Elementary my dear watson is now a public domain
Just found out, well, found out over the weekend when I wrote the first post for this week, that Sherlock Holmes will soon be in the public domain for good. I am both excited by this prospect and, based on what they just did with Winnie The Pooh, very apprehensive.
Did you count them? Did you see how many different stars from different countries and different eras have played him? Did you see how many of his most famous cases have been redone and remade and retold? The Hound of the Baskervilles is probably the most famous story of them all. "Elementary my dear Watson" is his most famous line and yet never appeared in any of the Arthur Conan Doyle stories.
Sherlock Holmes is one of my all time favorite charactors, favorite detectives, and some of the best TV and Movies I have ever seen. He is clearly very neurodivergent, struggles with addiction, has a hard time connecting with people, and understands that quite often the world just doesn't make sense but you can find a pattern even in the chaos.
Sherlock Holmes is a charactor that been done and redone for ages, and has been played by more different actors than probably any other charactor ever created. Don't beleive me? Check this out.
Did you count them? Did you see how many different stars from different countries and different eras have played him? Did you see how many of his most famous cases have been redone and remade and retold? The Hound of the Baskervilles is probably the most famous story of them all. "Elementary my dear Watson" is his most famous line and yet never appeared in any of the Arthur Conan Doyle stories.
Found a good description of an item entering into the "Public Domain" from The Associated Press:
"Once a work enters the public domain it can legally be shared, performed, reused, repurposed or sampled without permission or cost. The works from 1927 were originally supposed to be copyrighted for 75 years, but the 1998 Copyright Term Extension Act delayed opening them up for an additional 20 years. While many prominent works on the list used those extra two decades to earn their copyright holders good money, a Duke University expert says the copyright protections also applied to “all of the works whose commercial viability had long subsided.”
"Once a work enters the public domain it can legally be shared, performed, reused, repurposed or sampled without permission or cost. The works from 1927 were originally supposed to be copyrighted for 75 years, but the 1998 Copyright Term Extension Act delayed opening them up for an additional 20 years. While many prominent works on the list used those extra two decades to earn their copyright holders good money, a Duke University expert says the copyright protections also applied to “all of the works whose commercial viability had long subsided.”
“For the vast majority—probably 99%—of works from 1927, no copyright holder financially benefited from continued copyright. Yet they remained off limits, for no good reason,” Jennifer Jenkins, director of Duke’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain, wrote in a blog post heralding “Public Domain Day 2023.”
So be prepared for many more Sherlock Holmes books, comics, shows, movies, and so on coming soon. Fingers crossed there are many that live up to Doyles stories, but I am sure there will be PLENTY that dont.
But that could just be the bloodwine talking.
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