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Sherlock Holmes Is in the Public Domain, American Judge Rules

artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com

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Re: Sherlock Holmes Is in the Public Domain, American Judge Rules

#101

Post by gweinberg »

eurleif wrote: post #47
davidw wrote: post #22

I'm in favor of IP laws, including copyright, but with the idea of creating incentives for people to create. Putting Sherlock Holmes in the public domain is probably not going to have much effect on Arthur Conan-Doyle's writing output, though, so it's probably a good thing at this point.

>Putting Sherlock Holmes in the public domain is probably not going to have much effect on Arthur Conan-Doyle's writing output, though, so it's probably a good thing at this point. I'm playing devil's advocate a bit here, but couldn't the precedent have an effect on the creative output of people alive today, based on their desire for their descendants to inherit something valuable?

Not to any non-trivial extent. Given that nearly always the vast majority of royalties aree realized within a few yers of publicayion, anf given that with any reasonable discounting getting a dollar 100 years from now is worth less than getting a penny today, even without taking into account that you will be dead, there really isn't an incentive argument for long copyrights. The economic incentive effect for having a longer copyright term than about 20 years is approximately nothing.

Re: Sherlock Holmes Is in the Public Domain, American Judge Rules

#102

Post by gweinberg »

officemonkey wrote: post #40
Houshalter wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironic considering Disney is famous for making films based on other people's stories.

Did you know that Disney is asserting their trademark on Snow White? They believe that they're the only studio allowed to make a film of the Snow White story, even though the Snow White fairy tale is in the public domain?

I'm looking forward to them asserting copyright over the Jungle Book characters. Sure, Disnet made their movie the year after Kipling's copyright expired, but it's the Disney movie versions that people know and love, not the versions from some old book that nobody reads any more.

That reminds me, I should download Jungle Book from librivox, I need more books to listen to.

Re: Sherlock Holmes Is in the Public Domain, American Judge Rules

#103

Post by chilldream »

jrockway wrote: post #84

Can someone point me to a law review article that covers how characters can be copyrighted? I understand that the text of the book can be copyrighted, but characters? That seems like a stretch. How does fan fiction exist at all? Authors have the legal right to go after fans, but choose not to? In this legal climate, I highly doubt that.

> Authors have the legal right to go after fans, but choose not to?

This is actually pretty much exactly how it works. Fan fiction is generally a "derivative work" but most creators and publishers realize that there is no real incentive to go after most of it, and a serious disincentive in the form of bad PR among the exact groups of people who are already buying their stuff.

Re: Sherlock Holmes Is in the Public Domain, American Judge Rules

#104

Post by pseut »

rational_indian wrote: post #100
prewett wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Americans see everyone as equal in status (in theory); in paragraph two of our first document, we say that it is, in fact, self-evident that all men are created equal. Since we are all equal, titles don't really serve much purpose, as the whole point of titles is to distinguish yourself.

>we say that it is, in fact, self-evident that all men are created equal. How is this self evident?

That phrase is from the Declaration of Independence, one of the US's founding documents:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_transc...

Re: Sherlock Holmes Is in the Public Domain, American Judge Rules

#106

Post by njharman »

KeliNorth wrote: post #87
Houshalter wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I understand why characters themselves are copyrighted. I get why its bad to just copy someone else's work, but if I go to the effort to write my own book about the same character, who cares? The world isn't worse off for fan fiction.

Though copyright as it is has issues, this seems very off, as characters are the work, moreso than the settings and even plot - as only one of those three items tends to be unique. I've written books and stories, and the best answer I can give to you is this: Those characters do not live in your head. They live in mine. I have full control in expressing who and what they are on paper for others to learn more about th…

Wow, really?

> because they don't have any control over my creations, my thoughts, my personal universe.

Nor do you or should you have control over the creations, thoughts of the other billions of people on the planet

> I have full control in expressing who and what they are on paper

Why? It certainly isn't natural or basic right. Copyright does not cover or protect things in your head. It covers what you and others fixate into medium. It does(should) not cover ideas, only specific implementations of those ideas. Your imagined god-hood of things in your head matters not.

Creativity is not spontaneous. Despite what you think, your precious characters do not spring original from your mind. They are amalgamations of our shared culture.

You may be lauded for effort of getting them out into a cohesive and entertaining form. But that for fuck sure does not grant you the right to deny the rest of world from doing the same.

Re: Sherlock Holmes Is in the Public Domain, American Judge Rules

#107

Post by njharman »

officemonkey wrote: post #39
mullingitover wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disney holds a trademark on Mickey Mouse in perpetuity, so your nostalgia is covered. I'd be happy with a copyright system where the fee is $5 for the first year of government-protected monopoly, $10, for the second, $20 for the third, and on and on at the rate of $5*2^n for as long as they like. Note that at the fifteen-year mark, the renewal fee for another year of copyright enforcement would be over $30 million, w…

This. Whenever people talk about Mickey Mouse entering the public domain like it's the end of the world, I point to the Fleischer Studio Superman Cartoons that were made in the 1940s. Those cartoons are in the public domain and people may copy or sell them as much as they want. However, since DC Comics still holds a trademark on Superman, you can't use Superman for anything else. In fact, when I bought a VHS tape of…

Because it's not about Mickey.

It's about suppressing the ideas that copyright is a granted right, a temporary right, that everything starts out free (as in freedom) and is only temporarily monopolized for the betterment of society, that the public domain exists.

And to reinforce that idea that culture, art, entertainment are products owned by corporations which must be paid for.

Re: Sherlock Holmes Is in the Public Domain, American Judge Rules

#108

Post by derleth »

scoot wrote: post #80
icambron wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also ridiculous. That some institution granted you a degree doesn't compel the rest of us to call you by a special name. When I ask medical doctors about that (my wife is one, for example), their main reason for supporting the "Dr" title is that it creates a sort of formal separation between the patient and the doctor which keeps things professional, similar to how we had to call our elementary teachers "Mr" or "Ms".…

I found it amusing to learn that, in some parts of the world, surgeons are conferred the title of Mr, Miss, Mrs or Ms as preferential to Dr, as if above the petty nonsense of using "Dr" as a social differentiator. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surgeon#Titles And now we are wildly off-topic!

Also because surgeons were manual laborers, and therefore not accorded the same respect as gentleman physicians.

Re: Sherlock Holmes Is in the Public Domain, American Judge Rules

#109

Post by njharman »

chrismcb wrote: post #92
hrasyid wrote: post #15

Pardon my ignorance, but shouldn't it be a "duh" that the copyright already expired?

While I agree this should be a "duh." But the question is, the copyright for what? Some of the Holmes stories are still under copyright, and that is what they are arguing... Fortunately they are wrong.

Not about the expired copyrights. But rather how any story using those same characters are derivative works of the later still copyrighted stores (and thus protected by copyright) even if they use no elements from those later copyrighted stories.

Re: Sherlock Holmes Is in the Public Domain, American Judge Rules

#110

Post by ben010783 »

kurren wrote: post #105

It's really interesting how US justice is always so keen to rule for public domain for non US ip while being so defensive for US ip products (eg. Disney) - I guess it's one more face of American exceptionalism. We love you so much guys.

It seems like you're confusing a judge's interpretation of a law with extensive lobbying to get a law changed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act
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