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Disney 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?
https://repair.eu/news/apple-uses-trademark-law-to-strengthe...
Disney 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?
That's assuming Disney could ever register the trademark, which is not a given, no matter how often they use it.
Earlier 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.
95 years ago was also about when the cinema and recording industries began.
Since then, I’ll argue, all recorded entertainment and theatrical performances have become “fixed” into our culture similar to how Plato, the Bible, and Shakespeare became cultural touchstones due to literacy and the printing press.
And now, as they enter the public domain, Mickey and others are becoming, for better or worse, an inescapable part of our common heritage.
Disney 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 b…
Also practically it doesn’t matter whether it could be fine, most businesses can’t afford to fight an extended legal battle with Disney
“US copyright law says the rights to characters can be held for 95 years.” 95 years ago was also about when the cinema and recording industries began. Since then, I’ll argue, all recorded entertainment and theatrical performances have become “fixed” into our culture similar to how Plato, the Bible, and Shakespeare became cultural touchstones due to literacy and the printing press. And now, as they enter the public do…
The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings enters the public domain in New Zealand, Egypt, and a couple other countries. Would have entered into the public domain in Canada had the government not signed a last-minute 20 year copyright extension act last year.
That's why I get angry when copyright holders try to make ethical arguments against piracy.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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...…
Transcoding is expensive but not that much, if my company doesn’t make 1/20 of Wikipedia and we can afford to do 1000s of hours a day of transcoding surely they can too.
[1] https://wikimediafoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/W...
The prime example is the movie Metropolis. It became public domain in 1953 but copyright was restored in 1996 only to re-enter the public domain a year ago today.
“US copyright law says the rights to characters can be held for 95 years.” 95 years ago was also about when the cinema and recording industries began. Since then, I’ll argue, all recorded entertainment and theatrical performances have become “fixed” into our culture similar to how Plato, the Bible, and Shakespeare became cultural touchstones due to literacy and the printing press. And now, as they enter the public do…
Is Mickey content good enough that we'll see continued interest? My encounters with Mickey (35 year old American) have been only through the movie Fantasia and I know he is a prominent mascot of Disney World. But the pull to Disney world is probably what, Star Wars or Pixar these days? I was recently thinking Star Wars and the Friends TV series could reach that permanent status. Mickey seems unlikely to me.