Tags: Copyright

January 1, 2021 was Public Domain day. On that historic date, many new titles entered the public domain, including works by literary luminaries that had all been copyrighted in 1925; that copyright has now expired. The works in question include F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, Ernest Hemingway’s In Our Time, Franz Kafka’s The Trial, and Alain Locke's The New Negro, which features essays by Zora Neal Hurston...

#DGuknow that Tom Lehrer's lyrics are now all in the public domain? The songwriter Tom Lehrer recently posted on his website that "all the lyrics on this website, whether published or unpublished, copyrighted or uncopyrighted, may be downloaded and used in any manner. whatsoever, without requiring any further permission from me or payment to me or to anyone else." The Dramatists Guild supports a robust public domain, especially...

The Dramatists Guild of America is a national trade association of playwrights, composers, lyricists, and librettists. As such, the Guild is an advocate on behalf of its members on the issues related to their careers as dramatists and, more specifically, in their role as authors of original works of copyrightable expression, created as independent contractors in a free society. The Guild, however, is a non-partisan organization and does not support or make contributions...

The Dramatists Guild offers congratulations to its members, Rick Elice and Marshall Brickman, as well as their Jersey Boys co-authors, Bob Crewe and Bob Gaudio, on their victory in the copyright case of  Corbello v. Valli et al.  The writers’ defense team was led with great expertise by David S. Korzenik, Esq., in a legal battle fought in the courts for over 13 grueling years, as depicted in ...

The Guild continues to protect copyright, so artists can be masters of the material they create. Often, the Guild is working on  your behalf behind closed doors, in ways you might not be aware. Defending your copyright is one of our core principles, and it has never been more important than in the current climate, when in both corporate and academic interests are deriding the essential nature of copyright. Eliminating it as a...

The Dramatists Guild of America is pleased to announce the launch of a new initiative: #DontChangeTheWords to educate the public about copyright infringement; reporting hotline and webpage also launched. In response to persistent and troubling reports of copyright infringement within high school and college theater departments, the Dramatists Guild has launched a new initiative called #...