What Could Have Been
Sorry everyone, republishing Marilyn’s 1953 Playboy cover violates US copyright law.
In 1978, American copyright changed.
Previously, copyright protection held for 28 years at which point the copyright holder could either renew for one more 28-year “term” or their work entered the public domain. Only 15 percent of creators ever bothered. Most felt there was no longer an economic imperative to do so.
Book authors were especially remiss, renewing a mere seven percent of the time after the initial 28 years passed. The important point to note is that one’s initial copyright lasted 28 years and maxed out at 56 years if one opted to renew.
All that changed in 1978.
That was the year the genius squad got together and increased copyright not a few years, but 67 years. Yes, copyright protection for commercial “work for hire” went from 28 years to 95 years. Better yet, they grandfathered in previous works. Individual copyright (say, for a novel) extended 70 years from the date of an author’s death.
Duke University’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain has a great rundown of works published in 1953 that would have entered the public domain this year were it not for this legal change.
What might you be able to read or print online, quote as much as you want, or translate, republish or make a play or a movie from? How about Casino Royale, Ian Fleming’s first James Bond novel? Fleming published Casino Royale in 1953. If we were still under the copyright laws that were in effect until 1978, Casino Royale would be entering the public domain on January 1, 2010 (even assuming that Fleming had renewed the copyright). Under current copyright law, we’ll have to wait until 2049. This is because the copyright term for works published between 1950 and 1963 was extended to 95 years from the date of publication, so long as the works were published with a copyright notice and the term renewed (which is generally the case with famous works such as this). All of these works from 1953 will enter the public domain in 2049.
Other great works published in 1953 that would have entered the public domain this year so that you or I or anyone else could remix, remash and remake them in any medium we wanted: Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and James Baldwin’s Go Tell It On the Mountain (a personal favorite).
As the Center writes:
That means that all these examples from 1953 are only the tip of the iceberg. If the pre-1978 law were still in effect, we could have seen 85% of the works created in 1981 enter the public domain on January 1, 2010. Imagine what that would mean to our archives, our libraries, our schools and our culture.
Well — bright side of life — let’s go back 95 years to 1915.
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