#public Domain

[thenotoriousscuttlecliff]

A lot of people really do not understand how copyright and public domain actually works and thinks as soon as something is in the public domain that means anyone anywhere can use it. Sorry, but that isn't true. Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman will all enter the public domain in a few years, but this is only in the US and only for the very earliest versions of those characters. The most well known designs are still under copyright and many of the names and logos are all trademarked, and trademarks do not expire unless a company lets them.

So basically if you want to publish a Superman story in a few years time without getting a cease and desist from WB/DC you have to make sure it is only published in the US, only uses the specific design from Action Comics #1, and does no uses any trademarked names like Man of Steel.

[infernothechaosgod]

yall she gave me a heart shaped rock i think it might mean something

A lil comic abt these two, as you can see i used the texture technique you guys choose but also I switched out the colors to be much much warmer, Rose colored if you will :) lmk whach'a think about it, bc when it comes to accualy story driven comics i'll def use a diff style for them but mini comics like these could stay Rose glassed like those

[opencharacters]

It looks like Mickey has something to say

[amateur-climber-pro-shitposter]

Every year The Internet Archive hosts a competion to make art using newly public domain materials, and I've been losing my mind at this submission:

https://archive.org/details/555-milf-tar/

[peejalien]

Happy Mickey Mouse is mine day

[hell0mega]

people are drawing Steamboat Willie Mickey doing all this crazy shit and whatnot, but you could always do that. you can do that now, with current Mickey, just fine. it's fanart and it's legally protected. hell you could take Disney-drawn Mickey and put a caption about unions or whatever on it and it would still be protected under free speech and sometimes even parody law.

what is special about public domain is that you can SELL him. you could take a screenshot and sell it on a tshirt. you can use him to advertise your plumbing business. people have already uploaded and monetized the original film.

you could always have Mickey say what you want, but now you can profit off it.

[skiplo-wave]

Fyi

( x )

Happy creating folks

[squareallworthy]

Happy Public Domain Day 2025!

It is the first of January, so works from 1929 are now public domain in the United States. Here are some of them.

The Skeleton Dance, drawn by Ub Iwerks, music by Carl Stalling.

The Cocoanuts, the first Marx Brothers film (not counting an earlier unreleased silent film).

"Ain't Misbehavin'," by Andy Razaf, Fats Waller, Harry Brooks. (Only the composition is public domain, not this particular recording, which is from 1943. But hey, any chance to play a clip from Stormy Weather is a good one.)

“Rhapsody in Blue,” performed by Paul Whiteman and His Orchestra. (As a sound recording -- the composition, by George Gershwin, was already public domain.)

The Treachery of Images, by René Magritte.

The earliest "Thimble Theaters" comics featuring Popeye the Sailor.

A Farewell to Arms, by Ernest Hemingway

And many, many other works, which you can read about here. Happy Public Domain Day!

[spectralid]

Steamboat Willie has been in public domain for the last three days, and yet I've seen no one post this Pop Team Epic strip...

[prokopetz]

Mickey Mouse's entry into the public domain comes with significant caveats. While the Mickey Mouse who appears in Steamboat Willie (and other media published in 1928 or earlier) is free to use, there's established precedent that specific elements of a character which appear exclusively in later works which still fall under copyright may be protected, if sufficiently distinctive.

(This is the basis of, e.g., the infamous "Sherlock Holmes can't respect women" lawsuit: the Doyle estate, which at the time owned only a tiny handful of the latest-written stories, the others having already fallen into the public domain, argued that specific personality traits which Holmes exhibits only in those later stories are sufficiently distinctive as to be the valid subject of an infringement claim.)

With respect to various elements of Mickey's visual design, such as his red shorts and signature gloves, the matter is clear: just don't use those for another few years. However, there's another thing Mickey's public domain iterations don't exhibit: speech.

The present consensus among copyright scholars seems to be that "a character speaking" is not sufficiently distinctive as to qualify for protection, but the vocal characterisation with which Mickey Mouse is famously associated may so qualify. So, if you want to be scrupulously safe, you can have him talk, but not in that exact specific voice.

Which raises a fun question: what voice would you give him? Wrong answers only.

[bagelsforall]

Public Domain Expansion

[mattpresents]

[dd-the-man-without-fear]

My entire timeline atm:

[batboyblog]

Copy Right and Public Domain in 2025!

It's January 1st 2025 which means it's my favorite unsung holiday! Public Domain Day! This is the day once a year when, in the US, copyrights expire and things enter the public domain, meaning they belong to everyone! even you, Steve!

American copyright for books, movies, art work, and musical compositions (but not recordings, more on that later) runs for 95 years (way too long!) so today works published in 1929 join us in the public domain.

So whats free? so glad you asked.

Popeye the Sailor Man

Many people assume Popeye originated as a cartoon character but thats not true, he comes from a comic strip. The strip was called Thimble Theatre and Popeye was something of a late addition. Thimble Theatre was first published in 1919, so Popeye's girlfriend Olive Oyl has been in the public domain since before the big 20 year copyright freeze of 1998-2019. Popeye first appeared as a minor character 10 years into the strip's run but was so popular he soon took over and the strip would be renamed Popeye less than 5 years later. Now as always whats public is only what appears in 1929, later developments, remain copyrighted. Such as, while Popeye always had super strength its not till 1932 his superpowers were tied to eating spinach, and Olive Oyl originally had a different boyfriend named Ham Gravy, who she dumped for Popeye when he became the main character. It looks like Popeye is following tradition for famous now public domain characters and getting a quicky horror movie this year.

Tintin!

This is personally very exciting as someone who grew up with the Belgian boy detective. Like Popeye I expect a lot of people don't know that Tintin started off as a weekly comic strip. Indeed Tintin appeared as a part of a weekly youth supplement in the Catholic newspaper The Twentieth Century. Any ways, Tintin was first published in there in January 1929, and soon would start what would become the first Tintin story, Tintin in the Land of the Soviets. Now only part of Tintin in the Land of the Soviets was published in 1929, the story line wrapped up in May 1930, so only those 1929 stories and what appears in them is free and clear and Tintin was published in black and white not color. Tintin's author Hergé had no idea what he was doing and was really learning on the job so In The Land of the Soviets is generally seen as his weakest outing and the only one he never opted to redraw in later years. Even so it's nice to see the character free in the world. No word on if Tintin will star in a horror movie.

Buck Rogers (but not really)

The original futuristic space man was published, again a comic strip, in 1929 which means he should enter the public domain today, but he won't. That's because he already is public domain! Before the Copyright Act of 1976 copyright was 28 years with the option to renew for another 28 years. The copyright on the original comic strips was not renewed so ran out at the end of 28 years, 1958. So Buck Rogers has been free and clear for close to 70 years now, whatever you hear about him today.

What else?

Famously last year Mickey Mouse entered the public domain, but all the entered public domain was one (maybe two) animated short, Steamboat Willie. Well this year a dozen Mickey Mouse animated shorts enter the public domain, including the first time Mickey has his iconic white gloves, and the first time Mickey speaks (the first thing Mickey Mouse ever says, voiced by Walt Disney himself, is "Hot dogs! Hot dogs!" in case you were wondering) This will give creators much more to work with if they want to use Mickey in their works which is exciting.

Speaking of Walt Disney, The Skeleton Dance is entering public domain, you likely don't know the title but I suspect you've seen at least part of it at some point

so look for this showing up on TVs in the backgrounds of films and TV shows in the next year or so

Books

The iconic novels of World War I, Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms and Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front enter public domain. In fact All Quiet on the Western Front entered public domain last year, but only in the original German, the 1929 translation by Arthur Wesley Wheen is whats entered the public domain now. John Steinbeck's first novel, Cup of Gold, William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own, and Agatha Christie's Seven Dials Mystery (always get an Agatha Christie novel on this list for the rest of our lives). Dashiell Hammett published both Red Harvest and The Maltese Falcon, later made into one of the greatest films of all time, in 1929. Future children's book author E. B. White (who's go on to write Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little) and future New Yorker cartoonist and humorist James Thurber teamed up to write the delightfully titled Is Sex Necessary? Or, Why You Feel the Way You Do a book of spoof essays making fun of popular books on Freudian sexual theories at the time. The Roman Hat Mystery the first of the long running Ellery Queen mysteries was published, Queen would keep publishing mysteries into the 1970s (and Ellery Queen was a pen name for two people). Richard Hughes' A High Wind in Jamaica and Oliver La Farge's Laughing Boy also came out in 1929 and are in the public domain now. There's much else but those are the highlights sorry if I missed your favorite 1929 novel.

Movies

Alfred Hitchcock and Cecil B. DeMille's first movies with sound, Blackmail and Dynamite respectively, came out in 1929. Marx Brothers' first feature film The Cocoanuts joins the public domain. Other comedy land marks are Harold Lloyd's first sound film, Welcome Danger and Buster Keaton's last silent film, Spite Marriage (which Keaton also directed). John Ford's first sound film, The Black Watch, which also is 21 year old John Wayne's first appearance in a film, as an uncredited extra, he worked in the art department. Hallelujah the first studio film to have an all black cast came out that year. Also worth noting is The Hollywood Revue of 1929 a singing and dancing review, one of the earliest and the movie that popularized the song Singin’ in the Rain, maybe the first time a movie made a song a hit.

Musical compositions

musical compositions, ie the lyrics and musical notations you might see on sheet music are governed by the 1976 Copyright Act, and music written in 1929 is public domain. Music recordings are governed by a whole different law (we'll get there). Songs written in 1929 include Singin’ in the Rain by Arthur Freed & Nacio Herb Brown, Ain’t Misbehavin’ and Black and Blue by the legendary Fats Waller, What Is This Thing Called Love? by Cole Porter, Tiptoe Through the Tulips by Alfred Dubin, You Were Meant for Me by Arthur Freed & Nacio Herb Brown, and also Happy Days Are Here Again by Jack Yellen which would become FDR's campaign theme song in 1932.

Art!

a number of pieces by Salvador Dalí including:

Illumined Pleasures

The Accommodations of Desire

The Great Masturbator

are entering the public domain as is René Magritte’s The Treachery of Images.

Art is hard because while movies and books are clearly "published" and put on sale, what counts as "published" for a piece of art? the law is not totally sure.

Musical Recordings

as I promised, we got here. Till 2017 there were no federal laws governing the copyright of music recordings before the 1970s, it was governed by a confusing patchwork of state laws and it was not totally clear what was or was not free and clear even from the very earliest recordings ever. Now the term of a music recording's copyright is set at 100 years (way too long) so music recorded in 1924 is now public domain such as. Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen by Marian Anderson, Everybody Loves My Baby (But My Baby Don’t Love Nobody But Me) by Louis Armstrong, California Here I Come by Al Jolson, Rhapsody in Blue by George Gershwin, Shreveport Stomp by Jelly Roll Morton, Mama’s Gone, Good Bye by Ray Miller, and It Had To Be You by Marion Harris. Now many recordings a lot less famous can finally be preserved and digitized to save them for the next 100 years. Many abandoned works are literally rotting away since without the copyright holder's permission digitizing a work isn't legal.

[opencharacters]

Today's Public Domain Character

The Unknown from the Glasgow Willy Wonka Experience

The Unknown is like an evil chocolatier who lives in the walls. While the story of Charlie & The Chocolate Factory are copyrighted still (i believe owned by Netflix currently as they bought the rights to all of Roald Dahl's works a few years back)

The Unknown is an original character that was created using AI to write the script for this event. AI creations are not able to be copyrighted. Therefore, its public domain

[artofdiana]

"Now let's go get Tigger", said Pooh.