Why is "mythology" in the public domain in the first place?
from ryujin470@fedia.io to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world on 16 Aug 2025 17:33
https://fedia.io/m/nostupidquestions@lemmy.world/t/2570263
from ryujin470@fedia.io to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world on 16 Aug 2025 17:33
https://fedia.io/m/nostupidquestions@lemmy.world/t/2570263
Title. Why are most things usually considered “mythology” in the public domain in intellectual property terms?
#nostupidquestions
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Can you explain what you mean?
you might need to provide more context, what do you mean by mythology?
If by mythology you mean ancient mythos, then it’s because copyright expires and works made before some date (in the past century) are not covered by it.
Age. Copyright only lasts for a certain amount of time. In the US it’s around 70 years after creators death, if I remember correctly. Everything goes public domain after that. And most mythological stories are a few centuries old at least, some millennia. So copyright doesn’t apply and they are by default, considered public domain.
Yes. OP could make up a new story based on mythology and it’s not in the public domain.
The Church of Scientology is well-known to aggressively assert their copyright interest in some of their religious texts. At some point these will lapse into the public domain and anyone who has a copy can publish them.
I believe this is generally true. But as I read your comment, I started to think about what scenarios it wouldn’t be true for. So now I’ve lost 20 productive minutes of my evening. But to salvage its value, I’ll share what I’ve brainstormed.
If OP devises a universe following up from Greek mythology – as an example – and then affixes that story into writing, then OP’s copyright will come into existence automatically.
If OP instead hires a stenographer to write down his verbal dictation, and the stenographer later formats the text alongside a copyeditor that OP also hires, then OP still has a valid copyright, over both the raw, stenographic manuscript, plus the final, completed work. The stenographer and copyeditor would not share in the copyright, because it is a work-product that they are handling, rather than a creation of their own effort. Alternatively, their hiring contract waives all claims to the story’s copyright.
If OP instead writes his own manuscript using an open-source word processor like LibreOffice Writer, and then sends the PDF to FedEx Kinko’s to print as a perfect-bound book suitable for light coffee-table reading, neither the printer operator at the shop nor FedEx Kinko’s would share in the copyright, because although they are rendering the work into a more tangible form than an .odt or .pdf file, this is a mechanical function and not one of creativity, which is what intellectual property protects.
Finally, if OP stands at that one weird triangle in NYC and basically improvises the entire story aloud without any note cards or preparation, within full view and earshot of the public sidewalk, and it so happens that three Columbia University students – still disappointed by their school’s capitulation – decide to hear what this strange man on the corner is spouting, and begin writing down OP’s words verbatim, then it may be the case that neither the students nor OP have a valid copyright over the story or its characters.
What can happen is that although OP’s story is a creative expression, it wasn’t rendered by OP into a tangible or concrete form. And what the students did was the mechanical operation of taking dictation, so their scholarly efforts also don’t imbue any creative effort that copyright laws could protect, apart from maybe the exact sequence of grammatical symbols and guesses on how certain character names might be spelled.
In essence, a public creative process may end up depositing the meat of the story into the public domain, save only for the actual rendition on paper which merely records it. This is no different than republications of older public domain novels, where the only valid copyright is upon the copyediting done to clean up some old words and make it palatable for a modern audience.
IANAL, but I’m beginning to see why the job of IP lawyer might pay so much.
I understand the question to be: “why does cultural folklore, passed from person-to-person through the ages, fall into the public domain, in modern conception of intellectual property?”
If that is the question, then the answer is multi-fold: firstly, since folklore predates any organized notion of private rights to certain renditions of an idea (aka intellectual property), they are grandfathered in.
But supposing that making an exception for folklore or mythology isn’t palatable, the practical issue is: who would own said intellectual property for a particular myth? Property – in the Anglo-American sense – must have an owner. Even public property like parks and highways has an owner: the state. Without an owner, assigning intellectual property rights for myths is a pointless exercise.
And finally, remember that intellectual property does not cover ideas per-se, but their rendition in some tangible or concrete form. A book, a movie, an MP3 file, etc. If it’s solely an idea without a creation to go with it – or for patents, the plausibility of producing such a creation – then intellectual property rights cannot attach.
I would say because a lot of mythology comes from the oral tradition of storytelling, passed from person to person and age to age via spoken word and memory.
There’s actually a SUPERB podcast about Greek mythology, called Podyssey. It’s tremendously interesting, and the host, Alex Andreou, just did a 3 part epic on Aesop, both the person (or rather the ‘person’) and the Fables.
Well worth a listen, either just that one, or the whole show tbh.
Old
And whom do you think should own the rights to shit like Hercules or Jesus?
fair point
Catholic Church LLC?
You’d soon learn why Protestants are named that way.
Because they’re traditional?
The Coptic Orthodox might beg to differ
Most works published before 1930 are in the public domain. It happens automatically. Next year l, it will 1931. So being thousands of year sold, mythological stories have been public domain for many years.
OP really challenging the premise of the community name.
There’s also the difficulty of a identifying any originator, since “mythology” usually means many versions known by many people, and is typically an oral tradition before being printed