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Disney Lost Roger Rabbit

pluralistic.net

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Re: Disney Lost Roger Rabbit

#111

Post by kwanbix »

joecool1029 wrote: post #16

Sorta related since Disney held a share in it previously but Dick Tracy exclusive rights are still held by Warren Beatty who produced and starred in the role back in 1990. He had to fight off a challenge from Tribune Media in court decades ago but stipulation was he had to produce new Dick Tracy stuff every few years. It’s lead to a series of increasingly surreal late night specials on TCM where he appears in charact…

So is Warren being an asshole here? I mean, we haven't seen a Dick Tracy movie since the 90s. I am out of the loop so trying to understand.

Re: Disney Lost Roger Rabbit

#112

Post by Retric »

jrmg wrote: post #106
mattmaroon wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You assume he has dementia because he’s old and retired?

There seems to be a popular view nowadays that most old people grow to be senile (just look at any online discussion of old politicians for example). This is not the case!

Old people do lose mental capacity just as they lose strength etc, dementia is a more extreme thing.

Re: Disney Lost Roger Rabbit

#113

Post by pavlov »

mayoff wrote: post #33

I don’t know if Cory Doctorow has read the “fantastic 1981 novel”, but I have (decades ago) and as I recall the plot of the book and the plot of the movie are very different from each other. The author of the book didn’t write the screenplay and I doubt he had much (if anything) to do the character designs in the movie. So even if he has the rights to his novel back, it’s not at all clear to me that he could just mak…

Disney definitely owns the character designs, so Roger and Jessica Rabbit will have to look different if a new movie is made using the IP owned by the book's author.

Re: Disney Lost Roger Rabbit

#114

Post by 0110101001 »

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?

Not exactly the same, but in Japan (where obviously many of the great games of the 80s and 90s were authored) there's a mechanism to acquire a license from the government to publish abandonware. The government collects a royalty from the new distributor that it holds in case a valid copyright holder comes forward.

Little Samson, a late-era NES game that because of its rarity can sell for thousands, was developed by a now-defunct company and is getting a re-release next year using this process.

https://www.timeextension.com/news/2025/10/daunting-limited-...

Re: Disney Lost Roger Rabbit

#115

Post by jrmg »

jrmg wrote: post #110
blendergeek wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you are correct here. From the FAQ [0] on the website linked by the post: “Derivative works” exception – although a successful termination causes all of the rights to revert, this will not affect exploitation of derivative works created during the lifetime of the agreement, even after that agreement has been terminated. Once the agreement has been terminated, the grantee (see the glossary) may continue…

I wish this were further up in the comments. Most people seem to be assuming that you get all the marbles back. Imagine the chaos if someone were able to say ‘whoops, all those books you bought are no longer sellable!’. Imagine if Alan Cox took back all the bits of Linux he wrote and decided they were no longer to be licensed under the GPL! …although maybe it’s only a matter of time before that second thing happens s…

Replying to myself…

From https://rightsback.org/faq/#What_kinds_of_agreements_cannot_... , works for hire are not covered, which includes most 1990s software (though I do still wonder about open source licenses):

Under the U.S. Copyright Act, copyrighted works that qualify as “works made for hire” are subject to special rules that govern who becomes the first owner of copyright in a work. For regular works, the person who creates the work becomes the first owner of copyright. However, for “works made for hire” either the employer or person who commissioned the work becomes the first owner of copyright. Neither of these transfers of rights from the author to the employer or commissioning party, which occur by operation of the Copyright Act, nor any subsequent agreements entered into by the employer or commissioning party in relation to the work, may be challenged by the author or their family members.

There’s a whole lot more nuance there, but notably “A contribution to a collective work” is allowed to be a work for hire.

Re: Disney Lost Roger Rabbit

#116

Post by HeinzStuckeIt »

mattmaroon wrote: post #92
HeinzStuckeIt wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sad as it is, when stars from classic Hollywood stop being visible but are still known to be alive at a highly advanced age, dementia is often the case. Gene Hackman, Gene Wilder, and Jack Nicholson are notable cases, and I just assumed Beatty was similar.

Do you think perhaps there is a sample bias because old actors who retire and don't have dementia don't get written about?

By the time the actors I mentioned were written about as having dementia, many film fans had already assumed they were dealing with dementia precisely because they were no longer being written about or seen in the media much. Such speculation about Jack Nicholson, for example, was rife on film forums well before those paparazzi images appeared.

Re: Disney Lost Roger Rabbit

#117

Post by CuriouslyC »

It amazes me the number of people who are raging at how AI is hurting creators, and will make long videos and posts about this subject, without touching on the fact that the __ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY__ is the single largest abuser of creators, and it's far worse than AI is or probably will ever be.

That's how you can tell that the RIAA/MPAA propaganda campaign against AI to protect its racket is working.

Re: Disney Lost Roger Rabbit

#118

Post by Lariscus »

oniony wrote: post #82
7bit wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why it's called copyright. You can perfectly sign it away. In Germany the right is called "Urheberrecht" which literally translates to "author's right". And while you can license your work and sign away the usage, you cannot by definition sign away the fact that you are the author of a work.

So how does ghostwriting work then? Lots of books have unaccredited ghostwriters.

This is handled in the employment contract. The "Urheberrecht" is not transferable only inheritable, but you can grant "Nutzungsrechte" which means "rights of use". So in your contract you just grant your employer unrestricted and exclusive rights of use.

Re: Disney Lost Roger Rabbit

#119

Post by ghaff »

vidarh wrote: post #95
7bit wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why it's called copyright. You can perfectly sign it away. In Germany the right is called "Urheberrecht" which literally translates to "author's right". And while you can license your work and sign away the usage, you cannot by definition sign away the fact that you are the author of a work.

In English this is usually translated as "moral rights"[1]. They are fairly widespread in other civil law jurisdictions than Germany too. Less so in common law jurisdictions. But they exist to a (very) limited extent even in the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_rights

Which is one of the reasons public domain is problematic in some jurisdictions because it requires you to waive rights you can't necessarily waive.

Yes, Louisiana somewhat notwithstanding, the US is basically common law like the UK (and much of the Anglosphere/Commonwealth).

As a bit of trivia, the MIT License was essentially created because of issues with "just" making X public domain. https://opensource.com/article/19/4/history-mit-license

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