Every year, the Duke Center for the Study of the Public Domain releases a list of properties coming to the public domain. Along with Mickey, 2024 sees Virginia Woolf's Orlando, the jazzy tune Mack the Knife and the first screen appearance of comedy duo Laurel and Hardy are among the works losing some sort of artistic protections. Yet why is it that it took nearly a century for these properties to become public domain works when George Romeo's Night of the Living Dead has been in the realm of free use for decades and that classic zombie film is less than 60 years old?
The answer all has to do with if and when the artists involved in the creation of their works applied for a copyright. Sometimes, an artist just forgets to apply for one, making their work literally free for anyone else to copy off of. Or, maybe law at that time wasn't protective enough. Several amendments to the first US copyright protection act that occurred in 1790 have been enacted in the past century alone. Our forefathers couldn't have foreseen changes in technology such as video home recorders, streaming services or artificial intelligence which have all warranted some additional tweaking to copyright law. Other times, an agreement between artists is broken or misused, resulting in the loss of creative rights to a work as was part of the case behind the original prints of Romero's magnum opus becoming a public domain work.
Durham, North Carolina's Center for the Study of the Public Domain at Duke University seeks to examine all areas of copyright law and free use. Free use is a protection for consumers such as myself, which allows me to make my reviews of comics and graphic novels without fear of having to pay a fee or being sued. I'm allowed under free use to use minuscule snippets of the books I review as long as my posts are being used for critique. I'm also protected to say that such and such work 'stunk' as long as I am being objective to my own thoughts and not stating that it's 100% indisputable for the work's lack of quality.
Mind you that my understanding of copyright law is rudimentary at best. I read Duke's first graphic novel on public domain and free use and I still don't have a clear understanding of it. One thing I do know is that research is needed to clear anything being created artistically for money. Something as small as a ring tone in the background of a scene of a documentary could result in licensing fees that could be in the tens of thousands of dollars. Plus, just because you had a licensing agreement for background music when your film was released in 2010, don't expect to be able to use it for the 25th anniversary re-release in 2035!
Copyright law is extremely fickle. A generation ago, the laws were in the favor of the utilizer of others' works. Presently, the law has swung out of reach of the original artist and now more into the realm of the production companies that own the rights to the work. Though with the release of films like Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey and the forthcoming Mickey's Mouse Trap, the new trend of copyright protection might be in the hands of the independent producer of horror and macabre. That's because creators such as A.A. Milne clearly had no ill intent in development of their characters and thus a horror version of such innocents can be interpreted as a parody.
Tales From the Public Domain: Bound by Law? was co-written by Jennifer Jenkins, the mastermind behind Duke's annual Public Domain Day press releases we see in the days leading up to New Year's Day. Jenkins' writing partner is Scottish intellectual property scholar James Boyle, who also works at the Center of Public Domain. Illustrations were by illustrator and law professor Keith Aoki with black and white photos all used under free use law protections.
The Center of Public Domain had plans for a series of graphic novels based on copyright law. Tales From the Public Domain: Theft; A History of Music was the follow-up to this book. Keith Aoki had begun preliminary sketches for the book before ultimately passing from a lengthy illness in 2011. Theft's 2016 release was dedicated to Professor Aoki's memory.
Completing this review completes Task #39 (Published in the state you were born or your native country) of the 2024 Comic Book and Graphic Novel Reading Challenge.
