I've just learnt of a Manga series that was created in the 2000s that is in the public domain. Initially I was very sceptical, as covered before, Japan is a nation with copyright automatically given from creation and follows the life plus model, but they moved to that system in phases during the 20th century, so there are some exceptions and loopholes from when new laws were passed. Still, though, a serialised Manga published by Kodansha in the 2000s did not seem like one of those examples.
The Manga is called ブラックジャックによろしくSay Hello to Black Jack. Created by Shūhō Satō (whose still alive) and ran from 2002-5. The series is a drama focussed on the Japanese healthcare system and its darker aspects, overworked interns, pressure to perform at all costs, health insurance etc. It seemed interesting to me, but I wasn't seeing how it qualified as public domain, it had after all been licensed for a television series and theatrical production. Well it seems this stems from a dispute with the publisher and the success of the property.
Manga author Shuho Sato reported via his Twitter on Thursday that he had cancelled his publishing contract for his Say Hello to Black Jack medical manga with Kodansha, and that he had received a certificate from them confirming that the two parties no longer had a contract.
Sato expressed his dissatisfaction with Kodansha,
saying that the publisher were "making light of him." He explained that
the certificate was stamped with the seal of the editor-in-chief of Morning, the magazine that Say Hello to Black Jack was serialized in, rather than the Kodansha company seal; the certificate is technically for an agreement between Kodansha
and Sato's own company. In a follow-up post, he stated that as a result
of the contract being cancelled, the book is immediately considered as
out of print, and that readers who find any unreturned copies of the
title in bookstores should report them as "illegal publications."
And later Shūhō Satō disclosed that the series had made him over 100 million yen and that he was allowing secondary usage of his work in any form, including commercial activities and waiving his right to royalty payments.
Sato now allows people to use the original Say Hello to Black Jack work to create editions in foreign languages, films, applications, anime, and more without any royalty payments.
So, from what I can gather, the author has effectively given his work to the public domain by publicly consenting to its usage in all manner of forms and waived his rights to control and compensation. As far as public domain entries go this is a rare way of adding to it, but it's not without precedent, the 96-year-old Tom Lehrer placed his entire music library into the public domain and Bill Willingham has done something similar with his Fables creations. That case also followed an acrimonious dispute with the publishing company Warner Brothers.
So, how good is Black Jack? Well, I've only started reading it so can't give a full review, but I like what I've read so far, a word of warning for the curious, since the setting is about hospitals and Doctors the artwork includes very graphic depictions of injury.
I will say that I am planning to continue reading it in my spare time and may well have a review of it in the future.
Here's a short video recorded by three anonymous inmates of the prison in Arles. It details conditions and the grievances of the detained population.
Note: The transcription is of the translated subtitles from the video. Though some parts were confusing, so I re-worded some passages to make the meaning clearer. Though some references escaped me so I chose to leave them intact.
Arles, Prisoners
Statement
2001
This video was released in October 2001 by 3 prisoners from
the Arles prison in the South of France.
Translation was difficult as the statement often refers to
French reality.
We hope it is understandable, and we hope this video will be
played abroad as much as possible.
Statement
Before reading this statement we must clarify that we are
hooded in order to avoid the personalisation of the current action.
We are just long sentenced prisoners among others. The message
that we carry is the one of thousands of voiceless men and women locked up in
the prisons of France.
Furthermore, we want to point out that it is for security
reasons that we are hooded.
It would be useless to specify that the prison authorities won’t
appreciate our initiative. And that the repression will strike after the public
broadcasting of this document will be important.
The security measures that we took may not save us from
sanctions, that’s why we ask in advance to the associations and citizens caring
for the defence of human rights to be watchful regarding the Arles prison in
the coming days and weeks.
This will prevent the violences or different types of abuses
committed by the repression holders to occur.
Of course, we wouldn’t have been forced to carry out such an
action if the prison world wasn’t this law free place where freedom of
expression, freedom of association are denied to detainees.
It is the antidemocratic nature of prison that leads us to
act this way!
At last we want to specify here that the equipment used to
make this report was taken without anyone’s approval.
That is, the inmate responsible for the video workshop didn’t
know that we embezzled the mentioned equipment.
The year 2000 has been, among other things the year of the
public revelation of the prison horror in France.
“A shame for the Republic”, was stated by many. Many problems
were raised, denounced.
From deputies to Church to various associations, all had the
opportunity to express themselves on this subject with a clear unanimity.
We take note of that. But as always the main concerned didn’t
have their say. Those whose daily life is the prison infamy, which means the
prisoners themselves.
Word is not given to us. Never. That’s why we decided to
take it, here and now. It’s especially in the name of “long sentenced”
prisoners that we speak, we, the system’s left out. Those whose prospect is
only despair and hate.
We are here in front of you to demand that just and fair
measures are applied to us, that would allow us to believe that we have not
been convicted to a slow death, to sentences that are just a substitute to the
death penalty.
We are here to say, to say aloud that it is to no one’s
interest if we turn into “human bombs”, because our day when we’ll be freed
will come, when we’ll return to the social corpse.
What will happen if during the years the prison system kills
us, debases us, wounds us dramatically and deeply. It is time that this reality
stops.
It is a great time for this “cannibal prison” to become the
subject of a cultural revolution that’d allow it to enter the third millennium with
dignity.
From our experience, in the name of respect to the human dignity
and to the inalienable rights of the human being, we demand that the French government
takes the following measures:
First: Changing the punishment scale and lining it up to one
of the countries with the less repressive penal conception. That means we
demand the abolition of long sentences.
The abolition of sentences running consecutively, which
leads men and women to serve decades of prison, but also the abolition of the
unbearable life sentence.
All the specialists in this domain agree on the fact that
the sentence doesn’t have anymore sense after a certain period of time. It becomes
just fierceness, revenge, destruction of the individual.
The year 2001 will see the celebration of the 20th
anniversary of the abolition of the death penalty. The opportunity is here to
put an end to the long prison sentences, that are nothing else than a
substitute for the death penalty.
Second: Immediate release of all prisoners that have
incurable diseases.
Dying in prison is the worst fate a prisoner can experience.
We demand the respect of the right to die in dignity, among our relatives, out
of the prison context.
Third: Abolition of the isolation units and of the holes. Closing
down these super repressive tools is simply what we demand.
In those situations the law is much too often the one of the
strongest, where the officials turn into torturers, where suspicious deaths are
numerous.
We must end with that!
This is where the most urgent measures to take, as we feel
each new day is a day of social revenge applied to us and not a measure of
justice.
But the current prison reality is made up of many other
measures that we want to denounce and to see changing as soon as possible.
It deals for instance with the impossibility to have sexual
intercourses, to have children, or just to have the right to tenderness. All those
things are among the fundamental rights of the human being.
The extreme restriction of Family Life Units that would
concern 3 prisons out of the existing 187 is an insult made to us.
As many countries already have equipped their prisons with
special visit spaces intended for intimate relations, why does France carry out
such a program only in an experimental thus restricted way?
How many more decades will we have to wait until those
fundamental rights are recognised to us?
How many more families and couples will be broken until the
political decision makers and other officials act in a responsible way, or just
in a human way?
One other crucial concern is the transformation of prisons
into unofficial psychiatric hospitals.
More and more prisoners have nothing to do in prison. Their psychological
state is incompatible with prison.
We ask that they get a treatment in appropriate places. We want
also to denounce the scandal of using products supplying drugs in the prison
world.
Peace in detention much too often means maintaining
detainees in a state of addiction towards substitution products.
Some prisoners even turn into drug addicts in detention
while they were not when they were imprisoned.
What is to be thought of an institution that maintains and
encourages men and women to drug addiction with the public money?
We demand the end of censorship measures as well. The endless
violation of our mail, of our visits with families and friends only have but
one aim:
Imposing on us a self censorship that leads to the
alienation of thought and the anaesthesia of feelings, but also eventually to
the disappearance of family relationship.
Who would believe they want to rehabilitate us when the
prison authority never ceases to separate us from family?
By imprisoning us hundreds of kilometres from where our
relatives live? When the whole institution’s running only leads to infantilising
and taking away the responsibilities from detainees?
How could we forget prison
work while talking about outrageous realities?
Why is the labour law not applied to detainees? Why are the
French bosses sometimes more interested in giving work in French prisons than
moving to a third world country?
The answer is simple: because the prisoner is totally enslaved
and any modern supporter of slavery would dream of the conditions offered by
the prison administration.
Is it in those conditions that we are supposed to be
encouraged to rehabilitate in society through work?
And what should be said of those ridiculous salaries that
don’t allow us to reimburse decently the so-called party claiming damages?
The justice decisions in this domain are wiped out in the
name of profit.
Another reason for our exasperation is the disinterest of
the prison authorities towards culture, art, those things entertaining spirit
and the senses.
How can we evolve or re-evolve if this crucial part of our
being, our power of creating, our sensibility is denied to us, if culture and
art are not within our reach?
We want to denounce here and with strength that the negative
activities of an extremely active minority of the warden staff for whom the
detainee is an enemy that must be killed.
Those officials refuse to respect the spirit of laws and
even refuse simply to apply them.
They represent an ongoing danger for the institution in general,
but also more commonly for the penal population and for their own colleagues.
Its great time that these people get contained by those
whose mission is applying texts, and checking the running of the prisons.
Furthermore, we want to draw attention to the application of
the so called “innocence presumption” new law.
We fear that once again the main part of the magistrates
overseeing the terms and conditions of sentences keep on applying texts in a
very restrictive way.
It has been years since the politic carried out regarding terms
of sentences is a disaster. It must stop.
The harassment which long sentenced prisoners are undergoing
from the most repressive part of the French magistracy must cease.
We refuse to be the victims of those sworn torturers any longer.
To put an end to this incomplete list, we wish to state how
we feel it necessary and crucial that the prison authorities endeavour to fulfil
their mission of support to the rehabilitation of detainees.
It is obvious that we, the detainees of French prisons, don’t
enjoy measures following this line.
The political will obviously doesn’t exist, and the means
necessary are almost nowhere to be found.
It sounds clear to us that we are sacrificed, that we are doomed
to eternal subsequent offenses. We refuse to be used as scapegoats for the
security politic of the state.
Of course, we greet all our comrades currently walled up alive
in the isolation units, and all those undergoing the unbearable hole sanction.
Strength, courage and determination to all.
Greetings and solidarity also to all the detainees currently
locked up in jails. The foul living conditions in the jails are now known to everybody.
Fast changes are imperative.
Finally we want to send a message to the youth of the suburban
areas, to the children of the proletariat and subproletariat, to all those
belonging to the sacrificed classes, of the system.
Yesterday, your parents and grandparents, our parents and
grandparents were turned into cannon fodder. And sent to the front in order to
die, defending interests they had nothing to do with.
Today, the future of prison fodder is offered to us.
Let’s refuse this tragedy, let’s refuse this logic. Let’s become
aware of all that before it’s too late.
Because the prison gates are coming closer and closer,
longer and longer.
Whereas the real criminals, those who live on the back of
poverty, of our poverty, are guzzling in all their arrogance while laughing at our
misery, at our sacrificed life.
