Is It Legal to Copy Classic Comic Book as Art

maio 02, 2022 Enviar um comentário

What is the "public domain"?
Is the public domain but material that you can apply without paying for it?
What kinds of things are in the public domain?
Who benefits from the public domain?
The public domain sounds actually valuable, but I'm in favor of intellectual property, is there a contradiction?
This site talks a lot about copyright constabulary, is the public domain just a copyright effect?
What does copyright cover?
What does copyright not cover?
What material goes immediately into the public domain?
Is gratis and open source software in the public domain?
Are Creative Commons-licensed works in the public domain?
How has the public domain been diminished in recent years?
What are orphan works?
Can't all of these problems be solved just past getting permission or paying a fee?
How does the erosion of the public domain relate to the Cyberspace and the "digital revolution"?
What is the Copyright Term Extension Human action (CTEA) and what happened in the example that challenged its constitutionality — Eldred v. Ashcroft?
How does the 2012 Supreme Court decision in Golan v. Holder affect the public domain?
What is "fair use"?
What happened in the "Google Books" instance?
What is the Center for the Study of the Public Domain?

What is the "public domain"?

The public domain is the realm of material — ideas, images, sounds, discoveries, facts, texts — that is unprotected past intellectual property rights and free for all to use or build upon. It includes our commonage cultural and scientific heritage, and the raw materials for future expression, research, democratic dialogue and education.

dorsum to top

Is the public domain simply material that you lot can use without paying for it?

No. Public domain textile is "gratuitous" as in "free spoken language," non "free" as in "free beer" — because it is unprotected by intellectual property rights, it is costless of centralized control equally a legal thing, and yous can employ information technology without having to get permission. But we hope that in many cases information technology would also be available at little or no cost. And so for example, the works of Charles Dickens are in the public domain even though they are however for sale, but if yous beloved A Tale of Ii Cities you tin can freely translate it, make information technology into a pic, or turn it into a nowadays-mean solar day tale of ii cities without permission. Conversely, many copyrighted works may be available gratuitous of cost online, simply because they are copyrighted you would need permission before translating or selling or adapting them.

back to summit

What kinds of things are in the public domain?

1 category would include unabridged works and inventions whose copyright or patent terms accept expired (or that predated intellectual property laws entirely). Take, for instance, the literary classics Alice'south Adventures in Wonderland, Pinocchio, The Little Mermaid, The Hunchback of Notre Matriarch, or Fairy Tales by the Brothers Grimm — Disney was free to use these stories in its honey animations because their copyrights had lapsed. And in 2014, the movies Maleficent, Into the Woods, Hercules, Noah, and Exodus: Gods and Kings interpreted public domain works including fairy tales, mythology, and the Bible. In the patent realm, drug producers can offer cheaper generic versions of Prilosec or Zoloft, and inventors can improve and market previous innovations, because their patents have expired. A 2d category would include the basic building blocks of inventiveness and innovation that are not protectable by copyrights or patents at all — such every bit ideas, facts, plotlines, genres, themes, basic chord progressions, scientific principles, theories, formulae, and laws of nature. (You tin can begin to see how useful the public domain is!) These materials go immediately into the public domain, fifty-fifty if they are incorporated into a larger, protected work.

Generally, works published earlier 1923 are in the public domain. Notwithstanding, some works published before 1923 might nonetheless exist copyrighted, if their initial publication was unauthorized, because the electric current 95-twelvemonth copyright term just begins on the appointment of authorized publication. Archivist Peter Hirtle provides a notable example: the oldest work withal nether copyright may be a 1755 letter from John Adams to Nathan Webb. It was not published until 1956, so its copyright won't expire until 2052 – almost 300 years later its cosmos! (Encounter Hirtle's article here and his first-class chart showing the complexities of copyright terms here.)

dorsum to tiptop

Who benefits from the public domain?

Artists of all kinds rely on the public domain — Homer's The Odyssey has given united states of america Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Joyce's Ulysses, and the Coen Brothers' O Blood brother Where Art Thou?, to proper name only a few; and the twelve bar dejection influenced genres from land to jazz to soul to rock and roll. Journalists and activists use facts and symbols in the public domain to inform the public and spur argue. Wikipedia relies on public domain information and images. Hobbyists screen forgotten films and collect old recordings. Commercial publishers reprint public domain works and sell them at discounted prices. Teachers, libraries, museums, historians, archivists, and database operators use the public domain to collect, preserve, and teach us about our past. Scientific and technical research would be impossible without access to data and discoveries. Youth orchestras and church choirs perform public domain works for their communities. Read near other potential uses of the public domain on our why it matters page. The list goes on . . . chances are, yous've used, enjoyed, and depended on the public domain as well.

The public domain sounds really valuable, but I'grand in favor of intellectual property, is there a contradiction?

Quite the contrary. Yous'll be happy to hear that the public domain is a vital, indispensable part of our intellectual belongings system, and the inputs in the public domain are merely as important to its function as the outputs protected by intellectual holding. As Judge Kozinski of the 9th Circuit Courtroom of Appeals put it: "Inventiveness is impossible without a rich public domain. Zip today, likely cipher since we tamed burn down, is genuinely new: Culture, like science and technology, grows by accretion, each new creator building on the works of those who came before. Overprotection stifles the very creative forces it's supposed to nurture." Without the public domain, there would be little to protect with intellectual holding rights — if copyright lasted long enough to lock up Shakespeare's works, much of the literary canon would vanish; if data, theories and formulae were subject field to intellectual property protection, then scientific progress would grind to a halt. So the intellectual property organisation needs both the incentives provided past exclusive rights and the freedoms provided past the public domain, and the primal is to detect the appropriate balance betwixt them.

back to summit

This site talks a lot about copyright police force, is the public domain just a copyright result?

No, the public domain includes material that is unprotected by any intellectual property rights, including both copyrights and patents. Copyright police force protects original works of authorship, while patent law protects inventions or discoveries. Because Public Domain Day celebrates the moments when copyrights expire and citizens tin can freely use creative works, the bulk of this website is focused on copyright law. Just the public domain as well includes patentable field of study matter (processes, inventions, machines, products, and medicines) where the patents have expired. It besides includes materials that cannot be copyrighted, patented or trademarked at all.

dorsum to top

What does copyright cover?

Copyright serves an of import purpose: to encourage people to brand and distribute new works. To do so, it gives authors the sectional right to reproduce, distribute, publicly perform, and publicly display their works, and to make "derivative works" (such as translations and adaptations) based on their works. Copyright law covers creative works such as books, movies, music, photographs, poetry, plays, paintings, sculpture, architecture, websites, blogs, and software lawmaking. A work is protected past copyright every bit soon as it is fixed in a "tangible medium of expression" — whether by writing information technology down, recording it, pressing the shutter button, striking "salvage," etc. Neither a copyright notice nor registration is required for copyright protection.

What does copyright non embrace?

Copyright simply protects the original "expression" in creative works. Ideas, facts, genre (genre-making elements are sometimes called "scènes à faire"), and unoriginal elements are non copyrightable. For instance, if yous write a folk song about the perils of climate change, your original lyrics and melody would be copyrighted and yous could prevent others from copying them without permission. But the facts you lot include about rising temperatures, the idea that climate alter is dangerous and warrants greater public attention, your apply of elements common to the folk genre, and the eerily prescient lines yous borrowed from a Victorian poem would remain in the public domain for anyone to use. This is part of how copyright encourages future creativity. In the The states, copyright likewise does not protect works of the U.Southward. authorities (such every bit federal legislation, regulations, legal opinions, hearings, and all sorts of other information about how the authorities operates and what it produces). In improver, U.S. copyright law does not protect unoriginal databases or compilations of facts (such as a phone book), titles, names, short phrases, slogans, mere listings of ingredients, and utilitarian objects. For more information see the Copyright Office's Copyright Basics.

back to summit

What material goes immediately into the public domain?

Material that is non protectable by copyrights or patents goes immediately into the public domain. This includes the bones building blocks described higher up — ideas, facts, plotlines, genres, themes, basic chord progressions, scientific principles, theories, formulae, and laws of nature — fifty-fifty if they are part of a larger protected work. It as well includes unprotectable works such as US authorities works and unoriginal databases.

Is costless and open source software in the public domain?

No, gratis and open up-source software is not in the "public domain," which would mean that information technology is not protected past copyright police force. The software is copyrighted, but the copyright holder chooses to grant specific freedoms to the public through a license (such equally the Full general Public License), and she can do this precisely because she owns the copyright. Then, while public domain materials are free because they're unprotected past intellectual belongings rights, open-source software is gratis because of private action. This is how the license works: it says that anyone may copy the source code and comprise information technology into a new program, but if they do so and redistribute their work, their new program must also be covered by the same license, making information technology freely available for others to use and build upon. (The license thereby keeps the source code publicly bachelor and encourages broader collaboration, innovation, testing, and use.) If you violate these terms, then the freedoms granted past the license disappear, and you are where y'all would be without the license — namely infringing the developer's copyright. The gratuitous and open-source model has produced software that equals or, some would debate, exceeds the capabilities of proprietary software. Some examples of open-source software include the operating system Linux, the web browser Firefox, the programming linguistic communication Perl, the web server software Apache, and the free discussion processors NeoOffice and AbiWord.

back to meridian

Are Creative Commons-licensed works in the public domain?

No, similar complimentary and open up-source software licenses, Creative Commons licenses create a vibrant zone of freedom built on top of copyright law. Creative Eatables-licensed works are not in the "public domain," which would mean that they are non protected past copyright law. Rather, the works are copyrighted, and the copyright allows authors to choose to license their work under more than generous terms than standard copyright. The authors of millions of creative works such as educational materials, books, movies, websites, blogs, photos, music and fine art accept used Creative Commons licenses to grant a set of freedoms to the public — and then that others tin can share, remix, utilise them commercially, or any combination thereof. The wealth of textile available under Artistic Commons licenses includes everything from MIT's OpenCourseware to all of the articles in the Public Library of Science to millions of photographs on Flickr to all the text you might use every day on Wikipedia and the about twenty million media files in Wikimedia Commons.

back to superlative

How has the public domain been diminished in contempo years?

The public domain has been dramatically eroded in recent years. Near relevant to Public Domain Day in the United states of america are the following changes in copyright police force. Until 1978, the copyright term was 28 years from the date of publication, renewable once for another 28 years. Estimates are that 85% of copyrights were non renewed (93% in the case of books), most likely considering the works were no longer commercially valuable. In improver, works were non protected unless authors included a bones copyright notice — the word "copyright" or © with one'due south proper name and year next to information technology (this notice requirement was eliminated in 1989). By some estimates, 90% of works did not include this copyright notice and immediately entered the public domain. And so, earlier 1978, simply 10% of works might have been subject to copyright at all, and of the works that were, up to 85% simply used the outset 28-year term, with 15% renewing for the total 56-year term. That's 1.v% of all works with 56 years of protection, viii.5% with 28 years, and 90% completely gratuitous. In 1978, the renewable 28-twelvemonth term was extended to a single term of the life of the author plus 50 years. Fast forrad to 1998, and the copyright term was increased to an extraordinary 70 years after the expiry of a creator, and to 95 years after publication for works owned by corporations. This term extension applied not merely to future works, but was retroactively practical to works that had already been created and enjoyed their full copyright term, and were set to enter the public domain. (How long is this electric current term? Consider this: Warner Chappell claims buying of the song "Happy Birthday to You," registered for copyright in 1935, until 2030.) This series of legal changes has severely impoverished the public domain. Copyright has gone from being a legal system that governs a minority of creative expression to one that automatically governs the vast majority of artistic works, whether or non the creators want or can use it, and does so for the full — and very long — term. This might be dandy if the benefits of protecting all works for such a long time outweighed the costs, but only a tiny percent of copyright holders benefits from the longer copyright term — studies have found that just two% of works betwixt 55 and 75 years quondam go on to retain commercial value. The other 98% languish, with no 1 benefiting from the persisting copyright, while all users of the public domain lose a vast amount of available work. (This is explained in more particular below in the orphan works section.) A helpful chart explaining copyright terms is hither and the US Copyright Office's caption of copyright terms is here.

What are orphan works?

Ane of the almost troubling effects of the exceptionally long copyright term has been the increasing number of "orphan works." These works are still presumably nether copyright (in the United States only works published earlier 1923 are conclusively in the public domain), just the copyright owner cannot be identified or located. They probably incorporate the majority of the record of 20th century culture (one study indicates that but 2 per centum of works between 55 and 75 years old continue to retain commercial value). The default response of archivists, libraries, pic restorers, historians, artists, scholars, educators, publishers, and others is to avoid using copyrighted works unless they are clearly in the public domain. As a result, orphan works are not used in new creative efforts or made available to the public due to dubiety over their copyright status, even when there is no longer anyone claiming copyright buying, or the possessor no longer has any objection to such apply. The costs hither are huge: needlessly disintegrating films merely when technology would allow for their preservation, prohibitive costs for libraries, incomplete and spotted histories, thwarted scholarship, digital libraries put on hold, delays to publication. In the cases where the piece of work is truly an orphan piece of work, those costs are tragic because they are completely unnecessary: no 1 is benefiting from the continued copyright protection over these works, while the unabridged public loses the ability to adapt, transform, preserve, digitize, republish and otherwise make new and valuable uses of them. For more, encounter the Center's proposals on orphan works and the US Copyright Office's orphan works page. Y'all tin read more virtually the current costs associated with orphan works in The Chronicle of Higher Educational activity's "Out of Fear, Colleges Lock Books and Images Away From Scholars" and the American Bar Association Periodical's "A Trove of Historic Jazz Recordings Has Constitute a Home in Harlem, But You Tin can't Hear Them."

back to meridian

Can't all these problems be solved just by getting permission or paying a fee?

Is the public domain really that important? Surely, one can do all of the things mentioned on this website — copying, reprinting, translating, adapting, creating new versions — simply past getting permission or paying a fee to the copyright holder? Well, yes and no. First, a vast corporeality of our copyrighted culture — a bulk of it according to some estimates — consists of the orphan works described above. In the case of these works, i cannot practise whatever of the things mentioned here without a major legal gamble, because in that location is no identifiable copyright owner who can give permission and copyright is a "strict liability arrangement": meaning that the fact that you made conscientious efforts to find the possessor is no defense. For orphan works, therefore, lengthened terms effectively deny access and prohibit reuse and reworking; a cultural jail sentence with no appeal possible. Second, fifty-fifty if there is a copyright holder and the piece of work is commercially bachelor (the overwhelming proportion of older works are non) the cost of permission will effectively doom many laudable uses, even when the work was originally created under the hope of a term that has long since expired. Third, copyright holders may refuse permission for transformative reworking of textile. Some transformative uses, such equally parodies, may be protected by "fair utilize" or similar legal privileges, merely many are not. At what point in time in the life of a work practise we believe that the copyright holder should no longer have a unilateral veto over those who wish to build on the work?

How does the erosion of the public domain chronicle to the Internet and the "digital revolution"?

It's somewhere between ironic and perverse: the public domain is being impoverished merely every bit its opportunities for inventiveness, innovation, democratic participation, and knowledge advancement are transformed. The potential functions of the public domain have been expanded and invigorated by the Internet, which allows people to find, collect, process, share, and remix information and culture with unprecedented speed and ease. Citizens tin can readily access government information, amateur artists can remix as never before, musicians who have never met can create songs together, professors from different universities tin share and translate course materials, students and researchers can explore the contents of vast digital athenaeum, and scientists conducting experiments in different labs can share information and findings. Commercial entities such as Google may want to digitize the world'due south books, or a group of jazz fans may want to collect and add together personal reflections to a treasure trove of recordings from the 1930s and post these online — all of this would be enabled by a robust public domain. Every bit Professor James Boyle wrote in The Public Domain: "Imagine that energy, that decentralized and idiosyncratically dispersed pattern of interests: imagine all of this turned loose on the cultural artifacts of the twentieth century. Then imagine it coupled to the efforts of the great state athenaeum and private museums who themselves would be complimentary to do the same thing. Think of the people who would piece of work on Buster Keaton, or the literary classics of the 1930s, or the films of the 2nd Globe War, or footage on the daily lives of African-Americans during segregation, or the music of the Peachy Depression, or theremin recordings, or the best of vaudeville. Imagine your Google search in such a earth." The contraction of the public domain is foreclosing this potential just equally technology makes information technology possible.

back to elevation

What is the Copyright Term Extension Human activity (CTEA) and what happened in the case that challenged its constitutionality — Eldred v. Ashcroft?

The Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA) is the 1998 law that extended the copyright term to life of the author plus 70 years, and to 95 years subsequently publication for "works for hire" endemic by corporations (read the full text hither). Eldred 5. Ashcroft was the Supreme Court case challenging the CTEA. The challenge was unsuccessful: over two strong dissents, the Court held that Congress acted within constitutional limits on its authority in adopting the term extension. A New York Times editorial declared that this decision "makes it probable that we are seeing the beginning of the end of public domain and the birth of copyright perpetuity... [The] Public domain has been a thousand experiment, one that should not be allowed to die. The ability to draw freely on the entire creative output of humanity is one of the reasons we live in a time of such fruitful artistic ferment." The Washington Mail service, though more inclined to concur that retrospective extension might exist constitutional, declared the copyright arrangement to be "broken" in that it "effectively and perpetually protects nearly all fabric that anyone would want to cite or apply. That's non what the framers envisioned, and it'south not in the public interest." You can read the documents from the Eldred example here.

dorsum to top

How does the 2012 Supreme Court decision in Golan 5. Holder affect the public domain?

In the 2012 case Golan 5. Holder, the Supreme Court held that Congress may remove works from the public domain without violating the Constitution. Even if the public now enjoys unfettered access to a work, Congress is allowed to take that work out of the public domain and create a new legal monopoly over information technology. What'due south more, the Court alleged, Congress can do so fifty-fifty when it is clear that the new right "does not encourage anyone to produce a single new work."

This decision marked a pregnant departure from the "bedrock principle" that once works enter the public domain, they remain there, free for anyone to use and build upon. The constabulary at issue in Golan "restored" copyright to foreign works that had entered the American public domain for any of three reasons: the author failed to comply with copyright formalities, the U.S. did non have copyright relations with their state of origin at the fourth dimension of publication, or they were sound recordings stock-still before 1972. Some of these works were famous (including works by Picasso, Shostakovich, and Prokofiev), but many of them were obscure, older orphan works. In upholding the law, the Golan majority explicitly endorsed the position that the public has no legal rights to the public domain. While those who have copyrights enjoy vested, legally protected rights, "[a]nyone has free access to the public domain, but no i, after the copyright term has expired, acquires ownership rights in the once-protected works." In a dissenting opinion, Justices Breyer and Alito asked "Does the [Constitution] empower Congress to enact a statute that withdraws works from the public domain, brings almost higher prices and costs, and in doing so seriously restricts broadcasting, particularly to those who need information technology for scholarly, educational, or cultural purposes – all without providing any additional incentive for the product of new material?" Their answer was "No." Still, if i reads Golan, one searches in vain for whatsoever limiting principle on Congress's actions. Under the U.Due south. Constitution, according to this case, the public domain is "public" just by sufferance. It may be privatized at any moment, at the whim of the Congress and without violating the Neb of Rights. (You can read more about this case here.)

back to summit

What is "off-white use"?

In the United states of america, off-white utilize is a flexible category that lets you lot use expression all the same protected by copyright for many purposes including parody, commentary, criticism, news reporting, education, enquiry, and opposite engineering to achieve software compatibility. Whether fair uses are part of the public domain is a matter of bookish debate — you can read more near different scholarly conceptions of the public domain hither.

dorsum to height

What happened in the "Google Books" case?

In November 2013, a court decided that Google Books was protected past "fair apply" – the doctrine in copyright law that, broadly speaking, protects beneficial uses that do non readapt copyright holders' markets. The court plant that Google's use of copyrighted books was legal because information technology was "highly transformative": it transformed the expressive text within books into something unlike, a new search tool. The court also emphasized the "meaning public benefits" of Google Books. For the first time, people could notice books that were "in one case buried in research library archives." Beyond finding books, the "n-gram" project let researchers text-mine the total corpus of digitized books to track the development of words and phrases. Google Books immune libraries to better serve their functions: they could use the digital scans to facilitate admission for print-disabled patrons, and to preserve their holdings for perpetuity. Authors and publishers themselves benefited too: they gained new audiences and revenue streams from the people who were finally able to find their books. All of these benefits – widespread access, research, preservation, new markets – are merely what copyright law is intended to promote.

What is the Heart for the Study of the Public Domain?

The Heart for the Study of the Public Domain'south mission is to promote inquiry and scholarship on the contributions of the public domain to speech, culture, science and innovation, to promote argue most the balance needed in our intellectual holding system, and to interpret bookish inquiry into public policy solutions. Read more about our work here. The Heart produces a range of educational materials, including the comic book Bound By Law?, which explores the furnishings of copyright and fair employ on creativity. The comic book is freely bachelor online under a Creative Eatables license, then you can download, translate, share, or remix information technology. You tin besides buy a hard copy here.

back to elevation

Creative Commons License The Public Domain Day 2015 web pages by Duke University's Eye for the Study of the Public Domain are licensed nether a Artistic Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.