← All Of It with Alison Stewart
All Of It with Alison Stewart
Public Domain Day and the Public Song Project at Joe's Pub!
00:20:16
A New Year means new works entering the public domain!
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Listener Support
Listener support, WNYC Studios.
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Alison Stewart
This is all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart and listeners, you have now less than a week to get your tickets to the Public Song project at Joe's Pub. Our people's concert with DJ Reca, Joanna Sternberg and more is next Wednesday, and we'll be celebrating all things public domain. Yesterday was public domain day. That's when copyrights expire and works of art become available to adapt, remix, and a whole lot more. Which means as of yesterday, I can play as much of this 1924 recording of Rhapsody in Blue featuring George Gershwin on piano as I want to for free. This year's domain dump includes sound recordings like that one, plus compositions, movies, books, painting, and a whole lot more from 1929. Think of the song Singing in the Rain. Ernest Hemingway and A Farewell to Arms. And Salvador Dali, not to mention Mickey Mouse, who entered the public domain last year, has some new cartoon neighbors. Popeye and Tintin are now in the public domain too. Joining me now to walk us through this year's public domain is Jennifer Jenkins, director of Duke University's center for the Study of the Public Domain. Jennifer, welcome back.
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Jennifer Jenkins
Thank you so much. It's great. Joining you again, Alison.
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Alison Stewart
All right. Why should the average person care about the public domain?
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Jennifer Jenkins
Oh, because it's, it's a snapshot of a moment in time and it's the opportunity to rediscover and do something creative like with your public song project, which is so cool with these newly public domain works.
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Alison Stewart
We're going to remind people next Wednesday we'll be celebrating the public domain, kicking off this year's public Song project with a concert at Joe's Pub. JJ Rekha will be there along with Joanna Sternberg. And project winners, get your tickets@wnyc.org publicdomain so just some basics. What does it mean for something to be in the public domain?
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Jennifer Jenkins
It means that the copyright has expired and so the work becomes free for anyone to use and build upon without permission and without fee.
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Alison Stewart
What's special about this year's public domain day?
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Jennifer Jenkins
Oh, there's so much. It's just, it kind of blew my mind when I started researching it. But what we're getting is all these works from 1929. That was the end of the roaring twenties, the beginning of the Great Depression in film. It's when we finally figured out how to get the synchronized sound working right. And so sound films really took over and displaced silent films in 1929. And so what we get is all these musical numbers A whole lot of dance moves. I know we can't show them we're on radio, but they're good. And we get the very first sound films by directors. You know, it's a who's who. Alfred Hitchcock, Cecil B. DeMille, John Ford. We get the first talkie from Clara Bow. The sex symbol from the time. The it girl that people are. That even Taylor Swift even named a song after her. And with music, I mean, some of the songs are. I can I. I could just summon them in my head from hearing them. There's Singing in the Rain, like you mentioned. There's Ain't Misbehavin. There's An American in Paris by George Gershwin. Before Emily in Paris, there was an American in Paris. And there's the one. I listened to this song three times yesterday. So it was like Ravel's Bolero, which, if you haven't listened to it recently, you have to. And I discovered. I know it's often associated with, like, eroticism, but actually it's perfect for kitchen cleaning, which is what I used it for yesterday. And I have to say, you know, it was just about right for, like, doing the dishes. And so those are some highlights. And you already mentioned the literature. I mean, Faulkner, Hemingway, Virginia Woolf. Wow.
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Alison Stewart
The big news last year, that Mickey Mouse was in the public domain. Now this year we've got Popeye and Tin Tin adding. So what does this mean that I can do with Popeye or Tintin that I couldn't do before?
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Jennifer Jenkins
You can make your own adaptation. You can, you know, reimagine a sort of a gentle Popeye and olive oil love story for 20, 25. I don't know, just do something other than the slasher film. Okay, but it means you can make your own. You can. You can make your own Popeye feature. You can make your own Popeye animation. You can write a children's book, you know, where Popeye, Tintin, and the adorable dog Snowy, who I love, go on adventures together. Wouldn't that be interesting? So that's what it means.
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Alison Stewart
I want you to take a listen to this, and then I have a question on the other side. Okay.
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Jennifer Jenkins
Climbed up by the sailor man I'm Popeye the sailor man I'm strong to the finnage Cause I eat me spinach.
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Alison Stewart
I'm Popeye the sailor man. Okay, so you point out an article that Popeye didn't start eating spinach until the 1931 comic strip. So in the public domain, is Popeye in the public domain, is the spinach in the public Domain. How does it work?
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Jennifer Jenkins
We get to talk about spinach on there. Isn't this great? I haven't thought about spinach as much in yonks. So initially I just assumed because the copyrights in the original appearance of Popeye from 1929 were renewed, that the comic strip where he says he's being asked how he has these superhuman capabilities and he says, I eats my spinach. And I thought they would have renewed. That was one of these really fun research rabbit holes. So far as we can tell, the copyright in the comic strip where he first talks about spinach was not renewed, meaning it's been public domain for decades. Because you used to have to renew after 28 years. And I mean, lawyers out there. We searched every single record with the word Popeye Thimble Theater, which was the comic strip. The name of the author, E.C. segar, the name of the copyright holder, King Features. I mean, nothing came up under any of that. So I. I don't think it's out there. So you know what that means? That means the original Popeye character and his spinach fueled superpowers are both in the public domain now. So you actually can, if my research is right, and this is, I'm talking two days worth. So if I'm missing something, somebody tell me, or somebody tell wnyc, if my research is right, he can't eat spinach.
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Alison Stewart
All right, well, let's talk about a little bit of Mickey Mouse news. We'll leave this in a moment. But a dozen, about a dozen animated films featuring Mickey Mouse enter the public domain. Now, if Mickey Mouse was already in the public domain last year, why does this matter?
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Jennifer Jenkins
This matters because he develops some interesting characteristics and traits in 1929. And so without having this whole, you know, like, spinach debate that we're having, we know everything from the 1929 cartoons is public domain too now. So he wears his white gloves. So that's public domain. He talks for the first time. His very first words are hot dogs. Hot dogs.
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Alison Stewart
I think we have that. Wait a minute, hold on. I believe we have Mickey Mouse saying, hot dog.
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Simon Close
Hot dog.
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Jennifer Jenkins
There you go.
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Alison Stewart
I just had to say that.
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Jennifer Jenkins
There you go. Even a better voice than your papa I just heard about. But yeah, so hot dogs. Hot dogs. And there's all the plot elements. I mean, the cartoons are really fun to watch, but, you know, there's a lot of flirting between Mickey and Minnie. You know, there's a lot of dance sequences. There's some familiar. There's some good horror tropes in there and one called the Haunted House and some other ones. And so all of that material, material is now public domain too.
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Alison Stewart
We're marking Public Domain Day with Jennifer Jenkins, director of Duke University center for the Study of Public Domain. You can also join us at Joe's Pub next Wednesday at 7pm for a celebration of the public domain with the Public Song Project. Get your tickets@wnyc.org publicsong this year's public domain dump for movies features the Marx Brothers first film, Coconuts, Alfred Hitchcock's first film with sound, I should say Blackmail, one of the first major studio films with an all black cast. How Hallelujah. What can you do with a movie that has entered the public domain?
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Jennifer Jenkins
You can screen it in your community theaters, which is kind of exciting. You know, if you are a small theater and you can actually afford the licensing fees to allow people to watch these amazing Films from almost 100 years ago now you can screen them freely. You can also interpolate clips into your own movie, which is kind of exciting. Maybe, maybe you're into dancing like I am and you want to show. We actually made a mashup of all of our favorite dance moves. So now we're free to do that and put that out there, which we just did on YouTube. So, you know, start your engines, get creative, do something with these movies from 1929.
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Alison Stewart
All right, we've gotten this text from several people, so I'll just sort of say it in my language. Trademark works vis a vis copyright. What's the difference?
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Jennifer Jenkins
Isn't the law wonderfully complicated? So yeah, trademarks and copyrights are different. So here's my attempt to do it quickly. So copyright covers creative works and copyrights expire. Trademarks are different. Trademarks is, are protections for brands. They can last forever so long as the brand is still being used. So if Amazon is still around 500 years from now, which I don't know, I don't want to make predictions, but you know, they'll still, they can still own the Amazon brand name if they're using it. But importantly, trademarks, the rights are more limited than copyrights. You're only violating someone's trademark rights if you're using the brand name or the similar brand name in way that confuses consumers about where the products come from. So yes, the word Popeye is still trademarked for certain things. But if you make a Popeye feature and no one thinks that your Popeye feature is coming from the trademark owner, then there shouldn't be a trademark problem. Does that, does that clear things up at all.
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Alison Stewart
It did indeed.
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Jennifer Jenkins
Here's another question, by the way. If you want the, the legal, the, you know, the longer legal analysis, you're welcome to go to my annual Public Domain Day celebration and spell it out there too.
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Alison Stewart
Here's another question for you. Are images, photos, art in the public domain? How do we check?
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Jennifer Jenkins
Yeah, well, that's a great question. Yes. Images that were, quote, published as copyright defines that in 1929, those images are in the public domain. I mentioned the word publish with an emphasis because it's a little more difficult to figure out sometimes whether artwork and images were published as opposed to things like books and movies. Because with a book, you know, you know it's publication date. Right. With a movie, when it was released with some of these amazing works of art, they were only published if they were at an exhibition, put on display without restrictions, or if they were disseminated in like a periodical or a magazine. But if they just sat in the artist's studio, that probably doesn't count as publications. So some things that were like, you know, on display, on exhibit, like the Dali you mentioned, those were published. But the one that I've been really, really running into a wall on is Magritte's famous treachery of images, Susi Nipp. That one I can't figure out for the life of me whether it was officially published or it was just sitting in Magritte Studio. And so you'll see a lot of websites saying, okay, well, that's public domain in the US I'm not sure yet. I know that an image with the pipe reverse was in a magazine, but I still. We've got like interlibrary loan and all this kind of stuff. We can't figure out whether it was actually on display somewhere without restrictions in 1929 or later. And so it gets a little more complicated. So the short answer is yes, but only if they were published as copyright defines that term in 1929.
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Alison Stewart
Let's talk about music. There are two ways that music can enter the public domain. As a composition and as a recording. What's the difference?
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Jennifer Jenkins
So a composition, I write a song. It's the words and music, like you might see on a piece of sheet music, that's the composition, and they're on the same timeline as all the other works we were talking about. It's compositions and songs from 1929 that are public domain now. Recordings have their own separate copyright. And so if I wrote that song, WNYC is awesome. That's my song, right? Sing, which I can't but say you have a beautiful voice, which you do. If you record it. That's a different copyright over your recording of the song that I wrote. And somewhat confusingly, recordings are on a different timeline in the United States. And so this year, recordings from 1924 just went into the public domain. All right. Like the Rhapsody in Blue clip that you played of George Gershwin tinkling the keys masterfully.
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Alison Stewart
Well, let me play this clip and then you can explain what's going on. This is from the Hollywood review of 1929.
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Jennifer Jenkins
I'm singing in the rain Just singing in the rain what a glorious feeling.
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Alison Stewart
I'm happy again okay, so my big question to you, Jennifer, is can I play the Gene Kelly version?
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Jennifer Jenkins
No, not yet. That's for much more recently. So that's a great example. You know, that's a. That's a recording of the underlying composition that was recent enough that it's still going to be copyrighted for a while. But I've got another fun lingual recall about what you just played, though, which is you just played a recording. Right. But the definition of sound recording in the copyrighted act specifically excludes sounds accompanying a motion picture. And so unlike separate recordings, if it was part of a movie like what you just played, that's actually going into the public domain this year, along with the film the Hollywood review of 1929 that you mentioned.
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Alison Stewart
I want to talk about visual art. You've mentioned it a couple times because Salvador Dali paintings also enter the public domain this year. Why is it trickier when you're talking about art?
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Jennifer Jenkins
It's trickier because of what I mentioned. In some cases, unlike with Dali, we know that there was an exhibition that you don't know whether the art was published or not, so you don't know when the copyright clock actually started ticking. And I'm not going to mention the name of all of the Dali paintings on the air because, yeah, we'll just leave that where it is.
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Alison Stewart
And finally, books. Is there any literature that you're particularly excited about?
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Jennifer Jenkins
Oh, I'm beyond excited about the literature. So I was an English major millionaires ago, and so I read the Faulkner, the Sound of the Fury, Hemingway, A Feral to Arms, Virginia Woolf, who I adore, A Room of One's Own. And I'm actually rereading Dashiell Hammett's the Maltese Falcon right now as it was serialized in Black Mass magazine. And I realized that I don't remember how it comes out. And so I'm actually discovering all the plot twists for the first time, I'm like, what happened? I don't know. So there's a lot of sexism in it. Be warned, readers. I mean, some of the stuff's cringe, as my students would say, but, man, he can write a detective story. I don't know what's going to happen. I'm like, about 80% of the way through.
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Alison Stewart
Jennifer Jenkins is the director of the center for the Study of the Public Domain. Jennifer, thank you so much for joining us.
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Jennifer Jenkins
Have a great time with the Public Song Project. That sounds so cool.
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Alison Stewart
And speaking of the Public Song Project, producer Simon Close is here to talk a little bit more about next week's plans. Hi. Hi, Simon.
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Listener Support
Hi, Alison.
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Alison Stewart
So there's gonna be a concert Wednesday, January 8th at 7pm at Joe's Pub. What will we celebrating? Who will be performing?
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Listener Support
We'll be celebrating what we were just talking about with Jennifer, all the stuff entering the public domain. This year, we're gonna be launching the 2025 edition of the Public Song Project. We're also celebrating the album that we put for the Public Song Project. And yeah, we're doing it at the Public Theater because what better place to celebrate the public domain than the Public radio project than the Public Theater?
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Alison Stewart
So remind us who is featured on that awesome vinyl that you guys produced?
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Listener Support
Yeah, so that vinyl features Bela Fleck is on it, Nellie Mackay, the Lemon Twigs, Rhiannon Giddens, a bunch of other people, including DJ Rekha and Joanna Sternberg, who will both be performing at Joe's pub on the 8th. And. And that vinyl you can get online right now. But also, if you go to the concert, we're gonna be doing some trivia segments with the Public Domain.
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Alison Stewart
Tell me more.
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Listener Support
And we'll be giving that out as a prize. I will tell you more as soon as I figure out what the questions are gonna be. But yeah, we'll be handing out some of those records if you know your public domain stuff.
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Alison Stewart
You said the concert's also marking this year's Public Domain Day. Will any of the new public domain material be part of the show?
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Listener Support
Yes. I'll talk a little bit about some of the stuff that we just talked about with Jennifer, but specifically, if anyone attended the concert we did last year, we did sort of a group song at the end.
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Alison Stewart
That was great.
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Listener Support
So this year, can I do a pun on the air?
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Alison Stewart
Sure, why not?
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Listener Support
So this year, in the event of bad weather, the show's gonna go on, which is to say that we'll still be singing in the rain as a group. Yeah. Our engineers rolled his eyes, but yeah. So we'll be talking about new stuff in the public domain this year, too.
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Alison Stewart
All right, Tell us a little bit about. Let's see how it works. Oh, how can people get tick?
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Listener Support
Great question. People can go to wnyc.org publicsong to get tickets.
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Jennifer Jenkins
All right.
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Alison Stewart
You're gonna play. We're gonna play a little bit of one of the songs we're gonna hear or that we will we hear this song?
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Listener Support
Yes. Yeah. Juliet Riley, I can set this up. Juliet Riley will be she was one of the winners this past year and she'll be performing her song at Joe's pub on Wednesday, January 8th at 7pm next week. And this song, she titles it Summer Sang, it's based on an edna single, Edna St. Vincent Molay poem. Yeah. Which was originally called what Lips My lips have Kissed and Where and why. And she does a really like, wonderful, delightful, like poppy take that shows how timeless the words of the original poem are.
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Alison Stewart
Where can people get more information?
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Listener Support
Wnyc.orgpublicsong here's Juliet Riley.
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Simon Close
What lips my lips have kissed and where and why I forgot. I forgotten that they only stay till morning came but the rain is full of ghosts night that sigh and listen for reply and in my the stirs of quiet pain for all the unremembered men out. I don't know. I don't know anything. I only know that summer sang in me a while ago. Don't sing in me no more, more silent than before. Oh, but that summer sn so pure always saying.
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Alison Stewart
And that is all of it. Coming up on tomorrow's show, we'll kick off our new series, what the Heck. All year long, we're going to talk about ways that you can improve all areas of your life. Tomorrow, we'll speak with New York Magazine city editor Christopher Bonannos. He joins us to talk about ways to hack New York, from how to game the subway exits to getting discount Broadway tickets and scoring restaurant reservations. I'm Alison Stewart. I appreciate you listening and I appreciate you. I will meet you back here tomorrow.
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Jennifer Jenkins
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