The BBC has Disney as the owners of the snapshot they use. It's a nice thing to do. But is it still correct? Are Disney still the owner's but the image is now public domain?
Disney's earliest Mickey Mouse enters public domain as US copyright expires
11–20 of 201 posts
Re: Disney's earliest Mickey Mouse enters public domain as US copyright expires
#12Also Wikimedia Commons' Media of the Day: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Steamboat_Willie_(19...
There's WebM, VP9 in various resolutions, and... MJPEG ?
Setting aside the oddity of serving a 95-year-old cartoon in full HD, that's still an odd selection of codecs. Everything up to MPEG-4 ASP (XviD etc.) has already been patent-expired. There's also MP3 there, so why not an MPEG-2 (H.262), MPEG-1, or even H.261 encode?
Re: Disney's earliest Mickey Mouse enters public domain as US copyright expires
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
Any derivative works that lack sufficient creativity on their own also enter the public domain. It’s an interesting question where exactly that line is.
It's probably not this far, DALL-E / GPT4 has some issues.... https://twitter.com/bpiatt/status/1740915306359329233
The claim that this looks like modern mickey mouse is wild to me.
Re: Disney's earliest Mickey Mouse enters public domain as US copyright expires
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's probably not this far, DALL-E / GPT4 has some issues.... https://twitter.com/bpiatt/status/1740915306359329233
The claim that this looks like modern mickey mouse is wild to me.
This tweet seems like a fairly lazy combination of the recent ChatGPT copyright discussion with the Disney one.
Re: Disney's earliest Mickey Mouse enters public domain as US copyright expires
#15might have to write a mousy ttrpg real quick like and put it up on driverhru
Re: Disney's earliest Mickey Mouse enters public domain as US copyright expires
#16Disney now uses that 'steamboat willie' intro clip at the start of most of their stuff. Are they trying to use it as a trademark, and therefore use trademark law rather than copyright law to stop people using steamboat Willie publicly?
The Mickey Mouse head is literally the logo of the Disney corporation, it is and it will remain their trademark in perpetuity(or for as long as Disney exists).
Trademarks are different than copyright - you can't start a company and use Mickey mouse as your logo for instance, because then the trademark law would kick in. But you can still make your own story/cartoon/film with Mickey Mouse the character and it should be fine.
Re: Disney's earliest Mickey Mouse enters public domain as US copyright expires
#17Disney now uses that 'steamboat willie' intro clip at the start of most of their stuff. Are they trying to use it as a trademark, and therefore use trademark law rather than copyright law to stop people using steamboat Willie publicly?
Probably, at least for cases where ‘the public’ won’t see it as them being aggressive if they go after use of the image.
FTA: “He believes Disney's active use of the trademarked versions in Steamboat Willie merchandise, new animated shorts, and even a studios theatrical logo, is "Disney's way of safeguarding the characters if they want to go the legal route in any egregious use of the characters".”
Re: Disney's earliest Mickey Mouse enters public domain as US copyright expires
#18Also Wikimedia Commons' Media of the Day: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Steamboat_Willie_(19... There's WebM, VP9 in various resolutions, and... MJPEG ? Setting aside the oddity of serving a 95-year-old cartoon in full HD, that's still an odd selection of codecs. Everything up to MPEG-4 ASP (XviD etc.) has already been patent-expired. There's also MP3 there, so why not an MPEG-2 (H.262), MPEG-1, or even H.261 encode?
Why is it odd? The original is analogue. What resolution should it be scanned at? What about the Mona Lisa?
Re: Disney's earliest Mickey Mouse enters public domain as US copyright expires
#19Also Wikimedia Commons' Media of the Day: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Steamboat_Willie_(19... There's WebM, VP9 in various resolutions, and... MJPEG ? Setting aside the oddity of serving a 95-year-old cartoon in full HD, that's still an odd selection of codecs. Everything up to MPEG-4 ASP (XviD etc.) has already been patent-expired. There's also MP3 there, so why not an MPEG-2 (H.262), MPEG-1, or even H.261 encode?
Because despite Wikipedia and sister projects being one of the largest web property, it is running on a thin budget and has starved engineering resources. As far as I know, the transcode code is maintained by a single employee (possibly as a side gig / on top of everything else) and the assistance of a volunteer.
For Motion JPEG a recent config change ( https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/c/operations/mediawiki-config... ) indicates:
> Recent versions of iOS can play back suitably packaged VP9 video and Opus or MP3 audio, with a Motion-JPEG low-res fallback for older devices.
So I guess it is there for back compatibility :)
Re: Disney's earliest Mickey Mouse enters public domain as US copyright expires
#20The BBC has Disney as the owners of the snapshot they use. It's a nice thing to do. But is it still correct? Are Disney still the owner's but the image is now public domain?
It's a credit to the image's source, which is unrelated to ownership. They credit Getty Images for some public domain imagery as well: that is where they got the image from.