Sherlock Holmes and the Copyright Tangle 290
spagiola passes along a New York Times piece on the copyright travails of Sherlock Holmes. "At his age [123 years], Holmes would logically seem to have entered the public domain. But not only is the character still under copyright in the United States, for nearly 80 years he has also been caught in a web of ownership issues so tangled that Professor Moriarty wouldn't have wished them upon him."
So much for public domain... (Score:5, Interesting)
So you create copyright works in country A, and when that expires you then renew your copyright in country B? After that expires will they just transfer it yet again to another country and extend it yet again? Since all of these countries have [evil] trade treaties copyright in one is copyright in all....
Copyright is seriously out of control and I point the finger squarely at the US for creating this greedy flawed system...
where does the 2023 date come from? (Score:5, Interesting)
The article doesn't explain precisely why it's still under copyright, except that it was renewed in 1981 after falling into the public domain, as permitted by the Copyright Act of 1976. But why hasn't it fallen back into the public domain again? Looking through this chart [cornell.edu], I can't find any combination of circumstances that would allow an 1887 work, whose author died in 1930, to remain in copyright until 2023.
Re:What a crock (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What a crock (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't see why not, and copyrights can certainly be transferred. The screwed-up bit, in my opinion, is this:
In 1980 Sherlock Holmes and Conan Doyle’s other works entered the public domain in Britain. In America the passage of the Copyright Act of 1976 gave an author or his heirs a chance to recapture lost rights; Conan Doyle’s daughter, Jean, did so in 1981.
So here in Britain they would appear to be in the public domain, as one would expect, but in the US his daughter was given the chance to say "no, actually, I'd like to keep the copyright for longer please"? Or am I misunderstanding that paragraph?
Re:where does the 2023 date come from? (Score:2, Interesting)
A few of the short stories are still under copyright because they weren't originally published in the US. Nobody owns the characters because they're in the public domain but the person/group who claims to own them (possibly wilfully) doesn't understand this. Guy Ritchie realised it was cheaper to pay them off than to win in court. The journalist doesn't have a clue but figures he can be vague enough and still get a good story.
Re:Disney (Score:1, Interesting)
Interesting that we're talking about Sherlock Holmes and you refer to Disney's rodent (Mickey). Because Disney riffed on Sherlock Holmes with The Great Mouse Detective.
Think like a politician (Score:2, Interesting)
If you extend copyright: Some number of jobs (thousands, tens of thousands?) saved. IP exports generating US revenue. No real downside other than "What, you extended it again?" and no clear loser.
No wonder they extend it. They have no real case against doing so.
Re:where does the 2023 date come from? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:The copyright cash cow (Score:5, Interesting)
Huh? Incentive for creative work was an argument for copyright?
No. It wasn’t. Look at the word. It says copyright. The right to copy. To reproduce the work.
It has nothing to do with creativity or art. It has to do with publishers and money.
What you mean, is the author’s right.
Which, from what I heard, is nearly meaningless in the USA. Right?
In Germany we have the Urheberrecht instead of the copyright. The Urheberrecht (literally “originator’s right”) is the right of the one who created the work. And it can’t be given away. Ever. (The rule is, that if you’re payed by the hour, the payer is the originator. If you’re payed all at once, you are.)
Which is pretty nice.
Except that many people here start to think we are government by US laws. They always see the term “copyright“ and think that’s a German thing. Which results in silly things, like people stating to own the copyright on something they literally just copied. Like this idiot here, who really just scanned stuff in, and now thinks this entitles him to some right [deutschlan...tsorten.de].
Nowadays, nobody needs publishers anymore. So they are clinging to the last twig they still got: Extending copyright as far as possible. Like with this thing here. If your life would depend on it, you’d do the same. It always gets looong and weird at the end.
But I don’t worry, since it’s impossible to keep this going forever. Sooner or later, there is no art and no artist left. New artists already couldn’t care less about them. And there will be a time, where their extensions will become just so silly, that everybody stops taking them seriously.
Re:Disney (Score:5, Interesting)
You can blame Disney and their rodent for the current state of copyright laws. Don't think that when copyright period for Mickey once again draws to a close there won't be a large bundle of cash handed out to the nearest person able to extend the period another 20-50 years.
One way to stop this would be to turn Mickey into an pop culture symbol for a pedophile or terrorist...
Degrade the icon to the point where Disney would rather wash their hands of the rodent.
Re:What a crock (Score:5, Interesting)
If the copyright is fixed at 70 years after publication, then nobody cares you are alive or dead. If the copyright is your life + 70 years, then there is a higher incentive to kill you to get the work in the public domain ASAP.
BTW this extreme privileges that writers, singers and actors get. Painters and sculpturers never had those, and are now fighting to have a cut of their work's re-sales.
Re:The copyright cash cow (Score:1, Interesting)
Oh, they care. They care about money. They care about making the business of government bigger and more lucrative. The more complex and irrational the system of law, the more it costs to run it.
In the business of government, where you spend other people's money, the goal is to spend, not save. At the top of the power pyramid, as long as the money passes through your hands, you win.
Re:The copyright cash cow (Score:1, Interesting)
It never stopped L. Ron Hubbard...
(Posted anonymously to avoid the wrath of the Scientologists.)
Re:What a crock (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The copyright cash cow (Score:5, Interesting)
Consider the following point:
Holmes, in the country of his birth (Britain), has been public domain for TWENTY YEARS.
Holmes, in the US and thanks to our fucked up laws [cornell.edu] passed by paid-off, bribed, and otherwise corrupt legislators, is covered by "copyright" law in the US all the way until 2023. At which time the character will be 136 years old.
Keep in mind that the NORMAL term of our fucked-up copyright laws is supposed to be either 95 years for "works for hire" (bought and paid for by hookers sent to legislators courtesy of Disney Corp and Sonny Bono's widow), or "Death of the author plus 70 years", which means the copyright on all of Conan Doyle's Holmes stories should have passed into public domain in the US back in 2000 (Sir Artie died in 1930). Actually, they should have passed back in 1980 (and did), but every time it gets close, Disney sends another round of hookers and bags of cash to Congress to buy another extension [techdirt.com].
Re:The copyright cash cow (Score:3, Interesting)
Putting fences in imaginationland should be against human rights. You aren't just avoiding working on some particular character or environment, but in anything similar "enough". And you could had a new/good idea about something existing already.
Derivative works are also creative, the kind of creativity that don't need so much the world building and background explaining as was being done in the original work and focus in the story itself, but it still could be something great, maybe even greater than the original work, or enrich it greatly (and even promote more people being interested in the original work/author/etc).
An example could be i.e. how the Foundation universe was further enriched or completed by works of other great sci-fi writers [wikipedia.org]. This cases were approved by the copyright holders, but the idea could had being expanded a lot more if no restriction to that.
Re:The copyright cash cow (Score:3, Interesting)
Arthur Conan Doyle never wrote [snopes.com] "Elementary, my dear Watson". Perhaps it derives from some derived work, and any extant copyright claim to the phrase rests in the hands of some other estate.
Re:The copyright cash cow (Score:4, Interesting)
According to US copyright law and Project Gutenberg, the original Sherlock Holmes stories are in the public domain. This means that the original form of the character is available for re-presentation and re-imagining. Now, it may be that there is some later, more potent version of Sherlock Holmes that is still copyright protected. Certainly all of the movies are. But the original stories, and the ability to create derivatives of the original character as written, that's no longer locked up. The Times article is not clear on what's protected and what's not. It's not like for a continuum of works there's simply an on/off switch, protected/not protected.
Re:Wanna fix copyright? (Score:3, Interesting)
So you're another idiot who thinks that since the US is better off financially than all other "1st world nations", we should copy the countries that are worse than us.
We're not better off financially than other first world nations. We're probably worse, thanks to relaxed regulations and regulation enforcement.
"Universal healthcare" is universal theft.
So is inflating prices so you can pay for a staff to handle gross inefficiencies in the medical billing system, so is inflating prices for drugs for the motive of profit.
To "fix healthcare", it is necessary to remove all incentives which make it more expensive than it should be.
* End laws which make employee health insurance an untaxed expense.
* Make possible the purchase of medical insurance across state lines.
* End the absurdly high lawsuit rewards that make insurance for doctors so expensive.
* End the FDA control over medicine approval
* End licensing of healthcare professionals.
1) This would make healthcare more expensive and could cause my employer to reduce coverage through our group plan or drop it all together
2) This would cause a flight of insurance companies to flee to states like Texas where there are very relaxed regulations resulting in lower quality of care
3) Except this has been done in Texas, Nebraska and other states and insurance costs *didn't* go down for malpractice insurance, it kept going up.
4-5) So I can have a quack doctor prescribe something that is either ineffective or *worse* than science based medicine?
There are many more, and the amount that these would reduce expenses is surprising. Did you know that insurance companies always negotiate payments, and usually end up paying about half the billed amount? Just the five above would cut medical expenses by roughly 75%. That brings medical care into the price range that any moderately careful person could afford without insurance, excepting only catastrophic events requiring intensive longterm care. For this last case one might buy catastrophic medical insurance, at prices much lower than the absurd rates we see today.
The problems wouldn't go away. There'd be no price controls at all, your insurance would be horrible and it'd make life much worse for those who aren't absurdly wealthy independently.
You'd have quacks performing the Gonzalez Treatment and billing out the ass for it(or more than it's worth, which is nothing, considering it's likely it's worse than doing nothing) too. This is atrocious.