"We are not aware of any such efforts, and it's not something we are pursuing," an RIAA spokesman told us when we asked about legislation to retroactively extend copyright terms.
"While copyright term has been a longstanding topic of conversation in policy circles, we are not aware of any legislative proposals to address the issue," the MPAA told us.
The copyright for Mickey Mouse will never expire so long as they keep making new art of Mickey Mouse - the copyright for the earliest Mickey Mouse cartoon however will expire in 2023.
Copyright is not like a patent where once it expires anyone can use the novel work.
Something else, while someone could repackage the earliest Mickey Mouse shorts once the copyrights expire, it is unlikely that someone could make new Mickey Mouse related stories, because of trademark and other issues - beyond that, 1923 mickey and 2017 mickey only have a passing resemblance.
What we identify (as in most consumers of mickey related cartoons) identify as mickey mouse - didn't exist until fantasia in 1940. So long as WDC continues to make artwork with that character in it, and continues to keep up the trademark - the character itself will never leave copyright or trademark.
That would be an interesting court case to read - but I suspect they'd not make the argument - trademark is not blanket, its for the purpose specified - so merely copying or redistributing the work wouldnt trigger it, unless you try to use it to promote animation works or similar.
OTOH, Disney is aggressively pushing trademark where it hasn't gone before. For example, they're asserting that "Movies about Snow White" are a thing only Disney can do, because "Snow White" is a trademark.
I could absolutely see Disney saying "That clip of Steamboat Willie is a trademark of Disney Animation Studios. If you use that in animation, you're diluting our trademark."
As other commenters have suggested I didn't believe copyright applied to the characters, and use of the characters themselves (and that this was a trademark or other IP issue)... However, it appears that it does (or might). This was an interesting read:
yes, the copyright for an individual work will - but not on the character itself. because the character has slowly evolved over time. The personality and words of the character are protected by copyright, based on the last work created with the character, the appearance is protected by both trademark and copyright.
The protections overlap yes, but are not the same thing.
You can use the character as it appears in the public domain work, but not any copyrightable aspects that appear in works still in copyright. This situation already happened with Sherlock Holmes. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/27/sherlock-holme...
"Copyrightable aspects" include elements present in the public domain work. These don't get retroactive coverage from the copyrighted elements of the series. Sherlock is public domain, despite being present in later works. The later developments/characters/stories/"aspects" are not.
Copyright is not indefinite due to the series' continuation.
I was making the point that elements of the character not established in the works coming into public domain, would remain under copyright, and that trademark would also lock the character up (for many specific uses) - but I did fuzz the point excessively.
In the case of Mickey Mouse, this is a substantial part of the characters personality - most of which didnt come out until the successful shorts of the mid-30's.
yes, that was the exact point that I was trying to make.
At a minimum what we visually identify as mickey mouse wont leave copyright until, 2035 - but even then certain fundamentals of the character were not finalized until much later.
That isn't true at all, and it has been tested in court. Look okay Sherlock Holmes. Not all of Holmes is in public domain. As long as the character is based on the PD stories, then it is fine.
So after 2023 you can create a Mickey story based on steamboat willy.
Of course then there are trademark issues to deal with, wish is how I think it should be protected.
It's not even kinda wrong. The copyright for the 1923 Steam Boat Willie cartoon will expire in 2023, the trademark on Mickey Mouse will not expire, and the copyright of newly-created Mickey Mouse cartoons will eventually expire $WHENEVER.
There is no copyright on the character itself. There's a copyright on each piece of media the character has been in, like Steamboat Willie, but there is no copyright on Mickey Mouse. The character is trademarked, but not copyrighted.
The words "copyright" and "trademark" are different, and mean different things. You might know this and be fuzzing them for the sake of simplification, but if so, you've over-simplified. They are different, and treating them as the same is wrong and leads to confusion.
The copyright on Steamboat Willie will expire, allowing royalty-free use and copying of that movie, including Mickey Mouse. At that point, that version of Mickey Mouse will be free to us--BUT the ongoing trademark on the character will mean people should still stay away.
I was fuzzing yes - and I was making the point that elements of the character not established in the works coming into public domain, would remain under copyright, and that trademark would also lock the character up - but I did fuzz the point excessively.
Or a creation of a work based on steamboat Willie. Anyone could then write a steamboat Willie 2. You just can't use anything added to the character in later works.
I get all of this but what about the Copyright Alliance lobbying group, that's likely where any serious movement will start.
I was getting advertisements from them for years essentially looking for case studies of either personal or "family" copyright (as in extension) and people willing to essentially astroturf.
I'm guessing the efforts just bombed. I don't see the ads any more and all the comments, where they were possible were deeply cynical and lambasting them.
That's not really accurate. According to your link, Disney copyrights have been extended twice.
The first was with the Copyright Act of 1976. The main purposes of the 1976 Act were to update US copyright law to better conform to the Universal Copyright Convention and to prepare for the US to later join the Berne Convention; to update it to take into account new technology developed since the 1909 Act such as television, movies, radio, and sound recordings; and to codify various doctrines from case law include fair use.
The copyright extension in the 1976 Act was a side effect of changing terms to match those of Berne countries.
As far as I've been able to tell, the 1976 Act had very little opposition. Disney almost certainly was in favor of it, but I've found no evidence that they had any particular influence in drafting it or getting it passed, or even spent any lobbying money on it. There was no need for them to do so.
Disney did lobby for the 1998 extension (as did most major content creators), which extended US copyright terms to match those of Europe.
I don't know how Disney successfully lobbying once (as part of a large group) for a copyright extension turned into the internet myth that they have constantly been getting copyright extensions.
In the late 1980's, I talked with one of the government-side principals of the 1976 Act. They were at pains to explain that the Act should be viewed not as a failure, but as a success - a successful act of public policy damage control. Because you should have seen all the crazy [bleep] [Disney/Hollywood] wanted.
It seems I've been seeing a "oh, 1976 was just Berne, and Berne was no big deal" narrative more often of late. Perhaps as Disney spins up for extension-next.
Which isn't to say that some people don't honestly believe that narrative. Hollywood doing filter-bubble groupthink on copyright law has long been part of the picture. The angry public denunciations after SOPA, of a dishonest tech industry buying corrupt congressmen, was particularly striking. But after all, when everyone you know agrees that something is a great thing, anyone who opposes it can only be a bad actor.
US copyright terms were not merely brought into line with the rest of the world. Work-for-hire copyright is 95 years in the US. It is at most 70 years elsewhere.
Lawrence Lessig claimed so. See the Free Culture presentation. He makes it look as all these copyright extensions (centuries back, to the Statute of Anne) were Disney‘s doing.
That was highly influential. Lessig is a very gifted speaker.
I feel like Lessig painted copyright extension as an abuse of Disney's lobbyists in Free Culture, but it's been more than a decade since I've read it; I may be conflating memories.
I always feel like the right solution would be to have a significantly shorter copyright duration, but make it extendable for a large and increasing annual fee.
I don't care if Disney gets to keep the rights to Mickey Mouse. The real problem is all the other stuff that gets swept along in the bargain.
There are certain advantages to automatic copyright for individuals, and I don’t think that a short period is harmful. How about we say ten years of copyright protection on a work, then your $10 × 1.5 ⁿ ⁻ ¹ for each subsequent year.
I like the plan in theory but what's the justification for charging these huge sums of money except to be punitive? Why does a work have to somehow perpetually make more money?
Why not have the lawyers show up in court and show that the company they represent is still actively using and making money on their copyright? If they are they get a, say 5 year, extension. Judges can use common sense to avoid shady behavior like manufacturing demand or trying to pass of a small number of sales as evidence and copyright holders aren't left with a huge bill.
I believe that private ownership of culture is a cost to our society, as it restricts the rest of society from being able to use, remix and adapt that work. That cost grows as the work becomes more pervasive in the cultural zeitgeist.
I think that owners of a work should repay a portion of this cost to society in return for a monopoly on that work.
In an ideal world, I'd prefer some sort of "property tax" on intellectual property: annual percentage of IP's fair market value due as tax or it's released to public domain. However, I worry this scheme would be too vulnerable to gaming and manipulation as it's hard to determine the fair market price of a monopolized product.
My proposed exponential renewal tax is somewhat flawed as 'cultural relevance' is only partially correlated with age of work. But, by increasing the cost of renewal each year, it would more closely model increased societal costs over time as private works become more pervasive and relevant in our culture. By imposing a time-correlated cost of retaining IP rights, it would incentivize IP owners to release non-profitable IP into the public domain instead of hoarding it.
It respects the people in society who believe that, as long as a commercial work continues to make significant amounts of money, they are entitled to the profits of their labors.
It also respects the statistic that most creative works stop being commercially exploited within about 28 years [1]. A shorter default copyright allows society to reap the benefits of the default effect [2], in which a creator who is no longer interested in the sale of their work is psychologically more likely to just let the default option happen, which in a world with regular extensions of copyright would mean their work would enter the public domain and others could make use of their work.
It also forces creatives and companies to back up, with results, that they believe their works are, for their own benefit, worth denying the public access to. If a work deserves or needs more than 20 years of profit to justify its existence, fine, but your belief being backed up with a $20,000 deposit, and the knowledge that the cost to you is only going to go up from that point, speaks a lot stronger than just one's word.
It's also the short benefit. If game companies abandon the IP and stop paying the money to maintain it, the community can continue to play it. As it is now, we will have to wait a hundred years to have rights to play some games. Even though the servers were taken down decades ago, and the companies have no intentions of supporting that software ever again.
Copyright doesn't in practice prevent 3rd party game servers and copyright expiration won't suddenly enable them. We're dealing with mostly closed source games for which the server code was never released.
It does actually. Blizzard has successfully pursued legacy WoW servers because of their usage of protocols, and an imitation of their copy righted content.
Personally I think copyrights should be for 25 years. Based on the fact that it is almost impossible to find books older than 25 years old on Amazon ( unless they are in pd )
I almost wish this would be kept quiet. I'm afraid that if news of it gets out, corporations with an interest in extending copyright will wake up and start lobbying.
From my understanding it was quietness that allowed lobbyists to pass the extension in 1998.
I have been unable to find a great editorial I read a couple of years ago that detailed it, the only major resistance coming from a 1997 sized internet.
I would hope a similar act with social media as it is today would be met with a much stronger resistance.
Although I agree with you that this visibility might backfire, but I believe the transparency is of higher value in such debates compared to strategical opaqueness.
Fortunately there are very few corporations with an interest in fighting an expensive lobbying battle over works from 1923. There's substantial opposition to an extension, something lacking 20 years ago (when there was scant opposition, and the opposition that existed had few financial resources).
Google for example is against continuing to extend it. They have more financial resources than everyone on the other side combined. There is also meaningful public awareness, something almost entirely lacking just 20 years ago.
IMHO the only thing stopping an extension is that next year is a mid-term election year and a lot of house members will be busy. I have zero doubt that this congress would not push back against a major corporation like Disney on a matter like this. The best hope for saving the public domain is general dysfunction on the hill. This is especially true if you get people like Lawrence Lessig in there arguing against extension, some members would vote for it just to stick it to him and all of his ivory tower leftist friends.
They always seem to find time for amending the copyright law, sometimes multiple times in the same year. A list of amendments is at https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92preface.html. I'm not sure what has happened since 2010 though, since there's only one change, in 2014.
In this day and age they'll fail. The only reason they succeeded with this garbage in the past was the fact that they did it mostly in the dark, hiding this from the public. Today they can't pull it off, but it of course doesn't mean we shouldn't pay attention.
Problem is material in the public domain quickly becomes worthless. We already have many things, like the Fleischer Superman cartoons, for example. You just end up with cheap people bundling hundreds of public domain stuff with no real curation or quality for a few bucks in either physical or digital media form. Eventually, they stop bothering once they realize no one buys them; and it just gets thrown on youtube for fraction of pennies per ad click.
Doesn't even help creatives, because public domain stuff sees little to no creative half-life apart from the very best of the best. It's great for public in the same way f2p mobile games are great, as an endless mill of free content they can consume and forget, but once the brief flurry of monetization passes, the works become dead because there's no rights owner willing to spend the money to market or preserve the IP.
>Problem is, material in the public domain quickly becomes worthless
I wonder if Disney, which built its empire on repurposing public domain Hans Christian Anderson stories as animated films, would have agreed with your assessment.
The value of the public domain isn’t in its literal resale, nor is it supposed to be: the value is in being a direct, continuing, and explicitly legal source of inspiration for the new.
Indeed the Arden Shakespeare show you how to make money (as does Disney): it’s the value add. Translation, curation, commentary, re-interpretation, analysis.
Contrast with books written in the seventies that have neither huge followings nor electronic versions: they might as well not exist.
The value of the public domain isn’t in its literal resale
Reclam would like to have a word with you. For the non-Germans here, they are a German publisher known for their iconic yellow editions of literary classics. They got their big break in 1867 when Faust entered the public domain; their Faust edition was a cash cow, and they continued on with other authors. Later on they branched out with their own stable of authors.
I'm not saying that the intangible benefits don't exist, but even from free material you can make money.
Disney could tell you about all the competitors whose works have all languished in the public domain and have been forgotten where they survived. I don't see people making new Tom Swift movies, falling in love with The Shadow, or a massive Woody Woodpecker revival, for example.
People focus on the biggest of the big as if that solves anything.
The earliest Woody Woodpecker clips won't enter the public domain util 2035.
The Shadow debuted in 1930, so it is also not yet in the public domain, but was also in a movie as recently as 1994, and it still appearing in licensed comics in 2015 and ongoing.
Some Tom Swift books have entered the public domain, but not all, and the character is still covered under trademark law also.
You're making a great point about how copyright is too long, leaving characters to languish, but none of your examples are actually in the public domain.
There's actually a new Woody Woodpecker movie releasing on DVD next month. It was #1 at the box office in Brazil back in October. The movie sounds like it had a troubled development, and they've scaled back their plans for it, but clearly Universal Studios is still trying to work with that character.
Worthless? Classical music, Shakespeare, Sherlock Holmes, fairy tales, mythology, wizard of Oz. Shoot even the happy birthday song (which may or not be in pd, depending on who you all)
Well that's the understatement of the century.