Re:January 1, 2023 is Public Domain Day: Works from 1927 are...
by autoexec on Tuesday December 20, 2022 @05:45PM
(#34073872)
> The only thing the public domain seems to benefit is the ability to redistribute the work without iterating upon it in a way that makes it take on a new meaning.
No... fair use doesn't work like you think it does and it's a only a defense that has to be tested in court where you'll be up against the legal team of a billion dollar media industry that has connections and ties at the highest levels of the justice system
Once something is in the public domain you can use it to create new works that are completely transformative without risking losing everything in a lawsuit.
Vast amounts of new and truly innovative creative works are prevented from being created because of our existing copyright laws. Music is the worst at this where just a couple of notes being too similar to some other song can cause you lose everything. People have lost fortunes just for writing a new and unique song that just happened to be in the same genre as another song. (https://abovethelaw.com/2018/03/blurred-lines-can-you-copy-a...)
If those songs had been fully in the public domain, her amazing and transformative film (which I'd recommend to anyone) would have had no issues at all. How many artists aren't willing or able to go through what she did and just give up? How many musicians are writing songs that will never see the light of day because of fear that some song they've never heard before will be used to take everything from them? They can sign over all their rights to the RIAA and hope that's enough to protect them, or they risk being sued.
The public domain is critical for artists to be free to create entirely new works and build on old ones to create new works as well.
No... fair use doesn't work like you think it does and it's a only a defense that has to be tested in court where you'll be up against the legal team of a billion dollar media industry that has connections and ties at the highest levels of the justice system
Once something is in the public domain you can use it to create new works that are completely transformative without risking losing everything in a lawsuit.
Vast amounts of new and truly innovative creative works are prevented from being created because of our existing copyright laws. Music is the worst at this where just a couple of notes being too similar to some other song can cause you lose everything. People have lost fortunes just for writing a new and unique song that just happened to be in the same genre as another song. (https://abovethelaw.com/2018/03/blurred-lines-can-you-copy-a...)
Look at what one artist had to do (and pay) to get her film seen by the public at all: https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/sita-sings-the-copyright-bl...
If those songs had been fully in the public domain, her amazing and transformative film (which I'd recommend to anyone) would have had no issues at all. How many artists aren't willing or able to go through what she did and just give up? How many musicians are writing songs that will never see the light of day because of fear that some song they've never heard before will be used to take everything from them? They can sign over all their rights to the RIAA and hope that's enough to protect them, or they risk being sued.
The public domain is critical for artists to be free to create entirely new works and build on old ones to create new works as well.