Historic Hood River

Notes

You’ve probably heard me complain about the “Sonny Bono Copyright act” before. When Sonny Bono was congressman from California, he promoted a major copyright extension which was very beneficial to corporations like the Walt Disney Corporation which hold copyrights to characters like Mickey Mouse, but has been very harmful to academics and historians. Since 1998 we could only trust printed material published prior to December 31, 1922 was in the public domain. Because of that, many organizations dedicated to putting printed material online limited their work to publications prior to that date. This is the reason our online collection of The Hood River Glacier and The Hood River News end in 1922.

A year ago we finally reached the point where 1923 was greater than 95 years ago, so the “public domain wall” started to move again. Tonight at midnight all printed works published before January 1, 1925 will be in the public domain. Our friends at the Hood River County Library have found funds to extend the collection of The Hood River Glacier editions online at the Oregon Digital Newspaper Program through the end of 1924. This means we should soon have two more years of Hood River history easily viewable and searchable.

It is my hope to keep nudging our online collections forward as funds and the law permit.

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