Winnie The Pooh & Bambi Officially In The Public Domain

[ZariusTwo]

A deluge of creative works will enter the public domain on Jan. 1. According to US copyright law, anyone will be able to republish or adapt any work published on or before 1926 without needing to pay the author’s estate or even seek their permission.

Jennifer Jenkins, director of Duke University’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain, describes 2022 as “a blockbuster of a year” for public domain enthusiasts. The intellectual law professor has been tracking artistic works entering the public realm and publishes an analysis every December. “It’s like unwrapping hundreds of extra presents during the holidays,” Jenkins writes in an email to Quartz. “Not only do I get to explore all of these incredible works from the past, I get to imagine what creativity they might inspire in the future.”

This year’s bounty includes seminal books like A. A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh, Felix Salten’s Bambi, A Life in the Woods, and debut novels by Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner. Dorothy Parker and Langston Hughes’s first compendium of poems also enter in the public domain this year.

In addition, 400,000 sound recordings made before 1923 are also made available to new creators. In the US, a musical composition is treated separately from a recording of a performance. The US granted its first copyrights for sound recordings in 1972, while lyrics and scores have been protected since 1831. A 2018 bill called the “Music Modernization Act” specified a schedule for older recordings to gradually enter the public domain, with the first batch being released in 2022.

https://qz.com/2107498/winnie-the-po...public-domain/

[sdp]

Only 2 more years before Mickey is public domain, of course now I've derailed the thread for people to tell me Mickey isn't going in public domain because Disney won't allow it and that Superman Batman will never be public domain because reasons, as if they were actual lawyers for the multinational corporations that basically gave up any fight to extend copyright laws years ago



Mark my words, this decade we're actually going to see copyright laws reduced/shortened. Governments have seen how much better for the economy it is in the digital era for more stuff to be in public domain and large corporations are not going to fight anything since they don't want to put the spotlight on themselves that they are huge monopolies so they'll play ball. I don't think it'll be done retroactively but definitely it'll be lowered for new works.

[TigerClaw]

In regards to the public domain, Its always been the original works, Anything that is based on those original works can't be in the public domain.

In the case of Winnie The Pooh & Bambi, Its the original books that entered the public domain, Disney only has the rights to film versions, Not the original works, Its the reason why its called Disney's Winnie The Pooh and Disney's Bambi, As long as it has Disney in the titles, They own them, They can't own the original stuff.

[neatoman]

Originally Posted by TigerClaw

In regards to the public domain, Its always been the original works, Anything that is based on those original works can't be in the public domain.

In the case of Winnie The Pooh & Bambi, Its the original books that entered the public domain, Disney only has the rights to film versions, Not the original works, Its the reason why its called Disney's Winnie The Pooh and Disney's Bambi, As long as it has Disney in the titles, They own them, They can't own the original stuff.

Uh, you're like 25% correct or so. I'm assuming you just worded that really poorly and actually know better, but I'm just going to correct a few things here:

1. Adaptations will eventually enter the public domain. The original work does tend to enter the public domain before any adaptation but this does not mean the adaptations are exempt from entering the public domain.
2. On rare occasions, adaptations have indeed entered the public domain before the original work. An example of this would be the early Superman cartoons.
3. While Disney did not own rights to the books they did however maintain the film rights, not the rights to the movies but the simple right to make movies based on these books. Now that these books have fallen into the public domain, Disney no longer have these exclusive rights, meaning anyone can in fact make their own movies based on these books.
4. It's true that the opportunity for Disney to actually own the rights to the books themselves has passed, they could have bought the rights to them when they weren't public domain. So yes, they could have been able to own them, they didn't but they could have.
5. Yes, Disney does in fact still retain the rights to the movies they've already made, which won't enter the public domain until 2038 and 2062. However the title "Disney's X" does not prevent the movies from entering the public domain. It's possible that they may maintain a trademark on the name Disney and might thus be the only ones allowed to market the movies using that title, but it won't prevent people from simply scratching it from the title and distributing it anyway. Trademarks and Copyrights are not the same thing.