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The Double Edge of Copyright Extensions 245

Posted by michael from the pay-it-forward dept.
porkface writes "The Morning News is running a simple, but eloquent editorial that plainly shows how Hollywood has routinely benefitted from the expiration of copyright, despite their adamant pressure on Capitol Hill to extend copyright almost indefinitely."
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The Double Edge of Copyright Extensions More

The Double Edge of Copyright Extensions

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  • Continuity... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mgcsinc ( 681597 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @07:30PM (#6421088)
    Corporations are run by people, beings with a great sense of need for continuity; it is this fact alone that keeps me from being surprised by the way in which some companies - from copyright-protecting movie companies which could make good out of expired copyrights to napster-fearing record labels which could use the heightened interest in their music that online exposure would bring to open-source-scared software giants who could use a little outsider criticism of their code - choose the status quo over slightly modifying the business plan to accommodate for a new world and possibly even larger profits...

    • Re:Continuity - an alternative experience/view (Score:5, Interesting)

      by wiresquire ( 457486 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @09:06PM (#6421531) Journal
      I'm sorry, but I disagree. I suspect it is the way you phrased this rather than necessarily the concepts behind it.

      Corporations and people that work in corporations don't act with continuity. There is no continuity of people, they certainly are more mobile in choosing employers than years ago. I would also dispute that there is continuity with people within corporations. Even those within a corporation rarely stay at the same job longer than 3 years. YMMV with different cultures, but given the above corporations *can't* act in a continuous fashion.

      They act short term. Focus on Profits this year, sales this quarter, share price tomorrow. IMHO (yes, opinion this time), this is mutually exclusive with multi-year strategies.

      Why do they worry about copyright expiration? Because the cash cows that make their profits this year, revenue this quarter and share price tomorrow are about to disappear.
      • It's definitely got to be a phrasing disagreement, because you both seem to be saying the same thing. Quarterly profits and weekly stock prices may be short term, but corporations are usually looking at maintaing a status quo while also striving for constant growth. It's an interesting situation in any case.

  • Greed... (Score:5, Funny)

    by achacha ( 139424 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @07:33PM (#6421107)
    What's mine is mine, what's yours should be mine also if I can profit from it.

  • Wow! (Score:4, Funny)

    by cephalien ( 529516 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @07:35PM (#6421126)
    You mean that they've been profiting... and still trying to pay off congress to let them profit more?!? Next you'll be telling me the record companies are going bankrupt.

  • And the #1 example... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 11, 2003 @07:35PM (#6421128)
    Hollywood has routinely benefitted from the expiration of copyright
    No kidding, just look at Disney... They built an empire in large part by taking old fairy tales or otherwise public domain stories, and turning them into movies. Yet Disney is quite possibly the biggest, loudest lobbyist for copyright extensions.

    "Do as we say, not as we do," apparently.

    • Re:And the #1 example... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Lord_Slepnir ( 585350 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @07:48PM (#6421197) Journal
      What's interesting is with their 100 year copy rights, disney coudln't have made thier rip-off of the brothers Grimms' Snow White without paying royalities to the Grimms' descendants.

      • Re:And the #1 example... (Score:4, Informative)

        by nhaines ( 622289 ) <nhaines@ubuntu.cCOFFEEom minus caffeine> on Friday July 11, 2003 @08:50PM (#6421477) Homepage
        Ah, mod points for the second time ever, and they're no use now. I'll post a reply instead, about why I think this one isn't that interesting.

        The thing is that the Brüder Grimm didn't go around writing these fairy tales. They travelled around Germany collecting them. These Märchen or fairy tales were stories that had been told and retold throughout different parts of the region, and the Brothers Grimm went and gathered them all up, and published them as a collection.

        Even Disney didn't copy the stories verbatim. Snow White, for instance, is mostly the same but there are quite a lot of differences between that and the story of Schneewittchen. Although this is a meaningless difference, I like how the evil Queen asked the hunter to bring back Snow White's lungs and liver so that she could have them cooked and eat them, so that she would be the most beautiful in all the country. I eat meat but not organs. Yuck. :P

        Oh, yeah. A point. Err, well, I doubt that the Brothers Grimm could have claimed copyright for each story (although they certainly could for the actual collection of stories). And Disney made plenty of modifications to make it more suitable for kids. I do enjoy the grittier and gorier original published version, but Disney's Snow White is charming and magical and worthwhile all the same.

        • Re:And the #1 example... (Score:5, Informative)

          by IIRCAFAIKIANAL ( 572786 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @10:30PM (#6421827) Journal
          The idea that the Brothers Grimm collected fairy tales in germany is heavily disputed. See here [ucsc.edu].

          Lots of evidence that they didn't collect the stories as they claim is easily available.

        • Re:And the #1 example... (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Jerf ( 17166 )
          Err, well, I doubt that the Brothers Grimm could have claimed copyright for each story

          Incorrect. Copyright covers expressions, and the Brothers Grimm would hold a copyright on their rendition of the story. Someone else could re-tell the story entirely and it would be a different expression; for example, The Seven Samurai has apparently been retold more times then can be counted, in various formats, but since they are completely independent retellings the copyrights are all seperate.

          If they hypothetically

      • Who owns the Brothers Grimm? (Score:5, Informative)

        by fm6 ( 162816 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @09:01PM (#6421508) Homepage Journal
        Actually, the Grimm brothers didn't write their famous fairy tales, they collected them. Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm were students of language (Jakob discovered Grimm's Law [wikipedia.org]) and folklore. All the tales originate from the Grimms' interviews with various peasant informants.

        Which is why you have to have a cutoff date on copyrights -- the origins of so much material is lost in the poorly documented past. What's new is that we've effectively fixed the cutoff date for all material late in the 19th century. So Hollywood gets to have it both ways: they can mine traditional literature for free material, but their own work (even their own interpretations of traditional literature!) are protected forever.

        There are two particular instances that I find particularly bizarre. The first is the song "Happy Birthday" which is under copyright even though nobody knows who wrote the lyrics. (The music dates back to 1893 [snopes.com].) So every time it's sung at a part... well, maybe that's "fair use". But it's a fact that you can't sing it on TV without paying royalties.

        The other bizarre example is the Frank Capra classic, The Best Years of Our Lives. For various reasons, nobody bothered to renew the copyright on this one. That's why it got played to death every Christmas for so many years. Then all of sudden, Aaron Spelling informed everybody that you couldn't show the film without paying him royalties. How did he seize control of a film in the public domain? By buying the rights to the story it was based on, and also to a song played in the movie.

        Perhaps if you really wanted to, you could challenge Spelling's right to collect royalties on Lives. But no one will: Spelling has deep pockets, and it'd be expensive to assert a moral principle here.

        And the moral of the story, boys and girls, is that it's not about what's right and wrong. It's about who can afford justice!

        • Then all of sudden, Aaron Spelling informed everybody that you couldn't show the film without paying him royalties. How did he seize control of a film in the public domain? By buying the rights to the story it was based on, and also to a song played in the movie.

          This is basically correct, except things just got a little better. There was a recent supreme court ruling on a case that sounded very similar to this one - essentially a TV show based on a book that was not renewed. The court decided that the

      • A Grimm tale told by an idiot, full of bunnies (Score:5, Insightful)

        by kfg ( 145172 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @09:56PM (#6421702)
        Yes, yes, the tales that Disney stole from the Bros. Grimm were in fact public domain folk tales from the first. Yes, they changed them, making them all pretty and full of cute anthropomorphic fluffy bunnies and dishwashing chipmonks.

        None of this changes the fact that Disney selected these very tales because they were in the public domain and he could make free use of them as he willed and keep all the profits.

        Perhaps the Brothers Grimm weren't the best example though. Are there any identifiable authors from whom Disney took works? Why yes, there are.

        How about Rudyard Kipling? Heard of him? Victor Hugo, Carlo Collodi, Lewis Carrol, Prokofiev, R.L. Stevenson, Defoe, Washington Irving, J.M Barrie, Davey Crockett (Yes, Davey was an author), the list goes on, and on, and on.

        Disney has made billions of dollars on the backs of identifiable authors whose works they simply took, for free.

        The thing is none of these authors suffered by it (ok, some of them had been dead more than 50 years, but some of them hadn't) and Disney serves as a prime example of how *everyone* makes money by a reasonable copyright expiration period.

        KFG

    • Disney: the company so shrewd and cheap (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 11, 2003 @07:57PM (#6421241)
      ..that they still advertise a long distance telephone number on TV commercials for Disney World. 1-407-WDISNEY. As if it's not bad enough that a days' admission to Disney World for your family will set you back a week's pay, they won't even pick up the tab for you to call and order the tickets. This company with all its money can't be bothered to promote a 1-800 number like every other TV advertiser has been doing for 15 years.

      And yet, people go for it. They pick up the phone and pay for a long distance call to contact a multibillion-dollar corporation with the intent of giving it money. I don't understand it, but I guess it's sort of like the rest of entertainment. Everyone hates the RIAA/MPAA and cries "boycott"... Until the new Eminem CD or the next Matrix comes out, and they fork over more money.

      I will never, ever visit a Disney park and I make an effort to avoid Disney products. The copyright issue and the toll-free number issue are just two reasons. They're just a low down company, greedy and moneygrubbing to the end.
      • Some one told me once, that any person that would spend that kind of money to take their kids to Disney Land/World, is too stupid to realize that the money could be better spent taking the kids to europe, or asia, or some other place that might actually benefit them, and or bring a better understanding of the world around them rather than throw them into a tourist trap designed around the marketing ideal that parents are not very good at telling their kids no.

    • Disney (Score:3, Informative)

      by gilesjuk ( 604902 )
      As well as buying up other people's hard work then rebranding it Disney (see Winnie the Pooh). They act like Microsoft in the way that they swallow up good characters and established stories instead of creating their own. These purchases are then rebranded robbing the original author of credit (I'm sure they get a tiny mention somewhere).
    • C'mon - disney is original. It probably takes them a lot of money to figure out just which inanimate object or animal should talk and exactly when to have a character burst into song.

      Disney is simple - let us grab all we want, just don't grab from us. (wow...that mean's disney is your average p2p user)

  • Double edged? (Score:3, Funny)

    by mikeophile ( 647318 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @07:36PM (#6421129)
    Corporations are greedy bastards who want to maintain control over IP in perpetuity to enrich their own bloated coffers.

    What's the other edge?

    • Re:Double edged? (Score:5, Funny)

      by TMB ( 70166 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @07:37PM (#6421137)
      (this post brought to you by the ASDRWDRTA... the Association for SlashDot Readers Who Don't Read The Article)
    • What's the other edge?

      Users are greedy bastards who never want to pay for content, and are prepared to use all kinds of dubious logical machinations, hippie philosophy, and references to the constitution to justify IP infringement.
      • Users are greedy bastards who never want to pay for content, and are prepared to use all kinds of dubious logical machinations, hippie philosophy, and references to the constitution to justify IP infringement.

        I consider withholding works from the public domain to be theft. Certainly, it's a hell of a lot closer to theft than "copyright infringement". The question is, if they steal from me, am I entitled to steal back from them (I'm not talking about copying new works here) ?
    • What's the other edge?

      The corporations paying for copyright extensions in Congress are the very same corporations that have been built and/or made billions on the use of public domain works. Were it not for the public domain, these corporations likely wouldn't exist.

  • Mickey Mouse (Score:5, Insightful)

    by porkface ( 562081 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @07:39PM (#6421144) Journal
    For me, the one argument I don't think big media understands here, is that Disney could still use Mickey Mouse heavily when the copyright on "him" expires. There's nothing about the expiration of copyright that says they have to remove him from Disneyland and stop selling his likeness.

    It's not like they do anything these days that requires them to have some kind of exclusive rights. Even if Mickey becomes ubiquitous elsewhere, Disney can always remind us he's their child.

    The public is served when copyright expires in a reasonable amount of time, because new derivitive works can flourish, and the former owner has to get of their ass and contribute something new if they want to make money.

    This whole issue is yet another example of big media screwing the American public. Viva La Napster!

    • Re:Mickey Mouse (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Fareq ( 688769 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @07:50PM (#6421204)
      Ahh... but that's not what Disney is afraid of...

      what Disney is afraid of is that, as soon as it becomes legal to do so, someone will create a "derivative work" that is contrary to the disney image.

      For example, some company would likely take it upon themselves to create R or NC-17 rated cartoons that feature Mickey.

      I am farily certain that it is the concept of an "unwholesome" Mickey cartoon that concerns them most, because, as you said, Disney could and would continue to sell his likeness...

      Also, realize that this would introduce a bit more competition into the Mickey Merchandizing business, not to mention that any continuing licenses for Mickey would be dropped.
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re:Mickey Mouse (Score:3, Insightful)

        by lavalyn ( 649886 )
        Disclaim: IANAL.

        But aren't trademarks protected despite copyright expiration anyway? Mickey Mouse could well be a registered trademark.

        So Steamboat Mickey or whatever it's called becomes public domain and the entire clip be used as educational, entertainment, or dirtied and made obscene, but the general public release could be blocked by trademark law?

        This will either get +5 Insightful or (more likely) -1 Wrong.

        • But (Score:2)

          by Raul654 ( 453029 )
          They do not have a trademark on Mickey Mouse, that's the point. Walt Disney never thought of doing it when he made the original cartoon back in '28, why would he? So once it becomes public domain, that's it - they are totally at risk of someone annihalting their wholesome image.

          • Re:But (Score:5, Informative)

            by Xtifr ( 1323 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @10:10PM (#6421746) Homepage
            They do not have a trademark on Mickey Mouse, that's the point.

            Yes they do. In fact, that's the only way they can protect themselves from "evil Mickey pr0n". The copyright on Steamboat Willy (and other Mickey works) does not prevent anyone from using those characters in all-new works. It only prevents people from copying/modifying those copyrighted materials.

            And no, the trademark probably doesn't date back to 1928, but it doesn't have to. Trademarks don't have the strict requirements that copyrights and patents have.

            Now, the situation if Steamboat Willy ever fell into the public domain would be rather interesting. People could make derivative works (including Pr0n) based on those images only, but would have to be careful not to push so far that the work would no longer be considered a derived work, because then it (probably, IANAL) be subject to trademark violation suits. An interesting reversal on the usual situation with copyright violations.

      • Re:Mickey Mouse (Score:3, Insightful)

        by coldmist ( 154493 )
        This is the tradeoff. Disney has had their control of Mickey for 75 years. They have had their exclusive control over him.

        As a member of the "public" (as in the "public domain") it is now our turn to do with it as we please.

        Copyright was originally this tradeoff. Now, the balance has tipped completely to the copyright owner's side and the "public" can't use it as they wish.

        As the parent said, Disney can continue to use it, but now we get to as well.

        That's the whole point of "limited times".

        BTW, before
      • No, that's not actually much of an issue. As a matter of fact, making major changes in the character protects your work, in theory at least. You can argue that nobody would confuse your Mickey with the original. In practice nobody does that, because they'd have to defend their right to do so in court, and that's expensive.

        In the 60s, there was a case involving a headshop poster that showed Disney characters doing various unwholesome things: Mickey was shooting IV drugs, and Minnie was turning tricks. When

      • what Disney is afraid of is that, as soon as it becomes legal to do so, someone will create a "derivative work" that is contrary to the disney image.

        For example, some company would likely take it upon themselves to create R or NC-17 rated cartoons that feature Mickey.

        And that is a huge red herring. The character of Mickey Mouse is already protected for as long as Disney continues to use and defend him as their trademark.
      • All the Disney films that were made earlier than 1952 (ie. all the good ones IMHO) are in the public domain in Australia. As far as copyright is concerned (as opposed to trademarks) Mickey Mouse (via Steamboat Willie) has been in the public domain for nearly 20 years. There hasn't exactly been a glut of 'unwholesome' Mickey films in that time.

        skribe
        • the public domain in Australia. As far as copyright is concerned (as opposed to trademarks) Mickey Mouse (via Steamboat Willie) has been in the public domain for nearly 20 years. There hasn't exactly been a glut of 'unwholesome' Mickey films in that time.

          I do believe that you have let the cat out of the bag. Let the unwholesome Austrailian Mickey comics begin!

    • Nothing immediate perhapse. But if others started using his image in wholly un-family oriented ways, they MAY have to drop him because of the new associations. Considering that it is THEIR character, why should they even have to take that chance?

      And how is inventing a character but not allowing just any person to do anything they want with it, without permission, "Screwing the American public?" How? In what way? In what possible, even infinitessimal way? Does it limit other people from coming up with their

      • Re:Mickey Mouse (Score:4, Interesting)

        by ponxx ( 193567 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @08:21PM (#6421369)
        > No, they are (and should be) perfectly balanced

        so were they not "perfectly balanced" in the past when copyright had a term of 28 years?

        Music for example lives and always has lived of variations on earlier themes. But if in 100 years someone writes a piece that picks up some theme of say Jackson's Thriller, there is a good chance some great-grandson of Michael is going to come out and sue him for copyright infringement....

        I understand the point of having a fixed term copyright, to reward the author for his work. How this could possibly necessitate the extension of copyright 70n years after his death, I can not follow...

        Ponxx
      • I doubt I could get away with putting my own cute mouse into cartoons and onto t-shirts. Maybe, but maybe not. And it's not good enough to be acquitted, against Disney's legal team, you need to be overwhelmingly in the clear or you'll never finish paying off your legal bills.

        But, more importantly, genuine derivatives have their place. Disney is cas ein point -- all their work is derivative (well, most of it). Couldn't they have thought up their own plotlines? Well, probably (maybe not) but if they ha

      • And how is inventing a character but not allowing just any person to do anything they want with it, without permission, "Screwing the American public?" How? In what way?

        Nice troll. Surely you realize that virtually every artistic work borrows (often heavily) from other (usually popular) works. Shakespear wouldn't have been able to write many of his best plays under the current copyright regime. I believe he copied Romeo and Juliet from The Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland (1577). This page [fusionanomaly.net]
      • The problem is Disney is hypocritical, and have used other people's creations to get to where they are now, and they don't want anyone to do the same. You think Disney should get to keep the rights to their rodent infinitely? Ok, by that same token, they should have had no right to use Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Little Mermaid, The Jungle Book, Sleeping Beauty, and a good portion of the rest of their library. They were allowed to profit from the works of others afte

      • Re:Mickey Mouse (Score:3, Insightful)

        by cpt kangarooski ( 3773 )
        Nothing immediate perhapse. But if others started using his image in wholly un-family oriented ways, they MAY have to drop him because of the new associations. Considering that it is THEIR character, why should they even have to take that chance?

        Disney has closely associated itself with characters that are undeniably in the public domain. I can make unwholesome uses of Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Peter Pan, Aladdin, etc. In fact, IIRC, Anne Rice has a head start on this.

        It is a risk. But we
    • The real sick thing is that Walt Disney has been dead a long time, and Michael Eisner [uncoveror.com] did not create Mickey Mouse. I wrote an editorial [uncoveror.com] similar to the one this thread is discussing. The more people point out that we all can benefit from copyrights expiring, the sooner Congress will understand. We are all the public domain. Copyright extentions steal from us.

  • d00d! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Black Parrot ( 19622 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @07:40PM (#6421149)


    Don't you know it is now both immoral and criminal to think beyond the next quarterly report?

  • gobbles up public domain works (what percentage of their recently made animation is based on public domain works?), they are more concerned about getting more "money per unit of creativity" than about the future possibility of doing anything creative without being sued.

  • How does this hurt Hollywood? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @07:44PM (#6421170)
    There's really only a few big media companies now. The can sublicense out to themselves all they need to (ex. How many old 80's shows/cartoons have popped up as movies lately). I hate to sound cynical (well, no I don't actually) but Hollywood isn't about creativity, it's about money. Owning the merchandising rights to Mikey Mouse is worth way more than free rights to some old book. Come on folks, let's be realistic.

  • Duh. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 11, 2003 @07:45PM (#6421177)
    Hollywood has routinely benefitted from the expiration of copyright, despite their adamant pressure on Capitol Hill to extend copyright almost indefinitely.

    That's because they benefitted from the copyright expiration of works that they didn't make. Now that they've made a ton of money built from the ideas of others, they want to protect themselves. This is not shocking, it's how companies work. It reminds me of how most companies feel about open source code. Sure, open source is great, when you're not the one writing it.

  • I love english (Score:5, Funny)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @07:48PM (#6421195)
    LXG is based on a comic book entitled The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen

    I say this acronym doesn't have a LEG to stand on.

  • ...to the link at the bottom of the editorial - http://eldred.cc [eldred.cc] - where a campaign to petition Congress to effectively add registration to patents over fifty years old is underway.

    Granted, if they want to mess with anything below fifty years, they are on seriously shaky ground - a $1.00 tax isn't enough to be considered more than a formality, in my opinion. Still, just imagine how much stuff Disney will find itself dealing with on a yearly basis to keep all of its creations and movies locked from the public domain - even if they're a large enough corporation to deal with it.

    • where a campaign to petition Congress to effectively add registration to patents over fifty years old is underway.

      Patents? Patents last for 20 years. You must be talking about copyrights...

    • It's $1 every five years after the fifty-year mark. If you don't make $1 profit from a copyright in five years, what the hell is it good for?
    • The idea of the $1 fee isn't to effect cost-benefit calculations. Clearly, Disney isn't going to give up Mickey for a dollar. The idea is to ensure that forgotten copyrights go away.

      It's a serious problem. Books have been lost because probate forgot about the copyrights. No publisher would consider re-issuing something without a clear license, so one by one the surviving copies were lost, until the work failed to exist.

      There are several famous cases where a book was down to a handful of partial copi

  • It is money. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by www.sorehands.com ( 142825 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @07:52PM (#6421214) Homepage
    The Supreme court said that states cannot extend the statute of limitations so that priest that have molested children be charged with those crimes. But, the same court said that copyrights can be extended into infinity.


    If the MPAA backed extending the statuted of limitations, would the supreme court allow child molesters off the hook?

    • It's almost a fair comparison, but-

      the MPAA didn't get copyright protection re-instated on those that had lapsed. The states were trying to retroactively change the statues, not proactively change them.

      If the MPAA tried to re-copyright Shakespere, I'm sure the Supreme Court would say the same thing that it did to the states.
      • True, but the MPAA did get the copyright terms extended retroactively for works that had already been created long ago but hadn't quite passed into the public domain yet. It's a very similar changing of the rules after the fact.

        And it hardly makes sense to claim that extending terms on existing works encourages their creation, unless you have access to a time machine.
        • And it hardly makes sense to claim that extending terms on existing works encourages their creation, unless you have access to a time machine.

          Well, now you know what the court case was all about.
          Money : 1
          Reason : 0

  • Instead of Griping, Do Something (Score:5, Informative)

    by Famatra ( 669740 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @07:52PM (#6421216) Journal

    Everyone is griping about how long copyright is, instead lets lobby congress to reduce the length back towards the origional 28 years.

    What congress can do, it can undo. All that is needed is a little pressure. In fact there is a large lobby group that already exists in trying to reduce the copyright period to 50 years, unless the owners pays $1 at:

    http://eldred.cc/ [eldred.cc]

    So lend your support to it.

    • There is but one difficult problem with the resetting of copyright law.

      I mean, only one OTHER than the fact that the media companies could and would spend BILLIONS to prevent it...

      The United States government has signed numerous treaties (including the one mentioned on the Eldred page [eldred.cc]).

      It would be difficult (although not impossible) for the U.S. to extricate itself from these treaties without significant damage to our already lagging credibility.

      Otherwise, I'm all for it. Go ahead, lobby Congress,

      • Re:Instead of Griping, Do Something (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Zork the Almighty ( 599344 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @08:54PM (#6421490) Journal
        It won't have any impact at all. The fact is, our current system is broken. The media companies have all the money and power, and they can buy whatever laws they want. They will lobby, spend, and do whatever it takes to extend and broaden copyright without limit. People are correct in believing that this will choke creativity and kill culture, but the media companies actually benefit. You see, people will put up with garbage, as long as they have nothing better to compare it to. Marketing will ensure that everybody only hears about the "hot new thing", and they can recycle the same ten or twenty movies, at minimal cost and zero risk, until the end of time.

        We're not going to win that war, all of the decisive battles have already been lost, and our legal options are locked up. Either we admit defeat, and give in to a steady stream of Julia Roberts' movies and their ilk, or we fight on in a different arena. I propose that we build a digital library of all recorded works: music, films, books, etc. and put it on Freenet [freenetproject.org]. There is really no other option available to us, and I think that this will be the endgame. Let's do it before technology becomes illegal too.
        • We're not going to win that war, all of the decisive battles have already been lost, and our legal options are locked up. Either we admit defeat, and give in to a steady stream of Julia Roberts' movies and their ilk, or we fight on in a different arena. I propose that we build a digital library of all recorded works: music, films, books, etc. and put it on Freenet. There is really no other option available to us, and I think that this will be the endgame. Let's do it before technology becomes illegal too.
    • I suspect that wouldn't have any effect in my lifetime.

      a) The laws would not be retrospective, ie anything in force today would have grandfather provisions for existing stuff.
      b) Start the clock again. The nasty dude's have 50 years to get it extended again.

      Maybe our children's, children's, children will look back at us with fond memories...

  • Misuse of copyright law. (Score:5, Informative)

    by MrLint ( 519792 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @07:56PM (#6421235) Journal
    I recall reading recently about a spat between Nintendo and Universal(?). Basically Universal called up Nintendo one day saying to cough up millions of bucks for Donkey Kong, because, so they claimed that they (universal) owned the rights to King Kong. Well as the story went, Nintendo wanted to quickly settle as to not rock to boat of their franchise. So they went away tell universal they were going to research the amount and get back to them. Well Nintento cameback and told universal to go wash their heads. It seems that back in the day Universal went thru great pains to prove that King Kong was public domain so *they* didnt have to pay royalities. Of course Universal sued and lost badly as I recall reading. What can we extrapolate from this? Basically, if they cant get you to cough up legally, they will try to do it illegaly, by lying or misrepresentation. Its about who can scam the most bucks.. its not about 'intellectual property' at all.

    (boy i hope that story was true:)

  • Wrong suit Eric (Score:4, Funny)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @07:58PM (#6421248)
    Foremost amongst them was Eric Eldred, a bookmonger from Massachusetts who wished to continue providing free texts to his Web site's visitors. He eventually brought suit against the federal government, and the Supreme Court heard his case, Eldred v. Ashcroft

    Update: Mr. Eldred, according to his family, has not been heard of for some time. It has been rumored that Mr. Eldred may have had contacts with the "free internet texts", a free information dissident group, considered a dangerous hacker organization, and therefore very likely to be in connection with international terrorist groups.

    • Re:Wrong suit Eric (Score:5, Informative)

      by EricEldred ( 175470 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @09:28PM (#6421623) Homepage
      No suit--I don't fit into any of my suits anymore and can't afford a new one.

      I'm actually in New Hampshire (near Massachusetts) and my free online book web site at http://www.eldritchpress.org is still up and running on my Linux box at home via a cable modem--unless it has been slashdotted.

      The rumors of my turning Freenet infoterrorist are false. My current projects are scanning books for the Distributed Proofing project at http;//www.pgdp.net, promoting legislation at http://www.eldred.cc, and filtering books for the Internet Archive Bookmobile at http://www.archive.org.

      Probably all are considered dangerous by the various $$ publisher groups, but I'd welcome co-conspirators!

  • Lost Culture (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Midnight Warrior ( 32619 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @08:02PM (#6421264) Homepage

    It seems to me that liberals at every free-thinking college would be outraged. All their "classics" are essentially public domain. Why hasn't anyone else pieced together that lasting culture is defined by that which is freely available for use by all. Culture used to be about legends, shared experiences, and artistic works. Now culture is defined by some mega-corporation's marketing department.

    Examples: famous paintings (images thereof, not the works), books (as mentioned in the article), nursery rhymes (Eensy-Weensee-Spider (C) 1982 by ....), folklore legend (Sleepy Hollow), and so on and so forth.

    • Academics are outraged, if they're paying attention. But I'll bet every single literature professor in the country could donate his or her entire net worth to the cause of getting reasonable copyright laws passed, and the total amount of money raised still wouldn't equal Disney's lobbying budget.
    • "Why hasn't anyone else pieced together that lasting culture is defined by that which is freely available for use by all."

      Because that statement is false. When was the last time you went to a museum and saw stuff that was done for free. Whether it's a painting, a sculpture, a piece of clothing or furniture or clothing, etc, someone probably got paid to make it, and it's been traded ever since.

    • Outraged, eh? (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Under the Berne convention the copyright term of foreign works lasts for the same time they are protected in the country of origin. Imagine Israel would enact a law similar to US congress, granting copyright in perpetuity. Imagine the law would extend to works of the past, like the various US copyright extensions, but infinitely. Now the state of Israel, in substitution of the original author if you want, could claim ownership of the Bible or Thora or whatever, including all derivative works and translation

  • Hollywood is not a company (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Arrepiadd ( 688829 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @08:24PM (#6421381)
    Some used the example of Mickey Mouse. So I'll use it too.

    There is a difference between Hollywood and a certain company. If the rights on Mickey Mouse expire I don't see what Disney gains in general with this. Since the company that makes the film doesn't have to pay anything to Disney for using it's toy, Disney won't benefit from it.

    Of course, the sooner Mickey Mouse can be used, the sooner the second company could profit from it. But, they might think (or know) that keeping the rights for a lot more years will give them more money with the films they made, rather than what they'd get from using others productions.

    You might also say that the use of a already worldly known character would make a film easier to sell to viewers, but since the film wouldn't be from Disney, who would be running to the theatres to see it just because of Mickey (it could even be a porn movie, not that you would like your kids to see that, would you?).

    You can even add that Diskey could launch a parallel commercial campaign around the original Mickey. But, would Disney be interested in being associated to a XXX movie. Don't think so. So, in this case Disney itself wouldn't want to be in any way related to the film. Or in a case that the film is a serious piece of shit.

    Of course who made the film, could generate more profit than the one it would generate from an unknown character. But the risk to the (former) copyright holder would be tremendous and possibly not worthy of the gain it would have.

    So, there are, in my opinion, far more reasons to prefer an extension of copyright rather than a expiracy of it.

    • So your argument is: corporations should be able choke off new works and withhold old works, because it could benefit their image ? I'm sorry, I would benefit by clubbing you to death and taking your money, so maybe that's not a good principle to base society on.
    • So, there are, in my opinion, far more reasons to prefer an extension of copyright

      But the only reason you've given is, essentially, "because Disney can still profit from Mickey Mouse, and because if it became public domain, they'd lose its value as a commercial asset." And truth be told, that's exactly why it should lapse into the public domain. Disney has made plenty of money from its exclusive license on Mickey; that doesn't entitle them to make money on it in perpetuity.

      And the public domain would b

    • Re:Hollywood is not a company (Score:4, Informative)

      by dvdeug ( 5033 ) <dvdeug@emailMENCKEN.ro minus author> on Friday July 11, 2003 @11:05PM (#6421942)
      You might also say that the use of a already worldly known character would make a film easier to sell to viewers, but since the film wouldn't be from Disney, who would be running to the theatres to see it just because of Mickey (it could even be a porn movie, not that you would like your kids to see that, would you?).

      What about Pinocchio, or Cinderalla? I'm sure Disney would love to lock those characters up. There have been porn movies based on Pinocchio and Cinderalla, but most people can tell the different - the X-rated sign, the other movies at the theater or in the rental show. Heck, there have been other movies based on Pinnochio and Cinderalla - has it really made much difference to Disney? It's easy to tell the difference between the whip-driven, minimum-wage animated stuff and stuff professionally done, and even the other well done Pinocchio movies haven't had nearly the impact of the Disney version.

      There are 32 movies with Pinocchio in the title in the IMDB, including The Erotic Adventures of Pinocchio. Show me that not controlling Pinocchio has really hurt Disney, and I might start to believe it about Mickey.

  • Competing with the public domain? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by GammaTau ( 636807 ) <jni@iki.fi> on Friday July 11, 2003 @08:27PM (#6421393) Homepage Journal

    One thing I've been wondering is if many of the copyright holders are afraid of competition with the public domain. Some areas, such as literature, have this competition already because there are plenty of books in the public domain. However that's not exactly the case with pop music and movies.

    From my experience, many of the CD's with classical music in public domain are often only 30% of the price of a popular music CD in public domain. That's not a big problem because classical music and popular music are two separate genres so the competition isn't all that significant.

    What if the copyright was only 28 years and everything before 1975 would be in public domain? That would mean that we'd have lots of pop music and movies in public domain. Pre-1975 stuff isn't exactly the latest fashion but it can certainly compete with new music and movies. Pre-1975 would certainly be shown in television, heard on radio stations, sold on CD's etc. and that is something that makes me think that even if pre-1975 doesn't create all that much of money, preventing it from entering the public domain will help by making the competition easier.

    • You are exactly correct. The public domain is competition, and brutal competition at that. That's the problem with recording music, making movies, etc. At the beginning, people can't get enough of it. But the recordings never go away, and after a while there is so much great stuff available that people are not tempted to buy new works (unless they are really, really good).

  • Just saw at Wal-mart... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Sabalon ( 1684 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @08:45PM (#6421457)
    I was looking at the $5.98 DVD's (they are that for a reason) but found a combo DVD with Mulan and Pocahantos. Also found one that was Moses (Prince of Egypt) and something else based on a recent movie.

    The cover art was more or less similar poses of the characters on the mainstream release. Of course, because these are based on past events, there is nothing that Disney or whoever could do. I wonder how many people have been duped by this.

    I'm not saying it is wrong, but is definatly interesting and is the outcome if disney does lose the mickey copyright - lots of things that look like Disney releases.

    I remember when spiderman came out on DVD - there was a release of some old spidey cartoon on DVD about "Spiderman vs the Green Goblin" that had no pictures anywhere on it to indicate that it was a cartoon and not the recent movie.

  • Parapallegic Mice Team (Score:3, Interesting)

    by CrazyJim0 ( 324487 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @09:00PM (#6421507)
    Someone used a super charged ray of static electricity on a pair of mice in my roleplaying game:
    InterGalactic Bounty Hunter in 1990... (BTW someone is releasing a video game named that now, and I have it poor man's copywrighted-registered mail)

    Rolled 1,1,1 on a 20 sided dice...

    So they became parapallegic mice, with super intelligence.... They used robotic parts to create transportation, and schemed to seek revenge on the guy who did it in future episodes of the game.... Then when they realized he also helped them get intelligence, instead of killing him, they started to take over the universe.

    One or two years down the line, Pinky and the Brain came out.

    Theres only so many novel ideas out there that are original and artistic... Let alone copywrightable ideas in engineering and physics.

  • Hollywood is not one company (Score:3, Insightful)

    by geekee ( 591277 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @09:03PM (#6421521)
    "Hollywood has routinely benefitted from the expiration of copyright, despite their adamant pressure on Capitol Hill to extend copyright almost indefinitely."

    This staement is somewhat naive. What you mean is that some people in Hollywood could take advantage of the works of other people in Hollywood, with whom the are competing against, if copyrights expired sooner. This means that company b benefits at the expense of company a. So, although Hollywood possibly did generate more revenue as a whole, company a got screwed out of its share of that revenue. Whether or not the current copyright limit is fair, the arguement should be stated better.

  • Yes, but... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by evilWurst ( 96042 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @09:32PM (#6421641) Journal
    Hollywood isn't a bunch of new struggling studios anymore. They're the old guard. They'd rather have permanant copyright, thus being able to remake their own old stuff or license the rights from each other, while still preventing new companies from using it. It's part greed and part laziness. Free public domain stuff is more a threat to them now than a benefit.

  • The Real Irony and Flaw is...And Simplity! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Nom du Keyboard ( 633989 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @09:39PM (#6421665)
    The whole argument to extend copyright protection on existing works is a fraud and a lie. I hope you like being lied to about it. The fraud and lie is that every one of these existing works has already been created under the previous system of much shorter copyright protections. No extra creativity has fostered in any of those works by this extension. In fact, creativity has been hindered as all new and derivative properties are locked away beyond the lifetimes of any of us living now.

    Only profits are protected, at the very expensive of fostering creativity that the Constitution is supposed to protect.

    Now wasn't that simple? Why can't Congress and the Supreme Court understand this?

    Just for grins and giggles, try explaining this to your local representative and see what they really say about it.

  • ... copyrights are there so R&D is still profitable but extended copyrights can only create monopolisms and slowers the global evolution of any domain.

    People on Slashdot can see consequences on inadequation of copyright length in software development. In a relatively new domain like computer science, their length is really too long, and conducts to ridiculous situations (SCO vs IBM) and to monopolistic situations.

  • In other words (Score:4, Funny)

    by El ( 94934 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @10:23PM (#6421793)
    Disney and Microsoft have gotten rich using the same business model: rip off other people's intellectual property, and then jealously guard it as your own.

  • Lawsuits time bombs waiting to happen!!! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by tstoneman ( 589372 ) on Saturday July 12, 2003 @01:14AM (#6422474)
    I love it! One of the problems that the article touches upon is that the royalties, etc, will go on for 70 years... That means by the 60th year, there will be 3 generations of descendants that will be fighting over the royalties of this money!!! Imagine how many great-great-great grandchildren there will be that will be fighting over the money! The lawyers will be the ones making the most money, that's for sure!

    Isn't the great? They try so hard to keep control of their copyrights until decades after they die, presumably to help their descendants, but we know what will actually happen: greed will overtake them all and cause the family to be torn apart! I love it, what great revenge!

    I have a friend whose grandmother passed away, leaving a rather large cottage which is being shared between her several children and their children. Already, the fights that are brewing because they can't have access to this cottage is causing family strife, and we're talking about a stupid $20,000 cottage!

    Imagine how many fights there will be over potentially millions of dollars for the royalties for some of the stuff out there, like June Rowland/Harry Potter, or Stephen King, etc.

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