Digitising public domain images creates a new copyright, rules German court
Sigh ... as much of a supporter I am of the public domain, I&#x27;m really thinking we just need to end the charade that a &quot;public domain&quot; even exists anymore. Because, increasingly, it doesn&#x27;t.<p>Let&#x27;s face it ... I&#x27;ll never see a single work made within my lifetime make it the public domain. And copyrights are just going to keep getting extended and extended. Mickey Mouse is never making it to the public domain. And as if having to go back to pre-World War II to find public domain works wasn&#x27;t enough, now they&#x27;re trying to undermine even that!<p>If I thought there were any chance we could change the laws toward our favor, I wouldn&#x27;t advocate this. But I just don&#x27;t see any hope at all anymore. So let&#x27;s just call a spade a spade, and state that the public domain doesn&#x27;t exist: everyone owns everything, forever.<p>We&#x27;ll reclassify historians and preservationists as unquestionably being &quot;pirates&quot;. Most of us already are. But the few left that are trying to play within the confines of the law, only to continually have the rug pulled out from under them, can get to work with the rest of us on the wrong side of the law. Civil disobedience is the only recourse we have left. It&#x27;s that, or we give up our very history to corporate interests.