Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Disney Lost Roger Rabbit

pluralistic.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 260 posts

Re: Disney Lost Roger Rabbit

#21

Post by charcircuit »

water-data-dude wrote: post #12
charcircuit wrote: post #4

[flagged]

The power dynamic is very asymmetrical. Disney is ABSOLUTELY free to negotiate with him to continue distributing the movie, running the ride, etc. It has been 35 YEARS and Disney's failed to do anything else with the IP. The original creator wants to make a sequel, and now he's able to. Also: you mentioned a scenario where you might make a video game and wanted to be able to distribute it in perpetuity. Unless you ba…

>Unless you based the video game on some pre-existing creative work that someone else came up with

Licensing assets like rocks, foliage, random textures or sounds is extremely common in the game industry, even among big games.

Re: Disney Lost Roger Rabbit

#22

Post by eastbound »

parineum wrote: post #20

> This is a nightmare scenario for a creator: you make a piece of work that turns out to be incredibly popular, but you've licensed it to a kind of absentee landlord who owns the rights but refuses to exercise them. This nightmare scenario involves selling the rights to your character to a company that has the ability to produce, advertise and cast a movie with talented actors. I'm certain I never would have heard of…

> that has the ability to produce, advertise and cast a movie with talented actors.

Isn’t that most of the work?

You get: A lumpsum for your initial research that ended up as a character that people like,

They get: The idea of a character, but then they have to invest billions, build projects that work, tie relationships with cinemas and actors, advertise worldwide and maybe they make billions if they worked properly, but sometimes they make losses. Sounds like they worked for it, and building the initial character is like 0.0…1% of the talent involved.

Unionist gets: A nice story about how it’s always multibillion dollars companies that have all the money.

Maybe ideas are free and implementation is everything?

Re: Disney Lost Roger Rabbit

#23

Post by charcircuit »

invl wrote: post #9
charcircuit wrote: post #4

[flagged]

this happens with eg licensed music or product tie-ins or whatever, and the game just stops being sold

And I think it would be best if they could license the content in perpetuity so it doesn't come to that. But that's impossible as even if the studio gets a perpetual license, it can still be terminated.

Re: Disney Lost Roger Rabbit

#24

Post by charcircuit »

axiolite wrote: post #18
charcircuit wrote: post #4

[flagged]

> What's the point of buying something if the other person is allowed to steal it back. If you can't make a profit off of a licensed property after 35 years of exclusive control, you've done something horribly wrong. If you sit on a licensed property and do nothing with it for decades, it should be allowed to revert to someone else, or better yet go into public domain.

Termination of Transfer has nothing to do with how much profit a work is making.

Re: Disney Lost Roger Rabbit

#25

Post by charcircuit »

monkeywork wrote: post #8
charcircuit wrote: post #4

[flagged]

Is that what is happening? My understanding of Termination of Transfer is that it keeps you from being able to make a sequel to your video game using the characters you licensed from me, but that the game you have already created you can continue to sell. What the termination allows me to do as the creator of that character in this analogy is say - charcircuit isn't doing anything with my character for 35 years - I'm…

I can't keep selling it if you terminate the distribution right to some texture you made that I used in my game.

Re: Disney Lost Roger Rabbit

#26

Post by TitaRusell »

mathgeek wrote: post #3

Lots of fun ranting (the good kind) about the ills of the industries built to take advantage of creators, but for those who just want to know more about the state of Roger Rabbit: https://www.imnotbad.com/2025/11/roger-rabbit-copyright-reve...

[flagged]

Re: Disney Lost Roger Rabbit

#27

Post by crooked-v »

october8140 wrote: post #6

This should work for video game developers right? Can they reclaim ownership of the games they created in the 80s/90s that have been abandoned?

Video game copyrights were rarely ever held by a single person, even in the early days of the industry.

Re: Disney Lost Roger Rabbit

#28

Post by jonplackett »

Exoristos wrote: post #5

Direct link to the article: https://pluralistic.net/2025/11/18/im-not-bad/#im-just-drawn... It's a long-winded article, even for a lawyer, but the payload seems to be a crack at the head of the RIAA, which is suing Midjouney. "In other words, Glazier doesn't want these lawsuits to get rid of Midjourney and protect creative workers from the threat of AI – he just wants the AI companies to pay the media companies to ma…

I don’t find it long winded. It just gives background and makes a bunch of valid points.

Mainly that creatives are being screwed because every time they get given extra rights they’re bullied into selling them for nothing.

So this right that they get the copyright back after 35y is different - because you can’t be forced to sell it for nothing.

We need more laws like this to help creative people make the money they deserve. Most creative people make a pitiful amount of money while studios / publishers / labels do better and better. It’s not sustainable.

Re: Disney Lost Roger Rabbit

#29

Post by nebula8804 »

This is so freakin awesome!

Roger Rabbit was actually played in 35mm just last Thursday in Central NJ. What a treat it would have been to known that the original author got his characters back. I was lamenting on all the time that had passed since release. This cheered me right up! Will we see a whole Roger Rabbit universe now?

Re: Disney Lost Roger Rabbit

#30

Post by noelwelsh »

parineum wrote: post #20

> This is a nightmare scenario for a creator: you make a piece of work that turns out to be incredibly popular, but you've licensed it to a kind of absentee landlord who owns the rights but refuses to exercise them. This nightmare scenario involves selling the rights to your character to a company that has the ability to produce, advertise and cast a movie with talented actors. I'm certain I never would have heard of…

You quoted one of the key sentences from the piece, and yet missed the point. It's the "you've licensed it to a kind of absentee landlord who owns the rights but refuses to exercise them." part that is important. In the case of Roger Rabbit, the problem is the Disney has not made any new Roger Rabbit movies or other media in 35 years, despite the first movie being very successful. No doubt other concept, that could be successful, never even get to that point. See stories of "stuck in develompent hell".
Post reply on HN