Welcome to Learned, a short, weekly look at language, education, and everything else under the sun. I’m Joel, linguist, teacher, slacker. This week, we're finding something to read.
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A few days ago, the hosts of NPR's Planet Money podcast read The Great Gatsby just because they could. And they could because, after 95 years, The Great Gatsby, along with everything else published in 1925, has finally entered the public domain.
Here's a quick refresher on public domain from the Stanford University Library:
The term “public domain” refers to creative materials that are not protected by intellectual property laws such as copyright, trademark, or patent laws. The public owns these works, not an individual author or artist. Anyone can use a public domain work without obtaining permission, but no one can ever own it.
In the United States, copyright spans the length of the author's life plus 95 years. So, for any author who died before 1925, their works have now entered public domain and any of us can use them however we want, including reading them on a national podcast.
Over the course of the twentieth century, the U.S. congress has repeatedly voted to extend copyright, usually at the behest of corporate-backed lobbyists. After all, the owners of valuable copyrighted characters like Edward Bear, a.k.a. Winnie-the-Pooh and Mickey Mouse (cough *Disney* cough) do not want to see their brands diluted by us plebs. Disney and other corporate owners argue that their need to maintain lengthy copyrights stems from the cost of providing entertainments based on those characters. In other words, to make it worth Disney's cost and effort to make and distribute new Winnie-the-Pooh movies, they can't allow anyone else to use the character. And that is in keeping with the idea of copyright in the first place.
Copyright is, at best, a necessary evil. It is designed to help creators maintain control and ownership of their intellectual properties and to give them a legal standpoint from which to challenge theft, plagiarism, and other evils. That there are abuses of the machinery of copyright law is inarguable (just ask anyone who's ever had to fend off a DMCA takedown of their own work) and copyright is ripe for reform. Creative Commons is a valiant attempt to do just that and I'd encourage anyone reading this to support their efforts however you can.
But, back to public domain. The reason it exists is to foster creativity. Consider the novel and subsequent Broadway show Wicked. It retells the story of the Wizard of Oz from the Witch's perspective. The author, Gregory Maguire, was free to use the names of Oz and its occupants because the original book, The Wonderful World of Oz is in the public domain. That is the sort of freedom to experiment and create that the public domain enables. But, more importantly, it enables Gregory Maguire to profit from his work.
See, there is nothing preventing me from writing a Harry Potter story. In fact, hundreds of fans write their own stories using Harry, Ron, and Hermione among thousands of other characters and worlds every day. (A lot of them are posted on An Archive of Our Own, but read at your own risk.) But, because those characters are currently under copyright, the authors cannot attempt to sell or publish these new works. Whereas, if you want to write a new Oz story, or a story featuring Gatsby, you are within your legal right to publish it for all the money you can glean.
And so this is the issue: J.K. Rowling, the creator of Harry et. al. deserves all the money she's gotten from her creations. As of this writing, Rowling is 55 years old. Assume she lives another 40 years. Under current copyright law, her creations would enter the public domain in the year 2156. There is every chance that one of the corporations who have a stake in the franchise, be it through publishing, movies, or games, could still be making new stories and those characters could still be well-known. On the other hand, here's the list of best-selling books from 1925:
Soundings by A. Hamilton Gibbs
The Constant Nymph by Margaret Kennedy
The Keeper of the Bees by Gene Stratton-Porter
Glorious Apollo by E. Barrington
The Green Hat by Michael Arlen
The Little French Girl by Anne Douglas Sedgwick
Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis
The Perennial Bachelor by Anne Parrish
The Carolinian by Rafael Sabatini
One Increasing Purpose by A. S. M. Hutchinson
Not only do I not know any of the books, I do not know any save one of the authors. What brilliant pastiches and re-mixes might keep those characters alive? Thanks to public domain, we might just find out.
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Stay strong, stay curious. Read something.
Joel
Sources and Further Reading: