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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

#161

Post by brookst »

dahart wrote: post #153
mod50ack wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Companies are allowed to train on copyrighted works I’m curious what you mean by this. If I’m not allowed under copyright law to make a personal copy of the latest Pixar movie or watch it without permission or payment, even if I’m not sharing it with anyone else, what under the law allows a company to make a copy and train on it? I thought I understood copyright law to not only prohibit redistribution of copyrighte…

You’re hitting on the distinction between duplication and training.

I own hundreds of paperback books. Copyright law does not limit what I can learn from them.

It may be that assembling a corpus for training is illegal, but if so, that would be true even if it was never used for training. The act of training an AI is orthogonal to the collection of the corpus.

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

#162

Post by bvrmn »

abirch wrote: post #148
est31 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The USA often ignores the international community in many things, if the right domestic interest groups are behind it. It's just that currently the USA has powerful domestic companies/interests that are against copyright term extensions, which are more powerful than the (also quite powerful) companies in favour of term extensions. In the past decade, the USA also has tried to spread the new extended period over the w…

What are the powerful domestic companies/interests who are against the copyright terms? I always viewed copyright extensions as being good for the masses but bad for corporations (the copyright holders)

> I always viewed copyright extensions as being good for the masses

I have a hard time to find cases when it's true in the context of media content.

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

#163

Post by danbolt »

Solvency wrote: post #143
weinzierl wrote: post #29

Before people cheer too much, surprisingly works can retroactively be snatched back from the public domain and go back into copyrighted state. 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.

Just curious...why would anyone here cheer? Have HNers been desperate to launch their own Mickey Mouse novelty tee Etsy stores for years?

CS Lewis’ last novel was inspired by an ancient myth, and it wasn’t a quick rehash. It was reworked and retold with a new voice. Perhaps Steamboat Willie will be the same!

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

#164

Post by wredcoll »

zogrodea wrote: post #149
pasiaj wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The law is the will of ”we”. ”They” can’t change the law – only ”we” can.

I think this is one of those cases where representative democracy diverges from democracy proper. I doubt most people (who lack a financial incentive, unlike some politicians) will incline towards copyright extensions for companies.

And yet poor people constantly vote for tax cuts for rich people.

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

#166

Post by elnatro »

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?

Not only that, could an author from NZ create stories based on Tolkien writings? I suppose so, right?

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

#167

Post by shagie »

devilbunny wrote: post #116
RyanHamilton wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many adults of a certain age will have very happy childhood memories of watching classic disney movies such as jungle book, cinderella, toy story, Lion King. Most creative companies would love to have the kind of love that disneys back catalog has. Alas this love does mean the easy ability to sell plastic toys for every film.

Toy Story and Lion King are classics now? Damn, I’m old.

From 2011... The 2011 Guide to Making People Feel Old - Using Movie Release Dates - https://xkcd.com/891/

Age 26 - Did you realize that Toy Story Came Out Over Fifteen Years ago?

Age 27 - Did you realize that Lion King Came Out Over Fifteen Years ago?

...

Age 33, 34, 35 - Did you realize that The Little Mermaid Came Out Closer to the moon landing than the present day?

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

#168

Post by hylaride »

Solvency wrote: post #143
weinzierl wrote: post #29

Before people cheer too much, surprisingly works can retroactively be snatched back from the public domain and go back into copyrighted state. 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.

Just curious...why would anyone here cheer? Have HNers been desperate to launch their own Mickey Mouse novelty tee Etsy stores for years?

Because culture is built on itself. Almost everything is built, remixed, rewritten at some level. A good chunk of the Disney classics are taken from older stories, fairy tales, etc that were by then public domain.

Borrowing/"stealing"/copying happens with movies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-HuenDPZw0 (fast forward to 3:12 to see how much star wars borrowed from other pieces)

It happens with music (kirby had to remove this originally because of...copyright) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmjHlkQYoOM

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

#169

Post by hylaride »

datadeft wrote: post #51
praptak wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Retroactive copyright extensions It is kind of amazing how IP holders could pull this off. One of the foundations of law that you cannot make retroactive changes.

Money fuels politics (especially in the USA) and the media companies had money to spend. The average joe didn't care, so it was a perfect storm. That's less so nowadays, but mostly because even the companies are finding it hard to get bipartisan support for these kinds of things anymore.

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

#170

Post by [deleted] »

weinzierl wrote: post #29

Before people cheer too much, surprisingly works can retroactively be snatched back from the public domain and go back into copyrighted state. 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.

[deleted]
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