Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - December 30th, ’23

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December 30th, 2023




Bricking it: Do You Actually Own Anything Digital?

From ebooks, to videos and software, the answer is increasingly no
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols

Opinion What do Amazon, Sony, and Broadcom all have in common? Give up? Each, in their own way, has made it clear that when you buy something from them, you don't actually own it.

Going back to 2009, Amazon dropped 1984 and Animal Farm from its Kindle eReaders. You may have thought you owned copies of these classic George Orwell books, but you were wrong. Amazon said they'd discovered they hadn't the right to sell the books, so they deleted them from your eReaders. Eventually, Amazon restored those books, but a precedent had been set. Amazon, not you, owns your eBooks.

To quote from Amazon's copyright policy: "All content included in or made available through Amazon Business, such as text, graphics, logos, button icons, images, audio clips, digital downloads, data compilations, and software is the property of Amazon or its content suppliers and protected by U.S. and international copyright Laws. The compilation of all content included in or made available through any Amazon Business Service is the exclusive property of Amazon and protected by U.S. and international copyright Laws."

Funny, as I look at my large library of old-style books, I never had to worry about that with them. They all belong to me. Eventually, they'll go to my daughter's home or a library. My eBooks? They're off to the digital dustbin as soon as I'm under the ground.

Much more recently, Sony Interactive Entertainment has announced that as of December 31, 2023, users can no longer watch their previously purchased Discovery video content on their PlayStations. I'd never bought copies of Mythbusters, Deadliest Catch, How It’s Made or My 600-Pound Life myself, but someone did. If I were in their shoes, I'd be ticked.

What's that? Can't they always stream those shows? Can they? Not always. Take, for example, perhaps the best, most realistic American crime show, Homicide: Life on the Street. I love that show, and I have it on DVD, but the DVDs aren't available in the States now, and the show isn't available to stream anywhere. Like other shows, its rights are locked up in a mess and may never be available. This is especially poignant since the star, Andre Braugher, recently died, and many people want to see his signature role as Detective Frank Pembleton.

Finally, let's turn our attention to the aftershocks of Broadcom buying VMware. After the deal was finally cleared, Broadcom announced it was ending the sale of perpetual VMware software licenses and support and subscriptions for those perpetual offerings. Yes, you may have "owned" vSphere for years, but now you don't. That will be $X dollars per year from now to eternity thank you very much.

Broadcom isn't the only one doing this. Microsoft has been urging people away from their permanent licenses for desktop-based Office in favor of Microsoft 365 for years. I expect Windows will follow shortly by going to a subscription-only model.

So, what can you do about this trend for all the ownership power going to the company?

Well, one thing is to go old-school and get your books and media on paper and DVDs. That's easier said than done. For example, some books are only available now in eBook editions. And, manufacturers are abandoning Blu-Ray and DVD players, while retail vendors are giving up on selling DVDs.

What's a reader and a watcher to do? Since publishers are not letting me buy my own copies of their goods, it's time to make our own copies. The vendors frown on this, but they're not giving us any choice.

So, for ebooks, I use the open-source ebook program Calibre to manage them and a variety of tools to remove the Digital Rights Management (DRM)* from my books. It's a pain, but it works.

For video, I rip the movies off my DVDs using Handbrake. I know other people who use VLC Media Player. To remove DRM, you'll need the open-source library, libdvdcss.

If you don't want to get your hands dirty with the ins and outs of video transcribing and removing DRM, there are also commercial programs such as WinX DVD Ripper. Once you have the video files in MP4 format, you can use programs such as Jellyfin, Plex, or PlayOn so you can watch your TV shows and movies on your TV as well as your PC.

All of the above is in a gray area of the law. In many regions it's technically illegal to remove DRM even for personal use, although there are some exceptions. If you intend to resell or share copies, it's certainly illegal to rip commercial, copyrighted, copy-protected videos or eBooks almost everywhere in the world. As it happens, I don't. I just want to watch The Thin Man movies even if I can't replace my DVD player sometime in the future and it's not available on a streaming service. I bought my books and videos, and I have this notion that I want to be able to enjoy them even if their intellectual property owners decide I can't.

As for software, the answer has always been open source. Companies may decide I can't use their program without paying an annual fee, but I'm good to go as long as I can get my hands on the code. Broadcom may stop me from using "my" copy of vSphere, but no one can block me from running other open-source virtualization programs such as KVM and Xen.

In short, companies may try to restrict our use of the intellectual property we've purchased, but if you're willing to do some work, you can still call the shots.
https://www.theregister.com/2023/12/22/opinion_column/





The NY Times Lawsuit Against OpenAI Would Open Up The NY Times To All Sorts Of Lawsuits Should It Win
Mike Masnick

This week the NY Times somehow broke the story of… well, the NY Times suing OpenAI and Microsoft. I wonder who tipped them off. Anyhoo, the lawsuit in many ways is similar to some of the over a dozen lawsuits filed by copyright holders against AI companies. We’ve written about how silly many of these lawsuits are, in that they appear to be written by people who don’t much understand copyright law. And, as we noted, even if courts actually decide in favor of the copyright holders, it’s not like it will turn into any major windfall. All it will do is create another corruptible collection point, while locking in only a few large AI companies who can afford to pay up.

I’ve seen some people arguing that the NY Times lawsuit is somehow “stronger” and more effective than the others, but I honestly don’t see that. Indeed, the NY Times itself seems to think its case is so similar to the ridiculously bad Authors Guild case, that it’s looking to combine the cases.

But while there are some unique aspects to the NY Times case, I’m not sure they are nearly as compelling as the NY Times and its supporters think they are. Indeed, I think if the Times actually wins its case, it would open the Times itself up to some fairly damning lawsuits itself, given its somewhat infamous journalistic practices regarding summarizing other people’s articles without credit. But, we’ll get there.

The Times, in typical NY Times fashion, presents this case as thought the NY Times is the great defender of press freedom, taking this stand to stop the evil interlopers of AI.

Independent journalism is vital to our democracy. It is also increasingly rare and valuable. For more than 170 years, The Times has given the world deeply reported, expert, independent journalism. Times journalists go where the story is, often at great risk and cost, to inform the public about important and pressing issues. They bear witness to conflict and disasters, provide accountability for the use of power, and illuminate truths that would otherwise go unseen. Their essential work is made possible through the efforts of a large and expensive organization that provides legal, security, and operational support, as well as editors who ensure their journalism meets the highest standards of accuracy and fairness. This work has always been important. But within a damaged information ecosystem that is awash in unreliable content, The Times’s journalism provides a service that has grown even more valuable to the public by supplying trustworthy information, news analysis, and commentary

Defendants’ unlawful use of The Times’s work to create artificial intelligence products that compete with it threatens The Times’s ability to provide that service. Defendants’ generative artificial intelligence (“GenAI”) tools rely on large-language models (“LLMs”) that were built by copying and using millions of The Times’s copyrighted news articles, in-depth investigations, opinion pieces, reviews, how-to guides, and more. While Defendants engaged in widescale copying from many sources, they gave Times content particular emphasis when building their LLMs—revealing a preference that recognizes the value of those works. Through Microsoft’s Bing Chat (recently rebranded as “Copilot”) and OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Defendants seek to free-ride on The Times’s massive investment in its journalism by using it to build substitutive products without permission or payment.

As the lawsuit makes clear, this isn’t some high and mighty fight for journalism. It’s a negotiating ploy. The Times admits that it has been trying to get OpenAI to cough up some cash for its training:

For months, The Times has attempted to reach a negotiated agreement with Defendants, in accordance with its history of working productively with large technology platforms to permit the use of its content in new digital products (including the news products developed by Google, Meta, and Apple). The Times’s goal during these negotiations was to ensure it received fair value for the use of its content, facilitate the continuation of a healthy news ecosystem, and help develop GenAI technology in a responsible way that benefits society and supports a well-informed public.

I’m guessing that OpenAI’s decision a few weeks back to pay off media giant Axel Springer to avoid one of these lawsuits, and the failure to negotiate a similar deal (at what is likely a much higher price), resulted in the Times moving forward with the lawsuit.

There are five or six whole pages of puffery about how amazing the NY Times thinks the NY Times is, followed by the laughably stupid claim that generative AI “threatens” the kind of journalism the NY Times produces.

Let me let you in on a little secret: if you think that generative AI can do serious journalism better than a massive organization with a huge number of reporters, then, um, you deserve to go out of business. For all the puffery about the amazing work of the NY Times, this seems to suggest that it can easily be replaced by an auto-complete machine.

In the end, though, the crux of this lawsuit is the same as all the others. It’s a false belief that reading something (whether by human or machine) somehow implicates copyright. This is false. If the courts (or the legislature) decide otherwise, it would upset pretty much all of the history of copyright and create some significant real world problems.

Part of the Times complaint is that OpenAI’s GPT LLM was trained in part with Common Crawl data. Common Crawl is an incredibly useful and important resource that apparently is now coming under attack. It has been building an open repository of the web for people to use, not unlike the Internet Archive, but with a focus on making it accessible to researchers and innovators. Common Crawl is a fantastic resource run by some great people (though the lawsuit here attacks them).

But, again, this is the nature of the internet. It’s why things like Google’s cache and the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine are so important. These are archives of history that are incredibly important, and have historically been protected by fair use, which the Times is now threatening.

(Notably, just recently, the NY Times was able to get all of its articles excluded from Common Crawl. Otherwise I imagine that they would be a defendant in this case as well).

Either way, so much of the lawsuit is claiming that GPT learning from this data is infringement. And, as we’ve noted repeatedly, reading/processing data is not a right limited by copyright. We’ve already seen this in multiple lawsuits, but this rush of plaintiffs is hoping that maybe judges will be wowed by this newfangled “generative AI” technology into ignoring the basics of copyright law and pretending that there are now rights that simply do not exist.

Now, the one element that appears different in the Times’ lawsuit is that it has a bunch of exhibits that purport to prove how GPT regurgitates Times articles. Exhibit J is getting plenty of attention here, as the NY Times demonstrates how it was able to prompt ChatGPT in such a manner that it basically provided them with direct copies of NY Times articles.

In the complaint, they show this.

At first glance that might look damning. But it’s a lot less damning when you look at the actual prompt in Exhibit J and realize what happened, and how generative AI actually works.

What the Times did is prompt GPT-4 by (1) giving it the URL of the story and then (2) “prompting” it by giving it the headline of the article and the first seven and a half paragraphs of the article, and asking it to continue.

Here’s how the Times describes this:

Each example focuses on a single news article. Examples were produced by breaking the article into two parts. The frst part o f the article is given to GPT-4, and GPT-4 replies by writing its own version of the remainder of the article.

Here’s how it appears in Exhibit J (notably, the prompt was left out of the complaint itself).

If you actually understand how these systems work, the output looking very similar to the original NY Times piece is not so surprising. When you prompt a generative AI system like GPT, you’re giving it a bunch of parameters, which act as conditions and limits on its output. From those constraints, it’s trying to generate the most likely next part of the response. But, by providing it paragraphs upon paragraphs of these articles, the NY Times has effectively constrained GPT to the point that the most probabilistic responses is… very close to the NY Times’ original story.

In other words, by constraining GPT to effectively “recreate this article,” GPT has a very small data set to work off of, meaning that the highest likelihood outcome is going to sound remarkably like the original. If you were to create a much shorter prompt, or introduce further randomness into the process, you’d get a much more random output. But these kinds of prompts effectively tell GPT not to do anything BUT write the same article.

From there, though, the lawsuit gets dumber.

It shows that you can sorta get around the NY Times’ paywall in the most inefficient and unreliable way possible by asking ChatGPT to quote the first few paragraphs in one paragraph chunks.

Of course, quoting individual paragraphs from a news article is almost certainly fair use. And, for what it’s worth, the Times itself admits that this process doesn’t actually return the full article, but a paraphrase of it.

And the lawsuit seems to suggest that merely summarizing articles is itself infringing.

That’s… all factual information summarizing the review? And while the complaint shows that if you then ask for (again, paragraph length) quotes, GPT will give you a few quotes from the article.

And, yes, the complaint literally argues that a generative AI tool can violate copyright when it “summarizes” an article.

The issue here is not so much how GPT is trained, but how the NY Times is constraining the output. That is unrelated to the question of whether or not the reading of these article is fair use or not. The purpose of these LLMs is not to repeat the content that is scanned, but to figure out the probabilistic most likely next token for a given prompt. When the Times constrains the prompts in such a way that the data set is basically one article and one article only… well… that’s what you get.

Elsewhere, the Times again complains about GPT returning factual information that is not subject to copyright law.

But, I mean, if you were to ask anyone the same question, “What does wirecutter recommend for The Best Kitchen Scale,” they’re likely to return you a similar result, and that’s not infringing. It’s a fact that that scale is the one that it recommends. The Times complains that people who do this prompt will avoid clicking on Wirecutter affiliate links, but… um… it has no right to that affiliate income.

I mean, I’ll admit right here that I often research products and look at Wirecutter (and other!) reviews before eventually shopping independently of that research. In other words, I will frequently buy products after reading the recommendations on Wirecutter, but without clicking on an affiliate link. Is the NY Times really trying to suggest that this violates its copyright? Because that’s crazy.

Meanwhile, it’s not clear if the NY Times is mad that it’s accurately recommending stuff or if it’s just… mad. Because later in the complaint, the NY Times says its bad that sometimes GPT recommends the wrong product or makes up a paragraph.

So… the complaint is both that GPT reproduces things too accurately, AND not accurately enough. Which is it?

Anyway, the larger point is that if the NY Times wins, well… the NY Times might find itself on the receiving end of some lawsuits. The NY Times is somewhat infamous in the news world for using other journalists’ work as a starting point and building off of it (frequently without any credit at all). Sometimes this results in an eventual correction, but often it does not.

If the NY Times successfully argues that reading a third party article to help its reporters “learn” about the news before reporting their own version of it is copyright infringement, it might not like how that is turned around by tons of other news organizations against the NY Times. Because I don’t see how there’s any legitimate distinction between OpenAI scanning NY Times articles and NY Times reporters scanning other articles/books/research without first licensing those works as well.

Or, say, what happens if a source for a NY TImes reporter provides them with some copyright-covered work (an article, a book, a photograph, who knows what) that the NY Times does not have a license for? Can the NY Times journalist then produce an article based on that material (along with other research, though much less than OpenAI used in training GPT)?

It seems like (and this happens all too often in the news industry) the NY Times is arguing that it’s okay for its journalists to do this kind of thing because it’s in the business of producing Important Journalism™ whereas anyone else doing the same thing is some damn interloper.

We see this with other copyright disputes and the media industry, or with the ridiculous fight over the hot news doctrine, in which news orgs claimed that they should be the only ones allowed to report on something for a while.

Similarly, I’ll note that even if the NY Times gets some money out of this, don’t expect the actual reporters to see any of it. Remember, this is the same NY Times that once tried to stiff freelance reporters by relicensing their articles to electronic databases without paying them. The Supreme Court didn’t like that. If the NY Times establishes that merely training AI on old articles is a licenseable, copyright-impacting event, will it go back and pay those reporters a piece of whatever change they get? Or nah?
https://www.techdirt.com/2023/12/28/...should-it-win/





You Need Felix the Cat? Early Popeye? Talk to the King of Silent Animation.

Tommy José Stathes might have the largest collection of vintage animated films in the world stuffed into a storage unit in Queens.
Paige Darrah

“Guess you could say I hoard,” said Tommy José Stathes as he maneuvered around the shelves of his storage unit. Large enough to accommodate a minivan, it was stuffed with thousands of film canisters stacked floor to ceiling, arranged by studio and labeled with Sharpie. “Bray: Farmer Alfalfa Sees New York,” one read. Another said: “Fleischer: Adventures of Popeye (1935).”

“Oh,” he muttered absently as he paused before a tower of brass movie cans, “what do we have here?”

Once a week, Mr. Stathes heads from his small studio apartment in Queens to his enormous collection of vintage cartoons: a celluloid library of around 4,000 reels, some of the prints more than 100 years old. It is certainly one of the largest collections of early animated films anywhere in the world — and that accounts for the holdings of the Library of Congress, according to an archivist who does restoration there.

Usually, Mr. Stathes is searching for a specific clip — something with Felix the Cat (“the biggest star in 1920s cartoons”), say, or Popeye — for the regular events he hosts at Metrograph, an arty Lower East Side movie house with red velvet seating and chilled Junior Mints.

For his most recent screening, he dug out some vintage reels with a Christmas feel, like Fleischer Studios’ “Somewhere in Dreamland” — a Technicolor fantasia that follows two street urchins who scavenge firewood and go to bed hungry. Mr. Stathes first watched it on VHS tape as a toddler. “I think it helped me to better understand and connect with the inner children in my own grandparents, all of whom were born right around the time of the 1929 stock market crash and grew up during the Great Depression.”

Now 34, Mr. Stathes makes a living as a professor of animation history at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan. But his true vocation is curating vintage cartoon programs. In addition to his gig at Metrograph, he also regularly shows at Roxy Cinema and the Society of Illustrators and has over the last decade landed a recurring role on Turner Classic Movies.

It was by sheer chance that executives at the network, also known as TCM, saw an article about a 21-year-old movie historian on Fox News Latino.

They understood quickly that this young collector had amassed a deeper cartoon archive than TCM had ever gained access to. “We can’t do everything,” the network’s longtime lead programmer, Charles Tabesh, said in a phone interview. “But sometimes something comes along and you just think: This is an important part of film history — one we’ve never explored.”

The network contracted Mr. Stathes to produce a program in 2012, for which he provided an hour’s worth of silent animation he had recently restored. Then, a couple of years later, he found himself being interviewed on air by the channel’s marquee host, Robert Osborne, as the network’s expert on vintage cartoons. Mr. Stathes knew then that he had arrived.

It is a far cry from his early days, when he used to screen oddball cartoons at strange little pop-up places that don’t typically show movies. His very first show, when he was not even old enough to drink, was in a dive bar stuffed with vintage clutter in Bushwick, Brooklyn, called Goodbye Blue Monday. From that success, he bounced around various community centers (including the Queens Public Library, where he had a yearslong stint) and storefront galleries, like Shoestring Press in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.

This avocation can be traced back to an obscure Farmer Alfalfa cartoon his father showed him once. From there, he expanded to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit and Felix the Cat, and he started hunting for reels in local antique shops and flea markets. He soon progressed to eBay, ultimately piling up a six-figure investment in the archive.

His devotion to silent cartoons — the very birth of the form — is unrivaled. In fact, he has helped the Library of Congress identify some of its own collection. George Willeman, who oversees the nitrate film vaults for the library, recalled being amazed when Mr. Stathes, then in his 20s, took a seat in the archive and identified reel after reel of unidentified cartoons made decades before he was even born.

“As far as I know,” Mr. Willeman said, “Tommy is the king of silent animation.”

As for how much his archive is worth today, Mr. Stathes is reluctant to venture a guess. “Films don’t have standardized valuations like coins or other regularly traded collectibles,” he said. “It’s a very niche, specialized field concerning objects that are more utilitarian than anything else.”

“Might any of the kids here be alarmed by a creepy snowman?” Mr. Stathes asked a 100-strong crowd, nearly all of them adults shifting around on velvet seats during a Halloween-themed screening at Metrograph a couple months ago. It’s clear he loves playing M.C. — as he worked the audience, his enthusiasm was infectious. Mr. Stathes launched into a discussion of the disputed merits of Molly Moo-Cow, a key character for New York City-based Van Beuren Studios during the 1930s. “She always saves the day — and she’s a cow!” he marveled. “I mean …” His voice trailed off and he sighed wistfully.

Ian Adams, who began attending Mr. Stathes’s cartoon screenings back when they were projected onto sheets tacked to the walls of ad hoc venues, is now part of Metrograph’s programming department. The repertory theater first sought Mr. Stathes out to do a Halloween program in 2021. His Christmastime “Happy Endings” special ran last week. “Tommy has a following,” Mr. Adams said.

This August, Mr. Stathes introduced the theatrical release of “Cartoon Carnival” at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, where he stayed for a Q. and A. session with the audience. Produced by a British filmmaker, the movie focuses on the pioneers of cartoons and follows Mr. Stathes’s quest to preserve them. According to the director, Andrew T. Smith, Mr. Stathes “kind of inspired the documentary.” He stumbled onto Mr. Stathes’s work online and was struck by his devotion.

“He just kind of crossed me as someone very young to take on this quite big responsibility of gathering this archive of neglected films,” Mr. Smith said.

“Cartoon Carnival” has been shown on TCM, but Mr. Stathes is hoping it will get picked up by a streaming service like Netflix, which would definitely help offset the costs associated with maintaining the archive. The rent for his storage unit is now up to nearly $1,000 per month.

“That’s the kind of big break I truly need,” Mr. Stathes said. “Yes, I do it out of a love for the medium — because I enjoy sharing the film. But I do also have to get either a flat fee or a share of ticket sales, to get by.”

“Hopefully a time will come when I don’t have to push so hard and hustle so much every single day to keep all this collecting and archiving and storing and event production afloat,” he continued. “I still want to do those things as the years go on, but really need an additional set of buoys under me.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/19/n...-cartoons.html





January 1, 2024 is Public Domain Day: Works from 1928 are Open to all, as are Sound Recordings from 1923!
Jennifer Jenkins

On January 1, 2024, thousands of copyrighted works from 1928 will enter the US public domain, along with sound recordings from 1923. They will be free for all to copy, share, and build upon. This year’s highlights include Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence and The Threepenny Opera by Bertolt Brecht, Buster Keaton’s The Cameraman and Cole Porter’s Let’s Do It, and a trove of sound recordings from 1923. And, of course, 2024 marks the long-awaited arrival of Steamboat Willie – featuring Mickey and Minnie Mouse – into the public domain. That story is so fascinating, so rich in irony, so rife with misinformation about what you will be able to do with Mickey and Minnie now that they are in the public domain that it deserved its own article, “Mickey, Disney, and the Public Domain: a 95-year Love Triangle.” Why is it a love triangle? What rights does Disney still have? How is trademark law involved? Read all about it here.

Here is just a handful of the works that will be in the US public domain in 2024.[2] They were first set to go into the public domain after a 56-year term in 1984, but a term extension pushed that date to 2004. They were then supposed to go into the public domain in 2004, after being copyrighted for 75 years. But before this could happen, Congress hit another 20-year pause button and extended their copyright term to 95 years.[3] Now the wait is over. (To find more material from 1928, you can visit the Catalogue of Copyright Entries.)

Books and Plays

• D.H Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover
• Bertolt Brecht, The Threepenny Opera (in the original German, Die Dreigroschenoper)
• Virginia Woolf, Orlando
• Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front (in the original German, Im Westen nichts Neues)
• W.E.B. Du Bois, Dark Princess
• Claude McKay, Home to Harlem
• A. A. Milne, illustrations by E. H. Shepard, House at Pooh Corner (introducing the Tigger character)
• J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan; or the Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up (because it was not "published" for copyright purposes until 1928)[4]
• Radclyffe Hall, The Well of Loneliness
• Evelyn Waugh,Decline and Fall
• Agatha Christie, The Mystery of the Blue Train
• Wanda Gág, Millions of Cats (the oldest American picture book still in print)
• Robert Frost, West-Running Brook
• Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, The Front Page

These are just a few of the thousands of works entering the public domain in 2024. They present a snapshot of the cultural struggles of the time, some of which seem decidedly relevant today: there are books that were banned for obscenity, a critique of the inhumanity of capitalist society, works from the Harlem Renaissance, and a reminder of the lingering trauma from World War I. There are works exploring gender fluidity and sexuality, including Orlando, a feminist classic about a character “liberated from restraints of time and sex,” and The Well of Loneliness, an exploration of lesbian love. There are literary classics and great theatrical works, bestsellers and works of high culture. There are even popular children’s books—cat lovers can rejoice over Millions of Cats and Tigger bouncing into the Hundred Acre Wood.

Films

• Steamboat Willie and Plane Crazy (the silent version) (directed by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks) [5]
• The Cameraman (directed by Edward Sedgwick and Buster Keaton)
• Lights of New York (directed by Bryan Foy; billed as “the first ‘all-talking’ picture”)
• The Circus (directed by Charlie Chaplin)
• The Passion of Joan of Arc (directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer)
• The Singing Fool (directed by Lloyd Bacon; follow-up to The Jazz Singer)
• Speedy (directed by Ted Wilde; Harold Lloyd’s last silent theatrical release)
• In Old Arizona (“100% all talking” film featuring singing cowboys)
• The Man Who Laughs (directed by Paul Leni; features a character who inspired the appearance of the Joker from Batman)
• Should Married Men Go Home? (directed by Leo McCarey and James Parrott; the first Laurel and Hardy film to bill them as a team)
• The Wind (directed by Victor Sjöström)
• The Wedding March (directed by Erich von Stroheim)
• The Crowd (directed by King Vidor)
• The Last Command (directed by Josef von Sternberg; Emil Jannings won the first Academy Award for Best Actor)
• Street Angel (directed by Frank Borzage; Janet Gaynor won the first Academy Award for Best Actress)

Yes, Steamboat Willie is finally entering the public domain. Welcome, Mickey and Minnie Mouse! Read what this means here. But many more wonderful films will also be free of copyright. 1928 was part of the transitional period from silent films to “talkies,” and it brought us both some of the last great silent pictures and the “first ‘all-talking’ picture.” There are features from comedic giants such as Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, and Laurel and Hardy. There are films chosen for preservation in the National Film Registry because they are “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.” There are winners of some of the first Academy Awards. Sadly, many films from the era have been lost forever, while others survive only due to serendipitous stories of rediscovery. Please note that while the original footage from the listed films will be in the public domain, newly added material such as musical accompaniment might still be copyrighted. [6]

Musical Compositions

• Animal Crackers (musical starring the Marx Brothers; book by George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind and lyrics and music by Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby)
• Mack the Knife (original German lyrics by Bertolt Brecht and music by Kurt Weill; from The Threepenny Opera)
• Let’s Do It (Let’s Fall in Love) (Cole Porter; from the musical Paris)
• Sonny Boy (George Gard DeSylva, Lew Brown & Ray Henderson; from the film The Singing Fool starring Al Jolson)
• When You're Smiling (lyrics by Mark Fisher and Joe Goodwin and music by Larry Shay)
• Empty Bed Blues (J. C. Johnson)
• I Wanna Be Loved By You (lyrics by Bert Kalmar and music by Herbert Stothart and Harry Ruby; from the musical Good Boy)
• Makin’ Whoopee! (lyrics by Gus Khan and music by Walter Donaldson)
• You’re My Necessity, You’re The Cream in My Coffee (George Gard DeSylva, Lew Brown & Ray Henderson; from the musical Hold Everything!)
• I Can’t Give You Anything But Love, Baby (lyrics by Dorothy Fields and music by James Francis)
• Ramona (lyrics by L. Wolfe Gilbert and music by Mabel Wayne)
• There’s a Rainbow ‘Round My Shoulder (Al Jolson, Billy Rose, Dave Dreyer; from the film The Singing Fool)
• Beau Koo Jack (lyrics by Walter Melrose and music by Alex Hill and Louis Armstrong)
• Pick Pocket Blues (Bessie Smith)

This year’s musical line-up includes Broadway songs, jazz standards, early blues, and pop music addressing some familiar themes.[7] Only the musical compositions—the music and lyrics that you might see on a piece of sheet music—are entering the public domain, not the recordings of those songs, which are covered by a separate copyright.[8] The lyrics and music to Cole Porter’s Let’s Do It (Let’s Fall In Love) were published in 1928 and will be free for anyone to copy, perform, record, adapt, or interpolate into their own song. But the later recordings by Eartha Kitt, Lady Gaga, and others are still copyrighted. Note, however, that sound recording rights are more limited than composition rights—you can legally imitate a sound recording, even if your imitation sounds exactly the same, you just cannot copy from the actual recording.To hear some great adaptations of public domain songs and other material, visit WNYC’s Public Domain Song Project.

Sound Recordings from 1923

• Charleston (recorded by James P. Johnson)
• Yes! We Have No Bananas (recorded by Billy Jones; Furman and Nash; Eddie Cantor; Belle Baker; The Lanin Orchestra)
• Who’s Sorry Now (recorded by Lewis James; The Happy Six; the Original Memphis Five)
• Down Hearted Blues (recorded by Bessie Smith; Tennessee Ten)
• Lawdy, Lawdy Blues (recorded by Ida Cox)
• Southern Blues and Moonshine Blues (recorded by Ma Rainey)
• Down South Blues (recorded by Hannah Sylvester; The Virginians)
• Wolverine Blues (recorded by the Benson Orchestra of Chicago)
• Tin Roof Blues (recorded by the New Orleans Rhythm Kings)
• That American Boy of Mine and Parade of the Wooden Soldiers (recorded by Paul Whiteman and his Orchestra)
• Dipper Mouth Blues and Froggie More (recorded by King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band, featuring Louis Armstrong)
• Bambalina (recorded by the Ray Miller Orchestra)
• Swingin’ Down the Lane (recorded by the Isham Jones Orchestra; The Shannon Four; The Columbians)

In 2022, under a new law called the Music Modernization Act,[9] decades of sound recordings made from the advent of recording technology through the end of 1922 went into the public domain. In 2023 there was a pause, with no sound recordings entering the public domain. Now, in 2024, recordings from 1923 are open for legal reuse. You can download, remix, or use them in a soundtrack. Yes, these recordings are a century old, but better late than never! As you look through the list above, note that only the 1923 recordings made by these artists are entering the public domain, not their later recordings.

To listen to old recordings, go to the Library of Congress National Jukebox—in 2024 the Library of Congress will make all of the 1923 recordings in its collection available for download from this site, while recordings from 1924 forward will be streaming-only until they are in the public domain.

Copyright will also expire over works of art such as M.C. Escher’s Tower of Babel woodcut. While we were able to locate the copyright records indicating that Escher’s work is copyrighted through the end of 2023, we did not find definitive copyright information for other notable artworks. What we do know is that art published in 1928 – including drawings, paintings, and photography – will be in the public domain in 2024, but many works were actually copyright-free earlier due to noncompliance with the notice and renewal “formalities” that copyright law used to require.

Why Celebrate the Public Domain?

Some material is born in the public domain. This includes ideas, facts, and raw data, which can never be copyrighted. It also includes official works of the US government such as legislation, legal opinions, and NASA images.[10] But for copyrighted culture, the public domain arrives only after a long wait. Why celebrate? When works go into the public domain, they can legally be shared, without permission or fee. Community theaters can screen the films. Youth orchestras can perform the music publicly, without paying licensing fees. Online repositories such as the Internet Archive, HathiTrust, Google Books, and the New York Public Library can make works fully available online. This helps enable access to cultural materials that might otherwise be lost to history. 1928 was a long time ago and the vast majority of works from 1928 are not commercially available. You couldn’t buy them, or even find them, if you wanted. When they enter the public domain in 2024, anyone can rescue them from obscurity and make them available, where we can all discover, enjoy, and breathe new life into them.

The public domain is also a wellspring for creativity. The whole point of copyright is to promote creativity, and the public domain plays a central role in doing so. Copyright law gives authors important rights that encourage creativity and distribution—this is a very good thing. But it also ensures that those rights last for a “limited time,” so that when they expire, works go into the public domain, where future authors can legally build on the past—reimagining the books, making them into films, adapting the songs and movies. That’s a good thing too!

Think of all the films, cartoons, books, plays, musicals, video games, songs, and other works based on Greek mythology, or on the works of Shakespeare. Think of the literature that has built on Jane Austen’s novels, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, or the music that is based on Pachelbel’s Canon. As explained in a New York Times editorial: “When a work enters the public domain it means the public can afford to use it freely, to give it new currency . . . [public domain works] are an essential part of every artist’s sustenance, of every person’s sustenance.”

Shakespeare’s works have given us everything from The Lion King and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (from Hamlet) to 10 Things I Hate About You and Kiss Me Kate (from The Taming of the Shrew) to West Side Story (from Romeo and Juliet). That is the promise of the public domain. Who knows what the works entering the public domain in 2024 might inspire? As with Shakespeare, the ability freely to reinvent these works may spur a range of creativity, from the serious to the whimsical, and in doing so allow the original artists’ legacies to endure. And of course Shakespeare himself, who predated copyright law, borrowed heavily from his predecessors. One work inspires another. That is how the public domain feeds creativity.

Let me take just one example: feminist remakes of public domain works. It is striking how often remakes have transformed the original by giving voices and agency to the female characters. For contemporary examples, one could look to the movie Poor Things currently playing in theaters (inspired by Frankenstein) and Natalie Haynes’ 2023 book Stone Blind (reimagining the Medusa myth). After F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby went into the public domain in 2021, Nghi Vo’s The Chosen and the Beautiful reinvented the book from the perspective of a fascinating Jordan Baker character, and Jillian Cantor’s Beautiful Little Fools retells the Gatsby story through the voices of three of its female characters (Jordan, Daisy Buchanan, and Catherine McCoy). This kind of retelling does what art does best; gets us to reimagine a situation from a different, but neglected perspective. Those retellings are exactly what the public domain allows.

The United States is a country that is always reimagining itself and retelling its own story. One way it does so is through its iconic works of fiction. As Gatsby was set to enter the public domain, Blake Hazard, Fitzgerald’s great-granddaughter, said: “We’re now looking to a new period and trying to view it with enthusiasm, knowing some exciting things may come.” And that is just what happened. The New York Times reported a wealth of new editions with introductions by the likes of Times critic and Pulitzer-Prize winner Wesley Morris and Harvard scholar David J. Alworth, bringing “fresh analysis, nearly a century later, of what our ideas of ‘American’ now entail.” The book was adapted into TV shows, animations, graphic novels, and musicals. There were new works such as Michael Farris Smith’s prequel Nick, which tells the backstory of Nick Carraway, Self-Made Boys, a young-adult “Great Gatsby remix” centering on trans love, The Gay Gatsby, and The Great Gatsby Undead (the zombie edition). The hosts of Planet Money even created an audio book, reading the entire book on the air.

Winnie-the-Pooh’s entry into the public domain in 2022 likewise sparked a range of creativity. The most publicity went to celebrity and incongruous reuses, from Ryan Reynolds’ “Winnie-the-Screwed” ad for Mint Mobile to a comic strip in which Pooh celebrates his nudity, to the horror film Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey. A sustainable toilet paper company even turned it into a statement about deforestation with Winnie-the-Pooh: the Deforested Edition, in which the Hundred Acre Wood has been cut down. Pooh and Christopher Robin can’t climb trees. Owl’s home is a mere stump.

These are the kinds of uses that gain public attention; there are many more creators who built upon the newly public-domain Pooh book—I know this because they have been kind enough to send me cuddlier drawings and poems such as this that did not generate as much buzz, but do reflect how Pooh inspired artists and writers on a smaller scale.

Are all of these new works critically acclaimed or something of which rights holders would approve? Some yes, some no. But they are part of our culture, and time will tell whether they will be rewarded in either the commercial marketplace or the marketplace of ideas. You can look at the Shakespeare or Jane Austen remakes that have stood the test of time to get an idea of public domain reuses with enduring appeal. And just as Pride and Prejudice and Zombies did not diminish the luster of Jane Austen’s novel (at least for me), the original works entering the public domain more recently—from Gatsby to Winnie-the-Pooh—remain intact

The public domain gives us not just material to build upon but material to learn from, with lessons both joyful and sobering. This year’s works offer a temporal cross section of our cultural past, capturing the era in its complexity. In 1928 the Harlem Renaissance was in full swing, but there was also legally-enforced segregation, and many works from the era contain racial slurs and demeaning depictions.[11] Unfortunately, some of the films entering the public domain show performances in blackface, a distressing reminder of the racist stereotypes that dominated portrayals of African-Americans in popular culture. When such works enter the public domain, anyone is free to grapple with them, to critique, explain, and even remake them. The public domain is a repository of our history—a record of all our culture, not just the parts we like. Indeed, it is precisely because the works are no longer subject to control by their copyright holders that both their beauty and their ugliness can be freely explored by today’s scholars and citizens.

The Tip of the (Melting) Iceberg

Many of the works featured above are famous; that is why we included them. Their copyright holders benefitted from 20 more years of copyright because the works had enduring popularity and were still earning royalties. But when Congress extended the copyright term for works like Steamboat Willie, it also did so for all of the works whose commercial viability had long subsided. For the vast majority—probably 99%—of works from 1928, no copyright holder financially benefited from continued copyright. Yet they remained off limits, for no good reason. A Congressional Research Service report indicated that only around 2% of copyrights between 55 and 75 years old retain commercial value. After 75 years, that percentage is even lower. Most older works are “orphan works,” where the copyright owner cannot be found at all.

Now that these works are in the public domain, anyone can make them available to the public. This enables access to our cultural heritage—access to materials that might otherwise be forgotten. 1928 was a long time ago. The majority of works from that year are out of circulation. When they enter the public domain in 2024, anyone can republish or post them online. (Empirical studies have shown that public domain books are less expensive, available in more editions and formats, and more likely to be in print—see here, here, and here.) The works listed above are just the tip of the iceberg. Many more works are waiting to be rediscovered.

Unfortunately, part of this iceberg has already melted. As the story of silent films shows, the fact that works from 1928 are legally available does not mean they are actually available. Much of our silent film heritage has been lost— destroyed, discarded, or allowed to decay.[12] Some older films have disintegrated, rotting in their cans, while preservationists eagerly waited for them to enter the public domain so that they could legally digitize them, evidence of what long copyright terms do to the conservation of cultural artifacts.[13] For the material that has survived, however, the long-awaited entry into the public domain is still something to celebrate.

Another part of the iceberg includes works from 1928 and later that may already be in the public domain because the copyright owners did not comply with the “formalities” that used to be necessary for copyright protection. In the past, your work went into the public domain if you did not include a copyright notice—e.g. “Copyright 1928 Walt Disney”—when publishing it, or if you did not renew the copyright after 28 years. We know that works published in 1928 and earlier are out of copyright in 2024, but so are works published from 1929-1977 without a copyright notice, works published from 1978 through 3/1/1989 without a notice and without subsequent registration within five years (the registration fixed the lack of copyright notice), and works published from 1929-1963 with a notice but without a copyright renewal.

For example, the 1928 film that inspired the title of Steamboat Willie – Buster Keaton’s Steamboat Bill, Jr. – went into the public domain in 1956 due to non-renewal. The same is true of H. P. Lovecraft’s short story “The Call of Cthulhu.” It was published in the February 1928 issue of the pulp magazine Weird Times. While the March and April issues of Weird Times had their copyrights renewed, it appears that the February issue did not, letting its “obscene and incredible monstrosity” slither into the public domain in 1956.

Current copyright law no longer has these requirements. Even though these works might technically be in the public domain, however, as a practical matter, users sometimes have to assume they’re still copyrighted (or risk a lawsuit) because the relevant copyright information is difficult to find—older records can be fragmentary, confused, or lost. That’s why Public Domain Day is so significant. On January 1, 2024, the public will know for sure that all works published in 1928 and earlier are free for use without tedious or inconclusive research to find out if the copyright holder complied with formalities or resolve date discrepancies. Still, it is worth shining a light on this “invisible public domain”—including all of the works that entered the public domain years ago due to non-renewal.[14]

This analysis highlights an additional point: the sheer complexity of the rules we have set to govern our collective culture.[15] That harms both citizens and current artists, who can’t know what works they are and are not allowed to use without expensive professional advice. We have tried to provide some legal background here and in the footnotes, but sometimes it is easier to find Woozles and Heffalumps than definitive copyright information.

The Copyright Term Extension Blues

While the US finally turned on the public domain spigot in 2019, after a 20-year drought, Canada’s government recently decided to turn its spigot off. In 2022, Canada froze its public domain for 20 years with its C-19 copyright law—doing the same thing the US did in 1998, with all of the negative effects that have now been well documented.

The verdict is in: adding an extra 20 years to the US copyright term was a “big mistake.” This is not a quote from someone who is equivocal about copyright; it is a quote from the former head of our Copyright Office. Another former Director of the Copyright Office proposed shortening the copyright term by 20 years unless copyright owners “assert their continued interest in exploiting the work by registering with the Copyright Office in a timely manner.” Copyright holders such as Disney could readily secure “the full benefit of the additional twenty years,” while all of the works no longer being exploited would enter the public domain, fulfilling copyright’s goal of benefiting the public.

Indeed, there is a consensus among policymakers, economists, and academics that lengthy copyright extensions impose costs that far outweigh their benefits. Why? The benefits are minuscule—economists (including five Nobel laureates) have shown that term extension does not spur additional creativity. At the same time, it causes enormous harm, locking away millions of older works that are no longer generating any revenue for the copyright holders. Films have disintegrated because preservationists can’t digitize them. The works of historians and journalists are incomplete. Artists find their cultural heritage off limits. (See studies like the Hargreaves Review commissioned by the UK government, empirical comparisons of the availability of copyrighted works and public domain works, and economic studies of the effects of copyright.)

So…no one would be silly enough to keep extending copyright, right? Wrong! Countries such as Canada, New Zealand, and Japan have recently lengthened their copyright terms by 20 years—not as a result of reasoned debate, but to comply with trade deals that require harmonization of copyright terms. With harmonization, there is a catch: countries are always made to harmonize with the longer term, never the shorter term, even if the shorter term is a better choice for both economic and policy reasons. As Professor Michael Geist explained, the Canadian term extension will “cost Canadian education millions of dollars and would delay works entering the public domain for an entire generation,” yet the government chose to do so without mitigation measures “to reduce the economic cost and cultural harm that comes from term extension.” Canada could have given the full copyright term to rights holders who wanted it while allowing works that were no longer being commercially exploited—including orphan works—to enter the public domain, but the government rejected these recommendations.

This is irrational. It would be more efficient to simply levy a new tax on the public and give the proceeds to the small percentage of copyright holders whose works are still making money after a life-plus-50 term. The term extensions not only transfer wealth to a tiny subset of rights owners, but also lock away the remaining works from future creators and the public. Nonetheless, despite overwhelming evidence that term extension does more harm than good, countries are still extending their copyrights. Even as we celebrate a new crop of public domain works, it is important to realize that the global public domain is still shrinking. This makes an understanding of its vital contributions—to creativity, access, education, history—all the more important.

Conclusion

Each year, I create this guide to the works that will be entering the US public domain. This year is especially symbolic because of Mickey Mouse’s long-anticipated entry into the public domain. Each year’s site is a celebration, but once again it is a bittersweet one.

We celebrate the emergence of thousands works into the public domain, where everyone can build on them, remake them, present new versions of them, or use them for education or simply enjoyment. The research is complicated and mind-numbingly finicky—and we are lawyers whose professional expertise is copyright and the public domain; further proof of the barriers that poorly chosen copyright regimes can present to those who want to obey the law but cannot easily find out what material is free to use and what is not. A clearer system would benefit us all: artists, citizens and entrepreneurs. But it is not the complexity of the research that provides the bittersweet sentiment; our annual review gets a gratifying degree of attention and a Center for the Study of the Public Domain that was unwilling to…study the public domain would be a strange beast indeed.

The melancholy comes from the unnecessary losses that our current system causes—the vast majority of works that no longer retain commercial value and are not otherwise available, yet we lock them all up to provide exclusivity to a tiny minority. Those works which, remember, constitute part of our collective culture, are simply off limits for use without fear of legal liability. Since most of them are “orphan works” (where the copyright owner cannot be found) we could not get permission from a rights holder even if we wanted to. And many of those works do not survive that long cultural winter, as with the lost silent films mentioned earlier. Professor Hal Abelson, the MIT computer scientist, once asked: “What does it mean to be human if we don’t have a shared culture? And what does a shared culture mean if you can’t share it?” On Public Domain Day, that act of grateful sharing begins for another year of our culture, something to celebrate indeed. Yet we should also spare a moment to regret that which we have lost.

Want to learn more about the public domain? Here is the legal background on how we got our current copyright terms (including summaries of court cases), why the public domain matters, and answers to Frequently Asked Questions. You can also read James Boyle’s book The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind (Yale University Press, 2008)—naturally, you can read the full text of The Public Domain online at no cost and you are free to copy and redistribute it for non-commercial purposes.

More information on the copyright term can be found on this excellent chart on Copyright Term and the Public Domain in the United States. For additional guidance from the Copyright Office, see its circulars on Duration of Copyright, How to Investigate the Copyright Status of a Work, and Copyright Restoration Under the URAA. For a detailed guide to identifying public domain material, you can purchase Stephen Fishman’s The Public Domain: How to Find & Use Copyright-Free Writings, Music, Art & More. You can also read “In Ambiguous Battle: The Promise (and Pathos) of Public Domain Day,” an article by Center Director Jennifer Jenkins revealing the promise and the limits of various attempts to reverse the erosion of the public domain, referring to a previous Public Domain Day.

[1] Our featured works are only entering the public domain under US copyright law. The copyright term for older works is different in other countries. In the EU, works from authors who died in 1953 are going into the public domain in 2024 after a life-plus-70 year term. So Eugene O’Neill’s play Long Day’s Journey into Night will be in the public domain there. But in the US, that play was published posthumously in 1956 and its copyright does not expire until 2052. Conversely, if you are in the US, Agatha Christie’s Poirot novel The Mystery of the Blue Train enters the US public domain in 2024. But in the EU, Agatha Christie’s works are still copyrighted. Generally, under the principle of lex loci delicti, users are governed by the law in the jurisdiction where they are using the creative work. See Itar-Tass Russian News Agency v. Russian Kurier, Inc., 153 F.3d 82 (2d Cir. 1998). But note that this inquiry can be more complicated and fact-specific, depending on the circumstances surrounding the use.

[2] Only the original works published in 1928 are entering the US public domain. Later versions of them—adaptations, movies, or translations—may still be copyrighted. The original German version of All Quiet on the Western Front (Im Westen nichts Neues) published in 1928 is in the public domain, but translations from later years may still be copyrighted. In addition, in the US, only the author’s works from 1928 and earlier are in the public domain, not all of the other work published by that author. While you are free to use the lyrics and music from Let’s Do It (Let’s Fall in Love), later songs by Cole Porter are still copyrighted.

[3] The 1998 Copyright Term Extension Act gave works published from 1923 through 1977 a 95-year term, expiring on January 1 after the conclusion of the 95th year. Doing the math, works from 1928 were copyrighted for 95 years—through 2023—and are in the public domain January 1 2024. (Unpublished works have a different term – in the US, unpublished works from authors who died in 1953 will be entering the public domain after a life-plus-70 term.) Works published before 1978 had to meet certain requirements to be eligible for the 95-year term—they all had to be published with a copyright notice, and works from before 1964 also had to have their copyrights renewed after an initial 28-year term. The word “published” is important and has a special meaning under copyright law. It refers to when the work was sold or distributed to the general public with the authority of the copyright owner. Determining publication status can be complicated, however, and vary depending on the kind of work—with music from before 1978, for example, only distribution in written form counted as a publication. In the US, works created since 1978 are treated differently from those published before 1978. Works by natural persons from 1978 forward have a life-plus-70 term, unless they are works of corporate authorship, which are copyrighted for 95 years after publication.

The works on our lists are in the public domain because of either a 1928 registration or publication with a 1928 copyright notice. For most of the featured works we were also able to track down the renewal data indicating that they are still in-copyright through the end of 2023 and affirmatively entering the public domain in 2024.

Foreign works from 1928 such as D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Bertolt Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera (Die Dreigroschenoper) are copyrighted until 2024 because of a provision that, in 1996, restored copyright over certain foreign works that were in the public domain because of non-compliance with notice or renewal requirements. Such works were still copyrighted in the US until 2024 if 1) they complied with US notice and renewal formalities, 2) they were published in the US within 30 days of publication abroad, or 3) if neither of these are true, they were still copyrighted in their home country as of 1/1/96. If the owners of copyright in foreign works filed a Notice of Intent to Enforce (NIE) their restored copyright you can find that information here. You can also find copyright restoration records in the Copyright Office records or the Copyright Office’s new search portal here.

[4] Peter Pan; or, the Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up is finally entering the public domain in the US, despite the play having been performed since 1904 and the Peter Pan novel being published in 1911. Why the delay? Because the play’s script was not “published” for copyright purposes until 1928, pushing back its copyright expiration until 2024. It will be public domain in the US, but not in the United Kingdom, where there is a special provision giving the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children – to which J.M. Barrie assigned his copyright – the right to receive royalties from the play in perpetuity (just royalties, not the right to stop others from using the play).

[5] Steamboat Willie was not the only Mickey Mouse film from 1928. The mouse appeared in two other films shown the same year—silent versions of Plane Crazy and The Gallopin’ Gaucho. The silent version of Plane Crazy is public domain in 2024 but we could not find similar data for The Gallopin’ Gaucho. While the original silent version of Plane Crazy is not available, we assume that the footage is the same or similar to the footage in the publicly available version that added sound the subsequent year. The copyright notices on the available copies of those films, which were released after sound was added, say MCMXXIX, or 1929, so that is when the sound versions enter the public domain. Disney’s registrations and renewals for those same films claim a 1930 date, but if the date in the copyright notice is earlier than the registration date, the earlier date controls, so they are in the public domain in 2025. (According to the 1960 Copyright Law Revision Notice of Copyright Study, date discrepancies are resolved “in favor of the public” and the “term of protection is computed from the earlier date.” The 1960 Copyright Law Revision Copyright Renewal Study adds that “when the copyright notice on a published work contains a date earlier than the year when copyright was actually secured, the first term, and hence the renewal time limits, are computed from the last day of the year in the notice.”)

[6] The 1928 version of Charlie Chaplin’s The Circus is public domain, but newly added material in its 1960s rerelease, including the new score, is still copyrighted. However, the later copyright only covers newly added creative material. The original content from the 1928 work remains free. If a film has been restored or reconstructed, only original and creative additions are eligible for copyright; if a restoration faithfully mimics the preexisting film, it does not contain newly copyrightable material. Putting skill, labor, and money into a project is not enough to qualify it for copyright. The Supreme Court has made clear that “the sine qua non of copyright is originality.”

[7] Some lists of works from 1928 include George Gershwin’s American in Paris and Maurice Ravel’s Bolero because they were written and performed in 1928, but the copyright records show a date of 1929, making them public domain in 2025. Under copyright law at the time, musical compositions were not copyrighted until a manuscript was published with a copyright notice, so in an abundance of caution we are not listing them unless we can find sheet music with a 1928 copyright notice.

[8] US copyright law treats musical compositions and sound recordings differently. A composition consists of the lyrics and music that you might see on a piece of sheet music. A sound recording is the embodiment of a particular performance of that composition, fixed on media such as vinyl records or on digital audio files. If I write a song called “Public Domain Day!” and you record it, I get the copyright over the composition and you get a separate copyright over your recording of my song. Note that US copyright law allows you to cover a song without permission while it is still copyrighted under the “compulsory license” in 17 U.S.C. § 115, so long as you do not “change the basic melody or fundamental character” of the original song and pay a pre-set royalty rate. When a song is in the public domain you can make covers without complying with this provision, and you can also make other adaptations, performances, and interpolations.

[9] The Music Modernization Act’s “Classics Protection and Access Act” established a timeline for old recordings to enter the public domain. Recordings first published between 1923–1946 are public domain in January 2024–2047 (the year after a 100-year term). Then there is a ten-year pause from 2048–2058. After that, recordings first published between 1947–1956 are public domain in January 2058–2067, after a 110-year term. The term for all remaining recordings first fixed from 1957 until February 15, 1972 ends on February 15, 2067. Note that the term of protection for sound recordings in other countries is different from the one in the US: in the EU it is 70 years, and elsewhere it is 50 years.

[10] The category of “born in the public domain” also includes official works of the US government such as legislation, regulations, legal opinions, hearings, and speeches. As government works, the images from the James Webb telescope, the NASA collections NASA on The Commons (flickr) and NASA image and video library, the famous “Earthrise” photograph taken by astronaut William Anders, and the Farm Security Administration - Office of War Information Photograph Collection (a pictorial record of American life from 1935-1944) are all copyright-free. Another category of public domain material consists of works that creators choose to dedicate to the public domain, and many have done so using Creative Commons’ CC0 tool.

[11] There was also rampant exploitation of Black talent: Black musicians, for example, were routinely excluded from copyright’s benefits and denied both recognition and compensation for their work. To learn more about the unequal treatment of Black artists, you can read the excellent scholarship of Professor Olufunmilayo Arewa, including From J.C. Bach to Hip Hop: Musical Borrowing, Copyright and Cultural Context, Blues Lives: Promise and Perils of Musical Copyright and Writing Rights: Copyright’s Visual Bias and African American Music; Professor Kevin J. Greene, including Copyright, Culture & (and) Black Music: A Legacy of Unequal Protection and “Copynorms,” Black Cultural Production, and the Debate over African-American Reparations; and Professor Lateef Mtima, including Intellectual Property, Entrepreneurship and Social Justice: From Swords to Ploughshares.

[12] The Library of Congress study The Survival of American Silent Feature Films: 1912–1929 found that 75% of American silent films are lost to history in their complete form. A search in its silent film database shows just how many films are lost, including many from 1928.

[13] There is a narrow provision in the law allowing for some restorations, but it is limited and does not safeguard the work of many preservationists. The Library of Congress report confirms that “[t]he public domain status of some films has encouraged their survival,” referring to films that came out of copyright because the rights were not renewed, which allowed others to invest in their preservation. You can read our analysis of how long copyright terms thwart film preservation efforts here.

[14] Millions of books published from 1928–1963 are already in the public domain because the copyright owners did not renew the rights. Efforts have been underway to unlock this “secret” public domain, but compiling a definitive list of those titles is a daunting task. The relevant registration and renewal information is in the 450,000-page Catalog of Copyright Entries (“CCE”). Confirming that works without apparent renewals are in the public domain involves additional complexities. Happily, the HathiTrust Copyright Review Program reports: “Since 2008, over 195 reviewers at 53 institutions have reviewed 900,000 items, determining that more than 509,000 are no longer protected by copyright and have entered the public domain.” These items can therefore be made available online.

[15] Copyright law is complex. It has been updated many times, with each revision adding to the complexity. The lawmaking process has not produced a set of rules that is comprehensible to regular citizens (or even lawyers), and we do not have clear and comprehensive records of copyright ownership.

Written by Jennifer Jenkins. Special thanks to Sean Dudley for researching works and images from 1928 and creating video content and to Michael Wright and Grant Young for building this site.
https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/2024/





Your Kid Prefers YouTube to Netflix. That’s a Problem for Streamers.

Major streaming services test releasing children’s content on YouTube and cut back on fare for kids
Jessica Toonkel

When Loren Levy’s son Simon was little, he loved watching “Thomas & Friends,” the British cartoon about a talking train. That changed when Simon turned 8 and began watching videos on YouTube.

“Now, all he wants to do is watch gamers and basketball clips and highlights on YouTube,” said the South Orange, N.J.-based human-resources consultant. She can’t persuade him to watch anything else.

The Levy family learned what has become clear across the media industry: When it comes to children’s entertainment preferences, YouTube trumps all.

Netflix’s NFLX -0.99% decrease; red down pointing triangle share of U.S. streaming viewership by 2- to 11-year-olds fell to 21% in September from 25% two years earlier, according to Nielsen. Meanwhile, YouTube’s share jumped to 33% from 29.4% over the same period.

That reality is changing major streaming services’ approach to children’s entertainment, from what shows and movies they make to where they release them. Many are pulling back on investments in children’s content, and some streamers have started content for young viewers on such platforms as Google-owned YouTube and Roblox.

Entertainment companies recognize that youths are increasingly drawn to short-form content, not longer shows on streaming services, said Michael Hirsh, co-founder of WOW Unlimited Media, a Canadian animator.

“These viewers are watching on their iPads or on other platforms that have moved to shorter and shorter segments, and it’s a real issue for the streamers,” said Hirsh.

When Toronto-based Spin Master released its animated children’s film about a school where students learn to ride unicorns, it made its debut on Roblox in September and was released on Netflix about two months later. The studio also released half of “Unicorn Academy” on YouTube in October, and Netflix released the second half of the movie on its own YouTube channel at the same time.

“It’s really about following the consumer,” said Jeremy Tucker, global chief marketing officer at Spin Master, the studio behind major children’s franchises including “PAW Patrol.”

To get the rights to one of the biggest preschool animated hits, “CoComelon,” the streamer agreed with the show’s creator, Moonbug, to let the show remain on YouTube, where it started and continues to air. While the streamer has long had children’s channels on YouTube, such as Netflix After School, it has been resistant to putting full episodes of children’s originals on the platform for fear of cannibalizing its audience, according to people familiar with the situation.

That has started to shift recently. Last month, Moonbug, with Netflix’s blessing, released the first episode of a CoComelon spinoff series, called “CoComelon Lane,” on YouTube a week before the series came to the streamer.

Sony, with Netflix’s permission, in recent weeks launched a YouTube channel of episodes and clips from its “The Creature Cases” preschool series on Netflix to help draw a bigger audience, according to a person familiar with the situation.

As recently as a few years ago, entertainment companies such as Netflix and Warner Bros. Discovery, then WarnerMedia, ramped up their animated divisions. They saw cartoons—and youth programming in general—as essential to keeping subscribers as families want to keep services with shows their children watch.

Research showed that families with children canceled their service at a lower rate than households without them, said Tom Ascheim, a veteran Disney children’s programming executive hired by Warner in 2020 to oversee a new division creating shows for children and young adults.

Most-watched streaming shows and movies in the U.S., in millions of minutes
Source: Nielsen
*A series on Netflix, not the original movie ​Note: Orange bars are kids' programming. Data is for the week of Nov. 20-26.

Leo (2023)
Squid Game: The Challenge
Bluey
Young Sheldon
Grey's Anatomy
The Crown
NCIS
Suits
The First Wives Club*
Friends

“Every piece of data showed that households with children watch more and were less likely to churn,” said Ascheim, who recently co-founded Pith & Pixie Dust, a consulting firm that works with companies on attracting younger audiences.

Warner executives found that if young children watched franchises like Batman, the longtime value of that household as a subscriber was three times as large as one that hadn’t watched them, said a person familiar with the situation. Children’s shows were also thought to attract global audiences because the story lines are often universal and animation is easy to dub in foreign languages.

Under Ascheim, Warner’s new kids and young adult division planned a host of new shows for its linear networks and for Max.

Then austerity set in. After Warner merged with Discovery in April 2022, it made cuts to its animated and children’s division as part of an effort to reduce costs and pay down debt.

Ascheim’s position was eliminated, and many of the cartoons planned for what is now Max were shelved or licensed to competitors. The company pulled episodes of “Sesame Street” from Max to save money and has said that while it will continue to offer some children’s programming, Max’s focus is more on adults and families.

Netflix has also slimmed down its slate of animated children’s originals, opting instead to rely more on third parties such as Skydance Animation, with which it just signed a multiyear deal to do animated films. Now, Netflix is focusing its youth programming resources on bigger swings, such as the animated film “Leo,” starring Adam Sandler, its biggest animated debut ever in terms of views.

The eight largest U.S. streamers, including Netflix, Warner’s Max and Amazon Prime Video, added 53 originals catering to children and families in the first half of the year, down from 135 for the first half of 2022, according to Ampere. That represents a decrease of 61%, compared with a 31% decrease in overall originals across these streamers for the same period.

Among the challenges streamers have confronted in making children’s content is kids’ tendency to seek out characters they know. It is hard to make new ideas break through.

“It is really difficult to build new franchises, especially in this fragmented streaming market,” said Jeff Grossman, head of programming for Paramount+, which features such franchises as Nickelodeon’s “SpongeBob SquarePants, “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” and “PAW Patrol.” Children’s programming is consistently the most-watched content on Paramount+.

That is particularly true when these companies are going up against Disney, whose Disney+ streaming service is still core to families with young children, including such big hits as “Bluey,” major animated films and Mickey Mouse.

It takes time to create animated fare, which means entertainment companies have to approve multiple seasons if they want to keep their audience before they get too old to watch the show anymore.

That is what happened with Caleb Mogil, who at 3 years old couldn’t stop watching “Charlie’s Colorforms City,” an animated series on Netflix. In the show, Charlie, a boy made out of the Colorforms stickers, takes viewers on adventures with shapes and colors.

Caleb loved the first season, but the second season wasn’t released for 2½ years, said his father, Ben Mogil, who is managing director of Qualia Legacy Advisors and has worked with animation studios.

By that time, Caleb had already moved on to the animated version of the British comedy “Mr. Bean,” on Amazon Prime Video.
https://www.wsj.com/business/media/y...amers-86b132f8





What Is Decentralized File Sharing And How Does It Work?

Decentralized file sharing offer an exciting and arguably safer alternative to centralized cloud storage solutions.

Decentralized File Sharing

In the age of decentralization, where the paradigm has shifted from centralized authorities to democratized access and control, decentralized file sharing has emerged to challenge traditional data storage and distribution models.

In this guide, we define decentralized file sharing, explain how it works, and list some top projects providing this service.

What Is Decentralized File Sharing?

Decentralized file sharing is a protocol for accessing and distributing data using peer-to-peer (P2P) technology instead of a centralized server. The protocol comprises a network of nodes where each user (node) offers bandwidth and storage space.

Traditionally, data transfer relies on centralized servers, which can be vulnerable as a single point of failure. Decentralized file sharing improves the security of the information since it is split into several parts, in addition to end-to-end encryption to prevent unauthorized access.

How Does Decentralized File Sharing Work?

Decentralized file sharing uses a distributed architecture that relies on P2P networks. Four elements explain the protocol’s workings:

Peer Interaction

Each user plays the role of a server and a client. A node can request or share a file directly with other nodes. The direct interaction eliminates the need for a centralized server.

Peer Discovery

Distributed hash tables (DHTs) or decentralized protocols allow participants to discover each other. DHTs enable the storage and retrieval of key-value pairs in a network. The decentralized protocols establish the rules of communication between the peers in the network. Linked peers keep track of each other to ensure compliance with the pre-determined rules.

Blockchain and Smart Contracts

Incorporating blockchain technology in decentralized file-sharing systems ensures transparency and security. With cryptographic techniques such as end-to-end encryption, only authorized parties can access the information.

File-sharing systems utilize smart contracts to establish the rules on access, users’ rewards (mainly tokens), and information verification. The self-executing nature of the smart contracts then allows the decentralized file-sharing system to operate autonomously.

File Distribution

The systems ensure file accessibility and network reliability by splitting files into smaller units spread out throughout the network. This eliminates the reliance on a single server.

3 Top Decentralized File Sharing Projects

In this section, we highlight three of the most popular file-sharing projects and what they are all about.

InterPlanetary File System (IPFS)

The InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) protocol is a P2P distributed system for storing and accessing data. The protocol uses a content-addressed system where each piece of content has a unique IPFS Content Identifier (CID) hash, allowing the network to store information based on its hash instead of its location. The nodes use DHTs to retrieve the corresponding value when a key is provided.

Filecoin

Filecoin operates similarly to Dropbox, with one key difference: blockchain utilization. Once a user submits data for storage, it is broken down into smaller pieces and distributed to a network of miners who offer storage space on their devices in exchange for rewards.

The platform requires miners to perform computations (or proofs) to prove they stored the information (Proof-of-Replication) and for how long (Proof-of-Spacetime).

Arweave

Arweave offers permanent storage using blockchain-based architecture. The platform weaves data into its blockchain’s fabric to ensure it is accessible indefinitely. Arweave uses a consensus mechanism called Proof of Access, where miners compete to prove their ability to retrieve stored data.

Benefits and Drawbacks of Decentralized File Sharing

Pros

• Eliminating a single point of failure: The system functions normally even if some nodes stop operating.
• Minimized unauthorized access: With end-to-end encryption, only authorized users can decode the information.
• Scalability: As more users join the network, the capacity increases.

Cons

• Data consistency: With no central authority to take control, coordination challenges may lead to inconsistent data in different file versions.
• Required technical knowledge: Unlike their centralized competitors, decentralized file sharing platforms require some knowledge of concepts such as blockchain and smart contracts.
• Regulatory uncertainties: With regulators globally playing catch-up with blockchain platforms, there is no way of telling the impact of future laws.

Final Take

Decentralized file sharing offers a path away from centralized systems and towards direct data sharing between peers. Strong encryption practices can allay data privacy fears and reward systems, incentivizing more users, which increases the level of decentralization.

However, just like other decentralized inventions, it’s not manipulation-proof and beyond the reach of hackers and other bad actors. The existing protocols are promising, but further development will determine the long-term viability of decentralized file-sharing protocols.
https://unchainedcrypto.com/decentralized-file-sharing/





‘Shakeout has Begun’ after $5bn Streaming Loss for Netflix Rivals

Tie-ups and cuts on menu as Disney, Warner, Comcast and Paramount seek new ways to keep up
Anna Nicolaou in New York and Christopher Grimes

The world’s largest traditional entertainment companies face a reckoning in 2024 after losing more than $5bn in the past year from the streaming services they built to compete with Netflix.

Disney, Warner Bros Discovery, Comcast and Paramount — US entertainment conglomerates that have been growing ever larger for decades — are facing pressure to shrink or sell legacy businesses, scale back production and slash costs following billions in losses from their digital platforms.

Shari Redstone, Paramount’s billionaire controlling shareholder, has effectively put the company on the block in recent weeks. She has held talks about selling the Hollywood studio to Skydance, the production company behind Top Gun: Maverick, people familiar with the matter say.

Paramount chief executive Bob Bakish also discussed a possible combination over lunch with Warner CEO David Zaslav in mid-December. In both cases the discussions were said to be at an early stage and people familiar with the talks cautioned that a deal might not materialise.

Beyond their streaming losses, the traditional media groups are facing a weak advertising market, declining television revenues and higher production costs following the Hollywood strikes.

Rich Greenfield, an analyst at LightShed Partners, said Paramount’s deal discussions were a reflection of the “complete and utter panic” in the industry.

“TV advertising is falling far short, cord-cutting is continuing to accelerate, sports costs are going up and the movie business is not performing,” he said. “Everything is going wrong that can go wrong. The only thing [the companies] know how to do to survive is try to merge and cut costs.”

But as the traditional media owners struggle, Netflix, the tech group that pioneered the streaming model over a decade ago, has emerged as the winner of the battle to reshape video distribution.

“For much of the past four years, the entertainment industry spent money like drunken sailors to fight the first salvos of the streaming wars,” analyst Michael Nathanson wrote in November. “Now, we are finally starting to feel the hangover and the weight of the unpaid bar bill.”

For companies that have been trying to compete with Netflix, Nathanson added, “the shakeout has begun”.

After a bumpy 2022, Netflix has set itself apart from rivals — most notably by being profitable. Earnings for its most recent quarter soared past Wall Street’s expectations as it added 9mn new subscribers — the strongest rise since early 2020, when Covid-19 lockdowns led to a jump.

“Netflix has pulled away,” says John Martin, co-founder of Pugilist Capital and former chief executive of Turner Broadcasting. For its rivals, he said, the question is “how do you create a viable streaming service with a viable business model? Because they’re not working.”

The leading streaming services aggressively raised prices in 2023. Now, analysts, investors and executives predict that consolidation could be ahead next year as some of the smaller services combine or bow out of the streaming wars.

Warner, home to HBO and the Warner Bros movie studio, has made a small profit at its US streaming services this year, in part by raising prices, aggressively culling some series and licensing others to Netflix. However, this has come at a price: Warner lost more than 2mn streaming subscribers in its two most recent quarters.

The company, which merged with rival Discovery last year, has long been rumoured as a potential takeover candidate, with Comcast seen as the most likely buyer. But Zaslav in November hinted that his group wanted to be an acquirer instead of a target.

“There are a lot of . . . excess players in the market. So, this will give us a chance not only to fight to grow in the next year, but to have the kind of balance sheet and the kind of stability . . . that we could be really opportunistic over the next 12 to 24 months”, he said on an earnings call.

The terms of the Warner-Discovery merger barred the group from dealmaking for two years. That period expires on April 8.

Disney, the largest traditional media company, is in the midst of a gutting restructuring that has featured 7,000 job cuts and attacks from activist investors. It lost more than $1.6bn from its streaming businesses in the first nine months of 2023, during which its Disney+ service gained 8mn subscribers. The company says it will turn a profit in streaming in late 2024.

Bob Iger, Disney chief executive, this year openly pondered whether some of its assets still fit within the company, prompting speculation that he was considering disposals. But no deals emerged, leading some investors to conclude there is little appetite among private equity or tech companies for acquiring legacy businesses.

Paramount’s shares have risen almost 40 per cent since early November as sale speculation mounted. The stock rose sharply after the Skydance talks were reported, but both Paramount and Warner shares fell after news of their discussions came to light.

Analysts said the two companies’ high debt levels were an immediate concern for investors. “We suspect investors will focus on pro forma leverage above all else,” Citi analysts wrote in a note last week. They estimated that an all-stock combination of Warner and Paramount could yield at least $1bn of synergies.

But Greenfield said merging two companies with lossmaking streaming services and large portfolios of declining television assets was not the answer to their problems.

“The right answer should be, let’s stop trying to be in the streaming business,” he said. “The answer is, let’s get smaller and focused and stop trying to be a huge company. Let’s dramatically shrink.”
https://www.ft.com/content/ec0f7996-...9-020ad470c25a





FCC Rejects TV and Radio Owners’ Call for Deregulation

The owners had argued for looser ownership restrictions given the growth of social media, podcasts and other online services.
Al Tompkins

The Federal Communications Commission dashed the hopes of TV and radio ownership groups that wanted the commission to loosen ownership restrictions.

The broadcasters had argued that lifting ownership restrictions would allow local stations to more aggressively compete with social media and streaming sources that are eating away at audiences and revenue. Social media and streaming services — which did not exist when the original limitations on broadcasters were put in place — now claim more than half of some markets’ ad revenue.

But on Wednesday, in a long-awaited decision, the FCC rejected the broadcasters’ call for deregulation and said they should embrace “public service” over profitability.

In the decision, the FCC reaffirmed restrictions on the number of TV stations that ownership groups may control in a market “given the unique obligations broadcast licensees have as trustees of the public’s airwaves to serve their local communities.”

Federal rules dictate that a single broadcaster may own only one of the four highest-rated TV stations in a single market. Usually, those include stations affiliated with NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox and, in some markets, Spanish-language Univision- or Telemundo-affiliated stations.

In affirming the restriction, the ruling said, in effect, competition with streaming and social media sites will push the broadcasters to focus on serving the public. The ruling stressed words such as “competition,” “localism” and “viewpoint diversity.”

The ruling said: “We find that loosening the rule to allow a combination between Big Four broadcast networks would lessen competition for advertising revenue and likely subsequently result in the remaining networks paying less attention to viewer demand for innovative, high-quality programming.”

“To be clear, at this point only three core rules remain,” FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel wrote. “No entity can own all the television stations in a single market, with a case specific request necessary to own more than one of the top four stations. No entity can own all the radio stations in a single market. There is also a restriction on the national combination of two of the four big television networks — ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC.”

Broadcasters have argued for years that federal restrictions put them at a disadvantage in competing with online news and entertainment sources. Streaming services and podcasting have exploded. The National Association of Broadcasters told the FCC, “Broadcasters’ service to communities across the country is imperiled by the Commission’s failure to modernize its decades-old media ownership rules.”

Republican Commissioners Brendan Carr and Nathan Simington called the ruling “an ostrich-like approach.” Carr warned that local broadcasters will face the same financial troubles as local newspapers unless the FCC lifts ownership restrictions:

It is past time for the FCC to confront the harms that its own media ownership policies have caused. For decades, the FCC prohibited someone from owning a newspaper and a broadcast station in the same market. This restriction was born in an era when newspapers and broadcasters were the only games in town for local news and information. Back then, Americans got their news in the morning when a newspaper clunked onto the front doorstep and in the evening when they tuned into one of three nightly newscasts. But over time, the FCC failed to acknowledge the titanic changes taking place in the news business, particularly with the rise of the Internet.

Our prohibition on newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership only made it harder for them to gain the scale needed to compete with the Internet giants. When we finally eliminated the prohibition in 2017, it was too late for much of the industry—1,800 newspapers had gone out of business since 2004 alone. They were facing competition from market segments that the FCC refused even to recognize. The result? Communities across the country lost access to local news and information at least in part because the FCC failed to react quickly enough to changes in the marketplace.

The Internet and Television Association, a trade association that represents the broadband and cable TV industries, pushed the FCC to tighten ownership rules. When TV stations own multiple stations in a market, the group argued, it drives up cable rates because the owners have more leverage to force cable companies to pay more to carry the TV signals. The association recently wrote to the commissioners:

The Commission has repeatedly found that the long-standing ban on one company owning more than two top-four rated stations in a market remains vital to promoting competition and protecting consumers. More specifically, both the Commission and the Department of Justice have repeatedly found that the common ownership of two top-four stations in a market gives the owner increased leverage in retransmission consent negotiations that harms competition and leads to increases in retransmission consent costs, higher consumer prices, and an increased risk that multiple top stations go dark simultaneously.

The FCC ruling did acknowledge that it might be necessary, at some point, to change ownership rules because they no longer “serve the public interest.” But that time is not now, the ruling said. Congress compels the FCC to reconsider the ownership rules every four years.
Radio ownership rules remain, too

While radio ownership is less regulated than TV ownership, the FCC does restrict how many radio stations a company may own in a market. The rules vary depending on the number of stations in a market. Bigger markets allow owners to control more station licenses.

On Wednesday, the FCC affirmed those rules, saying:

The Local Radio Ownership Rule enacted in 1996 allows an entity to own:

(1) up to eight commercial radio stations in radio markets with at least 45 radio stations, no more than five of which may be in the same service (AM or FM);

(2) up to seven commercial radio stations in radio markets with 30-44 radio stations, no more than four of which may be in the same service (AM or FM);

(3) up to six commercial radio stations in radio markets with 15-29 radio stations, no more than four of which may be in the same service (AM or FM); and

(4) up to five commercial radio stations in radio markets with 14 or fewer radio stations, no more than three of which may be in the same service (AM or FM), provided that the entity does not own more than 50% of the radio stations in the market unless the combination comprises not more than one AM and one FM station.

The FCC acknowledged that radio stations face even more competitive headwinds than TV stations given the explosion of podcasts, satellite services and online streaming services. The commissioners noted:

In particular, we note that broadcast radio is alone within the audio landscape in having an affirmative obligation to serve the needs and interest of the local community. Moreover, there is evidence that being local is the defining value proposition that many radio stations see themselves as providing to consumers. As commenters point out, radio programming includes offerings with a community focus, such as program hosts that are known within the locality, music by local bands, reporting on local sports teams, and sponsorship of neighborhood festivals, which other audio services do not provide.

But Carr, the Republican commissioner, passed on this experience from a field trip to Wyoming:

During a visit to Powell, Wyoming, a town of about 6,000 people that sits in the northwest corner of the Cowboy State, I stopped by a local radio station, only to find its doors locked. After we were finally able to rouse someone to let us inside, I got a good look at the operations—effectively a Dell laptop playing music pumped in from some big city somewhere else.

A couple of miles away in Cody, there was a local broadcast company that was investing in their community and the types of local news and entertainment programming that are attuned to the needs of their listeners. This company wanted to invest in the Powell station and originate live and local programming for this underserved community. But they couldn’t. Not because they lacked the capital or a willing seller, but because the FCC wouldn’t let them. Our ownership rules—which are supposed to promote competition, a diversity of viewpoints, and localism—were keeping that laptop powered up while preventing actual investment in local newsgathering and the local jobs that come with it. These are the very same rules that the FCC votes to retain.
https://www.poynter.org/business-wor...-deregulation/
















Until next week,

- js.



















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