Public Domain and the battle of 2019

[Teelie]

If I recall right, it was originally something like 30 years after creation, then after the death of the creator, now it's zombified and tied to large corporations like Disney, Warner Brothers, Marvel, D.C., etc. where it won't end.

 

[Thundercrack85]

I can see the argument for a certain amount of time after the creator's death. I mean what if they die within a year? Spouses, descendants of creators and the company's that hire them deserve a certain span of time to use and profit from creative work, but that time shouldn't be centuries.

Tying it to lifetimes is a tricky matter. Who exactly creates films? Is it the writer? The director? The producers? Whose lifetime should it be tied to?

I don't see why. They inherit the profits, sure. But the rights? Why should my children own something fictitious I created?

Besides, it's not like they can't use the idea after I die. They can still sell copies. They just don't have a monopoly on it.

As to answer those other questions, I would look at how works were regulated before the laws were written by companies and or their lobbyists.

The current laws are actually unconstitutional by any sane person's reading of the constitution.

 

[redhawk23]

Often times in work for hire situations the creative works never belong to the actual writers or whatever but those who hire them. Who is the "creator" of a movie with 6 writers? What one person creates most video games?

Ownership of creative works can be seen as an asset the same way stocks and real estate are. They are property. Why shouldn't people be able to pass on their property to their spouses and children? Again I don't think the time should be crazy long or anything but I don't think that aspect is unreasonable. If I publish something today and die tomorrow, should it just become public? If that seems like an unreasonable case, just think how many rockstars have died at the height of their success. Should In Utero, released in 1993 and on which Kurt Cobain is listed as the songwriter have become public domain when Cobain killed himself in 1994? Why wouldn't his estate, and ultimately his daughter retain ownership of his intellectual properties any less than his guitar or his home?

 

[Teelie]

Flawed argument: Virtually everything created is owned by a corporation and almost none of the profits generated from it goes to the actual people or their descendents.

So nope, not buying that.

 

[JewishHobbit]

I honestly feel like people dying to use protected properties fighting the public domain laws are being greedy. We have all the ideas that our creative minds can possibly conceive, but we want to complain because we can't write or create with someone else's property? That just sound silly to me. We don't have a right to other people's creations no matter how long it's been. It'd be fun to use them, yes, but we aren't owed anything.

And no, I don't care about previous works that are now in the public domain like Dracula, Frankenstein, etc. Heck, there are great superheroes in the public domain already. If people are so hot to tell stories with established characters, use those. Black Terror, Green Llama, Pyro-Man... all great characters to tell stories with. But as far as I'm concerned, they could have all stayed in the estates of their creators.

I'd rather see people come up with something new and innovative than rip off other people's already established ideas. I and many like me are bored of constant retellings of old stories. Hollywood, comics, etc.

 

[Teelie]

The number of famous characters "ripped off" from past works is too massive to list, but go ahead and defend the idea that a creative new idea can be made without someone citing a previous work and see how far they get with it.

 

[Dr.]

For a one-off creation that’s been gathering dust for decades, a more limited copyright term would make a certain amount of sense. The original author (+ heirs) enjoyed revenues for, say, 75 years. But after that, maybe someone else - taking advantage of public domain status - can breathe creative life back into a dormant property.

But in cases where the author/owner is continually maintaining and investing in an ongoing character, a longer copyright also seems fair. E.g., Mickey Mouse. Now, I don’t think Disney particularly cares whether Steamboat Willie (1928) lapses into public domain. (Indeed, Disney has posted it on Youtube - watch it for free.) But Mickey, himself, continues to be a valuable and active character/brand. So it’s not as if public domain would rescue and revive Mickey from obscurity. That mouse is still famous and continues to thrive under Disney.

 

[Thundercrack85]

Actually, Disney is a major reason we have the modern copyright laws. The fear of Mickey Mouse becoming public domain in particular (via Steamboat Willie). Their lobbying efforts helped pass the law.

The Copyright Term Extension Act was even nicknamed the Mickey Mouse Protection Act.

Steamboat Willie may be online for free watching, but that hardly means it's public domain, or that Disney doesn't care about it becoming public domain (see above).

The whole point of copyright was for it to be temporary. It was never meant to be perpetual, something that's reflected by the constitution.

 

[Teelie]

And thanks to the Mickey Mouse act, anything that's become obscured or "abandoned" from that time on is still locked up, unusable and protected from anyone innovating or updating it. Some obscure character from the 30's or 40's should already be open to use but it won't be until long after most of us are dead.

I believe the closest we'll have anyone not Disney able to use Star Wars in the public domain (with current "protections") in place is sometime in the 2200 2100's. As in two centuries a century.

Therefore, Episode IV will be 2072.

I am not sure if Episodes V, VI are "corporate authorship", if so, they would expire into public domain either in 2075 or 2078 (if "authored" by LucasFilm), or 70 years after Lucas dies, which means 100% sure after 2082.

The rest of the years after 1989 fall under the same rules as the corporate authorship for pre-1989, therefore Episodes 1-3 will expire 2094, 2099 and 2102.

Stackexchange via Cornell's copyright resource page.

So not quite into the 22nd century, yet. Give Disney time though, once Mickey's public domain lease comes up I'm sure they'll extend it.

 

[The_Mighty_Thor]

I don't think copyright should ever expire. If you create something it should always belong to you and it should get passed down to your family. Leased copyrights should of course expire but the term length should be clearly and unchallengeabley written into the contract. If you think that you or anyone else is so talented that we have to see what they can do then let them show their talent and create their own character.

 

[Teelie]

I'm washing my hands of this. Fanboy defense of copyright, because you don't want to see a favorite character "tarnished" is going to inevitably leave more people defending a corporate construct that should never have been legalized to begin with.

 

[Dr.]

Steamboat Willie may be online for free watching, but that hardly means it's public domain, or that Disney doesn't care about it becoming public domain...

I don’t say that Disney would welcome Steamboat Willie entering the public domain (which would have happened by now under the prior rules). But if someone were legally allowed to make crappy copies of a black-&-white short and sell them as DVDs, Disney isn’t going to lose a lot of revenues as a result. The question is whether Mickey - as an active character, who appeared in new cartoons as recently as 2013 - should expire into public domain because Steamboat Willie started the copyright countdown clock in 1928.

 

[redhawk23]

I don’t say that Disney would welcome Steamboat Willie entering the public domain (which would have happened by now under the prior rules). But if someone were legally allowed to make crappy copies of a black-&-white short and sell them as DVDs, Disney isn’t going to lose a lot of revenues as a result. The question is whether Mickey - as an active character, who appeared in new cartoons as recently as 2013 - should expire into public domain because Steamboat Willie started the copyright countdown clock in 1928.

That's a solid point.

One solution is to treat copyright the way many of these companies already treat their licensing.

Just as Fox or Sony have to have some kind of development to keep their claim after Marvel characters, after a certain point in time, perhaps continual development and investment in properties will be what staves off public domain status rather than further time limit extensions. After 75 years or what have you it becomes a "use it or lose it" kind of scenario.

 

[The_Mighty_Thor]

I'm washing my hands of this. Fanboy defense of copyright, because you don't want to see a favorite character "tarnished" is going to inevitably leave more people defending a corporate construct that should never have been legalized to begin with.

That's absurd. It has nothing to do with being a fan boy of a favorite character. I'm a film maker and I don't want to see something I've written or made become public domain because a certain number of years have gone by. I should always own what's mine and when I'm gone it should belong to my kids and so forth. If when it's theirs they decide to sell off or lease out the rights that's their business. Public Domain is more of a corporate construct than Copyrights ever were or ever will be. It's fuelled by greedy talentless people who can't create so they want to take.

 

[Thundercrack85]

That's absurd. It has nothing to do with being a fan boy of a favorite character. I'm a film maker and I don't want to see something I've written or made become public domain because a certain number of years have gone by. I should always own what's mine and when I'm gone it should belong to my kids and so forth. If when it's theirs they decide to sell off or lease out the rights that's their business. Public Domain is more of a corporate construct than Copyrights ever were or ever will be. It's fuelled by greedy talentless people who can't create so they want to take.

That's insane. By that logic, we should be paying the descendants of Shakespeare, the Brothers Grimm, and whoever wrote the Bible.

Public domain is the opposite of a corporate construct.

I can't help but laugh at your last line though, given some of the children of prolific writers who live off their parent's work.

You should be happy anyone cares about your work after you're dead.

 

[The_Mighty_Thor]

Yes you should be paying their descendants, or not using their stuff!

I couldn't care less if anyone was interested in my work or not after I'm dead but if they are they should be paying my family for it.

 

[redhawk23]

That's absurd. It has nothing to do with being a fan boy of a favorite character. I'm a film maker and I don't want to see something I've written or made become public domain because a certain number of years have gone by. I should always own what's mine and when I'm gone it should belong to my kids and so forth. If when it's theirs they decide to sell off or lease out the rights that's their business. Public Domain is more of a corporate construct than Copyrights ever were or ever will be. It's fuelled by greedy talentless people who can't create so they want to take.

Ideas and artwork have more dimensions than just the financial value though. They are contributions to culture, which is socially constructed through interaction and the exchange of ideas. I agree that you should have the right to use and profit from your work as you choose, and that it is an asset that you should be able to pass on to your children, however if you manage to create something that is still relevant and useful, 75 years or more after your death, that thing would be foundational to many other things, much as Dracula, the films of Georges Melies or the the plays of William Shakespeare. Why after that amount of time, when they have become reference points and cultural building blocks akin the Bible and folik tales should works not be available in a Project Guttenberg kind of fashion?

Consider these lyrics:

Happy Birthday to you
Happy Birthday to you,
Happy Birthday Dear ___
Happy Birthday to you.

Those lyrics were written by Patty Hill who died in 1946. The tune we so often sing the song to was composed by Mildred Hill who died in 1916. This is a song that is a part of just about everyone's lives in the English speaking world. Now, how the hell does it make sense that AOL Time Warner brings in about 2 million dollars annually from that song? How does it make sense that that the song can't be sung in a TGI Fridays?

 

[Human Torch]

I honestly feel like people dying to use protected properties fighting the public domain laws are being greedy. We have all the ideas that our creative minds can possibly conceive, but we want to complain because we can't write or create with someone else's property? That just sound silly to me. We don't have a right to other people's creations no matter how long it's been. It'd be fun to use them, yes, but we aren't owed anything.

I don't think copyright should ever expire. If you create something it should always belong to you and it should get passed down to your family. Leased copyrights should of course expire but the term length should be clearly and unchallengeabley written into the contract. If you think that you or anyone else is so talented that we have to see what they can do then let them show their talent and create their own character.

 

[The_Mighty_Thor]

Ideas and artwork have more dimensions than just the financial value though. They are contributions to culture, which is socially constructed through interaction and the exchange of ideas. I agree that you should have the right to use and profit from your work as you choose, and that it is an asset that you should be able to pass on to your children, however if you manage to create something that is still relevant and useful, 75 years or more after your death, that thing would be foundational to many other things, much as Dracula, the films of Georges Melies or the the plays of William Shakespeare. Why after that amount of time, when they have become reference points and cultural building blocks akin the Bible and folik tales should works not be available in a Project Guttenberg kind of fashion?

But they would be available. You would just have to pay for the rights to use them. Nobody wants the rights just to have them. If they aren't doing something with the character themselves then I'm sure they would be willing to lease them out but they may want a say in who can use them so they can insure the quality of the project. They may want a quality film about say Wonder Woman to add to the legacy of the character rather than Wonder Woman XXX to degrade the legacy of the character.

Consider these lyrics:



Those lyrics were written by Patty Hill who died in 1946. The tune we so often sing the song to was composed by Mildred Hill who died in 1916. This is a song that is a part of just about everyone's lives in the English speaking world. Now, how the hell does it make sense that AOL Time Warner brings in about 2 million dollars annually from that song? How does it make sense that that the song can't be sung in a TGI Fridays?

That is so NOT a valid point. You can go on any art site right now and find a ton of fan art of Batman, Superman, Spiderman, Star Wars and Star Trek characters, and so on and nobody cares and nobody is trying to sue. You can also go on you tube and other video sites right now and find fan films of all those characters as well. Again nobody cares and nobody is trying to sue. People who want this stuff in the public domain want it so they can use it commercially and make a profit with out paying licensing fees or royalties. Why should anyone ever be able use your creation with out doing so? Nobody is stopping you from singing happy Birthday at your kids party or in the office on your friends birthday but it you want to sell one of those musical birthday cards using that song or put out a children's birthday song CD that includes that song you are using it commercially and trying to make money off of it so of course it makes sense that who ever owns the rights would also make money off of it. Only a greedy pig wants to make money off your work with out giving you a fair share. They should be happy they're allowed to make money off of your property at all!

 

[redhawk23]

But they would be available. You would just have to pay for the rights to use them. Nobody wants the rights just to have them. If they aren't doing something with the character themselves then I'm sure they would be willing to lease them out but they may want a say in who can use them so they can insure the quality of the project. They may want a quality film about say Wonder Woman to add to the legacy of the character rather than Wonder Woman XXX to degrade the legacy of the character.



That is so NOT a valid point. You can go on any art site right now and find a ton of fan art of Batman, Superman, Spiderman, Star Wars and Star Trek characters, and so on and nobody cares and nobody is trying to sue. You can also go on you tube and other video sites right now and find fan films of all those characters as well. Again nobody cares and nobody is trying to sue. People who want this stuff in the public domain want it so they can use it commercially and make a profit with out paying licensing fees or royalties. Why should anyone ever be able use your creation with out doing so? Nobody is stopping you from singing happy Birthday at your kids party or in the office on your friends birthday but it you want to sell one of those musical birthday cards using that song or put out a children's birthday song CD that includes that song you are using it commercially and trying to make money off of it so of course it makes sense that who ever owns the rights would also make money off of it. Only a greedy pig wants to make money off your work with out giving you a fair share. They should be happy they're allowed to make money off of your property at all!

If your party is in a business, they very often WILL stop you from singing happy birthday. That's why TGI Fridays and others have their own songs.

No one in Warner Music Group was involved in making the Happy Birthday song.

There are comics writers who are still alive and who don't see a dime from their creations. Is it somehow better that Warner Brothers and Disney get these profits and will continue to do so long after the creators die?

John Jacob Jingle Heimer Schmidt was made up by someone at some point.

The works of Beethoven are foundational parts of Western mustic. They have entered the public domain. Should they not be?

 

[Thundercrack85]

I rest my case about insanity. If Sherlock Homes was still owned by an estate, they could determine who, and who could not use the character. They don't even have to give anyone permission. Now that's just Sherlock Holmes, extend this idea to every damn piece of fiction, including ones that make up a good bulk of our culture. I believe that would make Shakespeare's descendants wealthier than Bill Gates.

 

[jmc]

As someone who creates stuff frankly the whole copyright thing is screwed up. Eventually however these big companies will run out of options in terms of being able to keep their characters out of public domain, because ultimately it means they'll have to start actually creating new things for their brand. By preserving the status quo means they don't have to actually put in as much effort, it's corporate laziness. Can anyone remember the last new Disney or Warner Bros character created? Da Vinci didn't just paint the Mona Lisa then called it a day, he painted other stuff. Thing the studios fail to consider is that they still will be associated with the characters even if they are free to use. Famous art has been copied for centuries by others but everyone still remembers who made the original. You might be able to buy a print of the Mona Lisa from someone who replicated it but you still know who created the original. Also look at Lego, the patent on their bricks ended a couple years back, and yet despite a bunch of copy-cats Lego are still going strong, stronger than ever if anything.

 

[The_Mighty_Thor]

If your party is in a business, they very often WILL stop you from singing happy birthday. That's why TGI Fridays and others have their own songs.

I've never ever seen that happen

No one in Warner Music Group was involved in making the Happy Birthday song.

No but they acquired the rights to it somehow so you would need to look at that agreement to decide what's fair.

There are comics writers who are still alive and who don't see a dime from their creations. Is it somehow better that Warner Brothers and Disney get these profits and will continue to do so long after the creators die?

That's because copyright laws sucked back then and because writers and artist were willing to sell their rights out right for a small amount of money or sign contracts that said any character you created while working for that company belongs to them. It's hard to fix the past but you can try to learn from it. You should be making copyright laws stronger and more fair not trying to strip them away.

John Jacob Jingle Heimer Schmidt was made up by someone at some point.

The works of Beethoven are foundational parts of Western mustic. They have entered the public domain. Should they not be?

No they shouldn't have.

 

[The_Mighty_Thor]

I rest my case about insanity. If Sherlock Homes was still owned by an estate, they could determine who, and who could not use the character. They don't even have to give anyone permission. Now that's just Sherlock Holmes, extend this idea to every damn piece of fiction, including ones that make up a good bulk of our culture. I believe that would make Shakespeare's descendants wealthier than Bill Gates.

How much money have the movie, TV, and book industries made off of those works? Why is it you think that the actual owners of that material shouldn't be compensated for them? Why do you think it's ok for the Movie studios who make the movies to get rich off of the work of others but you seem to have a problem with the people who own the material getting wealthy?

 

[Thundercrack85]

Creator, and owner are two very different things.

I believe the creator deserves certain rights. But once they die, that's it. Then it belongs to the world.

I can only thank the public domain Judeo-Christian God I don't believe in that our ancestors didn't have your mindset. For one thing, you might not have your beloved Thor.