
Why Isn't Gatsby in the Public Domain? - ninthfrank07
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/05/why-isnt-gatsby-public-domain
======
chimeracoder
A similar HN post, which may be of interest: "What Could Have Entered the
Public Domain on January 1, 2012?"
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4802849>

I find this overextension of copyright laws maddeningly frustrating. My
previous comment (unfortunately) still stands:

Also still under copyright:

"I Have a Dream" until 2038[1]. This is particularly frustrating because the
copyright holders include the estate of the person who _delivered_ the speech,
but not the estate of the two other people who _wrote_ it (and likely most of
it) - not to mention the fact that, by any web-era definition, it was a public
performance and also a 'general publication'.

"Happy Birthday" (certainly in the EU until 2016, and potentially in the US
too until 2030, though this is disputed[2]).

There is also one movie - whose name escapes me now - which entered the public
domain and was then put _back_ under copyright protection subsequently.

In the case of "I Have a Dream", think of the societal cost of raising two
generations of students without a complete copy of the speech in their
textbooks (as is generally the case).

Alternatively, think of how a 2012 version of "I Have a Dream" would happen
today. If hundreds of cell phone recordings of the speech were distributed
halfway around the world within mere minutes after the speech, of what
relevance would copyright protection be?

[1][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Have_a_Dream#Copyright_disput...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Have_a_Dream#Copyright_disput..).

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Birthday_to_You>

~~~
hammock
The shorter the copyright, the less incentive there is to create something
timeless and lasting (if copyright terms provide incentive to invest in
creative work). If spoils are only provided for life+70 years, then an artist
may have little incentive to create something that could be enjoyed for a
period longer than that.

~~~
cgag
Do people just downvote sarcasm or are people just not recognizing it? Thought
this was hilarious.

~~~
tomp
When first reading, I didn't see it as sarcasm, just as an unsubstantiated
claim. Rereading it, I'm still not so sure...

------
jstalin
The original US copyright act protected works for 14 years and was renewable
for an additional 14 if the author was alive. I think that's reasonable.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Act_of_1790>

~~~
tekacs
US patents last 20 years with design patents lasting 14 years. Whilst
copyright and patents aren't directly comparable (design patents come close)
it's hard to see how the size of this disparity makes any sense.

Engineers keep creating their entire lives, if they can help it. Why
incentivise artists to capitalise endlessly on their 'one big break'? :/

Edit: or indeed by endlessly charging licensing fees for their particular
idea, which is inexplicably considered to be tremendously more timeless than a
similar concept in engineering. :/

~~~
SEMW
IMO, the length of utility patents should be guarded way more jealously than
the length of copyright.

Unlike copyright, a patent gives you a true monopoly over its subject - you
can prevent other people from using an idea even if they came up with it
independently. At their worst, patents can stifle further developments in a
field. Copyright, even with a ridiculously long term, at least has the
property that you can't use it to stop other people doing things
independently, so it can't block whole fields in the same way. So the length
disparity isn't necessarily unjustifiable.

------
marquis
Well, I am reading Gatsby again right now free on my Kindle in view of seeing
the film next week. It's available on
<http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200041.txt>.

Is this illegal for me to bring my Kindle to the U.S.?

The same book search on <http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=gatsby>
shows nothing.

~~~
minopret
Yes, _The Great Gatsby_ entered the public domain January 1, 2011, in
countries such as the United Kingdom and Australia that observe copyright for
the author's lifetime plus 70 years. F. Scott Fitzgerald died in 1940. But in
the United States, under the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1988, _The Great
Gatsby_ seems to be protected until 95 years after its first publication,
which was in 1925. That may mean January 1, 2021. Project Gutenberg is well
aware of the copyright terms in the countries where it operates.

I am not a lawyer. It seems to me that copyright has nothing to do with your
possession of a work that you obtained legally. It involves publication,
duplication, public performance, and so on.

A bit more about _The Great Gatsby_ and copyright is here:
[http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jan/09/robert-mccrum-
co...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jan/09/robert-mccrum-copyright-
law-kindle)

About copyright terms in various countries:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries%27_copyright_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries%27_copyright_length)

(While we're discussing copyright for classic books, some might be interested
to learn about the copyright for _Peter Pan_.)

~~~
apotheon
I wouldn't put it past the copyright cartels in the US to find some way to
bend copyright law to go after people bringing copies of books into the US,
even just for personal use, that were obtained in a manner that would be
considered illegal in the US. On the other hand, in this particular case, I
don't see how the "offender" would ever even get on the cartels' radar for the
act of bringing a Kindle (in personal luggage) loaded with books under
copyright in the US and in the public domain elsewhere across international
borders.

------
danso
Kind of funny that people are talking about Fitzgerald and the rights to make
money off of "Gatsby". He obviously intended to make a living off of the book
but it didnt sell well. He was paid less than $2,000 for the book and sold the
movie rights for $16,666...which is roughly $200K in today's money.

[http://www.marketplace.org/topics/life/money-behind-great-
ga...](http://www.marketplace.org/topics/life/money-behind-great-gatsby-
fitzgerald-adaptations)

Too bad the book never got the recognition it deserved in his lifetime.

~~~
jlgray
Authors in Fitzgerald's time made their money off of short stories. He was
apparently making $4,000 per story.

<http://www.people.vcu.edu/~bmangum/fitzstories.html>

I've also heard that all the 19th century novels were so long because
originally they were serialized, and the author was basically paid per
chapter.

~~~
ImprovedSilence
>>I've also heard that all the 19th century novels were so long because
originally they were serialized, and the author was basically paid per
chapter.

That's exactly how A Tale of Two Cities was written.

~~~
commandar
That's how Dickens wrote most of his novels, actually.

------
ck2
Just like everything else in this country, because: profit.

Why does the health care system suck? because: profit.

Why do our politicians suck? because: profit.

Why do we go into war without a care? because: profit.

Why is corn syrup subsidized but not salad? because: profit.

Yay 'murica.

~~~
ankitml
Some governments just want to watch the world burn.

~~~
jakerocheleau
Then the members of those governments should be indicted on a long list of
felony charges against the rights of human beings on this planet. The general
people suffer because all the money addicts need their fix, and so they pay
our politicians to change the laws to accommodate their needs. They don't care
about us and they never will as long as they control the printing presses.

------
thrownaway2424
Amusingly, I wanted to read Gatsby on a plane trip, so at the airport I
Googled for it and downloaded the PDF from some Australian university's site.
Then I read the whole thing. Later someone mentioned that it was still
copyrighted and I argued that obviously not, it was freely available. But
apparently not in the USA :-/

~~~
rcfox
There are many things that you can download for free off the Internet. That
doesn't mean that they aren't protected by copyright.

~~~
thrownaway2424
It seemed like a reasonable assumption that a 90-year-old book was in the
public domain.

~~~
davidjohnstone
Australia has an author's death plus fifty years copyright expiration for
books where the author died in or before 1954. Unfortunately, I think we're
"catching up" to the US with our copyright laws.

There's <http://gutenberg.net.au/> (no formal relationship with Project
Gutenberg) which makes works available that are public domain in Australia
(but not the US), and this has The Great Gatsby.

------
patrickg
The (at least here in Germany) well known book "Mein Kampf" by Hitler loses
it's copyright in 2016. The state of Bavaria uses copyright law (German:
Urheberrecht) to disallow any distribution of the book. There is an ongoing
discussion how the Government can prohibit future distribution of the book,
now that it goes into public domain.
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mein_Kampf>)

~~~
NickPollard
It's curious to me that the government (local government in this case, it
appears) would want to censor that book. The whole idea of freedom is that
people should be free to make up their own mind, and being able to study what
Hitler wrote is important to a study of history.

My parents have a copy of Mein Kampf on their bookshelf; not because they're
Nazis but because it tells us a lot about what happened.

~~~
VLM
I had (have?) a copy as one of many textbooks for a Holocaust class. Its
pretty crazy to read because quite a few things from the 30s and 40s turned
out just like planned in the book. Deja Vu feelings all thru. Which led to in
class discussions about which modern book, if any, seems equally likely to
predict the future. Some peak oil classics were discussed, Camp of the Saints
was discussed, a couple others. The unabomber ramblings and quite a few others
got discredited. Lots of in class discussion about why the events of WWII
seemed inevitable, why was the only response to his very public plans was
eventually the D-Day invasion and is that right or wrong way to do it and how
so. Its a great book for encouraging in class discussion and hopefully once
its finally liberated more history classes and liberal arts synthesis classes
will use it as a resource.

This is the academic tragedy of copyright. We have better educational
materials for the Civil War than WWII because memoirs and such are free from
the civil war.

------
Zimahl
I find it odd that we protect one segment of creatives and not another.
Artists get these insane protections yet if you invent something it's up to 24
years and only if you want to spend the time and money getting the protection.
What an insane racket.

~~~
brazzy
Patents and copyright are _completely_ different. Copyright protects a
specific work - you could write a book that has exactly the same plot and
characters as _The Great Gatsby_ , and as long as you use different sentences
and names, it would not be copyright infringement (just look at the cookie-
cutter ripoffs of _Shades of Grey_ \- and for each one that's published, the
editor rejected 30 more).

If you have a patent on some mechanism, _nobody else is allowed to use that
mechanism_ without your approval, and minor variations are not sufficient to
bypass that.

~~~
kvb
Your broader point is a good one, but my understanding (though IANAL) is that
while copyright does protect the expression of an idea rather than the idea
itself, exactly where to draw the line is a bit of a fuzzy area (see
"substantial similarity"[1]). It's not just a work exactly as it was expressed
- a written work might infringe even with different names and wording. One
test that has been proposed is if "the ordinary observer, unless he set out to
detect the disparities, would be disposed to overlook them, and regard [the]
aesthetic appeal [of the two works] as the same". On the other hand scenes
that are required by the genre generally aren't protected even if they're
copied pretty closely (according to scène à faire doctrine[2]).

[1]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substantial_similarity>

[2]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sc%C3%A8nes_%C3%A0_faire>

~~~
SEMW
We should be careful about conflating principle and evidence. That looks like
an evidential test to help a court decide whether copying had taken place. If
you turn up with what looks like a tweaked copy of Harry Potter claiming you
wrote it yourself, no-one's going to believe you -- but if you did somehow
manage to prove it on the balance of probabilities (e.g. you've lived your
whole life in a sealed metal box and can prove you've never read Harry Potter
or something), then you're fine, you've rebutted the evidential presumption.

------
zdean
This is an interesting take on the correlation/causation between the impending
expirations of the Mickey Mouse copyright and the subsequent extensions of the
copyright duration over the past century:

<http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090811/0123105835.shtml>

------
eikenberry
The only ethical action is to ignore copyright. Publish under CC0/public-
domain. Share with your family, with your friends, with everyone. Download to
your hearts content.

There is no copyright.

~~~
katbyte
> There is no copyright. Well its definitely not hard to find pretty much
> anything even somewhat popular for download on the internet somewhere
> despite no small effort to prevent it.

------
vy8vWJlco
The article mentions the TPP is on the horizon, which recently got a new trade
representative/negotiator in the US.

Here is an email campaign to nag him towards good stewardship, for those
interested: <http://www.openmedia.org/froman?utm_campaign=Froman>

The EFF also has a summary of the changeover:
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5647596>

------
skylan_q
If there isn't copyright protection on this work, no one will want to write
another book again!

~~~
ekianjo
Huh? Who is saying no protection is needed? What we are saying is that the
protection is far too long.

~~~
eikenberry
And no restrictions on non-commercial use. Don't forget that.

------
gluejar
If you're in Australia or Canada, you can find Gatsby links for your kindle or
ipad at [http://go-to-hellman.blogspot.com/2013/05/its-legal-to-
downl...](http://go-to-hellman.blogspot.com/2013/05/its-legal-to-download-
great-gatsby.html)

If you're in the US or Europe, I'd advise you not to find those links.

------
pseingatl
But if Gatsby is not in the public domain, who owns it? If Fitzgerald has no
living heirs, who owns the property rights? These would normally transfer to
the state of his heirs' residence at the time of their death like any other
abandoned property. In the U.S. at least, intellectual property owned (as
opposed to licensed) by states is in the public domain. So wouldn't Gatsby be
in the public domain by this method, regardless of copyright? In other words,
copyright is a property right, but when there is no one left to exercise that
right, the property escheats to the state and thereby becomes property of all.

~~~
jccalhoun
He had a daughter who went on to have 4 kids:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Scott_Fitzgerald> So presumably they
get the money.

------
sage_joch
I argued in a previous thread that there is nothing morally wrong with
pirating older works like The Great Gatsby. Unfortunately, that doesn't help
with higher-budget derivative works, but it's a start.

------
wwweston
Because otherwise, Fitzgerald wouldn't have or have had any incentive to
invest in creative work?

~~~
jlgreco
_"What's that? You mean in 2013 people will be able to read my book for free?
Well fuck it, I'll just go have another drink instead."_

(Actually to be fair, I don't think "instead" is quite the right word there.)

~~~
DanBC
Don't joke. Disney honestly think like that. When home video was introduced
they couldn't get their heads round the fact that they wouldn't know how many
people would be sitting round the tv watching a movie, and thus Disney
wouldn't be able to charge all of these people. Some of them would be watching
for free!

Disney have introduced things like single watch video tape (need to be sent
back somewhere to be rewound); limited life DVD (special materials, sent in
sealed envelope, as soon as it's opened it starts to oxidise); and they still
have pretty horrible unskippable trailers and warnings and etc.

~~~
300bps
>limited life DVD

I remember well the original DIVX at Circuit City:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIVX>

I honestly think that failure was a huge reason why Circuit City failed. They
built up so much ill will from a technically literate audience.

~~~
DanBC
Wow. I was talking about (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexplay>) so there's
a few different systems around.

> _Flexplay is a trademark for a DVD-compatible optical video disc format with
> a time-limited (usually 48-hour) playback time. They are often described as
> "self-destructing" although the disc merely turns black and does not
> physically disintegrate. The same technology was used by Disney's Buena
> Vista Home Entertainment under the name ez-D._

------
bydo
You guys ever read 'Melancholy Elephants' by Spider Robinson?

<http://www.spiderrobinson.com/melancholyelephants.html>

------
nhangen
The public didn't write it, Mr. Fitzgerald did. Therefore, both he and his
heirs are entitled to reap the profits of that work. I have zero problems with
literature holding copyright for as long as someone is willing to manage that
copyright.

------
crugej
So the company who owns the rights to it can make a nice chunk of change off
new book purchases (especially the purchases made by the buzz from the movie).

------
caycep
I think its in the public domain in other countries (i.e. australia)...silly
that you could get it for free down there and schlep it back here.

------
Eva_Peron
Meyer Wolfsheim would never hear of it. :-)

------
yarrel
Article doesn't answer question posed in title.

------
sytelus
It's a fashion to bash copyright laws but lot of people forget that without
economic instrument called copyrights it would be almost impossible to
produce/consume works that bears high risk/investment.

If you had a house, you don't expect it to become part of public domain after
100 years. You neither expect wooden table you made in weekend or jewelry you
designed to be automatically in public domain after X years. Infect you would
probably argue that government has no right to confiscate your property and it
should rather be inherited by whomever you desire forever after your death.
Why music/books/software that _you_ create should be any different?

~~~
darkarmani
> It's a fashion to bash copyright laws but lot of people forget that without
> economic instrument called copyrights it would be almost impossible to
> produce/consume works that bears high risk/investment.

What are you talking about? No one has a problem with limited term copyright
like you are talking about. We have a problem with infinite term copyright.

How does _retroactively_ extending copyright length provide any of the
benefits you are claiming?

> Why music/books/software that you create should be any different?

They aren't any different. You are allowed to bequeath music, books, software
(sometimes) to people. Haven't you ever given a CD away?

If you are trying to refer to intellectual property, then you are talking
about a made-up right. The only reason we even grant this made-up right is
because there is a quid pro quo. If there is no cultural/societal benefit to
enforcing this made-up right, then why shouldn't we unmake it?

~~~
icebraining
_No one has a problem with limited term copyright_

Well, some of us do. But it's certainly not the majority, even here.

~~~
Flimm
Even the Pirate Party (at least the UK one) only wants to reduce copyright
length, not abolish it.

~~~
icebraining
Well, if I was to advocate among the general public for a policy change, I'd
advocate for something more palatable as well. You shouldn't assume those are
necessarily the end goals of the party members. It might just be a compromise.

------
Tycho
Big false dichotomy. That director most likely could have made Romeo and Julet
even if they'd had to pay a licence fee, just like how he's now managed to
make a film adaptation of Gatsby, which will likely also be a box office
success and enrich the culture of film.

This really just boils down to some people being mad that they can't make
money off derivative works because other people are making money off the
original work. Boo hoo.

------
javert
If you create something, _it belongs to you._

I guess somebody didn't learn this lesson in kindergarten, and still wants to
whine and complain in an effort to effectively nationalize what is rightfully
private property.

~~~
kristopolous
Why should MY tax dollars be used to enforce YOUR copyright?

If you want to protect it, go hire your own police and build your own courts;
stop using mine.

~~~
javert
I pay taxes, too.

In an ideal society, I wouldn't be opposed to those seeking copyright
enforcement paying the costs, although the costs would presumably eventually
be passed on to the infringers. We will never see such a society in our
lifetimes, though, so it's a somewhat moot point.

