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Disney Lost Roger Rabbit

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Re: Disney Lost Roger Rabbit

#221

Post by tptacek »

There's something very weird in this editorial. Doctorow implies that he's unhappy that copyright renewability became assignable in 1909†. Assignability to publishers is, by implication, bad for creators.

How exactly could that be the case? Assignment isn't automatic. Creators have to agree to assign to publishers. It's not clear to me how this doesn't make them strictly better off. Assignment of renewability, in Doctorow's framing, is valuable. How are creators made better off for not being able to sell it?

†(he refers to the framer's original term of 14 years + renewability for 14 years, leaving out that the term was extended to base 28 + 14 year renewal in 1831 --- he also leaves out that assignability predates the modern media industry by decades).

Re: Disney Lost Roger Rabbit

#222

Post by ramses0 »

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…

Similarly Wheel of Time had one... I had to dig deep and converse with an LLM to figure it out. I proposed to it "copyslop" as the term of art, it came back with "placeholder productions", "copyright keepers", and eventually there seems to be a "real" term-of-art called "ashcan" - https://old.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/9jxvtb/til_a...

In any case: """Yes, you're likely thinking of the "Wheel of Time" pilot episode titled Winter Dragon, which aired in 2015. It was a low-budget production that was released with almost no promotion and aired in the middle of the night on FXX. The purpose of this release was widely believed to be an attempt by Red Eagle Entertainment to retain the rights to Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series, as their licensing agreement required them to produce something before a specific deadline."""

https://wheeloftime.fandom.com/wiki/Winter_Dragon

Re: Disney Lost Roger Rabbit

#223

Post by dredmorbius »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #155
jimbokun wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You answer your own question. Yes, intellectual property rights should be different than physical property rights.

No, they're not different. If I can't sign away the title to my car, it's literally worthless. Exactly the same is true of my IP rights.

Your car (or other real/chattel property) is capital which can be used directly for gain (e.g., commuting to work, driven for hire), loaned, used as collateral in loans, have its likeness or image used, amongst other potential financially-beneficial actions, all without sale or transfer of title.

Re: Disney Lost Roger Rabbit

#224

Post by CobrastanJorji »

johannes1234321 wrote: post #79
latexr wrote: post #50

> "Termination of Transfer" was introduced via the 1976 Copyright Act. It allows creators to unilaterally cancel the copyright licenses they have signed over to others, by waiting 35 years and then filing some paperwork with the US Copyright Office. You have to wait half a lifetime?! Talk about a performative (pun unintended) law. > when Congress gives creators new copyrights to bargain with, the Big Five (or Four, o…

> should never be possible for someone to sign away their rights. If you can sign them away, you can be swindled of them. So, if I sell you my house or car I can't sign away my rights on it? - Sure, there is a difference between material and intellectual property ... Against swindling there needs to be protection from fraud, but that exists in most legislative systems.

Tangent to your point, the Bible requires that home ownership work exactly like this. You can sell your family's home and lands, but every 50th year, the Jubilee year, the lands must be returned to your family.

The intent was to prevent permanent poverty (poverty = not owning land), and any slaves are also freed on the Jubilee (because slavery was also a poverty thing then). Today, though, it'd probably be more of a tool of a permanent ruling class, so it's probably a good thing that Jews and Christians mostly ignore that section.

Re: Disney Lost Roger Rabbit

#225

Post by CamperBob2 »

Talanes wrote: post #213
CamperBob2 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they're not different. If I can't sign away the title to my car, it's literally worthless. Exactly the same is true of my IP rights.

You're describing literally Ferrari.

Ferrari can only enforce those terms by refusing to sell you any more cars, though. There's not much they can do beyond that.

GM also comes to mind, where they void the warranty if you flip your new Z06 or ZR1 within 6 months. It's nothing more or less than an encumbrance on the title, and they shouldn't be able to demand that without consideration in the form of a discount. But they can, because they have monopoly power in that particular niche.

Key point is that Ferrari and Corvette are niche markets. Car customers in general wouldn't put up with it, because there's plenty of competition for their business.

Re: Disney Lost Roger Rabbit

#226

Post by WorldMaker »

jajuuka wrote: post #127
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…

Yeah the Roger Rabbit is a miracle where multiple major studios came together and allowed their IP to be in the same work. Disney, Warner Bros, Fleischer Studios, Harvey Comics, King Features Syndicate, Felix the Cat Productions, Turner Entertainment, and Universal Pictures/Walter Lantz Productions all agreed to share their characters. One of Steven Spielbergs great accomplishments was negotiating this. With how prot…

Roger Rabbit was voiced by Charles Fleischer (no relation to Max and Dave Fleischer of Fleischer Studios), who is currently still working (and also voiced Roger's cameo in the Chip and Dale movie that was a spiritual sequel).

Re: Disney Lost Roger Rabbit

#227

Post by victorbjorklund »

dredmorbius wrote: post #223
CamperBob2 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they're not different. If I can't sign away the title to my car, it's literally worthless. Exactly the same is true of my IP rights.

Your car (or other real/chattel property) is capital which can be used directly for gain (e.g., commuting to work, driven for hire), loaned, used as collateral in loans, have its likeness or image used, amongst other potential financially-beneficial actions, all without sale or transfer of title.

What kind of collateral does not involve putting the title as the collateral?

Re: Disney Lost Roger Rabbit

#228

Post by victorbjorklund »

Asmod4n wrote: post #163
johannes1234321 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> should never be possible for someone to sign away their rights. If you can sign them away, you can be swindled of them. So, if I sell you my house or car I can't sign away my rights on it? - Sure, there is a difference between material and intellectual property ... Against swindling there needs to be protection from fraud, but that exists in most legislative systems.

You can't sign away your copyright in germany, you can only hand over the rights of distribution of your work.

An exclusive usage right (Nutzungsrechte) is pretty much the same (and not limited to distribution)

Re: Disney Lost Roger Rabbit

#229

Post by wilg »

> But at the same time, the amount of money being earned by creative workers has only fallen over this period [50 years, so since 1975], both in real terms (how much money an average creative worker brings home) and as a share of the total (what percentage of the revenues from a creator's work the creator gets to keep).

Is there evidence this is true? It doesn't sound very true.

Re: Disney Lost Roger Rabbit

#230

Post by pbhjpbhj »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #224
johannes1234321 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> should never be possible for someone to sign away their rights. If you can sign them away, you can be swindled of them. So, if I sell you my house or car I can't sign away my rights on it? - Sure, there is a difference between material and intellectual property ... Against swindling there needs to be protection from fraud, but that exists in most legislative systems.

Tangent to your point, the Bible requires that home ownership work exactly like this. You can sell your family's home and lands, but every 50th year, the Jubilee year, the lands must be returned to your family. The intent was to prevent permanent poverty (poverty = not owning land), and any slaves are also freed on the Jubilee (because slavery was also a poverty thing then). Today, though, it'd probably be more of a…

Christians don't need to ignore it, it's part of the Old Covenant. Jesus said he fulfilled the requirements of the old covenant, the new one is very basic "love God, love your neighbour, don't sin".

It (Leviticus 25) was a tool of a ruling people-group; it kept Jews special and relegated other people's to potentially be slaves, and to not own property in Jewish lands. Also have special privileges to priests (Levites).

I mean that's part of why it's not relevant to Christians - per Galatians 3:28 - there's not supposed to be racial distinctions! And there are not supposed to be priests either.

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