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Mickey, Disney, and the public domain: A 95-year love triangle

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Re: Mickey, Disney, and the public domain: A 95-year love triangle

#111

Post by justsomehnguy »

bentley wrote: post #94
Bluecobra wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is a rip from a BluRay fair use? I would think that you would need to own the film reels and scan them/master it yourself.

In the US, Bridgeman v. Corel ruled that faithful copies of public domain works don’t gain copyright protection for being copies of an original. To be copyrighted requires some sort of creative spark, and that spark was entirely contained in the original work; none was introduced in the copying process. Whether this applies to a Blu‐Ray rip, I will not attempt to discern.

The classical music pieces are old.

The recordings of the classical music pieces are under the copyright.

There was a good article about there at [probably] TorrentFreaks.

Re: Mickey, Disney, and the public domain: A 95-year love triangle

#112

Post by ioblomov »

Surprised the article didn’t mention what for me (as a horror fan) was the most famous example of the public domain immediately benefiting the culture. Due to repeated edits requested by a demanding distributor, the final cut of Night of the Living Dead was released without a copyright notice. In 1968, unfortunately, this meant the work automatically went into the public domain. The film’s subsequent unexpected success led to zombies becoming a pop-culture phenomenon, but perhaps at George Romero’s expense.

Re: Mickey, Disney, and the public domain: A 95-year love triangle

#113

Post by bfeist »

shmerl wrote: post #15
b112 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could freeze it, sorta. So it is 94, then 93, then 92 and so on, years. People with copyrights today, don't lose anything. Only new ones have shorter terms.

That's better than nothing, but since it was pushed so aggressively before, it can as well be pushed backwards the same way.

Unfortunately there’s no lobby paying the bills equivalent to Disney to go the other way.

Re: Mickey, Disney, and the public domain: A 95-year love triangle

#114

Post by logicallee »

Dwedit wrote: post #21

You need to look at the contemporary advertisements for Mickey Mouse from the era. Were they in color? Was he red? According to what is stated to be a 1928 poster, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/mickey-mouse-poster_n_2149610 , he is depicted with a red shirt, white buttons, yellow gloves, and brown shoes.

what is in the middle of his palm?

Re: Mickey, Disney, and the public domain: A 95-year love triangle

#115

Post by zinekeller »

ioblomov wrote: post #112

Surprised the article didn’t mention what for me (as a horror fan) was the most famous example of the public domain immediately benefiting the culture. Due to repeated edits requested by a demanding distributor, the final cut of Night of the Living Dead was released without a copyright notice. In 1968, unfortunately, this meant the work automatically went into the public domain. The film’s subsequent unexpected succe…

> unfortunately, this meant the work automatically went into the public domain

To clarify, only in the US (and a few others not following the Berne convention). Night of the Living Dead is still in copyright for 95%-ish of the world (unlike some people insisting that "It's Public Domain worldwide." because sadly that doesn't how copyright works.) This is of course more complicated (rule of shorter term may be applied here but that's a can of worms), but generally US copyright regime was weird (and still kind of is since that other countries do have a separate moral and economic rights).

Re: Mickey, Disney, and the public domain: A 95-year love triangle

#116

Post by wodenokoto »

jauntywundrkind wrote: post #79
EvanAnderson wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen a lot of speculation that they've been slowly pivoting Steamboat Willie in preparation to use trademark litigation where copyright will no longer be effective.

At very best, I'd say Disney might possibly be a tiny bit excited that something from inside Castle Disney is entering the world & will become semi exciting on its own. Sure there'll be bad & ugly & awful things done with Steamboat Willie. But no press is bad press. And there's going to be some press about the things people do with the mouse.

Wasn't "Winnie The Pooh: Blood and Honey" a result of the characters entering public domain? I don't think it really did a lot to bring Winnie the Pooh to peoples mind, and I don't recall anything else based on Winnie coming out.

Re: Mickey, Disney, and the public domain: A 95-year love triangle

#117

Post by muzani »

Dwedit wrote: post #21

You need to look at the contemporary advertisements for Mickey Mouse from the era. Were they in color? Was he red? According to what is stated to be a 1928 poster, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/mickey-mouse-poster_n_2149610 , he is depicted with a red shirt, white buttons, yellow gloves, and brown shoes.

Was it originally yellow gloves? That's an old poster.

Re: Mickey, Disney, and the public domain: A 95-year love triangle

#118

Post by goto11 »

ddingus wrote: post #47
cocacola1 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disney is both the best and worst when it comes to the public domain. It shows what you should do with it: take something that exists, remix it, release it, and even create a successful media & entertainment company. But efforts to aid extensions to the term of copyright expiration will – if they haven't already – have a deleterious effect.

Had the Brothers Grimm taken the Disney view, there would have been no Disney, or at the least, a very different, far less compelling one.

The Grimm Brothers didn't write the stories, they collected and published folktales. In any case they would have been been out of copyright since Jacob Grimm died in 1863.

Disney didn't mind paying for the rights if they wanted to use material still under copyright, like they did for Bambi or Dumbo or many others.

Re: Mickey, Disney, and the public domain: A 95-year love triangle

#119

Post by skrebbel »

ioblomov wrote: post #112

Surprised the article didn’t mention what for me (as a horror fan) was the most famous example of the public domain immediately benefiting the culture. Due to repeated edits requested by a demanding distributor, the final cut of Night of the Living Dead was released without a copyright notice. In 1968, unfortunately, this meant the work automatically went into the public domain. The film’s subsequent unexpected succe…

I’m confused that not adding a copyright notice automatically donates something to the public domain. This is not how I learned copyright works. I always believed that you own the copyright to everything you produce unless explicitly noted otherwise.

A sister comment suggests that this was some feature (bug?) of US copyright law at the time, can anyone elaborate?

Re: Mickey, Disney, and the public domain: A 95-year love triangle

#120

Post by inejge »

logicallee wrote: post #114
Dwedit wrote: post #21

You need to look at the contemporary advertisements for Mickey Mouse from the era. Were they in color? Was he red? According to what is stated to be a 1928 poster, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/mickey-mouse-poster_n_2149610 , he is depicted with a red shirt, white buttons, yellow gloves, and brown shoes.

what is in the middle of his palm?

He's wearing dress gloves with a cutout and button closure. When closed, the cutout leaves a small opening, which is a bit stylized and exaggerated here.
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