Disney will still C&D and sue anyone that uses Mickey in a way they disapprove of and 99% will fold because otherwise Disney will bankrupt them with the legal process.
Mickey, Disney, and the public domain: A 95-year love triangle
171–180 of 221 posts
Re: Mickey, Disney, and the public domain: A 95-year love triangle
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's probably too short. It would live authors with very little bargaining power particularly if they become bigger in their writing carriers. Corporations would just have to wait 20 years and save themselves the exclusive rights and royalties. It should be looked form the frame of how long is appropriate to promote the creation of the arts etc. Realistically no author is thinking I won't create this art unless I get…
40 years seems like the highest defensible limit. This would mean if you created a work in your 20s, copyright would expire when you're eligible for social security. It's safe to say that if you haven't made money on your work within nearly 2 generations since its publication and before you become a pensioner, you're not going to. Or it's at least not going to drive you to create new works. Corporations can't wait ev…
> Corporations can't wait even 20 years because tastes change.
Corporations create the taste. They can even wait hundreds of years. Just look at how many old stories are remade today. Unless there is something extraordinary, hyped for longer than a summer, they will wait all they want.
Re: Mickey, Disney, and the public domain: A 95-year love triangle
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's actually very common in Hollywood. Wait if a work survives the test of time. And then reap on the now money-loaded customers and cash out from their reminiscence.
Hollywood is already rebooting reboots of remakes of comic books vaguely based on historic events. Imagine if original copyright rules in the us applied (14 extensible by 14 for a living author). They could reboot anything before 1995 for free.
They already do that now, even for less stuff from less than 20, 30 years. They reboot, remake, continue anything for whatever reason. Money is relevant, but by far not the biggest hurdle to prevent them. The permissions of the right holders and the influence of the creators are more important IMHO.
For example, Netflix just now announced a reboot of One Piece Anime, a series running for 25 years. The creator is still working on the original source. Imagine if Netflix could just do that on their own, the creator had no influence at all on their work. They could just make shit along the way as they see it. Twist it, change it, with their power, they could be damaging the original work for good, simply because they are bigger.
Re: Mickey, Disney, and the public domain: A 95-year love triangle
#174You 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.
The estimate of $20,000 for that poster seemed surprisingly low. It went for $101,000. (This was back in 2012.)
Re: Mickey, Disney, and the public domain: A 95-year love triangle
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
You mean the comment written by me? This is a very tedious way of arguing - if you have a point, why dont you make it? You think Disney IP should be free for all to use? Just remember this would go both ways - Disney could take the work of any independent author or artist and use freely without crediting.
My point is that the Disney empire was built on public domain works. At least the older stuff should become public domain. They're trying to have their cake and eat it. It's not normal or sane or good for society that things created 70+ years ago are still locked up in a corporate vault.
You’re each arguing half of the article and are thus both correct.
Your conflict is self-created and can also be undone.
Re: Mickey, Disney, and the public domain: A 95-year love triangle
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
On the pre-Berne era, you are required to properly affix a copyright notice, but since that Night of the Living Dead was released without one it became outside of US copyright law (and automatically became in public domain). In addition to the belated Berne Convention adaptation, the US also required registration of copyright, and to this day still "prefers" registration. (However the reality is that while modern wor…
> However the reality is that while modern work is still in copyright regardless of registration status, in case there's a legal suit the possible remedies are severely curtailed if it's not a registered work, so to this day it's still effectively mandatory
It should be noted that only some of the possible remedies are curtailed. Attorney fees and statutory damages are curtailed, but injunctions and actual damages are not.
Also the curtailing is just for infringement before registration. I'm not quite sure what that the implications are for that.
For infringement that has stopped by the time you register and sue it seems straightforward--all you might get are actual damages from that infringement and an injunction ordering them to not infringe again.
But infringements are usually ongoing, I believe. So what if you just sue for an infringement that happened after you registered? Can you then get attorney fees and statutory damages?
If you can, then in the case of ongoing infringement it might not make much difference. Your attorney costs are going to be about the same regardless of whether the case is just dealing with the infringements after registration or is deal with all of the infringements. And statutory damages are per work infringed, not per infringing copy, although I'd expect the amount to be lower if they are only meant for post-registration infringement.
The statute that curtails attorney fees and statutory damages pre-registration says it applies to "any infringement of copyright commenced after first publication of the work and before the effective date of its registration [...]". The question then is when does an infringement "commence"? Would ongoing infringement all count as commencing with the first infringement, so it would all be denied attorney fees and statutory damages?
There's nothing I noticed in the definitions section of the copyright statute that says what "commence" means. I did find that for purposes of the statute of limitations on bringing a copyright suite, the time is counted from the most recent infringement that is part of an ongoing infringement, and would guess that it has similar meaning elsewhere but law is not always that consistent.
> This... has been a grumbling of some countries since that Berne convention requires that there should not have formalities, and this seems to retain that formality system
The requirement that you register for suing only applies to infringement of works that are "United States" works. A published work is a "United States" work only if it was first publication was in the US or simultaneous in the US and somewhere else, or if it was first published someplace that is not a party with the US in any international copyright agreement and all the authors are "nationals, domiciliaries, or habitual residents of, or in the case of an audiovisual work legal entities with headquarters in" the US.
So, if you are say some author in some random Berne country, publish your work there but not simultaneously here, and then later find someone in the US infringing, you don't have to register to sue here because that would not be a "United States" work. The US argues that this satisfies Berne. Berne is about how you treat works and authors from other countries. It's OK if you treat domestic works and authors worse than foreign works and authors.
You do need registration for attorney fees and statutory damages, but I think the argument for that being OK under Berne is that the only remedy Berne requires is the seizure of infringing goods.
Re: Mickey, Disney, and the public domain: A 95-year love triangle
#177So Mickey expired. But how does it work for creations by Disney? Will they expire on an ongoing basis? By creation I mean:
- The actual drawings
- The animations
- The story lines
Re: Mickey, Disney, and the public domain: A 95-year love triangle
#178Was there a copyright reason for Disney changing their opening logo sequence to the steamboat willy thing? Some kind of "it's now our trademark" claim?
I think it was to mirror Marvel's intro showing the history of the brand.
This was my more generous, less cynical take as well. Disney has been approaching their 100 year anniversary (not passed), and Steamboat Willie was the first animated short under the banner of Walt Disney Animation Studios. It makes sense to honor one's first at one's hundredth.
Re: Mickey, Disney, and the public domain: A 95-year love triangle
#179Unfair compromise suggestion: Exempt Disney from the law and shrink the public domain? Acknowledge reality and create competition for those who are beyond the law, instead of them destroying the law for all?
The idea that the current lengths of copyright law are anything to do with Disney is a nice fiction but it's not true. The US has the copyright terms they have is because they were obligated to match the EU's by international treaty (where copyright is, in most cases, the end of the year 70 years after the author dies). The EU adopted that term to harmonise it's copyright with that of Germany. Disney certainly didn't…
The USA unilaterally passed the Copyright Act of 1976, extending copyright to life + 50 years. The reason it did this was because the oldest works still enjoying copyright protection would have expired in 1977.
Only in 1988 did the USA accede to the Berne Convention, and in 1990 acceded to the WTO TRIPS agreement. The EU didn't exist until 1993 (the EEC preceeded it) and the EU didn't try harmonising copyright law even among its own member states until 1993. The EU and USA don't have any trade deals, their last attempt (TTIP) went down in flames.
And then came the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act
In 1998, the USA extended its copyright terms - not because any international convention or trade agreement required them to. Again, the timing was because the oldest works still enjoying copyright protection would have expired in 1998. As Disney was openly lobbying Congress, and Mickey was due to enter the public domain in 1999, it becomes fairly clear why the USA did this. Nothing to do with Europe.
Re: Mickey, Disney, and the public domain: A 95-year love triangle
#180It's incredibly ironic that under the copyright terms Disney has helped get enacted, several earlier films in particular Alice in Wonderland would have been infringement. Crossing a rope bridge and cutting it down behind you.
I don't understand. According to Wikipedia, Disney bought the rights to Alice in Wonderland and the illustrations from the publisher in 1938, 13 years before the movie came out.