- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
This iconic mouse is weeks away fromn being in the public domain Jan. 1, 2024, is the day when ‘Steamboat Willie’ enters the public domain
This iconic mouse is weeks away fromn being in the public domain Jan. 1, 2024, is the day when ‘Steamboat Willie’ enters the public domain
I find it insane that anyone should be allowed to use Mickey Mouse. Similarly, the 30s version of Superman is in public domain, soon, and that is similarly insane to me.
These are still Active properties closely tied with a company’s marketing and image. We badly need to update our IP laws.
Companies last longer than a hundred years, now. It’s silly we allow these things.
You do know that Disney made money from other people’s works like the brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen right? Their works are in public domain
They made money off of their version of those works, yes. They’re quite different from the originals.
This is what I mean about our laws needing updating - time alone is not enough any more. We need to define levels of differentiation that are commercially acceptable. Right now, that essentially just includes parody, which clearly is not a thorough enough accounting of the many ways IP can be varied.
The point of patents and copyrights is to promote and reward creative artists and inventors, not create a permanent revenue stream for corporations. Walt Disney died in 1966 and he, his investors, his heirs, and even their heirs have all been handsomely rewarded.
Now let’s get Steamboat Mickey in Smash Bros.
Steamboat Mickey could be in Smash Bros if Nintendo wanted to license it, but IIRC Smash Bros is specifically only properties owned by Nintendo on purpose. Smash Bros is effectively free advertising for other Nintendo games, in addition to a fighter.
I don’t see why Disney, rather than Walt himself, shouldnt own the copyright on Mickey Mouse.
Because the whole point of copyrights is to promote creativity. No one at Disney today had anything to do with creating Mickey Mouse. Why should they have the exclusive right to create derivative works? The people who are there seem perfectly capable of coming up with new characters. And the copyright expiring will push them to do so.
And besides, it’s not really about Mickey Mouse. It’s also about art, music, and literature. Beethoven’s heirs shouldn’t be getting a check every time an orchestra plays the 5th Symphony.
Because Mickey Mouse is a core brand to the company. It’s literally referred to as the “House of Mouse”
You do realize there’s a metric ton of non-Nintendo characters in Smash, right? It’s essentially a celebration of gaming as a whole. Mickey isn’t a video game character though, that’s why they used Sora. Same reason Goku and Superman aren’t in Smash.
Mickey is kinda a video game character if you think about it.
He’s been in games, but he’s definitely not a ‘video game character’ in the way that Mario, Sonic, and Cloud Strife are.
Sorry it was just a joke. I didn’t think I needed a /j, but I should know better. Poe’s law.
Edit: just gonna leave this here as proof of Mickey’s hardcore game roots…
The public must gain it’s share of the revenue for allowing a private company to use public domain IP exclusively.
Hold a yearly auction to see who is granted rights to the property which is now the public’s.
Pretty strongly disagree with the idea of a company’s product just becoming the public’s because a certain amount of time has passed.
I cannot even conceive of what the argument for this could possibly be.
Copyright was never meant to be used how it is today. It was specifically made to protect small creators from having big companies come in and rip them off. Companies were never meant to be the beneficiaries. But lot of lobbying plus corporations are people too bullshit changed that.
Copyright is meant to last roughly the lifetime of the artist, but organizations can live forever. And then nothing ever goes in the public domain, a shared culture dissolves in to nothingness.
This is why I think it needs to be updated.
I don’t see how these two things relate to one another at all. We currently have a shared culture.
the argument is that the people, and the political system the people put in place enabled the company to create and benefit off its creations.
“we live in a society” but unironically.
And you want to… Stop that?
I want to limit the amount of benefit they can reap.
Why?
Because people should get benefits rather than corporations?
How are the two at odds here? Disney has around a quarter million employees who currently benefit from copyrighted IPs.
Literally how it’s worked forever, how do you think books and films become public domain? Blame the Romans.
“this is the way it’s always been” is never an acceptable defense of anything
I’m confused, are you actually advocating for companies to retain control of their properties forever? Public domain exists for the benefit of all people, to keep knowledge and art open and available, and to allow future generations to build on existing work.
Sure not a huge deal for Mickey mouse because it’s not as important as research work or whatever, BUT considering Disney was literally built on repacking public domain stories (Pinocchio / Snow White / Beauty and Beast directly taken from previous works, Lion King is basically Hamlet with animals), it’s past time they contributed back.
I’m not sure how updating IP laws get in the way of this and no one seems able to article it for me.
And yes, I believe that any trademark characters/IPs should be protected forever. I don’t see how letting me write and publish independent Doctor Who stories benefits anyone but me, while damaging the “real” Doctor Who universe.
Do you have a reason for the alternative view?
For me it’s quite simple. The options are offering timed control over an IP, or have the wild west of no copywrite. We, as a society, decided we will protect an IP for said time to allow profit and encourage creation, before the public can go wild on it. Without copywrite protections, derivative works are available immediately.
Under this perpetual exclusive rights system/scenario you’re proposing Disney straight up does not exist. Whichever company held the rights to the Brothers Grimm estate would have immediately cease and desisted Disney’s Snow White. No Disney, no Mouse, end of story.
Now, that works out great for Current Day Media Giant - but what about tomorrow’s creators, the next Disney that builds it’s foundation on stories like Frozen or Moana? Shouldn’t those future generations be provided similar access to their childhood fables? It starts with making Steamboat Willie available.
I don’t understand why this shouldn’t be perpetual if the IP is in use.
“Misunderstood and somewhat outcast princess that develops special powers and saves her people” is hardly off-limits.
I find it insane that tvshows regularly show people watching 70+ year old tvshows. Nobody does that in real life. Doesn’t feel authentic.
I find it insane that we’ve reused characters in stories for thousands of years, but just a century ago it suddenly became illegal until almost every character was old enough to be forgotten and culturally irrelevant.
Fan fiction of relatively new IPs should be sellable, imho, without having to beg a corporation for permission. Its stuff we’ve grown up on. Disney and others are literally holding our culture hostage and dictates terms.
Fan fiction being sellable would require significant changes to copyright. It seems like you’re agreeing with me?
Idk what you mean by Disney “holding our culture hostage” - that seems weirdly hyperbolic.
That we’ve retold and improved stories for the most of human existence, suddenly we don’t. Thats what I mean with holding culture hostage.
I agree there should be some protections for artists, but not a hundred years. It should be close enough that the media is still relevant to the generation that it was presented to. Yeah, it would take drastic changes, but we got ourselves into this, we should be able to turn it back.
In what way is this not happening?
Like, Avatar is the highest grossing movie of all time and is the exact same story as Fern Gully, retold in space.
If your idea of retelling and improving upon a story is to carefully create a similar-ish general plotline in a different setting that doesn’t overlap enough to be sued by the previous author, for “retelling and improving”… You miss out.
How crazy it is that creators have to go out of their way to not name something that looks and act like a lightsaber, a lightsaber. For a century! Everyone knows what a lightsaber is. It is part of our culture now. But we cant re-use them as is in any creative work (except for parodies) without begging Disney to pay for the privilege to use it if we are well-known enough. Its silly.
I feel.like you keep bringing up stifling creativity being a reason to not enforce copyright, but then you suggest that there is simply no room for creativity outside of established universes.
This really doesn’t make any sense to me. I don’t see how anyone benefits by a glut of terrible Star Wars fanfiction being published, throwing the entire canon into disarray, and fundamentally changing what the material is about.
Are you for real? The creators have been dead for decades. Apart from the discussion of who was actually creatively responsible for Disney’s as significant characters. Copyright was invented to protect them, not to be a gravy train for their useless descendants or the faceless companies owning the right for some (often murky) reason.
This doesn’t contain any reasoning behind why copyright shouldn’t be that.
We agree on updating IP laws, but I think they should be curtailed rather than extended. You should not have the monopoly on an idea your entire life. If you can’t milk a fortune from it in 50 years it wasn’t that good an idea, so everyone else should be free to build on and improve it after that point.
And even if you absolutely kill it and your brand is still going strong decades later, that 50 years will cover anything new your did in that time. Plus it’s not like people wouldn’t know yours is the original even after the copyright expire; something entering public domain doesn’t make it legal to claim you invented it if you didn’t.
If you make something, it should be yours to disseminate as you wish. It’s silly to suggest otherwise. You literally created it.
Copyright isn’t just paying for an idea, its giving a complete monopoly over a concept. We came up with the idea of copyright to give creators a much easier way to profit off their creation (not having to compete after its created) to make sure innovation is very rewarded. That said, its still a government enforced monopoly, with all the issues that come with that, and with how much its been extended, its far past the point of encouraging innovation and instead just works to cement large companies in place, resting on their laurals rather than making anything new. Even when a copyright ends, the current copyright holder wouldn’t lose the idea, they just no longer have a monopoly on it. Disney can and will keep making Micky Mouse content, and the mouse will probably keep being accociated with them for centuries to come unless someone makes something that dwarfs the impact of Disney’s work with the character, in which case its best that it was released anyway.
I don’t disagree with this necessarily (obviously, I think Mickey Mouse should belong to Disney forever) but this is why I recommend reform rather than throwing it out
Well, why should the government protect their monopoly? The original creator is dead, so he doesn’t benifit from it. The cartoon is 95 years old, and I doubt Walt Disney factored in the profit his company would make 60+ after he died, when deciding to make the original animation. The only reason to let Disney maintain their monopoly on it is to allow a massive coorperation to get more money without doing any new work.
Except they do create new works using that same IP, quite regularly.
I think you’re misunderstanding how copyright works. Losing the copyright doesn’t mean they won’t be able to make new works, nor does it mean those new works won’t have copyright. Copyright is only lost on the original work, so while others can use Steamboat Willie, and that very specific version of Micky Mouse, Disney still owns modern updates to him. Either way, the end of that monopoly opens more avenues for newer authors to build on it, while again, doing nothing but reducing Disney’s passive income for work their founder did a century ago. Its a more physical example, but along the same line of logic, if I cure cancer, it might make sense to give me time to get a head start on profiting from it (so I am rewarded for my work) but it would be ridiculous to say no one is else is allowed to use my cure for cancer or build on it for the next century or longer. Theres absolutely no reason not to allow the ideas to spread once the author has had plenty of time to make a profit.
No-one creates something from whole cloth. All ideas are based on things that came before them. Locking those ideas up indefinitely will stifle creativity and stagnate culture.
How? I don’t see any evidence of this. Can you point some out?
As mentioned elsewhere
Yes, by abolishing IP as a concept entirely. You cannot own an idea after you published it, that’s insane.
I mean, IP isn’t all bad. I can’t start selling p*ss in a bottle and label it with Coca-Cola branding. I’d get sued into oblivion. In this particular case, that would be a good thing. It also means that if you find a rat in your coke, you can sue CocaCola. If there were no IP, everyone could make it and it would be almost impossible to know where it came from.
There would also be no widely distributed film, TV, music, books, etc. Do you really want to live in a world where WattPad is the engine of literature?
I don’t feel that this would have the positive impact you seem to think it would - and I cannot even picture how you think this would be a positive.