Hacker News Reader

It is even worse. There were some publications which already entered public domain, but High Court extended copyright period retroactively. So stuff which was already under PD got copyrighted again. (I dont have link, please add it)

View on HN

It's A Wonderful Life entered the public domain and was taken back from us. The rights holder forgot to apply for an extension. After it lapsed they argued that done they held the rights to the story it was based on, the rights to derive from that story, the score, etc., they should have the film too.

I can not, with humor, get across how dumb that sounds to me. So I'll state it plainly. That's amazingly stupid. And it worked.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com