Speaker 1: Guess what will?
Speaker 2: What's that mango?
Speaker 1: So this week I started looking up Harry Potter knockoffs
Speaker 1: and they are so terrible. I love them so much,
Speaker 1: all right, So what'd you find? So there's this one
Speaker 1: book in Spanish called Harry Porez and he's got his
Speaker 1: friends Ron and Harmonia and they take on this evil
Speaker 1: character named Condo Mort. I love how they change everyone's
Speaker 1: name except Ron's, like there's no alternative name from Ron.
Speaker 1: There's also one from Russia where he's kind of more
Speaker 1: of a rock star and he rides a double bass
Speaker 1: instead of a broom. But my favorite one is from China,
Speaker 1: where Harry has to chase down Voldemort's protege Jandamort, who
Speaker 1: apparently used to work for the circus under the name
Speaker 1: Naughty Bubble. And there's also kind of into that to
Speaker 1: check this out for some reason, there's also a character
Speaker 1: named Big Spinach in it, but none of it makes
Speaker 1: any sense. And can you imagine, like how bummed you'd
Speaker 1: be if you ask for a Harry Potter book from
Speaker 1: your parents and instead they brought you one of these
Speaker 1: knock on ma I'm kind of into the but you know,
Speaker 1: seeing all these crazy titles. Maybe wonder how does copyright work?
Speaker 1: Like why can you remix a Sherlock home story but
Speaker 1: not use Felix the Cat to advertise your work? Like
Speaker 1: why are people so excited about twenty nineteen's public domain day.
Speaker 1: We're gonna get into all of this. Let's dig in.
Speaker 3: Hey, the podcast listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm
Speaker 3: Will Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good
Speaker 3: friend Mangush hot ticketter and on the other side of
Speaker 3: the soundproof glass celebrating the demise of copyright by eating
Speaker 3: Those are those Charleston jew They are dancing with Charleston.
Speaker 3: That's our friend and producer Tristan McNeil. All right, so
Speaker 3: just explain a little bit. I have to point out
Speaker 3: that part of the reason Christin is doing this is
Speaker 3: because he's lairing the Charleston song. It took me a
Speaker 3: minute to figure this out. You could probably hear this
Speaker 3: in the background now. The song itself was written to
Speaker 3: accompany the dance back when it debuted back in nineteen
Speaker 3: twenty three, and it kicked off this national craze. What's
Speaker 3: notable about this is that twenty nineteen actually marks the
Speaker 3: end of the Charleston Songs copyright protection. I don't know
Speaker 3: if you knew this, if you've been following this, but
Speaker 3: that is the case. So now anyone can make a
Speaker 3: new recording of the song or play a nineteen twenty
Speaker 3: three performance of it on a podcast, all without having
Speaker 3: to pay a dime or worry about getting sued at
Speaker 3: least I hope that.
Speaker 1: Which is obviously great news for any listeners who are
Speaker 1: into the Charleston or at least as into it as
Speaker 1: Kristan is. Apparently I guess so.
Speaker 3: But you know, it turns out there's a lot of
Speaker 3: reasons the party like it's nineteen twenty three this month,
Speaker 3: even if you're not a Charleston fan, And that's because
Speaker 3: a slew of works from this year have just entered
Speaker 3: the public domain for the very first time. Now, believe
Speaker 3: it or not, this is actually the first mass influx
Speaker 3: of public domain material in the US in twenty years,
Speaker 3: I think. So we'll get in exactly why this is
Speaker 3: and how it involves Mickey Mouse a little bit later,
Speaker 3: but the main takeaway is that thousands of classic books
Speaker 3: and movies and songs and other works of art they
Speaker 3: are now free to use, remix, sell, all without any
Speaker 3: legal restriction around them, which.
Speaker 1: Is why we're marking the occasion with an episode all
Speaker 1: about the ins and outs of the copyright. So we'll
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about the history of copyright law,
Speaker 1: including why the terms have been extended in the US
Speaker 1: and also what makes this year so different from others.
Speaker 1: Plus we'll take a closer look at the public domain
Speaker 1: class of twenty nineteen to see exactly what sort of
Speaker 1: hidden treasures just fell into our laps. But you know, will,
Speaker 1: where do you want to start off here? All?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: Well, I thought we should give our listeners a little
Speaker 3: bit of context to all of this. So for starters,
Speaker 3: January first is recognized all around the world is Public
Speaker 3: Domain Day, and I actually didn't know that until we
Speaker 3: were doing our research for this episode. But the way
Speaker 3: that it works is that at the stroke of midnight
Speaker 3: on New Year's Eve, older works are automatically enter the
Speaker 3: public domain as they age out of their copyright terms.
Speaker 3: But this is where things get a little bit tricky.
Speaker 3: So different countries have their own rules for how long
Speaker 3: a work can remain under copyright, so most countries will
Speaker 3: provide copyright protection for the life of their author. Plus
Speaker 3: a certain set number of years beyond that, like the
Speaker 3: author's life plus fifty or seventy or whatever it may be.
Speaker 3: But in the US things have traditionally worked a little
Speaker 3: bit differently. So here copyrights made prior to nineteen seventy
Speaker 3: eight have nothing to do with the life span of
Speaker 3: the work's author. Instead, these copyright materials are protected for
Speaker 3: a flat ninety five years after their first publication. It
Speaker 3: always makes you wonder, like where they come up with
Speaker 3: the number why ninety five? So, just as an example,
Speaker 3: the Grapes of Wrath won't enter the US public domain
Speaker 3: until January of two thousand and thirty five, because that
Speaker 3: will be ninety five years after it was first published. Now,
Speaker 3: on the other hand, readers in places like Canada and
Speaker 3: New Zealand, can Rea and rework the text for free
Speaker 3: starting this year, and that's because twenty nineteen is fifty
Speaker 3: years after the death of the book's author, John Steinbeck.
Speaker 1: Isn't that weird? Like something about that like feels so
Speaker 1: off to me. Yeah, I mean, it's this like quintessential
Speaker 1: American novel and people in other countries actually get to
Speaker 1: do whatever they want with it. First, I know, three
Speaker 1: decades before Americans get to. It's super weird, but it
Speaker 1: actually reminds you. I was reading about the rights to
Speaker 1: the song this Land is Your Land, which, of course
Speaker 1: you know what you got through. You wrote the lyrics too,
Speaker 1: and that's a piece of music that just feels inseparable
Speaker 1: from the American identity, and it's kind of come this
Speaker 1: great American almost like an anthem, ever since it was
Speaker 1: published back in nineteen forty five. But again for Canada
Speaker 1: and other countries with copyright terms of life plus fifty years,
Speaker 1: that song entered in the public domain last year, whereas
Speaker 1: in the US you'll actually have to wait till twenty
Speaker 1: forty one to be able to use it. Twenty forty one,
Speaker 1: and that's when you're planning to put out a dubstep rema.
Speaker 1: That's right, absolutely, But before we move on, I do
Speaker 1: want to mention that this Land is Your Land is
Speaker 1: kind of a funny case to look at it. So
Speaker 1: the lyrics clained that the land belongs to you and me,
Speaker 1: and that was actually Guthrie's intention for the song too.
Speaker 1: In nineteen forty five, he published the song with a
Speaker 1: copyright notice that read quote, this song is copyrighted in
Speaker 1: the US for a period of twenty eight years, and
Speaker 1: anybody caught singing it without our permission will be mighty
Speaker 1: good friends of ourn because we don't give a durn
Speaker 1: publish it, write it, sing it, swing to it, yodel it.
Speaker 1: We wrote it. That's all we wanted to do.
Speaker 2: That's hilarious.
Speaker 3: And I'm curious that, like, why didn't the song enter
Speaker 3: the public domain in the seventies, you know, like what
Speaker 3: he wanted it to.
Speaker 1: Well, apparently the publisher renewed the copyright at some point
Speaker 1: without Guthrie's input, so the song's copyright status wound up
Speaker 1: being extended and now it's covered by the current ninety
Speaker 1: five year term we have in the US.
Speaker 3: Okay, all right, well in that case, I mean now
Speaker 3: seems like a good time to break down the key
Speaker 3: changes to the copyright law that have taken place here
Speaker 3: in the US over you know, over several decades. But
Speaker 3: don't worry about your eyes glazing over because I'm going
Speaker 3: to try to keep this short and sweet good. So
Speaker 3: they basically, American copyright law began with the Constitution, which
Speaker 3: grants Congress the power to bestow exclusive rights to the
Speaker 3: author of a work for quote limited times. So at first,
Speaker 3: that limited time meant fourteen years, with the option to
Speaker 3: renew for another fourteen years, making the max possible twenty
Speaker 3: eight years. Now, those rules were mended over time that went.
Speaker 3: By nineteen oh nine, both copyright terms had doubled to
Speaker 3: twenty eight years or fifty six total.
Speaker 2: I guess got it.
Speaker 1: So that's where what you would have gotten that twenty
Speaker 1: eight year term he claimed, you know, for the copyright
Speaker 1: he was talking about. But you know, I'm sure he
Speaker 1: never intended to renew the song for that second twenty
Speaker 1: eight year period.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 3: So then you fast forward to nineteen seventy six and
Speaker 3: the extension started getting kind of out of hand. So
Speaker 3: the fifty six year period was bumped up to a
Speaker 3: full seventy five years, meaning that any work produced through
Speaker 3: nineteen twenty two would be copyright protected until nineteen ninety eight. Then,
Speaker 3: in nineteen ninety eight, just as the nineteen twenty three
Speaker 3: copyrights were about to expire for the next year, a
Speaker 3: new piece of legislation was passed. It makes you wonder
Speaker 3: why people were so interested in changing the legislation, But yeah,
Speaker 3: the new law attacked on another twenty years for the
Speaker 3: copyright of any work made between nineteen twenty three and
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy seven.
Speaker 1: And that's actually why there's this big twenty year gap
Speaker 1: that we're just coming out of right now.
Speaker 2: That is exactly right.
Speaker 3: So those extra two decades added in, you know, nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety eight was when this happened. It basically put a
Speaker 3: freeze on the public domain editions. So the works that
Speaker 3: were scheduled dinner the public domain were suddenly off the
Speaker 3: table for another twenty years. And so that's what made
Speaker 3: New Years of twenty nineteen such a big deal.
Speaker 2: I mean, the drought is finally.
Speaker 1: And I'm guessing that's for the foreseeable future too, right,
Speaker 1: Like a whole year's worth of work should enter the
Speaker 1: public domain every year now, ongoing.
Speaker 3: Right, right, And it's really just the beginning of like
Speaker 3: four decades worth of annual time capsules, you know, so
Speaker 3: you know, long as corporations don't succeed in extending the
Speaker 3: copyright terms even further. Although if we're being it's not
Speaker 3: like the last twenty years haven't brought any new additions
Speaker 3: to the public domain from this era, because plenty of
Speaker 3: works from the nineteen twenties through the nineteen seventies have
Speaker 3: already entered the public domain because their copyrights were never
Speaker 3: renewed for one reason or another. And in fact, one
Speaker 3: study from twenty eleven suggested that as many as ninety
Speaker 3: percent of works published in the nineteen twenties were never
Speaker 3: renewed at all, and the same is true for roughly
Speaker 3: sixty percent of the works from the nineteen forties, So
Speaker 3: there were a ton.
Speaker 2: Of them that were out there.
Speaker 3: So basically that extension in nineteen ninety eight only applied
Speaker 3: to the works whose copyrights were still active at that time,
Speaker 3: and so anything that hadn't been previously renewed was already
Speaker 3: fair game.
Speaker 2: For public use.
Speaker 3: Of course, the tricky part has been determining whether an
Speaker 3: old copyright has lapsed or not.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm guessing that's a pretty murky business trying to
Speaker 1: figure all that out.
Speaker 3: It is, And you know, so in the past it's
Speaker 3: been safer to err on the side of caution and
Speaker 3: just kind of steer clear of any work whose status
Speaker 3: was in.
Speaker 2: Question, of course, to avoid getting sued.
Speaker 3: His concerns are out the window at least as far
Speaker 3: as works from nineteen twenty three go, And now that
Speaker 3: they've passed the ninety five year mark. We know for
Speaker 3: certain that they're in the public domain.
Speaker 1: So I know there are probably some folks listening who
Speaker 1: are thinking, okay, but who cares about all this old
Speaker 1: timey stuff anyway. You know, it's not like I'm going
Speaker 1: to start listening to chart toppers from the nineteen twenties
Speaker 1: or whatever. But you know, that's totally fair. But here's
Speaker 1: the thing that Gabe was pointing out to me. Most
Speaker 1: of us honestly don't know what we've been missing out on.
Speaker 1: Like the public domain provides this great chance for overlooked
Speaker 1: works to find a second lease on life. And if
Speaker 1: you look at what happened to It's a Wonderful Life.
Speaker 1: You know, that movie actually flopped when it was first released,
Speaker 1: but once it entered the public domain, it slowly became
Speaker 1: a holiday classic. And that success only happened because TV
Speaker 1: networks were actually able to play the movie for free
Speaker 1: year after year. So in this weird way, it's like
Speaker 1: cultural worth is actually greater today than it would have
Speaker 1: been had it remained under a copyright. You know, there
Speaker 1: is this author, Glenn Fleischman, and he had this great
Speaker 1: quote in this article for the Atlantic, and he said, quote,
Speaker 1: only so much that's created has room to persist in memory, culture,
Speaker 1: and scholarship. Some works may have been forgotten because they
Speaker 1: were simply terrible or perishable, but it's also the case
Speaker 1: that a lack of access to these works and digital
Speaker 1: forms limits whether they get considered at all.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's a good point, and it actually reminds
Speaker 3: me of something I came across this week from the
Speaker 3: American novelist Willa Cather, and she once called nineteen twenty
Speaker 3: two the year the world broke in two, and that
Speaker 3: was because of all the big literary and cultural shakeups
Speaker 3: that took place that year. It was the start of
Speaker 3: the Harlem Renaissance, plus the publication of works like Ulysses
Speaker 3: by James Joyce and The Wasteland by T. S.
Speaker 2: Eliott.
Speaker 3: So to her, nineteen twenty two was this turning point,
Speaker 3: like there was a world before that year and then
Speaker 3: there was a world after it. And strangely enough, that's
Speaker 3: also how things broke down in terms of US copyright law.
Speaker 3: So everything up through nineteen twenty two is now part
Speaker 3: of the public domain, but it's a different story for
Speaker 3: works from nineteen twenty three and beyond. So hundreds of
Speaker 3: thousands of songs and movies and books and newspapers, magazines,
Speaker 3: like so many different things of that era had been
Speaker 3: held back for decades, longer than they should have been,
Speaker 3: And so as a result, you figure there have to
Speaker 3: be a lot of blind spots in our understanding of
Speaker 3: that period in American history.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like even things we know about, like the Harlem Renaissance,
Speaker 1: so the Great Depression of World War two, Like we
Speaker 1: should get like a fuller picture once we get access
Speaker 1: to these materials.
Speaker 2: Then.
Speaker 1: Also, it'll be so fun to see them show up
Speaker 1: in memes and music and things.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: All right, Well, I'm excited to hear what you think
Speaker 3: should make the cut this year. But before we share
Speaker 3: our favorites, let's take a quick break. You're listening to
Speaker 3: Part Time Genius, so we're talking about the giant wave
Speaker 3: of classic art that just entered the public domain this month.
Speaker 3: All right, Megan, So I'm curious which works are you
Speaker 3: most excited to have free of their copyrights this year.
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna go ahead and get the literature picks
Speaker 1: out of the way first, because that's where you find
Speaker 1: a lot of the heavy hitters, and honestly, it's too
Speaker 1: many to go through So for fiction, we've got stories
Speaker 1: from authors like Virginia Woolf, Aldus Huxley, Jane Austen Hemingway.
Speaker 1: And then in terms of poetry, there's work from E. Cummings,
Speaker 1: William Carlos, Williams, Wallace Stevens, Pablo Neruda, Robert Frost, including
Speaker 1: one of his most famous poems, Stopping by Woods on
Speaker 1: a snowy evening Like, which is just cool that these
Speaker 1: texts are out there and easier to explore and play
Speaker 1: with them before. But but what about you, Like, are
Speaker 1: there any books you're happy to see in the public
Speaker 1: domain that.
Speaker 2: Was amazing to hear, like all those heavy hitters.
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Here, But I always like it when famous literary characters
Speaker 3: make their way into the public domain because you get
Speaker 3: a whole bunch of new takes on them, Like that's
Speaker 3: what happened with Robin Hood or Sherlock Holmes.
Speaker 1: You know, I didn't think of that. So what new
Speaker 1: characters are we getting to play with now?
Speaker 3: All right? Well, twenty nineteen is giving us access to
Speaker 3: new Tarzan stories from Edgar Rice Burrows, but also two
Speaker 3: of Agatha Christie's mystery novels, Starr Belgian detective Hercule Puro,
Speaker 3: the Murder of Roger Ackroyd, and the Murder on the Links.
Speaker 1: Wait, wasn't Tarzan already in the public domain?
Speaker 3: Though, Yeah, that's right, there's a story from nineteen ten
Speaker 3: that's been in the public domain. And actually there's one
Speaker 3: earlier Poro novel that's already there too.
Speaker 1: So how do the laws work with characters like that?
Speaker 1: I mean, can people just write their own new Tarzan
Speaker 1: stories or can they only publish and rework the existing books?
Speaker 1: Like is the copyright on the character or just the
Speaker 1: stories he appears in.
Speaker 3: Well, you can't actually copyright a name or a phrase
Speaker 3: or anything like that. But what you can do is
Speaker 3: get your character trademarked while it's still under copyright. So,
Speaker 3: if you take the case of Tarzan, that's what the
Speaker 3: author's airs did. So even though the original Tarzan stories
Speaker 3: can be freely published and adapted for movies or comics
Speaker 3: or whatever else, you still can't publish your own original
Speaker 3: Tarzan books without receiving permission, And of course to do
Speaker 3: that you'd have to pay a fee to the Burroughs estate,
Speaker 3: And so things are a little more icy when it
Speaker 3: comes to Pooro.
Speaker 1: And why is that? Well, not all.
Speaker 3: Copyrighted characters qualify for trademark protection, and some people you
Speaker 3: know maintain that Pooro does not qualify so for reasons
Speaker 3: that they're a little too complicated to get into here.
Speaker 3: But until someone is willing to gamble, you know, a
Speaker 3: potential lawsuit to publish their own unauthorized story, the character's
Speaker 3: legal status is kind of in limen So the new
Speaker 3: public domain additions for those characters are mostly exciting because
Speaker 3: it means there are new Tarzan stories or Pooro mysteries
Speaker 3: that can be safely adapted or altered by anyone, even
Speaker 3: if the characters themselves are still otherwise off limits.
Speaker 1: So I'm a little worried about what that might mean
Speaker 1: for our next pick here, because even though twenty nineteen
Speaker 1: Freese up the rights to a bunch of classic silent
Speaker 1: films from people like a Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, Laurel,
Speaker 1: and Hardy, which is awesome, by the way, because like,
Speaker 1: it'd be so amazing to start seeing these movies on
Speaker 1: late night TV. But you know, the one I was
Speaker 1: most personally excited about was the Felix the Cat cartoons,
Speaker 1: which just hit the public domain, and I was kind
Speaker 1: of hoping we could add it to the PTG logo
Speaker 1: or just make him like the official show mascot or something,
Speaker 1: but I'm guessing that's not the case if he's still
Speaker 1: trademark right.
Speaker 3: You know, Felix was one that stood out to me too,
Speaker 3: so I actually did a little bit of digging on this,
Speaker 3: and it turns out that even though the character is
Speaker 3: still technically trademarked by DreamWorks, they only control his use
Speaker 3: in certain instances. And you know, of course that's really
Speaker 3: around advertising, So how does that work exactly? So you
Speaker 3: could actually publish your own Felix the Cat comic strips
Speaker 3: and even adapt those new stories into animated shorts, but weirdly,
Speaker 3: you just can't include Felix himself and any of the
Speaker 3: advertising for that. Apparently, DreamWorks also owns the Felix trademark
Speaker 3: for quote life saving instruments, so I guess a line
Speaker 3: of Felix branded fire extinguishers is totally off.
Speaker 1: I feel like that's exactly where I was going with this,
Speaker 1: like Felix EpiPens and spook detectors. But you know, if
Speaker 1: cartoons aren't your thing, We've also got plenty of new
Speaker 1: public domain songs to keep us busy, and there's some
Speaker 1: real chestnuts here, tunes like dizzy Fingers Horsey keep your
Speaker 1: tail up, I know that's a favorite in the Pierson
Speaker 1: household aught and that timeless romantic vallid o g oh gosh,
Speaker 1: oh golly, I'm in love.
Speaker 3: I think these are probably in that collection of that
Speaker 3: old amberolla, like, oh yeah, the house that's all those
Speaker 3: wax cylinders. That's pretty cool to listen to, And you
Speaker 3: know it truly was a different time. I was actually
Speaker 3: listening to a few songs from our list this week,
Speaker 3: and I was struck by how many of them were
Speaker 3: just kind.
Speaker 2: Of wide eyed, upbeat nonsense.
Speaker 3: Like there was this one that was basically about how
Speaker 3: strange it is that the earth rotates, and that it
Speaker 3: can be daytime in one part of the world and
Speaker 3: nighttime in another. It was riveting song, but and I
Speaker 3: guess for fun, they just threw in a bunch of
Speaker 3: gibbers that doesn't rhyme or fit the meter or anything.
Speaker 3: So there's this one line that goes, when it's nighttime
Speaker 3: in Italy, it's Wednesday over here, when it's fish day
Speaker 3: in Germany, you can't get shaved in Massachusetts, and the
Speaker 3: whole thing. It's just so bizarre, and I'm really hoping
Speaker 3: this catches on again.
Speaker 1: That is amazing and in the same vein of that
Speaker 1: old timy nonsense songs. I'm pretty pumped that the copyright
Speaker 1: finally expired on Yes We Have No Bananas Today, which
Speaker 1: is actually one of the songs. I know.
Speaker 3: I would definitely leave it to you to zero in
Speaker 3: on the Banana song and a bunch of these, But.
Speaker 1: Weirdly, it turns out there's actually a sequel song called
Speaker 1: the It's called I've Got the Yes we Have No
Speaker 1: Banana Blues, and since it was released the same year
Speaker 1: as the original, it's now in the public domain as well.
Speaker 2: So why did they do a follow up song? Was
Speaker 2: it just that popular?
Speaker 1: It's basically a response to how popular the first song
Speaker 1: was and how sick everyone was of hearing it all
Speaker 1: the time. And so one of the line says, quote,
Speaker 1: it hasn't got a bit of sense, and I go
Speaker 1: wild when they commence bananas bananas, I wish I could
Speaker 1: break up a million pianos.
Speaker 2: I get it.
Speaker 3: I mean, I kind of love that this song is
Speaker 3: going to start annoying everyone all over again.
Speaker 2: Back out there, and I was.
Speaker 3: I guess that's kind of the scenario that these annual
Speaker 3: copyright expirations allow for.
Speaker 2: So it's nice to have them back in the mix.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess that's true. But you know, we can
Speaker 1: probably make a more compelling case for them than that,
Speaker 1: I'm guessing. I mean, the public domain is good for
Speaker 1: lots of stuff beyond just annoying your friends with weird
Speaker 1: old songs.
Speaker 3: No, no question, it's just fun to read all those
Speaker 3: lyrics and everything. But all right, Well, now that we've
Speaker 3: checked out some of the most notable inductees for this year,
Speaker 3: I do think we should take a closer look at
Speaker 3: the benefits that come from having the growing catalog of
Speaker 3: public domain works.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it sounds great, But before we get into that,
Speaker 1: let's take another quick break.
Speaker 3: All right, Magael, So we spent a lot of time
Speaker 3: today singing the praises of the public domain and kind
Speaker 3: of lamenting all the extensions that certain copyrights have been
Speaker 3: granted over the years. And honestly, at this point, I'm
Speaker 3: a little bit worried that people might get the impression
Speaker 3: that we or anti copyright.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, I do think we could survive that
Speaker 1: sort of scandal, but let's go ahead and make the
Speaker 1: case for copyrights anyway, just to be safe. It's actually
Speaker 1: something worth doing, because even though copyrights can feel annoying
Speaker 1: or restrictive, the core idea makes a lot of sense
Speaker 1: granting creators the right to control how their work is used,
Speaker 1: and in its purest form, copyright protections benefit not just
Speaker 1: creators but society as a whole. So the idea is, like,
Speaker 1: that's how copyrights were framed in the US Constitution. It
Speaker 1: was kind of this way to promote the progress of
Speaker 1: science and useful arts, and again in the first Copyright
Speaker 1: Law of seventeen ninety, it was thought of as a
Speaker 1: way to further the encouragement of learning.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's interesting because you'd almost guess that we're
Speaker 3: talking about the public domain again and not copyrights. I mean,
Speaker 3: how does restricting access to a work encourage learning or
Speaker 3: promote science and art.
Speaker 1: So the idea is that it isn't like a short
Speaker 1: term fix, it's one for the long run. So the
Speaker 1: basic idea is that copyright protection offers an incentive for
Speaker 1: people to create new works. I mean, why go to
Speaker 1: the trouble of writing a book or making a movie
Speaker 1: if anyone can just copy it right after it's made public. Right. So,
Speaker 1: one way I've seen it described is that copyright is
Speaker 1: basically a contract between creators and society. They continue making
Speaker 1: new stuff and in return, we promised not to rip
Speaker 1: it off or muck with it for about twenty eight
Speaker 1: years or however long, at which point the work belongs
Speaker 1: to everyone.
Speaker 3: I mean, I get that the premise is sound, but
Speaker 3: it does it feels like these copyright terms have kind
Speaker 3: of ballooned so much that we've kind of lost sight
Speaker 3: of their original purpose.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, the trouble is that there's always someone
Speaker 1: arguing that the length of the copyright is too short
Speaker 1: to make a profit. And back in the days of
Speaker 1: fourteen and twenty eight year terms, content creators may have
Speaker 1: had a point. But you know, now that we're up
Speaker 1: to ninety five years or a lifetime plus seventy years,
Speaker 1: the terms they really start to seem excessive. So the
Speaker 1: contract we started with has gotten a lot more one
Speaker 1: sided over the last century, which is.
Speaker 3: Of course an intentional move on the part of copyright holders,
Speaker 3: or more specifically, the part of companies that hold those
Speaker 3: copyright Yeah, because the ones making money on the ninety
Speaker 3: five year copyrights or lifetime plus copyrights aren't the authors
Speaker 3: or really even their families in most cases. Instead, it's
Speaker 3: the companies that control the rights once the creator is gone.
Speaker 3: Like the Woody Guthrie example you gave earlier, his descendants
Speaker 3: aren't cashing in from licensing deals.
Speaker 2: It's the publisher that is sure.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's a great point. And corporations definitely played
Speaker 1: a huge role in the twentieth century extensions to copyright terms.
Speaker 1: I mean, the most famous example is probably the nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety eight extension you mentioned earlier, the one that raised
Speaker 1: the term for older US copyrights from seventy five to
Speaker 1: ninety five years. And the law was called the Sonny
Speaker 1: Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. And the Disney Corporation was
Speaker 1: actually his biggest and most vocal champion, and that's because
Speaker 1: they wanted to keep the first Mickey Mouse cartoon ever released,
Speaker 1: which is Steamboat Willie, from entering the public domain in
Speaker 1: two thousand and three.
Speaker 3: So what did Sonny Bono have to do with this? Like,
Speaker 3: shouldn't it have been called the Mickey Mouse Act?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that might have been more accurate. And
Speaker 1: actually Disney lobbied so hard for the legislation that some
Speaker 1: people actually do refer to it as the Mickey Mouse
Speaker 1: Protection Act, but in reality, the ninety eight bill was
Speaker 1: named as a way to honor Sonny Bono, who had
Speaker 1: passed away in January of that year. And if that
Speaker 1: sounds kind of random, it isn't just that he was
Speaker 1: an entertainer. It's also that he was a congressman in California,
Speaker 1: and during his tenure, Bono had actually pushed hard for
Speaker 1: better copyright protection. So the gesture kind of made a
Speaker 1: lot of sense if you knew all that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, But I mean, you know, it still strikes me
Speaker 3: about this whole thing is how ironic it is that
Speaker 3: a company built on adaptations of public domain fairy tales
Speaker 3: they're the ones that wound up fighting to keep all
Speaker 3: those adaptations under wraps.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the ironies don't end there either, because Disney's
Speaker 1: Steamboat Willie cartoon was itself a parody of Buster Keaton's
Speaker 1: short called Steamboat Bill Junior. It actually premiered the same year.
Speaker 1: So yeah, and so while the Keaton short entered the
Speaker 1: public domain years ago, the cartoon it inspired is still
Speaker 1: under lock and key. It's kind of bizarre, but you know,
Speaker 1: just like with Felix the Cat, Mickey Mouse's trademark, so
Speaker 1: when the copyright on his debut cartoon expires, the short
Speaker 1: itself can be bought or sold or given away or
Speaker 1: remixed by anyone, but the Mickey character will still belong
Speaker 1: to the Disney Company for as long as it continues
Speaker 1: to you know, use his likeness and continuity.
Speaker 3: So one of the things you hope doesn't happen is
Speaker 3: that someone makes an adult version of Steamboat Willie. Actually,
Speaker 3: one of the main arguments you hear from staunch copyright
Speaker 3: defenders like the ideas that when work slip into the
Speaker 3: public domain, they will be abused. They're tarnet in some way.
Speaker 3: So for instance, the book could be published with errors,
Speaker 3: or a film could be released in low quality.
Speaker 1: Yeah, or someone could replace every other line in your
Speaker 1: poem with Beyonce lyrics, which.
Speaker 3: Might be an improvement depending on how bad the poetry is.
Speaker 3: But I mean, you get the point. The worry is
Speaker 3: that a public domain work will be over exploited and
Speaker 3: that it's cultural or artistic worth, you know, by because
Speaker 3: of that, it'll be diminished in the process.
Speaker 1: I mean that sounds like a legit concern. Doesn't it.
Speaker 1: But you know, like I love the idea of pride
Speaker 1: and prejudice and zombies, you know, like Jane Austen might
Speaker 1: not have wanted that when you wrote it, but it's
Speaker 1: a pretty great thing for all of us.
Speaker 3: And probably more people went back and actually read Pride
Speaker 3: and Prejudice when that Yeah, yeah, that's true. And for
Speaker 3: the most part, I'm not sure the argument holds that
Speaker 3: much water, you know, because, for instance, there was a
Speaker 3: study back in twenty twelve where researchers took a bunch
Speaker 3: of different audio books, some of the public domains, some
Speaker 3: under copyright, and they had listeners provide feedback on the
Speaker 3: quality of each one and just actually, I'll just read
Speaker 3: here what they found. So our data provided almost no
Speaker 3: support for the arguments made by proponents of copyright term
Speaker 3: extension that once works fall into the public domain, they
Speaker 3: will be produced in poor quality versions that will undermine
Speaker 3: their cultural or economic value. Our data indicate no statistically
Speaker 3: significant difference, for example, between the listener's judgments of the
Speaker 3: quality of the professional audiobook readers or copyrighted and public
Speaker 3: domain texts.
Speaker 1: So it sounds like we're saying, even though there could
Speaker 1: be downsides, to a work entering the public domain, those
Speaker 1: drawbacks tend to be heavily outweighed by the benefits of
Speaker 1: open access. I mean, teachers can make photocopies without breaking
Speaker 1: the law, artists can pay tribute to and even build
Speaker 1: off the worst that inspire them, and the rest of
Speaker 1: us can kick back and listen to Yes, we have
Speaker 1: no bananas on loop, completely free of charge.
Speaker 3: I was there with you until that last part, but
Speaker 3: I do agree the public domain is a win for society,
Speaker 3: and it's exciting to see how it can grow substantially
Speaker 3: again after a twenty year hiatus. But before we go
Speaker 3: exploring into that treasure trove once again, I know we
Speaker 3: still have a bunch of weird copyright facts to share,
Speaker 3: so let's get into the fact off. All right, Well,
Speaker 3: here's something I think is pretty cool. There's this little
Speaker 3: village in England called Wookie Hole.
Speaker 1: That's already cool.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, And there are over three hundred eggs painted
Speaker 3: with clown faces on them. And this collection is known
Speaker 3: as the Clown Register. And while it started as a
Speaker 3: hobby where one individual was cataloging these clowns just for fun,
Speaker 3: the collection grew into a way for professional clowns to
Speaker 3: basically copyright the way they make up their faces, you know,
Speaker 3: to protect from imitators. That's crazy, and so the tradition
Speaker 3: actually continues today. If you register with the Clowns International,
Speaker 3: they will have your makeup painted on a ceramic.
Speaker 1: That's crazy. There's one thing I learned this week that
Speaker 1: you can't copyright, and that's a chicken sandwich. And I
Speaker 1: know this because a man named Narberto Cologne Lorenzana tried
Speaker 1: to do this in the nineteen eighties. Apparently, Narberto added
Speaker 1: a simple chicken sandwich to the menu at Church's Chicken
Speaker 1: in Puerto Rico, and the company made millions off it.
Speaker 1: They even used the name he gave it, the Pache Sandwich.
Speaker 1: But when he tried to sue for intellectual property theft,
Speaker 1: the judge sternly rebuked him, letting him know that while films, books, music,
Speaker 1: and architecture and even some art are all protected, culinary
Speaker 1: inventions are kind of a gray area, especially chicken sandwiches.
Speaker 3: Well, speaking of architecture, it is interesting to note that
Speaker 3: Hershey's has a trademark for the structural design of their
Speaker 3: chocolate bar, and apparently it took a ton of work
Speaker 3: to get that. Basically, they were trying to protect the
Speaker 3: fact that you can snap those little rectangles off to
Speaker 3: fit perfectly on a smorn if you think about like,
Speaker 3: everyone can image those exact rectangles. But as Smithsonian notes,
Speaker 3: functionality is not a qualifying feature when registering a product
Speaker 3: design for trademark, so to win the case, they basically
Speaker 3: had to show that the ridges were more than just utility.
Speaker 3: The architectural design was something that people associated with Hershey Bars,
Speaker 3: even when the brand name was absent from the chocolate,
Speaker 3: and I would completely agree with.
Speaker 1: You, Yeah, it's really interesting. Well, here's a funny one
Speaker 1: for mental phloss. Apparently, the nineteen sixty three Beach Boys
Speaker 1: hit Surfin Usa is a complete knockoff of a Chuck
Speaker 1: Berry song called Sweet Little Sixteen. I had never heard
Speaker 1: of that that when very accused Brian Wilson of steel
Speaker 1: the song without telling anyone, Wilson's dad, who also happened
Speaker 1: to be the band's manager, gave Barry the copyright to
Speaker 1: the tune, but he didn't tell anyone in the band,
Speaker 1: so the band actually only learned that they weren't getting
Speaker 1: royalties from the song twenty five years after it was released. Like,
Speaker 1: why are we not getting any money on this song
Speaker 1: we stole? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Well, speaking of wild did you know that animals can't
Speaker 3: own copyrights manga?
Speaker 1: I don't even know how that could be an issue.
Speaker 3: Well, in twenty eleven, this photographer named David Slater went
Speaker 3: to Indonesia and he had this brilliant idea, like what
Speaker 3: if he set up a tripod and tried to get
Speaker 3: the monkeys to take selfies of themselves. Sure, and somehow
Speaker 3: this one female macaque named Nrudo went crazy, and of
Speaker 3: course the photos went viral. The Wikipedia put them up,
Speaker 3: claiming no one could own the copyright, and David Slater
Speaker 3: assumed that he owned the rights. It was his camera
Speaker 3: and idea after all. But PETA and their ethical treatment
Speaker 3: of all animals decided to sue on the monkey's behalf,
Speaker 3: claiming that this female should get the royalties on the photos.
Speaker 3: So far, the US Copyright Office has taken a firm
Speaker 3: line that quote, the Office will not register works produced
Speaker 3: by nature, animals or plants, and it's put the photos
Speaker 3: in the public domain. But PETA is still fighting for
Speaker 3: its social media star client.
Speaker 1: That's pretty crazy. I mean, I think monkeys are a
Speaker 1: great way to end the show, clown eggs, monkey selfies.
Speaker 1: I do think you deserve today's trophy and to celebrate
Speaker 1: your victory, Tristan, will you please queue up. Yes, we
Speaker 1: have no more bananas. That is it for today's show.
Speaker 1: I do want to give a special shout out to
Speaker 1: our listener Samantha, who tipped us off on some Brady
Speaker 1: Bunch spinoffs from our last nine things that we did,
Speaker 1: our favorite of which is The Brady Brides, where Marcia
Speaker 1: and Jen have a double wedding to their boyfriends and
Speaker 1: then have to live in the same house because they
Speaker 1: can't afford to move out. Unfortunately, The High Drinks only
Speaker 1: last is six episodes, which sounds great and terrible but one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but thank you so much for that, Samantha. But that's
Speaker 1: it for today's show. If you want to send us
Speaker 1: facts where part time genius at how stuffworks dot com
Speaker 1: and from Gabe, Tristan, Will and me. Thank you so
Speaker 1: much for listening.