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Disney's earliest Mickey Mouse enters public domain as US copyright expires

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Re: Disney's earliest Mickey Mouse enters public domain as US copyright expires

#71

Post by laverya »

manquer wrote: post #28
hashar wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...…

Why though ? They spend $160M a year [1] and grew their cash reserves by 50% year on year in 2023, so not particularly running in an operating deficit environment. 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...

Because in the end every organization is vulnerable to being eaten from the inside and worn as a skinsuit by parasites. Especially charities.

Why would they spend money on improvements to the site when they could spend money on other things instead?

Re: Disney's earliest Mickey Mouse enters public domain as US copyright expires

#72

Post by verve_rat »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #35
geiagal wrote: post #10

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.

I'm interested in how this would work in New Zealand. Could I publish a version of The Hobbit on amazon.co.nz? Would this be perfectly legal? If I instead published it on my own New Zealand based blog, maybe even hosted on a data center in NZ, but with no attempt to geo-fence it would that cause issues?

The real interesting question is: what does this mean for our hobbit based tourism industry? What angle can someone take to make a buck now?

Special edition hand printed and bound in the Shire (aka Matamata)? Sell it to people coming off of the Hobbiton tour.

If you don't reference the Jackson movies, can you sell those tourists a One Ring or a Sting without paying for licensing?

Re: Disney's earliest Mickey Mouse enters public domain as US copyright expires

#73

Post by mod50ack »

echelon wrote: post #60
mod50ack wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Before people cheer too much, surprisingly works can retroactively be snatched back from the public domain and go back into copyrighted state. The United States is decidedly not going to extend copyright terms. The US only very reluctantly pulled works out of the public domain after it joined the Berne Convention in 1989. The reason ''Metropolis'' was in the public domain was because it failed to comply with renewa…

> As someone who works in the field What's your read on what's going to happen with AI? Will companies be allowed to train on copyrighted works? Seems like we'll fall behind international competition or supercharge monopolies if we don't allow it. Japan and China permit training on copyrighted works. China goes a step further and allows AI outputs to be copyrighted. Really interested in what insiders think or know ab…

Well, to be clear, I am mainly a public domain and copyright theory guy. I do keep up to date with everything here. But I also don't write laws; if I did, they would look different.

Companies are allowed to train on copyrighted works - or, to be more precise, there is no prohibition in copyright law on them doing so. On the other hand, there are no particular protections.

The real question is to what extent an AI generator can return its copyrighted training data as a non-de minimis output. In other words, can I get one of the existing copyrighted works by putting in a prompt? This is something that AI developers are trying to avoid, but it's actuallg a pretty tricky problem.

Allowing AI output to be copyrighted is one of the worst ideas in copyright. Thankfully, the US Constitution as interpreted by the courts only allows for copyright to inhere in works of human creativity.

By the way, while I'm very excited about certain "AI" things, I have a very poor opinion of the merit of generative AI — and I mean in theory we well as how it stands today.

Re: Disney's earliest Mickey Mouse enters public domain as US copyright expires

#74

Post by b4ke »

praptak wrote: post #27
geiagal wrote: post #10

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.

Retroactive copyright extensions are changing the deal after it has been made, for the benefit of copyright holders and to the detriment of the public. This is unethical. That's why I get angry when copyright holders try to make ethical arguments against piracy.

When your property is representative of so many as Disney’s are due to shared exposure, it is hard to defend centralized control.

Re: Disney's earliest Mickey Mouse enters public domain as US copyright expires

#75

Post by VBprogrammer »

verve_rat wrote: post #72
VBprogrammer wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm interested in how this would work in New Zealand. Could I publish a version of The Hobbit on amazon.co.nz? Would this be perfectly legal? If I instead published it on my own New Zealand based blog, maybe even hosted on a data center in NZ, but with no attempt to geo-fence it would that cause issues?

The real interesting question is: what does this mean for our hobbit based tourism industry? What angle can someone take to make a buck now? Special edition hand printed and bound in the Shire (aka Matamata)? Sell it to people coming off of the Hobbiton tour. If you don't reference the Jackson movies, can you sell those tourists a One Ring or a Sting without paying for licensing?

That is indeed an interesting question. Presumably if you reimagined those things, without reference to the imagery in the movies, that would be completely legitimate right?

Re: Disney's earliest Mickey Mouse enters public domain as US copyright expires

#76

Post by [deleted] »

zinekeller wrote: post #45
cubefox wrote: post #41

This is a silly question, but when exactly did Mickey Mouse enter the public domain? On January 1, sure, but which time zone?

On whatever local time where you are (at least for US). The "at least in US" is important since that most people who didn't clarify that "Steamboat Willie" is in the public domain specifically in reference to US laws - in other countries it is either already PD, or in a handful countries like Mexico (which has author+100, technically no concept of corporate copyright except for the government) is still not PD.

[deleted]

Re: Disney's earliest Mickey Mouse enters public domain as US copyright expires

#77

Post by masfuerte »

chungy wrote: post #54
globular-toast wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it odd? The original is analogue. What resolution should it be scanned at? What about the Mona Lisa ?

People often think that old video must be stuck to standard definition (or worse), because they're used to seeing it on NTSC/PAL broadcasts, VHS, or DVD. The reality is, these things were captured on film, and there's no reason you can't scan the film in high definition resolutions. Film is an analogue medium whose upper bound for resolution is dictated by the film stock and grain; 35mm film is sufficient to produce…

A particular bugbear of mine is when black and white films get scanned and the process somehow introduces a bunch of moiré colour fringes into the digital copy. This feels like something that shouldn't be hard to get right.

Re: Disney's earliest Mickey Mouse enters public domain as US copyright expires

#78

Post by CuriouslyC »

safety1st wrote: post #59
manquer wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only the steamboat Willie version, the one without gloves . Also practically it doesn’t matter whether it could be fine, most businesses can’t afford to fight an extended legal battle with Disney

Mickey's so high profile that I bet someone out there would be more than happy to go to court with Disney over this. I mean if you have money and lawyers, then this is a sure way to turn them into publicity, especially if you win.

John Oliver started baiting them a while back... https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2023/04/john-oliver-dar....

Re: Disney's earliest Mickey Mouse enters public domain as US copyright expires

#79

Post by dkjaudyeqooe »

NolF wrote: post #52
dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trademark law only stops someone else using the character to represent themselves as Disney, or where is might cause confusion around that. A simple prominent disclaimer can fix that. That's assuming Disney could ever register the trademark, which is not a given, no matter how often they use it.

The question would be, do you want to fight Disney lawyers to make the argument that your use was not as a trademark, represented as Disney, or that it might cause confusion? With or without a disclaimer.

If you want to make a logo that has the likeness, then you may have a point.

If you're making a work derivative of Steamboat Willy then Disney has no basis to sue you, regardless of what trademarks they claim.

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