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Mickey, Disney, and the public domain: A 95-year love triangle

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Re: Mickey, Disney, and the public domain: A 95-year love triangle

#181

Post by scythe »

kelnos wrote: post #67
galangalalgol wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we go back to death +50 then? Tolkien would be public domain next year. In Canada it was close but they switched to +70 last year.

That doesn't go far enough. Copyright terms should be on the order of 20 years or so, and should have nothing to do with whether or not the creator is still alive.

It should preferably depend on the type of work. Books generally have a long, slow RoI. People are still buying Tolstoy. I don't believe Tolstoy should be copyrighted, but insofar as copyright is a system designed by eighteenth-century economists to incentivise creative works, it seems to function basically as designed with long terms for books.

Movies and music last a little shorter. For some reason musicians tend to have short natural lives, and copyrights start to seem like grave-robbing.

Video games and software are practically dead within two decades. The primary effect of copyrights on software more than 20 years old seems to be to stifle innovation and promote rent-seeking. I think this is why tech people have such a dim view of copyright, because the system as it exists seems to create a lot of busywork and headaches that just feel so unnecessary for anyone tasked with filling in the gaps.

Re: Mickey, Disney, and the public domain: A 95-year love triangle

#182

Post by phantom784 »

PurpleRamen wrote: post #173
galangalalgol wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hollywood is already rebooting reboots of remakes of comic books vaguely based on historic events. Imagine if original copyright rules in the us applied (14 extensible by 14 for a living author). They could reboot anything before 1995 for free.

They already do that now, even for less stuff from less than 20, 30 years. They reboot, remake, continue anything for whatever reason. Money is relevant, but by far not the biggest hurdle to prevent them. The permissions of the right holders and the influence of the creators are more important IMHO. For example, Netflix just now announced a reboot of One Piece Anime, a series running for 25 years. The creator is stil…

Perhaps trademark law could help? E.g. Netflix can make their One Piece reboot without permission, but it has to be named in a way that makes it clear it's not licensed from the original creator.

Re: Mickey, Disney, and the public domain: A 95-year love triangle

#184

Post by tzs »

valleyer wrote: post #121
skrebbel wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m confused that not adding a copyright notice automatically donates something to the public domain. This is not how I learned copyright works. I always believed that you own the copyright to everything you produce unless explicitly noted otherwise. A sister comment suggests that this was some feature (bug?) of US copyright law at the time, can anyone elaborate?

Automatic application of copyright law to creative works came about in the U.S. after it became a signatory to the Berne Convention, in 1988. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention_Implementatio...

Nit-pick: automatic copyright came about in the US via the Copyright Act of 1976, which came into force in 1978. The Berne Implementation Act of 1988 finished the job of making the US compatible [1] with Berne that the 1976 Act started.

[1] There is an argument to be made that US copyright law still isn't compatible with Berne, but the rest of the world has decided having the US in Berne is important enough that as long as US law is close enough that you can make a hand wavy argument that isn't completely ridiculous everyone lets it slide.

Re: Mickey, Disney, and the public domain: A 95-year love triangle

#185

Post by jhawk28 »

ehsankia wrote: post #19
andsoitis wrote: post #5

On the other hand, Disney itself is a talented and successful practitioner of building upon the public domain. In fact, the public domain is Disney’s bread and butter. Frozen was inspired by Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen. The Lion King draws from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Biblical stories, and possibly an epic poem about the founder of the Mali Empire.[3] Fantasia showcases public domain classical music, and “…

Wasn't The Lion King a rip off of the Japanese anime Kimba? https://12tomatoes.com/kimba-similarity-lion-king/

The Lion King is an adaptation of Hamlet.

Re: Mickey, Disney, and the public domain: A 95-year love triangle

#187

Post by visarga »

karaterobot wrote: post #180
pie_flavor wrote: post #126

It's incredibly ironic that under the copyright terms Disney has helped get enacted, several earlier films in particular Alice in Wonderland would have been infringement. Crossing a rope bridge and cutting it down behind you.

I don't understand. According to Wikipedia, Disney bought the rights to Alice in Wonderland and the illustrations from the publisher in 1938, 13 years before the movie came out.

They also used public domain works like Snow White and Cinderella but now are working actively to stop other works from reaching public domain.

Re: Mickey, Disney, and the public domain: A 95-year love triangle

#188

Post by inkcapmushroom »

dclowd9901 wrote: post #23

I’m curious as to how the copyright pertains to the 2013 iteration of Mickey, which is similar in design to the original Mickey Mouse design.

The article covers it. If the 2013 Mickey is similar enough to Steamboat Willie to consider it the same character, then the 2013 version is a derivative work and does nothing to change Steamboat Willie entering the public domain. If it's substantially different enough to constitute a new character then it does nothing to change Steamboat Willie entering public domain. So either way it does not change what's happening in the new year, but Disney lawyers could argue that the new character is substantially different, so if you want to avoid getting sued base any of your works on the original Steamboat Willie and avoid any characteristics that make the 2013 version different.

Re: Mickey, Disney, and the public domain: A 95-year love triangle

#189

Post by kouru225 »

ioblomov wrote: post #112

Surprised the article didn’t mention what for me (as a horror fan) was the most famous example of the public domain immediately benefiting the culture. Due to repeated edits requested by a demanding distributor, the final cut of Night of the Living Dead was released without a copyright notice. In 1968, unfortunately, this meant the work automatically went into the public domain. The film’s subsequent unexpected succe…

From what I’ve read and heard, this was actually a major success for George Romero. Night of the Living Dead had made its money back (and more) by the time anyone noticed it was public domain. Once people realized, NotLD got a level of publicity that it would have never gotten if it were copyrighted, which ended up being way more beneficial to Romero. Any theater could show it whenever they didn’t know what else to play and so the movies lifespan extendedly dramatically. Because of all the publicity, NotLD travelled across seas to Europe, and the Europeans reevaluated it as valuable social commentary on race relations in America. If you listen to interviews with Romero on the subject, he was convinced that the public domain is what actually launched his career.

Re: Mickey, Disney, and the public domain: A 95-year love triangle

#190

Post by tacocataco »

tptacek wrote: post #85
kelnos wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't go far enough. Copyright terms should be on the order of 20 years or so, and should have nothing to do with whether or not the creator is still alive.

That's less time than the copyright terms at the time of the founders.

I was under the impression copyright was 14 years back then.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Act_of_1790

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