Historic Hood River
Copyrights
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.
L. E.
Very interesting. I had no idea about the Sonny Bono Copyright act and its affect on historians.
So glad to hear there will be access to more online HR Glacier.
Thanks to all who made it possible.
Dale Nicol
Thanks Arthur for proving another year of historic and interesting looking back into Hood Rivers past.
Nellie
One of my most favorite duo…
Jeffrey W Bryant
I’m almost finished going through the 1913 Hood River Glaciers for information on the families of Hood River. I’m glad to hear that you will be enlarging the collection.
ArthurB
We’ll try to keep a year ahead of you, Jeffrey. Thanks for the notes you’re adding to HHR images as you find relevant details in the Glacier pages.