Seneste nyt
[ 31.12.09 ] At the beginning of each year, cultural redistribution takes place on a large scale, namely, when, on 1 January, the commercial rights of descendants to the creative works of their ancestors ... læs videre
[ 18.12.09 ] Good news for all online borrowers and digital readers. It’s like Christmas brought forward to mid or rather early December: the tokens have arrived - the gifts will be coming sometime later. ... læs videre
[ 11.12.09 ] If everything new is of the devil’s making, then technical advances must, at the very least, be compared with SS troops; a simple calculation, based on a certain kind of cultural pessimism, ... læs videre
[ 07.12.09 ] This time the ‘medium of the week’ comes from ZYX Music: ‘With Jazzy Christmas , you can enjoy jazz versions of classic Christmas songs.’ These words are to be found at the ... læs videre
[ 28.11.09 ] First you’re battling a huge swell on the world’s oceans – and then, all of the sudden, you’re cruising through smooth inland waters. So it seems for European writers’ associations at ... læs videre
[ 19.11.09 ] Effective immediately, readme.cc will be available not only on the internet and our computer screens, but also in printed form, running from right to left. Made possible by the Egyptian-German ... læs videre
[ 12.11.09 ] In November 2008, around 500 publishers participated in BUCH WIEN 08, Austria’s first international book fair, which sought to make Vienna a hub for the trading of books between the East and ... læs videre
[ 05.11.09 ] The poetry collection Alternative Geography by Egyptian poet Iman Mersal , recently published in Hebrew translation, has become a literary event in Cairo. The daily Al-Masri al-Youm ... læs videre
[ 30.10.09 ] True, the controversies surrounding China, Guest of Honour, at the Frankfurt Book Fair eclipsed everything else. At least that’s how it seemed on the surface. News, of course, also accumulated ... læs videre
[ 23.10.09 ] In actual fact, it was a welcome change. At the Frankfurt Book Fair, which ended just a few days ago, everyone was discussing topics related to China, the fair’s Guest of Honour : China’s ... læs videre
Nyheder tilbage til oversigt
Public Domain Day
[ 31.12.2009 ]
At the beginning of each year, cultural redistribution takes place on a large scale, namely, when, on 1 January, the commercial rights of descendants to the creative works of their ancestors expire. From this day onwards, these works may be copied, adapted, sampled, and reorganised. They are no longer private property, but have become common property - in other words, they fall into the public domain. Thus for some years now, 1 January has been celebrated as Public Domain Day.
In 2010, 563 authors in the Public Domain Works registry will become common property according to the simple rule ‘year of death plus seventy’. (Diverse Public Domain Calculators can be found here.) Among those on the list are Sigmund Freud (The Interpretation of Dreams, Civilization and Its Discontents) and William Butler Yeats (The Land of Heart's Desire, The Winding Stair). Project Gutenberg has long been ready to upload the entire oeuvre of these authors (here and here).
At the same time, in many places efforts are being made to restrict, hinder, or charge fees for enjoying works in the public domain. One such example is the quarrel between the British National Portrait Gallery and Wikipedia over digital photographs of paintings.
Hence Public Domain Day is also a moment to recall that the public domain is, as Jessica Litman put it, ‘the law’s primary safeguard of the raw material that makes authorship possible’ (J Litman, ‘The Public Domain’ (1990) 39 Emory Law Journal 965, 967). During the Heinrich Böll Foundation’s Interdisciplinary Political Salon on the topic of ‘Time for the Commons’, the thesis ‘Gemeingüter stärken. Jetzt!’ was written (‘Strengthen the Commons. Now!’). It postulates, among other things, that common properties should not be destroyed by unlimited use; at the same time, no one should be refused access to them. It calls for a new idea of ownership, one that values the usage rights of society higher than those of private enterprise.
For Public Domain Day 2010, COMMUNIA - The European Thematic Network on the Digital Public Domain will post a public domain manifesto at www.publicdomainday.eu. It revolves around the idea that the public domain should be the rule and copyright the exception when it comes to paying authors for their intellectual work. From this, it derives consequences for copyright laws and makes recommendations for protecting the public domain, for example, by reducing the term of copyright or taking measures to transfer orphan and out-of-print works to the public domain.
Peter Troxler
