[cube00]

> The British Library keeps to a ‘safe date’ when determining when a newspaper can be considered to be entirely out-of-copyright, which is 140 years after the date of publication.

It's depressing that copyright has been extended so far it's now longer then any single individual's possible lifetime.

[dalbasal]

This needs to change, big time.

There is almost no cash value to an article one day later, yet we completely impoverish the public domain for its sake. Not only are creators of valuable works is usually pretty distant from direct ownership anyway, there's no possible way for them to profit directly from this work. The only way a spotify-like deal works is because copyright ownership is conglomerated.

IMO, public (especially free-as-in-beer) access to newspaper archives could be pretty liberally justified on fair use grounds.

[thaumasiotes]

> There is almost no cash value to an article one day later, yet we completely impoverish the public domain for its sake.

We're not imposing publishing restrictions on past works in order to preserve their cash value. We're imposing publishing restrictions on past works in order to stop them from competing with present works. It keeps the cash value of present works up.

[zozbot234]

That makes even less sense, though. Yesterday's news does not really compete with today's news, they're effectively in separate markets.

[thaumasiotes]

So? Yesterday's books, movies, and music compete with today's books, movies, and music. Nobody cares about the news one way or the other. So the news gets treated just like everything else.

[bnj]

There are virtually unlimited quantities of free to consume media - TV, Books, Movies. People don't pay more money for new creations because the older works aren't published or available.

Relaxing copyright restrictions after a more reasonable period (seven years) doesn't take value away from new work, it enriches the public commons in a way that encourages the creation of new culture.

A tiny portion of cultural works remain profitable after the first few years. Grant seven years of copyright automatically, and let creators purchase extensions in five year blocks that increase in price. $100 for five additional years, $1000 for five years after that, $10000 for five more, $100000 for five more. It makes no sense to barricade all cultural works behind a copyright wall to protect the tiny slice of properties that continue to pay dividends after a generation.

[dalbasal]

Well... the fair use case and/or the public good case are pretty strong for news.

[dredmorbius]

This.

Even if the works are not economically valuable, people's attention is, as is gatekeeping control over archives (allowing one to set narratives and agendas and control context).

The time I spend going through an archive (I immediately hit the 3-article registration wall at the BLNA, so ... little time) is time I'm not spending consuming the present-moment adverts-laden infotainment stream.

[JackFr]

> There is almost no cash value to an article one day later, yet we completely impoverish the public domain for its sake.

If there is no value to an article one day later, it’s literally impossible that restricting it impoverishes anyone.

Copyright law is messed up, but demanding access to something by asserting it’s worthless makes no sense.

[Banana699]

>If there is no value to an article one day later, it’s literally impossible that restricting it impoverishes anyone.

You have mistakenly generalized "cash value" to "value" without reason. I find a ton of value reading old media, because it allows one to "play the historian", you get a unique and magical ability to experience an era just like its natives have done, except not with their outlook on life or assumptions. It's the closest you can get to traveling to a far foreign country.

This is value, but not cash value. Releasing this media impoverishes no one (in terms of cash value) but massively impoverishes people like me (in the sense of value).

>Copyright law is messed up,

10^grahams_number amen to that, it's bloody ridiculous to withhold something decades after its creator died and their family is now in the 5th generation and probably don't know the thing ever existed.

Copyrights, patents and intellectual property are a blight upon the earth, a massive bug in civilization's conception of ideas and knowledge that no one is willing to report.

[bryanrasmussen]

>This is value, but not cash value.

I agree that then copyright on the news should expire a lot sooner, but really if people (as a general category) find value in something they (as a general rule) will pay some amount to have it. It may not be a great amount, and you may not be one of the people who will pay for it despite valuing it (many people who value music won't pay for it, but there are obviously people who do value it and will pay).

I am not arguing that there should be copyright on this media just that what the parent commenter said is correct, you can't claim that it holds some form of value without also admitting that someone will pay (another form of value) for it.

In point of fact now that I think of it I have some old hardbound police gazette collections that are republished sometime in the last 20 years from 100+ years ago. I paid for those.

[Retric]

Economically numbers close enough to zero are zero. Basically every method of value extraction has overhead so something can both be valued and have no economic value.

[WalterBright]

> every method of value extraction has overhead so something can both be valued and have no economic value

Right. Which is why I don't bother selling on ebay or amazon, it isn't worth the time, postage, or trip to the post office. It just goes to the thrift store, as they have a business model that enables them to eke out a profit on such items.

[bryanrasmussen]

yet books that compile publications from previous centuries are published and bought but evidently the ledgers are not debited or credited for the parties to these transactions. Basically if a method of value extraction has so much overhead that it has no economic value I would expect that method to disappear, thus when methods of value extraction are still in use I think that someone has managed to derive economic value from that method - perhaps a very paltry economic value in comparison to some of the companies we discuss here quite frequently - but still some value.

[Ovah]

The National library of Sweden has a similar website but for newspapers printed in Sweden. They write "Copyright protection is valid for 115 years on the day. The free material is moved forward by one day every day." I get that likes such as Disney has an interest in extending it. Maybe a middle ground could be the ability to apply for extensions of individual works instead of a universal blanket extension? This long period really hampers my ability to do research on 1700s literature - a lot of such research was done in the early 1900s. But that content, even if it's 100 years old, just isn't indexed anywhere (e.g. Google books) due to copyright even if it is already digitized. https://tidningar.kb.se

[Zenst]

Wasn't it Disney and other media companies that pushed copyright duration towards this 140 year value? I vaguely recall that as a driving factor though maybe wrong and one of those unproven theories or meme'd news of times past.

Be ironic (A children focused company like Disney pushing thru a change in law that actually in the end harms the children as it limits their access for their lifetime into copyright servitude that shows little thought for the children) if was as would sure add a whole new spin to the "think of the children" sound-bite often used to push thru some change in law/rules.

Still, somewhat sad. More so as we build building today too a standard that is not that long-standing in years by design.

[fredoralive]

AFAIK the 140 year is just an arbitary value the British Library have used, it isn't part of copyright law. The UK has used a life + X[1] years system since the 1840s[2]. I guess they assume 140 years is enough to ensure any unknown / untracable authors have been dead for long enough for a work to be near unquestionably in the public domain.

[1] Where X has steadily increased with each copyright law revision.

[2] The US was a weird outlier on this for a long time after most of the world settled on this system.

[iechoz6H]

It's even worse than that, from the failed registration page:

    View 3 pages FREE when you register to help you get started
    Explore hundreds of national, regional and local titles dating from the 1700s-2000s
    Search, save and organise your favourite topics

[Normille]

Oh. It's worse than that. Copyright apparently extends back to the middle ages:

https://stiobhart.net/2021-04-8-bubble-trouble/

[vidarh]

The article does not say that. It conflates copyright and trademarks a couple of places, but it's clear that this is a combination of Redbubble applying their own over-cautious policies combined with trademark registrations, not copyright.

There are plenty of issues with trademarks too, but they are very different to copyright.

[Normille]

I think the nub of the article is that the artist had his artwork banned just for referring to the fact his designs were inspired by a mediaeval manuscript ie. 'The Book of Kells' because Trinity College have trademarked 'The Book of Kells' to use as a brand name on products they sell.

As it says in the article

  >...So, are [Trinity College] actually saying that no one is even allowed to mention "The Book of Kells", for fear of violating their copyright? If so, that’s really going to fuck up a lot of History books!...

I take on board what you mean about the distinction between Copyright and Trademark, but I think it still serves to illustrate just how ridiculous the legal minefield around both issues has become.

[5faulker]

It's almost as if they're slowly declassifying documents over time.

[nonameiguess]

A funny thing is actual US classification guidance is the default declassification length is 10 years from publication, and the maximum length without a special appeal is 25 years: https://ustr.gov/sites/default/files/foia/Classification%20G...