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

bbc.com

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

#121

Post by [deleted] »

mFixman wrote: post #61
zinekeller wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Does that mean that I can publish a Mickey video in New York that's illegal to watch in California for the next couple of hours? Neat.

[deleted]

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

#123

Post by cxr »

omneity wrote: post #88
cool_dude85 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone, in one of these threads a few weeks ago, posted what was claimed to be a movie poster/ad from the same year with his red pants and gloves: https://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/22084 If you could verify the timing on that I guess it would go into public domain as well.

You can see gloves in Steamboat Willie’s outro too, on both Mickey and Minnie.

You don't have to wait until the end. They're also in the title card. In other words, he's got gloves on in his very first appearance.

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

#124

Post by [deleted] »

dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #22
londons_explore wrote: post #8

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?

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.

[deleted]

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

#125

Post by cxr »

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.

I'm picking up on a lot of undertones in these comments and elsewhere something like an argument that while it may not technically be copyright infringement in 2024 onward, it will remain de facto off-limits simply from the threat of having to deal with lawsuits from Disney, no matter whether they're actually well-founded. What's missing from that argument is an acknowledgement that there are organizations for the public good that are more than willing to litigate over this (and happen to be bigger targets, too). Wikimedia, for example.

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

#126

Post by anticensor »

anonymfus wrote: post #70
NolF wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There is no DMCA analogue for trademarks, so, for example, YouTube has no obligation to automate trademark complaints or to resolve disputes between trademark owners and video creators, so almost every case will go through the court, and overloading courts with bogus cases can have consequences for them.

You can be sure YouTube will make BrandID, this time to satisfy jurisdictions without nominative use of trademarks, such as Turkey.

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

#127

Post by manquer »

laverya wrote: post #71
manquer wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

it is the easiest line item to spend on .

Wikipedia has one of the best SRE teams, they were pretty transparent too, a lot of the communication was on IRC channels you could see, at least that was the case few years back.

Running the top 5 website in the world is no joke especially as a non-profit and they do it well. They haven’t had any down time or major incident in the last decade which is pretty impressive.

I would think their SRE team is not just good but also very motivated in the mission otherwise they would leave for much higher paying jobs, infra jobs are very lucrative if you have prior experience at more scale not much more scale than Wikipedia .

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

#129

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

anonymfus wrote: post #70
NolF wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There is no DMCA analogue for trademarks, so, for example, YouTube has no obligation to automate trademark complaints or to resolve disputes between trademark owners and video creators, so almost every case will go through the court, and overloading courts with bogus cases can have consequences for them.

DMCA doesn't require automation for copyright takedown requests. You can use a PO box in Guam if you like.

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

#130

Post by Aloha »

mod50ack wrote: post #73
echelon wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 gen…

What would your ideal copyright regime look like?

Mine would be different than what we have now, it'd be 20 years or artists lifetime, whichever is shorter - then 10 year long renewals are possible after that, but the cost of the renewal would ratchet up with each renewal.

I've also considered using a percentage of revenue for the work - basically a tax on the revenue from that work, as a condition for the right of monopoly on it - which would also ratchet upwards with each renewal.

I'd also consider a use it or lose it strategy for copyright like trademark, meaning if you are not making the work available for purchase/license within the copyright renewal period, for reasonable terms, you lose the ability to renew it.

Mine is mostly designed to deal with orphaned works, ensuring they enter public domain in a predictable way, I think the biggest issue with our existing copyright system isn't enriching Disney - they're still putting those works out there, making them available - its all the works being lost to the sands of time.

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