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Happy Public Domain Day everyone (web.law.duke.edu)
submitted 10 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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Direct quote from the page:

Please note that this site is only about US law; the copyright terms in other countries are different.[2]

On January 1, 2026, thousands of copyrighted works from 1930 enter the US public domain, along with sound recordings from 1925. They will be free for all to copy, share, and build upon

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[–] 6 points 10 months ago (4 children)

Has any software ever entered the public domain through copyright expiration? I think software at least 70 years old (125 years for corporate created) when its copyright expires prevents it from being any benefit at all.

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  • [–] [S] -2 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    Software in general is actually very hard to copyright, as you cannot legally copyright code, the most you're allowed to do is patent the process the code is doing.

    More often the copyright applies to everything else, like the brand, and the UI

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  • [–] 13 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    No, copyright applies specifically to the code, eulas and copyleft such as GPL rely on that fact. The logic itself can't be, but the specific implementation can. It's why clean room reverse engineering is fine, but a tainted decompilation direct from a binary may not be.

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