Party Like It's 1925 On Public Domain Day (npr.org) 103
Neda Ulaby, writing for NPR: What a year it was for Anglo-American literature and the arts! 1925 was the year of heralded novels by F. Scott Fitzgerald and Virginia Woolf, seminal works by Sinclair Lewis, Franz Kafka, Gertrude Stein, Agatha Christie, Theodore Dreiser, Edith Wharton, Aldous Huxley ... and a banner year for musicians, too. Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, the Gershwins, Duke Ellington and Fats Waller, among hundreds of others, made important recordings. And 1925 marked the release of canonical movies from silent film comedians Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd. As of today, every single one of those works has entered the public domain. "That means that copyright has expired," explains Jennifer Jenkins, a law professor at Duke University who directs its Center for the Study of the Public Domain. "And all of the works are free for anyone to use, reuse, build upon for anyone -- without paying a fee."
I knew it (Score:2, Funny)
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"Socialists" ?
Say it loud and proud my friend: F. Scott Fitzgerald was a COMMIE !
Re:I knew it (Score:5, Insightful)
Public Domain is the opposite of Socialist; the government has sworn off any management of the resource at all.
These works are now suitable for use in Libertarian Utopias.
Somebody call John Galt.
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Utter bollocks, being in the public domain is as good as meaning socialist, everybody owns it - it now belongs to the public.
Nice bit of double speak you did there.
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It doesn't "belong" to the public, that's just stupid-sauce.
Look up the word "ownership" or "property."
Then look up the word "public."
Re:Only under TRUMP... (Score:5, Funny)
This is a disgrace! Copyright law should be amended every year to make sure nothing ever enters into the public domain.
Thanks Disney Anon.
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Disney hasn't spent the effort to make sure nothing _ver_ enters the public domain. It's invested time and money to protect very profitable and irreplaceable property, the ownership of Mickey Mouse since his original appearance in Steamboat Willie being the leading example.
Re:Only under TRUMP... (Score:5, Informative)
The trademark on Mickey Mouse will last until Disney stops defending it. If the copyright on steamboat willy expires, derivative works would be permitted, but that would not enable the use of the mickey mouse character in such a work, because the character is still protected by trademark.
Copies of the steamboat willy cartoon itself, however, do not constitute unauthorized use of the mickey mouse trademark since the work was made by Disney themselves, so Disney's trademark protection cannot be used to prevent copies of their original creation, only derivative works that try to utilize the character.
Kellogg v. Nabisco (Score:2)
Disney's trademark protection cannot be used to prevent copies of their original creation, only derivative works that try to utilize the character.
How does a ban on derivative works follow from the case law in Kellogg v. Nabisco and Dastar v. Fox? As I mentioned in another comment [slashdot.org], I read those cases as precluding assertion of a trademark in such a way as to extend the effective term of an expired patent or copyright.
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Precisely right; trademarks cannot function as a substitute for copyright, and where a trademark is predicated on a patent or copyright, the mark will go generic when the underlying right is lost.
Disney might be able to maintain their trademark on MICKEY MOUSE-branded ice cream bars*, but won't be able to stop the use of their character -- as it existed in the public domain works, so no modern design, no color, etc. that's derivative of later, still protected works -- in new works.
* Much like Peter Pan is a
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What are you talking about?
Disney is most assuredly allowed to exert trademark protection on any characters that they create.
Re:Kellogg v. Nabisco (Score:5, Informative)
What are you talking about?
Okay! So the important thing here is to understand what a trademark actually is, and why it works. This will be a little long, but I am trying to answer your question.
The fundamental reason for trademarks is actually consumer protection. If you purchase a specific branded good, you should be able to expect a consistent level of quality as with other such branded goods. For example, if you buy a soft drink with the COCA-COLA brand on the can, you know it will taste like every other can with that brand, and not taste like something else like disgusting Mountain Dew. Whether the quality is good or bad is irrelevant, it just needs to be consistent, and it needs to originate from a common source.
That's why trademark infringement is a concern: if anyone can label anything as COCA-COLA, you won't know what to expect, and the consistency is lost. If the mark holder finds that someone is using the mark without authorization and supervision, they need to act to stop that in order to maintain consistency and commonality of sources.
Because that is the other half of the equation: the consistency is what is in the minds of the public. If you failed to stop infringing uses of your trademark, then customers would no longer associate the mark with consistent goods from a common source -- e.g. thinking that COCA-COLA can taste like any old thing -- and the mark would be lost.
Something similar happens when the public uses the mark incorrectly to refer to a whole class of items that do not originate from a common source. For example, ELEVATOR, ESCALATOR, TRAMPOLINE, CELLOPHANE, DRY ICE, VIDEOTAPE, and thermos all used to be trademarks. But people stopped thinking of ELEVATOR-brand vertical conveyance devices and just started using 'elevator' to mean a vertical conveyance device, regardless of who makes it, or whether they're similar. This caused the ELEVATOR mark to undergo what is known as 'genericide' -- it referred to a generic type of good, rather than to specific branded goods from a common source with consistent quality, and so could not function as a trademark. Often this happens to businesses that so dominate a field that the mark is too successful.
Marks that have long been on teetering on the edge of genericide include XEROX (they run ad campaigns telling people not to use it as a generic word for photocopying machines, photocopies, or the verb 'to photocopy'), KLEENEX, BAND-AID, Q-TIP, etc. (Actually, to clarify something above, THERMOS is a trademark, but 'thermos' in lowercase is not... it was a weird sort of split-the-baby decision). SANKA, if you remember it, practically flatlined until people actually started to say 'decaf' instead, for decaffeinated coffee. On the other hand, I don't think their business is all that fantastic any more now that decaf is more widely available. GOOGLE has even had problems (they don't like people using the verb 'google' meaning to search). (ASPIRIN and HEROIN are special cases; Bayer, a German company, lost their American marks in part due to the hostilities between the US and Germany in WW1)
This is why in official ads you'll generally see that trademark holders go to some pains to use their marks not to refer to products directly. Like, you can't wear a pair of Levi's, you can only wear a pair of LEVI'S-brand blue jeans. Because if the word is synonymous with 'blue jeans' everyone can use it. Or why if you look at pharmaceutical ads closely, you'll see that LIPITOR, for example, is actually LIPITOR-brand atorvastatin, the latter being the name for the actual drug)
So, why the hell does this matter?
In the 1890s an inventor created a machine to make a new kind of breakfast cereal, and he took out patents on the machine and the cereal itself (this is not that odd) and he called it SHREDDED WHEAT and got a trademark on the name. And for the life of the patent, no one else could make that precise machine, and even building a different kind of machine wouldn't be too u
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Although Mickey Mouse was not originally trademarked by Disney, it was trademarked before the copyrights on any of the character's earliest works expired, so at no point did the Mickey Mouse character ever enter public domain.
Any use by a third party of the Mickey Mouse character without Disney's consent would constitute trademark infringement.
This does not effectively lengthen their copy protections on works such as Steamboat Willy, because that work's copyright has expired. Steamboat Willy might be p
Re:Kellogg v. Nabisco (Score:5, Informative)
I feel that you're not up to speed on this because, among other things, the key 1928 Mickey Mouse copyrights have not expired. They aren't due to expire until January 1, 2024.
The character, as I mentioned, is not a standalone thing. You can copyright a work. You can trademark a source identifier. There is no special type of protection for a character. When a work falls into the public domain, the characters within that work, to the extent that they are described within that work, enter the public domain too.
Let's take a look at Klinger v. Conan Doyle Estate, Ltd., 755 F.3d 496 (7th Cir. 2014):
We cannot find any basis in statute or case law for extending a copyright beyond its expiration. When a story falls into the public domain, story elements -- including characters covered by the expired copyright -- become fair game for follow-on authors, as held in Silverman v. CBS Inc., 870 F.2d 40, 49-51 (2d Cir. 1989), a case much like this one. At issue was the right to copy fictional characters (Amos and Andy) who had appeared in copyrighted radio scripts. The copyrights covered the characters because they were original. As in this case the characters also appeared in subsequent radio scripts that remained under copyright, though the copyrights on the original scripts in which the characters had appeared had expired. The court ruled that "a copyright affords protection only for original works of authorship and, consequently, copyrights in derivative works secure protection only for the incremental additions of originality contributed by the authors of the derivative works." Id. at 49.
17 USC 103(b) is also pertinent in that it establishes that the copyright in a derivative work only extends to the new material, not the pre-existing material. (So, for example, the parts of Empire Strikes Back that define Luke Skywalker's character might include that he can lift rocks with the force, but not that his father was Anakin Skywalker, a friend of Obi-Wan Kenobi, since that was previously established in A New Hope)
So when the first three Mickey Mouse cartoons from 1928 hit the public domain, so too does the Mickey Mouse character to the extent that those films describe him and are not derivative of anything earlier. If you disagree, by all means cite a case that supports your argument.
The other half of your error is thinking that trademarks are in some fashion superior to copyrights, and aren't susceptible to being dragged down by them. Let's look closer at Dastar Corp. v. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp., 539 US 23 (2003):
The problem with this argument according special treatment to communicative products is that it causes the Lanham Act to conflict with the law of copyright, which addresses that subject specifically. The right to copy, and to copy without attribution, once a copyright has expired, like "the right to make [an article whose patent has expired]--including the right to make it in precisely the shape it carried when patented--passes to the public." Sears, Roebuck & Co. v. Stiffel Co., 376 U. S. 225, 230 (1964); see also Kellogg Co. v. National Biscuit Co., 305 U. S. 111, 121-122 (1938). "In general, unless an intellectual property right such as a patent or copyright protects an item, it will be subject to copying." TrafFix Devices, Inc. v. Marketing Displays, Inc., 532 U. S. 23, 29 (2001). The rights of a patentee or copyright holder are part of a "carefully crafted bargain," Bonito Boats, Inc. v. Thunder Craft Boats, Inc., 489 U. S. 141, 150-151 (1989), under which, once the patent or copyright monopoly has expired, the public may use the invention or work at will and without attribution. Thus, in construing the Lanham Act, we have been "careful to caution against misuse or over-extension" of trademark and related protections into areas traditionally occupied by patent or copyright. TrafFix, 532 U. S., at 29. ..
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So when the first three Mickey Mouse cartoons from 1928 hit the public domain, so too does the Mickey Mouse character to the extent that those films describe him and are not derivative of anything earlier. If you disagree, by all means cite a case that supports your argument.
A character from a story and a drawn design expressing that character's appearance are different things.
There's really no relevance to this thread of something that happened on the radio.
Generally speaking, you have not even addressed why the use of trademark is an attempt to extend copyright. What "copying" is prevented by the use of Mickey's design as a trademark? "Kellogg Company was free to use the pillow-shaped form, subject only to the obligation to identify its product lest it be mistaken for that of
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I thought that the copyright on steamboat willy expired in 2019, only a few years after Disney had trademarked the Mickey Mouse character, and in anticipation of Mickey Mouse works starting to enter the public domain. If this date was wrong, then the example I was giving about steamboat willy would apply to the future, not to what is currently the case. It doesn't significantly change my point
I am not "trying" to make trademark function in a copyright capacity at all. Trademark protects unauthorized u
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A character from a story and a drawn design expressing that character's appearance are different things.
There's really no relevance to this thread of something that happened on the radio.
Oh, not at all. Courts don't care whether a character was defined by a drawing or a filmed appearance or a portrait of words, or in the case of a character that has appeared in a variety of media, both. How much of Sherlock Holmes is taken from the characterizations in the book, and how much from the drawings by Sidney Paget that appeared in The Strand, to illustrate the stories that were appearing in print for the first time? As a hint, note that Paget gave him the cape and deerstalker hat, which never ap
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I thought that the copyright on steamboat willy expired in 2019, only a few years after Disney had trademarked the Mickey Mouse character
No, 2024 for the copyright, but also Disney started filing Mickey Mouse trademarks in 1928. You can look them up at the PTO website. Plus of course you can get a trademark without registration.
And [trademark] only prevents unauthorized derivative works by third parties when those works contain a trademarked character.
Nope! Copyright law governs the use of unauthorized derivative works. (Check out 17 USC 106(2). The cases previously cited are directly on point. Congress cannot make trademark law take over from copyright with regard to derivatives.
Mickey Mouse is not, and has never been, protected by copyright. Once the copyright in a work has expired, a derivative work containing different characters would be entirely acceptable.
Okay, so it's now very obvious that you don't know a damn thing about copyright or tr
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It absolutely can, because the trademark lasts for as long as Disney defends it.
Your interpretation would violate "limited Times" (Score:2)
Trademark would not prevent derivative works of a once-copyrighted work in general, but it would still prevent unauthorized use of whatever was trademarked.
Trademark exists to identify origin of a product. If a trademark registration conferred copyright-like rights over elements of a work whose copyright has expired to block release of derivative works whose authorship is not otherwise misrepresented, it would violate "for limited Times" in the Copyright Clause.
You might as well say that when Back To the Future's copyright expires, that Nike should become public domain too, just because that product was featured in the once-copyrighted work.
There's a difference. The "NIKE" and swoosh marks are not used to identify elements introduced in the motion picture Back to the Future. They existed prior, to identify other athletic apparel. The "MICK
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Whether the trademarked term existed prior to the copyrighted work or not is irrelevant.
The appearance of Mickey Mouse in Steamboat Willy is authorized. That authorization most assuredly does *NOT* extend to derivative works.
This does not prevent derivative works like copyright does. It only prevents unauthorized use of the character, full stop. It does not prevent copying the work like copyright does, because the work, being created by Disney themselves, represents an obviously authorized use of th
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What case law distinguishes "use of the character" from "preparing derivative works"?
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My reasoning follows inescapably from the fact that trademark and copyright protect wholly different things.
Trademark cannot be used to protect a copyrighted work once the copyright has expired. There is precedent for this in patent law, as mentioned earlier.
By the same reasoning, the lapsing of a copyrighted work does not ordinarily affect the trademark status of anything that might have been used in the work. It follows that a separate license would be needed for any unauthorized of the trademark
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But the trademark cannot stop people from using the character (using only those elements from public domain sources and original elements) in new creative works.
It absolutely can, because the trademark lasts for as long as Disney defends it.
And how, pray tell, do you deal with Dastar? It very clearly indicates that trademark cannot substitute for copyright. Disney can continue to have a trademark in MICKEY MOUSE where it is in a trademark capacity (i.e. 'uncreative' products, like the ice cream bars), but it fundamentally cannot show that the MICKEY MOUSE trademark is distinctive in creative works, where everyone can use it to depict the further derivative adventures of the circa 1928 Mickey Mouse character. It would be as if Levi's tried to
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I never once alleged that it could. It prevents unauthorized use of trademarked terms. In the Fox/Dastar case, the thing that was copied bore the same name as the thing that was trademarked, so once the copyright with that title expired, there was no longer any ability to defend the trademark either.
Also, as I said elsewhere, if Disney were to have called Steamboat Willy "Mouse Pilots a
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Also, as I said elsewhere, if Disney were to have called Steamboat Willy "Mouse Pilots a Steamboat", they would absolutely lose control of any trademarks on that title when the work fell into public domain. They likewise will lose the ability to assert trademark control over the term "Steamboat Willy" when it falls into public domain.
WTF, mate? You cannot trademark the title of a single creative work because -- and this is the thing you just seem totally blind to -- it cannot serve as a source identifier. TMEP 1202.08 delves into this in great detail and even has case cites, which you will ignore because you have constructed this imaginary form of trademark law that you are clearly never letting go of and you will never even look to see if there might be any support for the other position.
blah blah Thunderbirds blah blah
Actually, as is common, the movie producers wan
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How does all this square with Kellogg v. Nabisco, where the Court ruled that "shredded wheat" had become a generic term for pillow-shaped wheat biscuits once Nabisco's patent expired?
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I still think you're missing the distinct problems around an inherently visual character - which Holmes was not; the illustrations are based on the writing, not the case with Mickey.
Your example of the new Mickey mouse movie merges immediately into the ice-cream bar example as you would presumably have to advertise the movie and that's where in both cases trademark comes into play. As I see it making and distributing the movie would not be the problem; marketing it would be but crucially, copyright would no
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When they are somehow featured in the movie and expressly named as a brand, yes.
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"Mickey Mouse" billed bigger on title cards (Score:2)
"Mickey Mouse" itself was just the name of the short film series. It also described a set of copyrighted work elements, and a court following Dastar would reasonably rule that trademark protection on such a generic term that described an expired copyright could not be utilized to prevent others from using the elements or the term.
This could otherwise be applicable to the Disney's situation when Steamboat Willy's copyright expires if the copyrighted work itself were actually instead titled "Mickey Mouse".
The exact text on the title card is as follows:
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If that's the case, we'll see what happens when Steamboat Willy becomes public domain. I think you're wrong, but we'll see in just a few years.
Copyright currently lasts so long that there's simply no real court precedent for a trademark on a character in a copyrighted work to lose its trademark protection when the copyright on the work expires.
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By the way, there is precedent for trademark persisting past the lapsing of copyright.
The Max Fleischer Superman cartoons from the 1940's are public domain, because the copyright was not extended, but the character of Superman is still trademarked.
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This is probably true, but I am inclined to think that they had simply failed to realize it earlier. They are aware of this now, and I think it may be why they aren't further extending the copyright duration anymore.
When the copyrights expired for the 1940's Superman cartoons which DC had neglected to extend, their trademarked Superman character did not fall into public domain. You can freely copy or even make deri
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The Fleischer Superman cartoons are also sort of a special case in that they are adaptations of earlier works published in 1938 whose copyright was renewed.
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They are, yes... but the copyright on them has still expired.
You are even free to make derivative works of them... for example, creating a virtually identical story, but not using any DC characters, and not naming the inspiration. Something that might be a very blatant copyright infringement, not to mention plagiarism, if the copyright on them had been maintained.
I am inclined to think that until a court has actually ruled otherwise, it has to hold that expiration of copyright does not cause expiratio
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Ownership of a trademark in a work whose copyright has expired does not prevent derivative works, but it does prevent unauthorized use of what is protected by the trademark.
A copy of a public domain work that contains a trademarked character isn't an unauthorized use of a trademark when the owner of the trademark actually produced that work in the first place.
So trademark ownership does not substitute for copyright because it does not prevent unauthorized copies of the original work. That is the job f
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I'd appreciate it if you can cite a single case supporting your interpretation.
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You can't cite a case for something that has never been tested in court yet. The most reasonable interpretation at the present time is that copyright and trademark are orthogonal would have to apply until a case comes up where an expired copyright actually causes loss of a trademark of something that was inside of the copyrighted work when the trademark is not actually serving some other function (such as the name of the work, for example, or describing a patentable process).
Consider that the Max Fleisch
Fleischer (Score:2)
Consider that the Max Fleischer Superman cartoons from the 1940's are public domain because DC did not renew their copyright
Copyright in the Fleischer cartoons was not DC's to renew, as Paramount Pictures was the author of the Fleischer cartoons, not DC.
but you cannot use the superman character in your own works, even if they are somehow clearly derived from the public domain ones. It follows that the expiration of copyright of a work does not cause loss of a trademark for anything contained in that work.
This is not because of trademark alone. This is because of copyright. In particular, it depends on in which work each element was introduced. Because copyright in the Fleischer cartoons cartoons was not renewed, elements original to the Fleischer cartoons are not copyrighted. Because copyright in the underlying comics was renewed, elements from the underlying comics are copyright
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Actually, the rights reverted to DC at the end of the term for which it was licensed to Fleischer. DC actually failed to renew their copyright on the Fleischer works*.
Anyways, that DC is the author of works with the character that are still under copyright is likely irrelevant. The trademarked character of Superman was licensed to appear in a copyrighted work whose copyright
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If the copyright on steamboat willy expires, derivative works would be permitted, but that would not enable the use of the mickey mouse character in such a work
Once the Copyright expires: others can use anything, any character, within derivative works. Disney may retain a trademark, but trademark Only prevents others from using the character in commerce such as marketing or labelling products or services for sale, And even with trademark they cannot prevent others honestly using their mark nominally,
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Sure, as long as the character isn't protected by other IP that is still being enforced.
The lapsing of copyright does not affect trademark status.
Trademark cannot be effectively used to lengthen copyright on a work, but it does still prevent unauthorized use of the things that are protected by the trademark.
If a trademarked term was licensed for use to appear in a copyrighted work, the lapse of copyright on the
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Disney hasn't spent the effort to make sure nothing _ver_ enters the public domain. It's invested time and money to protect very profitable and irreplaceable property, the ownership of Mickey Mouse since his original appearance in Steamboat Willie being the leading example.
Yeah, that's why the founders insisted on "for a limited time".
Forever is not limited
95 YEARS AGO ! Pirate motivation right there. (Score:4, Insightful)
Should one pirate ?
Against: Although derivate work is creation in itself, the original creators deserve to be paid.
For: NINETY FIVE FUCKING YEARS !!
Re:95 YEARS AGO ! Pirate motivation right there. (Score:4, Insightful)
Just wait until 2023, when the IP from 1928 could enter the public domain...the copyright period will be extended again, and a new segment added to the Mickey Mouse Curve.
Nah... It's TMs all the way down. (Score:5, Informative)
Naah... You're not paying attention.
Disney simply trademarks EVERYTHING now.
E.g. All of the Star Wars characters, objects and any IP even remotely marketable [justia.com] now have a TM added to their name or label.
Note the TMs on both the brand and the character's name. [ssl-images-amazon.com]
Why copyright and risk losing the IP when trademarks are FOREVER?
Re: Nah... It's TMs all the way down. (Score:5, Informative)
A trademark is just a name. Copyright protects the content
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A trademark should protect whatever it is you're protecting as a trademark only though. That may preclude you from creating a Skywalker (tm) action figure
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Dastar v. Fox (2003) (Score:5, Informative)
Exclusive rights under the Lanham Act, such as trademarks in a work's title and character names, don't bar others from commercially exploiting the work once copyright expires. A Disney subsidiary* tried to assert a trademark as an ersatz copyright under a "reverse passing off" legal theory and lost. Dastar Corp. v. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp., 539 U.S. 23 (2003) [wikipedia.org].
* Prior to acquisition
Re:95 YEARS AGO ! Pirate motivation right there. (Score:4, Insightful)
Should one pirate ?
Copyright should serve to foster abundance (partly by ensuring that creators are well compensated for their work), not to create an artificial scarcity that mostly benefits the distributors rather than the creators. Personally I think it should at least be reduced to more reasonable terms, like we had in the past. Something like 25 years starting from first publication, reverting to the public domain afterwards.
As for piracy, for me personally it depends on the extent publishers are meeting their end of the social contract. If they make the material available to us in a conventient and timely manner at a reasonable price, then don't pirate. Like music: inexpensive and widely available, either streaming or downloadable to own. So pay for it. But if they create artificial scarcity, mess around with geofencing and region codes, create "exclusive content" that can only be bought bundled with a bunch of other crap or is locked away in expensive monthly subscriptions, or encumber their content with shitty DRM, then pirate away matey.
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I don't mind giving money to creators.
Publishers are not creators though.
Tell me when I can send directly to grips; they had more of an impact.
Not much but > 0.
Five to 20 years at best.
With still less for commercial even.
Remember your history (Score:5, Informative)
If you think 95 years is bad, last year Congress tried to extend it to 144 years.
Push back on your representatives and tell them you want to dial back the copyright protections or this will just keep happening until copyright is permanent.
https://www.wired.com/story/co... [wired.com]
https://www.econlib.org/librar... [econlib.org]
Canada, push back (Score:2)
They are trying (did they succeed) in passing the same huge extension in Canada, to 95 years from 50.
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Part of the new NAFTA, the main change I believe, was extending copyright to 70 years. You might be right for corporate work for hire copyright. As far as I know, Parliament hasn't acted yet.
We did manage to avoid the pharmaceutical patent shit though.
Fucking Trump starting trade wars to push copyright.
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Not 70 years -- that would be almost almost reasonable. It's LIFE plus 70 years. If someone creates something at age 20 and dies at 100, the work is in copyright for 150 years.
95 years for corporate works and items created long before the current rules applied.
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Yes, life plus 70 years to incentive the artist with recordings and performances for 75 years. Currently lots of stuff like Beatles recordings are out of copyright here I believe.
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Yes, life plus 70 years to incentive the artist with recordings and performances for 75 years. Currently lots of stuff like Beatles recordings are out of copyright here I believe.
Beatles should still be covered. They're coming up on 60 years. I think I heard Paul say - I'M NOT that bloody old yet!
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It's complicated. The early Beatles etc are in the public domain but they need a mechanical license as well to be reproduced, about 8 cents a song and usually automatic. Well the music industry went ape shit when Walmart started selling recordings, from refusing to deal to fake negative reviews.
https://www.billboard.com/arti... [billboard.com] also follow the link to https://www.michaelgeist.ca/20... [michaelgeist.ca]
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Feel sorry for Stargrove. That sucks.
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I would argue that if copyright is extended any more it will be permanent. Even at 95 it is virtually permanent since works are tied up for more than a generation.
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Of course it's permanent already - nobody who could legally agree to make the copyright trade will be alive in 95 years.
And the author will be dead too.
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Heirs can and do make copyright agreements. So do corporations, such as Disney, which has long outlived the creators of Mickey Mouse.
Life of grandchildren (Score:2)
In particular, the present copyright term was intended to approximate the life of those heirs who had had personal contact with the author. (Source: "The Copyright Term Red Herring" by Leo Lichtman [copyrightalliance.org])
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And how exactly does the heir having copyrights aid in "promot[ing] the Progress of Science and useful Arts"? Since this is the supposed reason for having copyrights (at least in the US based on the Constitution) copyright should expire at death.
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Do the longer profits for their heirs encourage artists to create or to pubish? It's a fair question, though thte answer may well be "no".
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More than a generation? A generation is 25 years or thereabouts. 95 years is more than a human lifetime....
So as I stated more than a generation. 8^)
Re:Remember your history (Score:5, Informative)
If you think 95 years is bad, last year Congress tried to extend it to 144 years.
Actually, it was an attempt to extend the copyright on pre-1972 musical recordings to 2067. It wasn't an attempt to extend all copyrights on everything for that long.
The issue of musical performance copyrights in the USA is extraordinarily complex and it would take a lawyer and copyright expert to give it the full depth it needs. But to try to give Slashdot folks a quick overview, technically speaking due to some kind of weird oversight, musical recordings prior to 1972 weren't covered by US copyright law. Somebody figured this out and got Congress to quickly pass a law covering those recordings. And on top of this, everybody just sort of assumed that pre-1972 recordings would enter the public domain after copyrights expired for whatever the time period was at the time. If I remember correctly, it was sort of generally assumed without any legal backing that pre-1925 recordings were in the public domain in the USA but stuff after that most likely was not. Then Naxos Records, a Singapore based classical music label, decided to test US law by taking a late 1930s classical recording that everybody in the US believed was still under copyright law and issued their own copy without permission roughly around the year 2000 in the USA. Well, Capitol Records not only owned the rights, this specific title was actually still a decent seller (by old classical music standards) and they were pretty upset at this. Naxos probably thought because of the murky US situation of pre-1972 recordings that they could get away with it, but any US music executive worth their salt would have told Naxos that those recordings were believed to still be under valid US copyright. Capitol sued Naxos and won. They not only won, the court ruled (this is where is gets a bit crazy) that the original records were under New York state common law copyright, which never expired, so they were still under valid copyright because the state law protected them under copyright until Congress passed the pre-1972 recordings law. And on top of that, the court ruled that literally every recording ever made before 1972 was still under copyright, even stuff from the 1800s, because the New York state law never expired. So it has led to this really weird situation where old songs are not under copyright but any old performance of them is still under US copyright until 2067 when very old recordings will finally start to enter the public domain. Apparently this new law was to make sure that this happens, but based on my limited legal understanding, it will probably happen anyway without the law. So recordings by Enrico Caruso, who died in 1921, are still under copyright in the USA even though the individual songs are not and people can do new recordings of any songs he ever recorded without paying publishing fees, but they can't in the USA issue their own legal copies of his recordings. This is just an example. The Naxos release in question was actually by Pable Casals.
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How are New York state laws applicable in other states?
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New York state laws apply when one end of the connection is or reasonably could be in New York. As I understand it, most CMSes and CDNs aren't set up to geoblock based on states, provinces, or other subsovereign entities. Nor are reusers willing to go to court to determine what other U.S. states recognize state-level perpetual copyright in sound recordings.
Capitol venue shopped for their lawsuit (Score:2)
New York state laws apply when one end of the connection is or reasonably could be in New York.
Correct. Capitol venue shopped their lawsuit to a certain extent and filed it in New York even though their HQ is in Los Angeles. This may have been because they had an idea that New York state copyright law was quirky and it would work out in their favor. The court ruling essentially said that New York state law kept the recordings from going into public domain until the 1972 law got passed by Congress, therefore they were not and never had been in public domain in the USA. Note that the US music ind
crimes against society (Score:3, Insightful)
The old 28+28 regime means to me we are economically and "legally" raped by ex post facto law(yers), and Disney etc, every time we pay for copyrights older than the late 60s. And personally, I believe 28+28 was overly generous vs 14+14 - I would streamline to 20 - 25 years and done, more similar to patents.
Re:crimes against society (Score:4, Informative)
7+7 was the agreement made between the People and the Government.
Sam Clemens planned to add a new chapter to each of his books at least every 14 years.
Steamboat Willy (Score:2)
As an example, these extended copyrights are worth 4 billion to George Lucas and half a billion to Bob Dylan. And a huge loss to the public as the creative community is barred for iteration and inn
Re:Steamboat Willy (Score:5, Informative)
So Disney has about a decade to bribe congress to insure their content is never public domain. This is, after all, why these laws were passed. In the 1970Âs copyright was extended to protected corporate interests like Disney, them around 2000 it was extended to protect crappy music from the 1960s and 1970s.
As an example, these extended copyrights are worth 4 billion to George Lucas and half a billion to Bob Dylan. And a huge loss to the public as the creative community is barred for iteration and innovation. Copyright in the US until,Disney got it changed was 28 years.
Best part of all? Disney based most of their stories on free public domain to get their start. Snow white, Cinderella, Pinocchio. Many based on literature from other countries. Grimm, etc.
Re:Steamboat Willy (Score:5, Funny)
"Disney based most of their stories on free public domain to get their start."
Great point that I hadn't noticed until now.
So, Disney, you want that permacopyright ?
Fine, but first you have to find the descendants of the Brothers Grimm AND GIVE THEM YOUR COMPANY.
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Or those descendants will come and cut your heads off!
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Grim grinning ghosts want to socialize....
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You are free to do your own versions of legacy stories. Every time Disney does a new one based on some old folklore, other companies rush out what I call "Grandma trappers", movies with the same name as the Disney one, e.g. Pochahontas, for release on DVD, for grandma to go buy dear ones that title, not realizing it is a knockoff so to speak.
I once sought out Grandma trappers (Score:2)
I used to deliberately seek out Grandma trappers, such as the Golden Films version of Pinocchio and Rankin/Bass Pinocchio's Christmas, on account of my having boycotted Disney and Gershwin Enterprises from 1999 through 2018 over the companies' leading role in lobbying for the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998.
Disney had sued GoodTimes (now New Video) in 1993 for allegedly confusing packaging of these Grandma trappers. Disney later tasted its own medicine in 2013 when Oz the Great and Powerful had to have [wikipedia.org]
Re: Steamboat Willy (Score:2)
What should happen is that if you extend copyright then it gets extended for old works too. So an extra 20 years puts Pinocchio in copyright when Disney released their animation. As such they owe back royalties to the estate of Carlo Collodi. Would stop them wanting any more extensions.
Melancholy Elephants (Score:2)
If I write a song, how can I tell before publishing it whether someone else already wrote a substantially similar song? See the short story "Melancholy Elephants" by Spider Robinson [spiderrobinson.com].
(If your reply mentions the "access" element: If I write a song, how can I tell before publishing it whether I accidentally copied something I had heard a decade ago on commercial radio? Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music.)
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Don't worry, it's guaranteed that you're infringing at least these guys' copyright.
https://entertainment.slashdot... [slashdot.org]
Re: Steamboat Willy (Score:2)
Uum, no? How in the world do you figure would giving *distributors* the privilege to kill any creativity that is somewhat based on any other creativity, spur any creativity?
Because that's the key talking point of those distributors?
There is no such thing as a creative work not inspired by other creative works. It's the only way our brain, a neural net, can work. The only things that could come from something else than a human creative work are a creative work of nature itself, and pure random noise. All an
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You cannot claim that creativity is in anyway stifled here.
But could it be even better with shorter, less restrictive copyrights? Widespread but generally illegal 'fan' works suggest that it would be.
Meanwhile, there has been at least one study [rufuspollock.com] that I know of into optimizing copyright terms for greatest public benefit. The answer was about 15 years. While the math is over my head, I think that more research into this question would be good, followed by implementing changes accordingly.
Sound recordings are not included (Score:2)
Sound recordings are not included in this release, those have separate and longer expiration period.
About 90 years too late. (Score:4, Insightful)
Just like a patent doesn't last forever, especially if you've finished or never started commerciaizing on it, ... nothing deserves more than 5 years of a literal monopoly that enables them to gouge prices with artificial scarcity. ... Even if both of those otherwise criminal schemes are of course actually imaginary.
If you can't get a full return on your investment in five years, maybe you should find a more suitable legitimate business model that doesn't rely on your victims treating information as if it was still 1925, everyone in the world keeping a "secret" that you literally will give to everyone for a fiver, and as if you could just ignore basic laws of physics (causality).
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Meanwhile in the rest of the world... (Score:2)
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Works titled "1984" are going to show up a bit oddly with George Orwell's infamous book and the new Wonder Woman movie of the same name coming up.
Shut up your fools (Score:2)
Stop celebrating this thing you idiots, it will alert Disney that their stupid Mickey Mouse copyright is set to expire and they'll re-extend copyrights once again. You idiots have already forgotten the copyright shitshow of the 1990s (and 70s). Each time the copyright terms were set to expire Disney lobbyist showed up congressmen's homes with suitcases of cash.
Authors Guild would fight Disney (Score:2)
Stop celebrating this thing you idiots, it will alert Disney that their stupid Mickey Mouse copyright is set to expire and they'll re-extend copyrights once again.
Last I checked (3 years ago), the Authors Guild opposed an extension and was willing to fight Disney on this [arstechnica.com].
Copyright owners: landlords charging rent (Score:3, Interesting)
These extended copyrights are a way for copyright owners (hardly ever artists) to make money just by owning the rights to artistic works. That is, they are not rewarded for creating the works, but charge people to use works created long ago. I believe economists call this rent-seeking, as distinct from useful work being justly rewarded. I am pretty sure this was not the intent behind the original copyright laws.
Re: Copyright owners: landlords charging rent (Score:1, Interesting)
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But be careful. (Score:1)
Franz Kafka was not Anglo-American. (Score:1)