Copyright Term (Your Input Requested)

[Steerpike]

Thanks. I'd not even thought about it, except for a vague idea that copyright could be renewed. Nice to think my books will one day be in the public domain. I wonder what will become of my history essays.

You used to have to renew, but the law changed a while back. There is actually a lot of work from prior to the early 1960s that is in the public domain because it was never renewed, but it can be difficult to figure out which ones lapsed.

 

[Steerpike]

I seem to remember news items (a year or two back? Maybe longer. I can't keep track of dates anymore) about certain corporations at least attempting to circumvent copyright expirations by claiming trademarks on certain names from fictional works. Disney with 'Peter Pan' I believe was one example. Haven't really followed up on any of that so I'm not sure whether it's still going on (but would guess it is).

Names like that typically are not subject to copyright protection. Companies can get those trademarks and it is true they might make it more difficult to market a book about those characters, but trademark rights typically wouldn't prevent you from writing a story with the characters.

 

[pmmg]

I believe the argument in favor of public domain is along the lines of works becoming so saturated into the common experience that it 1) becomes something that the evolutions of the ideas and properties become things that should not be impeded from occurring, and 2) becomes so prevalent that pursing claims of copyright become impractical. Similar, I would think, to the collegiate process where we all stand on the shoulders of giants, and owe our position in the evolutionary process to many who have come before. I am not sure that the issue is really damage, but that the inevitable will happen, and it becomes less reasonable to expect it can be contained.

Laws, and government, are attempts to codify what is reasonable, and most of our mechanisms are human based ones that have to survive a test of reason. It would not seem reasonable from the perspective of government to prevent evolution of peter pan a hundred and fifty years after it had permeated everyone's common experience.