Fortunately, the estate appeal was rejected. If adding any new (short) story can make a character "more rounded", it is basically a very cheap way to extend the copyrights ad vitam aeternam.
The cynic in me things that this idea is probably the reason why Disney have been so aggressive about using their oldest characters in the last few years. E.g. Steamboat Willy in opening sequences, and the short film before Frozen.
Even if they fail to extend the original copyrights, there are other potential "loopholes" to making it harder to reuse these characters:
The more Disney uses variations of them, the bigger the minefield becomes in terms of sticking to the depictions that enters/have entered public domain. And they may also be going for making it harder to make any use of some of the imagery without running into trademark law as well.
In this case, the author "only" had to deal with the threats and the small minefield of avoiding character aspects revealed in the last 10 Sherlock stories, and so presumably had a reasonably simple task. Perhaps the Arthur Conan Doyle estate now wishes they'd pursued a more aggressive licensing strategy aimed at creating a bigger minefield..
But this ruling will create a precedent that will make it harder to justify, that Sherlock Holmes entered the domain public and Mickey Mouse should not, although I am pretty sure that Walt Disney's lawyers are already carefully preparing their argument for the next few hundred years of protection extension.
I am actually not for Mickey entering public domain, he is still representative of a very active and well known company. There are certain characters in the Disney domain that would be wholly out of place anywhere else.
Whereas book characters from long dead authors are a whole different matter. While I think estates should be able to protect the rights of the estate for a period of time the fact that no new content can be created by the author should discount extending the protection. Now interesting cases do arise where direct descendant or designated authors do keep stories and characters progressing, Dune and Pern come to mind.
So where the association is very strong with an active entitle I say let them keep it, where there are degrees of separation, like book examples, then perhaps one generation?
Then you don't understand why copyright was created.
It's not there to give forever and ever protection. It's there to allow you to get some money before society, which made your product worth something in the first place, can incorporate it into culture where it belonged in the first place.
Disney themselves love using other people stories constantly, but no-one can use theirs for extreme amounts of time because they've distorted the meaning of copyright.
There's no good reason for someone else's ideas to be protected, it doesn't benefit society at all. Copyright should be 10-15 years, not this ridiculous century.
Apart from America as it exports the stuff, so, surprise, surprise, they've bullied the rest of the world into making stupidly long copyrights so that everything created in the last century is languishing in untouchable hell so a few big brands can continue making money off things that should be public domain.
> Then you don't understand why copyright was created.
Just because someone disagrees with you, doesn't mean that they don't understand the issue. Your post would have worked just as well without this line.
That may have been why copyright was created, but over time, the justification has evolved, at least in Europe, into one based on the moral rights of the author.
My personal opinion is that copyright should never expire. Think about it: you can have an indefinite government granted monopoly over land, something you didn't create, something that existed before you and will exist after you, but you have weaker protections over something you brought to life? Something that would not exist without you? To me, the moral case for indefinite copyright protection is stronger than the one for indefinite land ownership.
On the one hand, you do not have a monopoly over land in the sense of copyright. Sure, you control the use of the particular piece of land, but if someone else wants to copy it by reshaping their own land to have the same topography as yours, you have no recourse. Also, if someone wants to make a derivative work, like a map, they are free to do so. In this sense, the land is in the public domain.
On the other hand, you already have indefinite government granted monopoly of creative works in the sense of land ownership. You can write a novel, print it, bind it, and put it in a drawer. As long as you just have the one copy and don't give it to anyone else, the government will protect your right to exclusive usage and ownership of the work. In this sense, the book is protected property like land.
Where the equivalence falls apart is when you want to sell or transfer the property. If you sell your land, you have no say in what the new owners do with it. If you sell a book, you expect to be able to control what the new owners do with it. This is why this comparison is not very useful.
> That may have been why copyright was created, but over time, the justification has evolved, at least in Europe, into one based on the moral rights of the author.
It's interesting that you bring this up, as in many European countries, moral rights of the author are explicitly separate from copyright:
You can assign copyrights, but not moral rights. I believe that distinction stems from France, but I'm familiar with it from Norway, and variations of it is widespread throughout Europe.
For example, you typically have a legal right to have your name on a work, regardless of copyright. You also typically have a legal right to have your name removed from the work if alterations are made that affects the integrity of it, or that may be detrimental to the creators reputation (e.g. imagine someone deciding to alter key sentences in your political treatise to make it mean the opposite of your original), again irrespective of copyright.
So the protection of a creators moral rights does in Europe explicitly not require a wider interpretation of copyright.
Animals are territorial and that's really the end of that.
However, the idea of owning an idea ... that's a legal construct and a very recent one at that. The idea of owning an idea would be entirely foreign to someone a thousand years ago.
And the idea that you have a moral claim on owning an idea is just patently absurd, for a very simple reason.
You have no means of proving one way or another that you were the first person to have that very thought. It is entirely possible someone else had it long before you. What claim to ownership can you have? Because you commercialized the idea first?
Most countries are moving to a "first to file" system to simplify bureaucracy, so now your moral claim is contingent not even on your business acumen, but on your ability to quickly fill out a form.
Artists contribute to world culture. George Lucas may own Star Wars in a narrow technical sense (something something disney, I know), but from a cultural standpoint, he can't take it away. It has become part of our culture, part of our written and visual language. A vast amount of energy and derivative art has been spent enjoying and celebrating Star Wars. It has outgrown the original author, because that is what all human artifacts are: derivatives, copies, reinventions, reimaginations.
If copyright were 40 years, Star Wars would be up in 2017. That's more than enough time.
I vehemently disagree with you rayiner (which is pretty rare) on this particular point.
Imagine, if you will, that a "corporation" had existed since ancient times that owned the copyrights on all of the Art, Maths, Literature and other intellectual treasures that have enriched humanity as a whole. Do you really want an immortal, gatekeeper entity that could hold back the entire progress of humanity?
Before you claim that supposition as absurd, consider that we now have at least one company that has "existed" since 705 A.D. (1,309 years ago):
What if that were true? How many works that we enjoy today could not exist under that sort of copyright regime? Disney is the obvious example, but many other works are on some level derivative of previous works and would be banished from existence by such a law.
Works of art survive because they are reproduced. This is why still-existing older works are so much better, having been heavily selected already.
Given the already ridiculous difficulty in identifying copyright holders in some cases presently, creating an eternal paperwork burden is a sure way to ensure that works become legally unusable, preventing them from being reproduced and ensuring their demise.
The Twentieth Century has a big hole in the middle, because copyright holders tend to stop publishing what is not profitable enough, but do not release their rights just in case, something could put the book back at the forefront.
In the long run, if Mickey Mouse remains the sole property of Walt Disney, it will disappear with the company, while something entering the public domain has much more chance of being revivified. You just have to look to the Sherlock serie. Again, I don't really care for Mickey Mouse specifically. After all, we can't remember everything and some thing will be forgotten in a century or two. But since the law is the same for everyone, there are plenty of works from the 1940's or 1950's that are languishing unpublished, and could have be made available, especially now with the rise of e-books.
I believe existing IP law already covers this. Disney still maintains exclusivity over Mickey as one of their trademarks (and will forever). It's the Steamboat Willie shorts themselves that would be going into the public domain when the copyright expires.
A good example is the Fleischer Superman cartoons. No one disputes that DC (and Warner Bros.) owns Superman, but these cartoons have all entered the public domain.
> The more Disney uses variations of them, the bigger the minefield becomes in terms of sticking to the depictions that enters/have entered public domain.
That's a two-edged sword. If someone else produces material featuring Steamboat Willy which does not violate recent usage, it could seriously curtail Disney's future ability to use the character as well.
Copyright law would not prevent us from creating derivatives of Steamboat Willie, but trademark law probably would. We could still sell Steamboat Willie on those dirt-cheap DVDs, though, as-is. For what that's worth... it's really of primarily historical interest, I doubt modern audiences will find that much to be terribly entertained by in it.
I don't have a problem with this. While it's not likely to any of the tastes of anybody reading this sentence, since Mickey Mouse right now is mostly being used to entertain those too young to read, he's still actively producing things. (And while Mickey Mouse Clubhouse is hardly a masterpiece for adults.... there's much worse out there to have to listen to ad infinitum.) The offensive thing about infinite copyright extension is locking up things that the creators are done with, and have been for decades, but won't let anyone else do anything either, thus essentially killing the cultural artifact in question.
Wow, I think this new decision cleans up a number of loose ends left by the district judge. It's not especially clear in the Guardian article, but this is the Circuit Court (one layer below the Supreme Court) decision of the appeal by the Conan Doyle Estate of a District Court decision made at the end of last year.
In addition to affirming the earlier District decision (Klinger can publish without fear of being sued), this brand new Circuit decision by Richard Posner seems like it clears up a lot of the uncertainty and offers much clearer guidelines for future decisions. And it does it decisively and with considerable flair: http://freesherlock.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/klinger-7th-...
We cannot find any basis in statute or case law for ex-
tending 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...
The decision itself is worth reading, definitely clearer and more engaging than most of the newspaper coverage.
I guess it's not surprising that Sherlock Holmes couldn't pull a Mickey Mouse. The AC Doyle estate should've greased the wheels of commerce with some major dollars.
The problem with such cases is that -- as far as I'm aware (IANAL) -- concepts like characters, inventions (e.g. hyperdrive) etc are not covered by any of the existing laws that handle creative monopolies (i.e. what is generally known, incorrectly, as "intellectual property"). Copyright covers the specific fixed representations (e.g. words on paper) and not ideas and concepts, while other laws like patents or trademarks also seem unfit here.
Not a lawyer either. Characters may be protected by copyright, in as much as their manifestations in writing, or visual depictions etc. is protected by copyright, and copyright includes the right to control derivative works.
So if I describe a young boy that goes to wizard school in a book, then that idea is not protected by copyright, but if the way I describe him makes him similar enough to Harry Potter, I would risk that a court would determine that the character is a derivative work and find copyright infringement.
Trademark can also apply, if the characters have been used in association with products, but not generally for the work itself.
I've googled this a bunch out of curiosity before and everybody, including a bunch of courts, seems to argue that fleshed-out fictional characters are in fact covered by copyright even with the serial numbers filed off. IANAL either, obviously.
I mean, you'd be drowning in published, unauthorized fanfic of Batman and Harry Potter and whatnot otherwise.
Plus most sci-fi stuff such as hyperdrive is old news. Clarke, Asimov and most hard scifi are from 1950ies. Some stuff such as antigravity goes back to Wells and Kepler.
Some real absolutely timeless classic stories are available in the public domain right now. If I had more time, money and passion, I'd be the RMS of the public domain. In my mind it's the free-est a work can possibly be. Unencumbered by licensing or copyright (or copyleft) considerations. You like it? Use it for whatever you want in whatever way you want.
One of my friends was looking for something to read, had an old kindle but didn't really have any money to pay for anything. I pointed her towards these absolute classics which kept her occupied for months, and then she passed them down to her kids. She now has a kindle full of more books than she can possibly read, all for free. And her children are now benefiting from this as well. The last time we spoke, her son was enjoying romping across Mars in the "Barsoom" series, a series of books I grew up enjoying immensely. Even while looking for these I was stunned how many freaking awesome works are out there in the PD.
And that's just the Gutenberg project. You can dive into several Library of Congress's worth of books, magazine and other literature at archive.org, a well so deep, it's easy to get lost and never find your way back to the same place again. And also happens to have the best on-line e-reader ever made. (Note: not all of these have fallen into the PD, but Archive.org treats them like it's from a world where they are in the PD, demonstrating the power of the idea).
but does have an almost 3,000 item Children's library https://archive.org/details/iacl, mostly of scans of original prints which are amazing on tablets.
Excellent call on the Oz books. L. Frank Baum was quite prolific and built a whole pantheon of characters beyond those most people know from the Judy Garland movie. When I was in elementary school, I was lucky enough to inherit most of Baum's Oz books (in hardcover, bound in the late 40s and 50s) and consider them a real gem. The illustrations by John R. Neill were fantastic.
Why Hollywood continues to insist on ignoring a treasure-trove of "canon" material in favor of utter crap cobbled together by teams of screenwriters is beyond me.
I can't recall the exact process, but you can bookmark a certain Project Gutenberg page on the Kindle that puts basically all of their works at your fingertips.
May I also plug Distributed Proofreaders (http://www.pgdp.net/), which is a major source of primary source documents to Project Gutenberg. It is the power of the global community of internet citizens who digitize scanned documents that are difficult or impossible to OCR.
To anyone looking for inspiration and creativity and innovation; that is where you will find those stories that are obscure and hidden and have not been rehashed ad nauseam.
Is it possible to make new works based on Tarzan? It appears that Burroughs was a pioneer in the strategy of "trademark the characters, assign ownership to an eternal corporation."
One note on Verne -- a lot of early Verne translations (e.g. the ones in the public domain) have really lousy English translations. Big things, like sections being excised because they seemed anti-England, and little things like metric units not being converted to English (screwing up Verne's careful math). So while it's nice to have them free, you'd actually do yourself a favor of getting a modern translation when available, even if you have to pay for it.
IANAL (or that experience with copyright) but, it probably depends on the country and how it was translated. A translation of Clash of Kings to Spanish in the US for example would be considered a derivative work. A translator would have been hired by the publisher (or similar party) and created with permission from the original copyright holder who would then retain a copyright over the Spanish copy, although probably the same copyright. Translating without the permission of the copyright holder as far as I'm aware is against US copyright laws. I imagine it's different if you translate something without a current copyright, a translation of Beowulf for example may be eligible for copyright. This is just extrapolation from my limited knowledge on the subject.
Yes, there is generally a separate copyright in the translation. I'm not aware whether/how common exceptions from that apply depending on jurisdiction. But most places you should be able to do a new translation from the original and be ok.
I'm curious... (and I'm only being a little flippant, I promise) Does this also mean that the new BBC series can be freely distributed on Bit torrent without fear of copyright infringement?
No, each new work gets its own separate copyright period. Many individual elements of the BBC series are public domain, and as such could be used in other works, but the work as a whole is covered by copyright.
