'Metropolis', Sherlock Holmes Finally Enter the Public Domain 95 Years Later (duke.edu) 87
Guess what's finally entering America's public domain today? Appropriately enough, it's Marcel Proust's 1927 novel Remembrance of Things Past.
Also entering the public domain today are thousands of other books, plus the music and lyrics of hundreds of songs, and even several silent movies.
Fritz Lang's sci-fi classic Metropolis enters the public domain today — and so does the Laurel & Hardy comedy Battle of the Century (which culminates with one of Hollywod's first pie fights), according to Duke University's Center for the Study of the Public Domain: This is actually the second time that Metropolis has gone into the US public domain. The first was in 1955, when its initial 28-year term expired and the rights holders did not renew the copyright. Then in 1996 a new law restored the copyrights in qualifying foreign works. Metropolis, along with thousands of other works, was pulled out of the public domain, and now reenters it after the expiration of the 95-year term, with the once missing scenes available for anyone to reuse.
They also note that some material is in the public domain from the beginning, including government works like the images from the James Webb telescope.
But for other works, today is a big and important day, writes the Associated Press: Alongside the short-story collection "The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes," books such as Virginia Woolf's "To The Lighthouse," Ernest Hemingway's "Men Without Women," William Faulkner's "Mosquitoes" and Agatha Christie's "The Big Four" — an Hercule Poirot mystery — will become public domain as the calendar turns to 2023. Once a work enters the public domain it can legally be shared, performed, reused, repurposed or sampled without permission or cost.
The works from 1927 were originally supposed to be copyrighted for 75 years, but the 1998 Copyright Term Extension Act delayed opening them up for an additional 20 years. While many prominent works on the list used those extra two decades to earn their copyright holders good money, a Duke University expert says the copyright protections also applied to "all of the works whose commercial viability had long subsided."
"For the vast majority — probably 99% — of works from 1927, no copyright holder financially benefited from continued copyright. Yet they remained off limits, for no good reason," Jennifer Jenkins, director of Duke's Center for the Study of the Public Domain, wrote in a blog post heralding "Public Domain Day 2023." That long U.S. copyright period meant many works that would now become available have long since been lost, because they were not profitable to maintain by the legal owners, but couldn't be used by others. On the Duke list are such "lost" films like Victor Fleming's "The Way of All Flesh" and Tod Browning's "London After Midnight...."
Also entering the public domain today:
- Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop
- A. A. Milne's Now We Are Six (illustrations by E. H. Shepard)
- Franklin W. Dixon's The Tower Treasure — the first Hardy Boys book
- Herman Hesse's Steppenwolf (German version)
- The song "My Blue Heaven"
- Songs by Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong
- Alfred Hitchcock's early silent movie The Lodger
The UK-based newspaper the Observer adds: For those readers who do not reside in the US, there is perhaps another reason for celebrating today, because copyright terms are longer in the US than they are in other parts of the world, including the EU and the UK. And therein lies a story about intellectual property laws and the power of political lobbying in a so-called liberal democracy.... The term was gradually lengthened in small increments by Congress until 1976, when it was extended by 19 years to 75 years and then in 1998 by the Sonny Bono Act. So, as the legal scholar Lawrence Lessig puts it, "in the 20 years after the Sonny Bono Act, while 1 million patents will pass into the public domain, zero copyrights will pass into the public domain by virtue of the expiration of a copyright term"....
[T]he end result is that American citizens have had to wait two decades to be free to adapt and reuse works to which we Europeans have had easy access....
The issue highlighted by Public Domain Day is not that intellectual property is evil but that aspects of it — especially copyright — have been monopolised and weaponised by corporate interests and that legislators have been supine in the face of their lobbying. Authors and inventors need protection against being ripped off. It's obviously important that clever people are rewarded for their creativity and the patent system does that quite well. But if a patent only lasts for 20 years, why on earth should copyright last for life plus 70 years for a novel?
Also entering the public domain today are thousands of other books, plus the music and lyrics of hundreds of songs, and even several silent movies.
Fritz Lang's sci-fi classic Metropolis enters the public domain today — and so does the Laurel & Hardy comedy Battle of the Century (which culminates with one of Hollywod's first pie fights), according to Duke University's Center for the Study of the Public Domain: This is actually the second time that Metropolis has gone into the US public domain. The first was in 1955, when its initial 28-year term expired and the rights holders did not renew the copyright. Then in 1996 a new law restored the copyrights in qualifying foreign works. Metropolis, along with thousands of other works, was pulled out of the public domain, and now reenters it after the expiration of the 95-year term, with the once missing scenes available for anyone to reuse.
They also note that some material is in the public domain from the beginning, including government works like the images from the James Webb telescope.
But for other works, today is a big and important day, writes the Associated Press: Alongside the short-story collection "The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes," books such as Virginia Woolf's "To The Lighthouse," Ernest Hemingway's "Men Without Women," William Faulkner's "Mosquitoes" and Agatha Christie's "The Big Four" — an Hercule Poirot mystery — will become public domain as the calendar turns to 2023. Once a work enters the public domain it can legally be shared, performed, reused, repurposed or sampled without permission or cost.
The works from 1927 were originally supposed to be copyrighted for 75 years, but the 1998 Copyright Term Extension Act delayed opening them up for an additional 20 years. While many prominent works on the list used those extra two decades to earn their copyright holders good money, a Duke University expert says the copyright protections also applied to "all of the works whose commercial viability had long subsided."
"For the vast majority — probably 99% — of works from 1927, no copyright holder financially benefited from continued copyright. Yet they remained off limits, for no good reason," Jennifer Jenkins, director of Duke's Center for the Study of the Public Domain, wrote in a blog post heralding "Public Domain Day 2023." That long U.S. copyright period meant many works that would now become available have long since been lost, because they were not profitable to maintain by the legal owners, but couldn't be used by others. On the Duke list are such "lost" films like Victor Fleming's "The Way of All Flesh" and Tod Browning's "London After Midnight...."
Also entering the public domain today:
- Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop
- A. A. Milne's Now We Are Six (illustrations by E. H. Shepard)
- Franklin W. Dixon's The Tower Treasure — the first Hardy Boys book
- Herman Hesse's Steppenwolf (German version)
- The song "My Blue Heaven"
- Songs by Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong
- Alfred Hitchcock's early silent movie The Lodger
The UK-based newspaper the Observer adds: For those readers who do not reside in the US, there is perhaps another reason for celebrating today, because copyright terms are longer in the US than they are in other parts of the world, including the EU and the UK. And therein lies a story about intellectual property laws and the power of political lobbying in a so-called liberal democracy.... The term was gradually lengthened in small increments by Congress until 1976, when it was extended by 19 years to 75 years and then in 1998 by the Sonny Bono Act. So, as the legal scholar Lawrence Lessig puts it, "in the 20 years after the Sonny Bono Act, while 1 million patents will pass into the public domain, zero copyrights will pass into the public domain by virtue of the expiration of a copyright term"....
[T]he end result is that American citizens have had to wait two decades to be free to adapt and reuse works to which we Europeans have had easy access....
The issue highlighted by Public Domain Day is not that intellectual property is evil but that aspects of it — especially copyright — have been monopolised and weaponised by corporate interests and that legislators have been supine in the face of their lobbying. Authors and inventors need protection against being ripped off. It's obviously important that clever people are rewarded for their creativity and the patent system does that quite well. But if a patent only lasts for 20 years, why on earth should copyright last for life plus 70 years for a novel?
Copyright length is too long (Score:3, Interesting)
But if a patent only lasts for 20 years, why on earth should copyright last for life plus 70 years for a novel?
Unfortunately some see that as an argument that patents should last for life + 70 years, offering the same level of protection as copyright.
Re:Copyright length is too long (Score:4, Insightful)
Nice FP, but you could have said more about the motivation. The original idea of copyright was to encourage creativity, but copyright law has mutated and devolved to become a mechanism to create artificial scarcity with associated gold mines of precious IP--even though most of the resulting creative products have become fool's gold. Authors and creators were supposed to be motivated to keep producing creative new ideas, not by sordid dreams of striking it rich so they can stop creating. And they definitely weren't thinking about corporate cancers when they were drafting the Constitution, the biggest winners in today's copyright wars. The new ideas were supposed to be valuable, but not the way copyright law defines value now.
If I was ever going to get a tattoo, perhaps it should say "Death to Mickey Mouse!" Along with a copyright violating image they will have to scrape off my dead body?
Hmm... Now I'm wondering if Ye will sue (for copyright violations, obviously) anyone who writes a fable about his rags to riches to rags life story.
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And that's the core problem with copyright, it has become the absolute opposite of what it was supposed to be. Instead of encouraging people to create because they can actually reap the fruits of their labor instead of being ripped off, they now have no interest in creating ever again once they hit the big one.
And while this certainly caters to today's creation of "art", in the time and age of "talent shows" where talents are discovered, hyped for a year and then thrown away, it's probably not a sustainable
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Just the ACK, but maybe you worded it better than I did?
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If anything, terms should be shorter now as the distribution mechanisms have become massively faster. You can publish something worldwide instantly now, instead of having to wait for printing presses and physical distribution via horse and ship.
Most works today make the vast majority of their revenue in the first couple of years if not the first few months. Most software has already been obsoleted and replaced with a newer version within a couple of years.
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I think it would be difficult (or probably impossible) to come up with any simple period of time that makes much sense. So my imaginary page-one rewrite would probably be based on some kind of micropayment system for value received, including entertaining value. Already a huge can of worms to figure out value in any fair way, but I think the biggest can of worms would involve derivative rights. The original creator definitely deserves some fraction of the profits of derived works, but elephino what it would
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I knew I wouldn't be able to make it far before you armchair lawyers said something that needed to be corrected.
The "original idea" was absolutely contested from the very beginning, and the best way to use it for encouraging creativity was in dispute as well. Artificial scarcity was the whole point, at least inasmuch as we moved beyond simple control of information by the government. Read up on the Statute of Anne- it sounds like you'll be surprised how much it mirrors the US's first copyright sta
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But if a patent only lasts for 20 years, why on earth should copyright last for life plus 70 years for a novel?
because it was the media industry who has been buying off the politicians for this. "patents" is random diverse innovation, patent trolls are not a strong enough lobby behind, and they can't shape public opinion as easily as the media can, so unlike the media they are mostly universally seen as the greedy fuckers they are. hard sell.
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meanwhile over on metafilter [metafilter.com] some dude is arguing that copyright should be infinite [metafilter.com]
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Back in the day Kuro5hin.org had this essay [archive.org] about how the dangers of long copyright duration had been debated from at least 1841 (!) when Thomas Macaulay gave this speech which opened with this brilliant observation:
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When Donaldson v Beckett reached the House of Lords in 1774, Lord Camden was most strident in his rejection of common law copyright, warning the Lords that, should they vote in favour of common law copyright, effectively a perpetual copyright, "all our learning will be locked up in the hands of the Tonsons and the Lintots of the age". Moreover, he warned, booksellers would then set upon books whatever price they pleased "till the public became as much their slaves, as th
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Excellent quote and thanks for the digging that and the date up!
Let's be realistic for a minute (Score:5, Insightful)
Just like with other "ex-protected now-free" content, we will still be seeing DMCAs issued with all these titles for decades to come. Even more so with the Sherlock Holmes books, which are the foundation of a massive franchise and therefore uncountable revenue.
Re:Let's be realistic for a minute (Score:5, Interesting)
Not only that, Metropolis is still under copyright outside US until 70 years after Fritz Lang's death, which isn't for a while yet (2046). So even though it isn't under copyright in US any more, it is in the country it was made. As the DMCA can be used for takedowns from outside US, don't go thinking you can do anything with it.
Re: Let's be realistic for a minute (Score:3)
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Metropolis enters the public domain. But is that also true of restored prints of the film?
No
Next question. How do you compete with Criterion and the handful of others who know how to hammer a successful restoration into a marketable product.
You don't. You sell into a different market, for much less money probably. Think dollar store DVDs.
Re:Let's be realistic for a minute (Score:5, Informative)
The whole idea of "time of death + 70 years" is insane. Ponder this if you will: The copyright to "Love me do" by the Beatles, released on 1962, will not enter public domain before 2094.
Provided that McCartney and Starr die this year.
Let's ponder this for a moment. If you were a teenager when this song came out, you're around 80 years old today. You have grandkids that are teenagers or even young adults. By the time that they are 80, there is a slim chance that this song may enter PD. We're talking six generations of descendants of an artist that can milk one of their creations for their respective lifetimes.
Tell me with a straight face that this isn't insane.
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True, that, only Lennon/McCartney are named as writers, so it only hinges on Paul now.
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And I suggest he should just stfu and never speak again. But you can't always get what you want.
On the other hand, as the great philosopher Jagger said, if you try sometime you'll find you get what you need.
So I need him to stfu.
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Provided that McCartney and Starr die this year.
All good points, but Paul McCartney died in 1967.
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Well, then love me do might still enter the PD while we're alive, in 2051.
Unfortunately you can bet that everyone will try to keep the story of that imposter being Paul alive just to milk that catalogue a bit longer.
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I agree wholeheartedly with you on that - but I think the argument is not on the six generations milking a creation side.
The goal of copyright is, eventually, to enrich our common culture and provide the foundations for advancing it - standing on the shoulders of giants, in other words. We make new creations using the bones of the ones we inherit.
When there are billions and billions of people in this world who are forever barred from contributing to our collective culture, there is a huge problem.
I'm no ar
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The core idea of copyright was to give artists a financial incentive to create and a way that they can exist on their art. That artists who have the talent to create works of art can concentrate on working their art instead of having a day job so they can finance it because they write a song and everyone sings it while they get nothing out of it. That general idea was very good.
The flaw starts when these works never become something that new artists can use to improve and develop on. Disney, of all the corp
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DMCA takedown notices include a statement, made under penalty of perjury, that the person filing the notice has the right to act on behalf of the copyright owner. If the copyright has expired but they make that claim anyway, they can be penalized for that perjury.
(Some social media platforms have non-DMCA takedown mechanisms that might not require such a statement. I believe YouTube is one such platform.)
Re:Let's be realistic for a minute (Score:4, Insightful)
DMCA takedown notices include a statement, made under penalty of perjury, that the person filing the notice has the right to act on behalf of the copyright owner. If the copyright has expired but they make that claim anyway, they can be penalized for that perjury.
(Some social media platforms have non-DMCA takedown mechanisms that might not require such a statement. I believe YouTube is one such platform.)
And how many people (and companies) have gotten into trouble for perjuring themselves on a DMCA take down? I know of one. There may be a few more but I bet you could count them on two hands with fingers left over. And as you said, other platforms have extra-judiciary rules of their own. Now you could sue over a false DMCA or even a false take down, but that's expensive, you probably won't get attorney's fees if you win unless it's provable it's an extremely egregious case, and federal lawsuits are not cheap.
Proust in the original French (Score:3)
I'm not sure why À la recherche du temps perdu is the work they choose to lead with, because surely it's only the original version which is entering the public domain. Translations into English, despite being derived works, have their own copyright periods. Or is the expectation that there are US-based translators who've been waiting for this moment to bring out their own unauthorised translations?
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Authorship rights in France are: death of author + 70 years + years of war service for France. If Proust did not serve at war, his works in original version entered public domain in 1992. Earliest translations of the Recherche into English date 1927, USA copyright seems to be 95 years, which makes it past 2022.
How to get a copy? (Score:2)
Where do you even begin to find copies of these things? Even if they're in the public domain it'll still cost you $5.99 on Amazon to watch it, and then that's just a rental shrouded in DRM. Where is the "source" for all these things that are on paper "free" if they're still not really free?
Is it only the case that if I can get in the local library I'm free to copy at will? But then, what about the DRM on the DVD or Blu-Ray it's on am I legally able to break it? Is it okay to circumvent "protections" on stre
Re: How to get a copy? (Score:4, Informative)
Where do you even begin to find copies of these things?
Libraries are usually a good option. Until the 1976 Copyright Act took effect, it used to be a rather stringent requirement that copies of works be deposited at the Library of Congress as part of the trade for getting a copyright. Now that formality is barely applied, and the Library has had issues with preservation as well. It would be great to revitalize the deposit formality. If a copyright is truly valuable to an author, a few free copies for the public (which also help to establish precisely what is getting copyrighted) isn't too much to ask for. (Obviously for one of a kind things, good replicas and other information is usually fine)
But then, what about the DRM on the DVD or Blu-Ray it's on am I legally able to break it?
Obviously not; breaking it in circumstances that don't infringe copyright would still imperil it generally. This is another thing that needs to be addressed.
it would also be sensible to reset copyright law to something more like what the founders intended too.
I'd rather have something that yielded the best outcome for the public rather than fetishize a bunch of dead guys.
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The US wasn't a member of Berne until 1989; it's not important for us, and we'd be better off exiting it and reforming copyright with a rather strict but simple system of formalities -- if the author doesn't care enough to comply, why should we care about granting them a copyright?
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Some volumes are already on Wikisource: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki... [wikisource.org] There's also Project Gutenberg https://www.gutenberg.org/ [gutenberg.org] which digitalizes public domain books but these particular titles are not yet in their collection.
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> Where do you even begin to find copies of these things?
Don't quote me on this, as these are only rumors... but I've heard there are "internet sites" that allow you to download copyright material. If it's officially public domain then I guess it's now legal. But again, these are only rumors, I have not seen or heard of such sites myself.
Re:How to get a copy? (Score:4, Informative)
Well, for Proust
https://www.gutenberg.org/eboo... [gutenberg.org]!
You'll get the Scott Montcrief translation, which is acceptable if there is nothing else. Its at the same time a bit over flowery and veils the occasional brutally coarse moments, as when Albertine accidentally says that a girl can't even get a free moment to 'me faire casser le pot', and Montcrief shies away from giving a literal translation. As another example, he translates a title as 'Within a Budding Grove', when literally it would be 'in the shadow of the young girls in flower'.
Montcrief's translation was revised and updated by Kilmartin and Enright, and the result is excellent, though its of course still in copyright. The recent Penguin translation by several hands is also very good.
Read it, however, in whatever version. That's the important thing. Its a book full of longeurs and self indulgent maunderings, but its rescued from disaster by a strong underlying moral fierceness. As for instance in the episode of the Red Shoes. Not a masterpiece to be worshipped in its entirety, but one to be persisted with through the flat parts because the rest is worth it. And there are episodes which will remind you of Dickens, but its a Dickens with a strong streak of Swift in him.
Ridiculous copyright length (Score:5, Insightful)
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That's very simple.
If those insanely long copyrights had been in place at his epoch, Shakespeare wouldn't have been able to write his masterpieces.
The reason why is he drew heavily from previous literary works by other authors.
So much so that he would be comdemned today for copyright infringement.
Hence, today's copyrights are preventing the Shakespeares of our epoch to express their genius talents.
Our loss as a society.
Hardy Boys (Score:5, Informative)
Franklin W. Dixon's The Tower Treasure — the first Hardy Boys book
To clarify, the original Hardy Boys books were heavily revised (pretty much re-written) starting in 1959. The vast majority of the books out there, and the ones still currently for sale, are the revised editions published after 1959. So this is not The Tower Treasure currently in print, or if you have read Hardy Boys growing up (like I did) it is probably NOT the book that you read.
The books were revised to modernize them (IE the originals were so old that Chet was still crank starting his jalopy!!), and to remove some racial shading and out-of-date vernacular (which ironically the 1959 rewrites are even more out-of-date today than when the rewrites were done).
The originals are generally said to be better written and more edgier than the toned-down revisions.
Also, it is not just the first book that is entering the public domain, but the first three books of the series (The House on the Cliff and The Secret of the Old Mill) and will be followed by the next three books next year.
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The original stories were not necessarily better. It has been a long time, but I used to own both versions of one of them, and the original story was nonsense.
It might be worth noting that the books have been updated at least once since 1959, too; I remember skimming a copy of The Missing Chums or something about 20 years ago, and it had been updated to include a fantastic automobile explosion that causes the death of Iola and/or Callie. (This is hopefully not a spoiler, since it happens in chapter one).
Fra
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Re: Hardy Boys (Score:2)
Mickey Mouse coming next year (Score:2)
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This is not very cut and dry. Disney owns multiple trademarks on the Mickey Mouse character(s), and trademarks do not expire. That is the general image and appearance, name, etc that is Mickey Mouse. What has expired this year is the copyright on one specific work - the Steamboat Willie short cartoon. Thus that cartoon can now be copied, sold, etc by anyone as it is public domain. It does not necessarily mean that original incarnation of the Mickey Mouse character is totally up for grabs and can be incorpo
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Re:Mickey Mouse coming next year (Score:5, Informative)
Disney owns multiple trademarks on the Mickey Mouse character(s), and trademarks do not expire.
More accurately, trademarks can be maintained indefinitely. If you stop using the mark, it will expire. If you stop registering the mark, the registration will expire.
That is the general image and appearance, name, etc that is Mickey Mouse.
That's not really accurate. You can't trademark something in general -- only in conjunction with particular goods or services, only where used as a mark.
What has expired this year is the copyright on one specific work - the Steamboat Willie short cartoon.
First, it's not this year, it's next year. The Mickey Mouse copyrights begin to expire on January 1, 202 4 . Second, it's not one cartoon, it's three: Steamboat Willie, The Gallopin' Gaucho, and the silent version of Plane Crazy.
It does not necessarily mean that original incarnation of the Mickey Mouse character is totally up for grabs and can be incorporated into new works by 3rd parties, as it is trademarked.
Not totally up for grabs, but absolutely can be incorporated into new works.
Trademark rights are inferior to, and not a substitute for, copyright rights. When a copyright enters the public domain, the public can freely use the work at issue, including to make and distribute copies and to prepare new, derivative works based on it. A prerequisite for a trademark existing is that it cannot be freely used; marked goods must all be of like quality with identical marked goods, and must originate from the same source. This is why you have to defend your trademarks; if you allow other people to use them, you'll lose it.
Well, with the circa-1928 character in the public domain, Disney cannot deny other people the right to use that version of the character. It will, as a result, lose its trademark to the extent that it would impede copies of such works from being made and sold.
The trademark is still perfectly useful in other capacities -- as a trademark for theme park services, as you suggest -- though I suspect that even that would be limited, say, if you wanted to create an unauthorized Mickey Mouse ride, since that's arguably a performative creative work. Something that used the character in a totally uncreative fashion -- Mickey Mouse branded strained peas for example -- would probably survive just fine.
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Inferior how?
Let's go to the source: Dastar Corp. v. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp., 539 US 23, 32-34 (2003) --
Section 43(a) of the Lanham Act prohibits actions like trademark infringement that deceive consumers and impair a producer's goodwill. It forbids, for example, the Coca-Cola Company's passing off its product as Pepsi-Cola or reverse passing off Pepsi-Cola as its product. But the brand-loyal consumer who prefers the drink that the Coca-Cola Company or PepsiCo sells, while he believes that that company produced (or at least stands behind the production of) that product, surely does not necessarily believe that that company was the "origin" of the drink in the sense that it was the very first to devise the formula. The consumer who buys a branded product does not automatically assume that the brand-name company is the same entity that came up with the idea for the product, or designed the productâ"and typically does not care whether it is. The words of the Lanham Act should not be stretched to cover matters that are typically of no consequence to purchasers.
It could be argued, perhaps, that the reality of purchaser concern is different for what might be called a communicative product -- one that is valued not primarily for its physical qualities, such as a hammer, but for the intellectual content that it conveys, such as a book or, as here, a video. The purchaser of a novel is interested not merely, if at all, in the identity of the producer of the physical tome (the publisher), but also, and indeed primarily, in the identity of the creator of the story it conveys (the author). And the author, of course, has at least as much interest in avoiding passing off (or reverse passing off) of his creation as does the publisher. For such a communicative product (the argument goes) "origin of goods" in s. 43(a) must be deemed to include not merely the producer of the physical item (the publishing house Farrar, Straus and Giroux, or the video producer Dastar) but also the creator of the content that the physical item conveys (the author Tom Wolfe, or -- assertedly -- respondents).
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. "The Lanham Act," we have said, "does not exist to reward manufacturers for their innovation in creating a particular device; that is the purpose of the patent law and its period of exclusivity." Id., at 34. Federal trademark law "has no necessary relation to invention or discovery," Trade-Mark Cases, 100 U. S. 82, 94 (1879), but rather, by preventing competitors from copying "a source-identifying mark," "reduce[s] the customer's costs of shopping and making purchasing decisions," and "helps assure a producer that it (and not an imitating competitor) will reap the financial, reputation-related rewards associated with a desirable product," Qualitex Co. v. Jacobson Products Co., 514 U. S. 159, 163-164 (1995) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). Assuming for the sake of argument that Dastar's representation of itself as the "Producer" of its videos amounted to a representation that it originated the creative work conveyed by the videos, allowing a cause of action under s. 43(a) for that representation would create a species of mutant copyright law that limits the public's "federal right to `copy and to use' " expired copyrights, Bonito Boats, supra, at 165.
Long story short, when a copyright or patent expires, it drags the trademark down with it, as in Kellog, the famous SHREDDED WHEAT trademark case. Doesn't work the other way though; loss of a trademark relating to a patented or copyrighted work doesn't affect the latter rights one bit.
its famous trademark status
First interesting thing you've said today. But I think that under Dastar what you'll get is a famous mark that is neverthele
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What has expired this year is the copyright on one specific work - the Steamboat Willie short cartoon. Thus that cartoon can now be copied, sold, etc by anyone as it is public domain.
In 2019 Lego brought out a Steamboat Willie set [brickset.com], prepare for fuckery!
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SHUT THE FUCK UP ABOUT THIS. You really want Disney to wake up and fuck this shit up again? Just shut up about it until next year.
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> You really want Disney to wake up and fuck this shit up again
Oh, thank goodness nobody at Disney is aware of this!
So much better that nobody who could defend against Disney would be on guard.
That you, Eisner?
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Disney is the more powerful entity in this case, so it's better not to go poking the snake. You know, choose your battles. And ideally don't have one.
Then what's the point of having 400 million guns? (Score:2)
If you don't even have the balls to face off a cartoon mouse.
Maybe if Disney started importing tea and taxing it or something? I hear the colonies are very sensitive to teabags and such.
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You actually believe this?
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"SHUT THE FUCK UP ABOUT THIS. You really want Disney to wake up and fuck this shit up again? Just shut up about it until next year."
Er, Disney is not going to fail to notice this just because we're not talking about it. Trust me, they are very, very aware of it.
Come, Watson (Score:3)
The game is afoot!
Wrong duration (Score:5, Informative)
In 1927 copyright duration was 28 years with a 28 year renewal for a total of 56 years. In 1978 congress stretched the renewal to give a total of 75 years and then in 1998 they stretched it again to give a total of 95 years.
Limited Times??? (Score:2)
The Constitution of the United States, in Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8, authorizes the Congress "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;"
https://constitution.congress.... [congress.gov]
For LIMITED times. I think the Founders would disagree that 95 years is a "limited time".
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Read âoeDeath Comes for the Archbishopâ (Score:1)
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About time (Score:4, Informative)
Amazed to find I couldn't find it on a simple search on archive.org. Well, since it's now PD, have at it! Yarrrr.
Metropolis https://www.magnetdl.com/file/... [magnetdl.com]
magnet:?xt=urn:btih:f327170bd870f5bd9ea593921cd4deac36fb16a9&dn=Fritz+Langs+Metropolis+(1927)+:+Reconstructed+And+Restored+1080&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.opentrackr.org%3A1337&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.torrent.eu.org%3A451&tr=udp://tracker.internetwarriors.net:1337&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fexodus.desync.com%3A6969
"Restored the rights"? That was clearly illegal. (Score:2)
Real world copyright in an online world (Score:2)
And because YT infringement rules ask the _original poster_ to confirm they own the copyrights (but not verify the case in law) it's impossible to use/remix the content without fear of copyright strikes. (Guess who gets to oversee the appeal of a copyright claim? Yep - the original post
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Fiction is not "science and the useful arts" (Score:2)
It's amazing that the US Constitution says nothing about purely speculative and creative works like fiction and visual imagery like movies, only science and "useful" arts (presumably trade methods). And yet most of the copyright value today is in fiction, and patent protection for ideas is thankfully short. I think we have strayed.
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The US has had values and failed to live up to them pretty much forever.
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No, you just aren't reading it correctly.
The US Constitution was written in the late 18th century, and English is a very dynamic and ever-changing language. The meanings of some of the words have changed over time.
In the copyright and patent clause, the word 'science' refers to copyrightable subject matter and means 'knowledge' or 'learning.' The phrase 'useful Arts' refers to patentable subject matter, and means 'functional, applied technology.'
Some remnants of the latter use are still around, such as 's
14 years or until death (Score:2)
whichever is longer.
You get to enjoy the fruit of your own labour while you live and if you die soon after creating something your kids have 14 years to make some money off it before they have to start having to work for their own living.
If you want to monetise, pay. (Score:2)
I think there's a fairly simple solution.
Copyright may be held up to the current limits (so no one can complain that "their rights are being taken away"). But you need to pay each year, with the cost increasing exponentially every X years.
First year is free. For most people, this would include the vast majority of any income they will get from the work. Next say 5 years is a low cost. If you're making any kind of ongoing revenue then this payment should be easy. And every 5 years the cost doubles for the ne
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And yes, I know there are complications e.g. web serials, programming, etc. So maybe multiple categories, where "complete published work" (and a movie is a complete published work whether it's part of a series or not ...).
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Damned lack of edit ...
Speaking of code, as a professional programmer I don't think that code should fall under copyright, but trade secret laws. Which would make open source automatically public domain.
Cool, now release more (Score:2)
I thought ex post facto laws were unconstitutional (Score:2)
Quoting Wikipedia :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
"An ex post facto law (from Latin: ex post facto, lit.'After the fact') is a law that retroactively changes the legal consequences (or status) of actions that were committed, or relationships that existed, before the enactment of the law."
"Ex post facto laws are expressly forbidden by the United States Constitution in Article 1, Section 9, Clause 3 (with respect to federal laws) and Article 1, Section 10 (with respect to state laws)."
Congress can extend co
public domain "copies" may be junk (Score:1)