estates of multiple high-profile creators who've passed away, and this is after Jack Kirby's estate went after them. I'm no expert but it looks like it's a systemic practice among media companies going back an awfully long way.
- The music industry. I don't even know where to start. It goes back throughout its history, it goes all the way up to today. Even listening to one tiny music podcast - A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs - has brought plenty of cases, and I fell off of listening regularly around episode 120. For example, Episode 92. https://500songs.com/podcast/episode-92-the-lion-sleeps-tonight-by-the-tokens/ (and see also https://traxploitation.com/solomon-linda). You can basically just search 'music industry copyright screwing artists' and it'd probably take you years just to get a reasonable sample of cases. It gets worse.
- There is literally a fucking satirical sci-fi novel coming out about... music industry copyright. I am not making this up. I'm sure it isn't even the first satirical media about the music industry and copyright. https://www.npr.org/sections/allsongs/2012/07/05/156311483/aliens-have-landed-hoping-to-license-all-of-humanitys-music
I'd be surprised to find an industry where copyright isn't screwing creators.
Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦
Mre. Dartigen [maker mode]