The #USCopyrightOffice has repeatedly stated that works made by AIs aren't eligible for copyright, which is the exclusive purview of works of human authorship. This has been affirmed by courts.
Richard Owen, the Victorian scientist who first named the “dinosaurs”, claimed that he could identify an animal, even an extinct one, from inspecting a single bone.
"On 30 April 1993 CERN issued a public statement stating that the three components of Web software (the basic line-mode client, the basic server and the library of common code) were put in the Public Domain [...]"
Italian courts ignore Art.14 of the #DSM Directive intended to safeguard the #PublicDomain and use cultural heritage laws to engineer new pseudo #copyright. Today we are releasing an independent expert opinion commissioned to Giulia Dore & Giulia Priora on this matter.
#IP#Copyright#PublicDomain: "2024 has been off to a busy start with the long-anticipated arrival of Mickey Mouse and Steamboat Willie in the public domain. Creators have released new games and stories, including a comic that picks up where Steamboat Willie ends. Comedian John Oliver has been showcasing a “Steamboat Mickey” mascot. CBS Sunday Morning even aired a Mickey-inspired celebration of the public domain featuring an interview with CSPD Director Jennifer Jenkins.
This is just the beginning of Mickey’s new life in the public domain. Next year, over a dozen Mickey Mouse cartoons from 1929 will join Steamboat Willie in the public domain. These cartoons continue Disney’s innovative experiments with synchronized sound and include The Karnival Kid, the first film in which Mickey speaks intelligible words. His first words? “Hot dogs! Hot dogs!”
Like other Disney works, The Karnival Kid builds upon prior public domain material. To attract an audience for Minnie Mouse’s “shimmy dancer” performance, the Karnival barker riffs on a 19th Century tune known as “the snake charmer song.” This melody has also been featured in numerous other Disney cartoons and may be familiar to readers from the scores of additional reuses in works ranging from The Simpsons to Ke$ha’s Take It Off." https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/newsletter/April2024/
Project Gutenberg is the world’s first digital library. For over 50 years, it has been steadfast in its commitment to provide free, unfettered access to digitized literature for everyone. Now, they are using AI text-to-speech capabilities from Microsoft to accelerate the progress of creating an extensive audiobook library.
A new podcast about audiobooks with our CEO @gbnewby. Pivotal with Hayete Gallot. Produced by Larj Media.
Since the #PublicDomain has been getting new content for the last few years (e.g. 1928 and older) this provides fertile ground for things like the
Public Song Project:
I really like @xor's Python script for generating domain names from public domain books, so I turned it, with permission, into a website, to make it easier to use.
It is so wonderful when art comes out of copyright and can be adapted or printed without limitations. The Getty now offers 88,000 Art Images for free Downloading, including some greats. #art#decor#publicdomain#freebies
In March 1907. The Diamond Sūtra, a woodblock printed Buddhist scripture dated AD 868, is discovered by Aurel Stein at the Mogao Caves near Dunhuang in China. It is said to be "the earliest complete survival of a dated printed book".
It is also the first known creative work with an explicit public domain dedication, as its colophon at the end states that it was created "for universal free distribution". via @wikipedia
https://musopen.org/
«We provide recordings, sheet music, and textbooks to the public for free, without copyright restrictions. Put simply, our mission is to set music free.» #PublicDomain#Music
Hoo boy, been a while. Let me briefly say, November and December sucked personally, and I found it hard to get back into blogging and making YouTube videos after I lost my momentum. But here’s my attempt at getting back into things.
As you may know, Mickey Mouse went public domain as of January 1, 2024 in the US, along with the cartoons Steamboat Willie and Plane Crazy. (For a comprehensive look at what that means, and what the public now has legal access to, check out this great writeup by Jennifer Jenkins at the Duke Center for the Study of Public Domain, Mickey, Disney and the Public Domain) Back in November I had the idea that it would be cool to make an NES game of Mickey Mouse and get it ready to release shortly after his release from copywrite. My plan originally was to start the game in November, and then with luck, since it was going to be very short, have it ready to go on New Years Day or shortly thereafter. But like I said, November and December kind of sucked, and I was not able to get motivated to make it. But shortly after New Years I started feeling like it was worth it to give it a try, and so for the past few months I have been working on the game!
I’m using a program called NESMaker, which while not exactly easy to use, is far easier than learning the NES from scratch, and it helps that there’s a great community of people willing to help you if you have questions. Right now, I’m planning on it being a rather short game, maybe four stages and a boss battle, all focused around Steamboat Willie. The enemies are some of the animals that Mickey tormented in the original short, who are not taking very kindly to the mouse anymore!
In what may have been an overly ambitious move for someone with limited knowledge of the NES and its palette at the time, I thought it would be cool to try and make the game black and white, or at least as limited in color as I could. However, with the NES’ capabilities, that means that I have black, white, and two grays. That’s not a lot to work with, so I’m also using a few lighter blues, which kind of feel like they mix in with the black and white well enough.
Work is coming along nicely on the game, and I’ll be releasing it for free on my Itch.io page when it’s complete, though right now I’ve put the game on pause momentarily to participate in a game jam around NES games, the NESMaker Byte Off IV, which I will write about in a future post. But so far working on this game has been a lot of fun, I’ve learned a lot, and I’m looking forward to releasing it so people can play it.
In case of a victory for the #PublicDomain, how to celebrate?
I just realised that night I'll be in a crowded theatre, so maybe I can cry: "EN 2:1992/A1:2004 Classification of fires"? (Or just distribute a few copies.)
"…a November judgment from the UK Court of Appeal means #museums can’t go on claiming #copyright in photographs of #publicdomain art works. Museums have used this claim to create costly licensing schemes. For art history books and dissertations that need the images for discussion, the costs are often prohibitive. And, it turns out, the #GLAM sector isn’t even profiting from it."