How Mickey Mouse Evades the Public Domain
priceonomics.com
priceonomics.com
[1] http://www.marketwatch.com/story/interest-rates-were-fixed-f...
Source here, with some example quotes below: http://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/pr6510-13
December 4, 2008: (RBS Order p. 25-26.)
Swiss Franc Trader: can u put 6m swiss libor in low pls?
Primary Submitter: NO
Swiss Franc Trader: should have pushed the door harder
Primary Submitter: Whats it worth
Swiss Franc Trader: ive got some sushi rolls from yesterday?
[…]
Primary Submitter: ok low 6m , just for u
Swiss Franc Trader: wooooooohooooooo[,] 0.01%? thatd be awesome
Primary Submitter: 1.33
Swiss Franc Trader: perfect[.] u r a nice man
May 5, 2009: (RBS Order p. 27.)
Swiss Franc Trader: can we get high 3m, low 6m pls!
Primary Submitter: maybe
Swiss Franc Trader: PPPPLLLLLEEEEEAAAAASSSSEEEEEE
Primary Submitter: ok 41 52
Swiss Franc Trader: perfect perfect
May 14, 2009: (RBS Order p. 28-29.)
Swiss Franc Trader: [Primary Submitter] pls can we get super high 3m[,] super low 6m
Swiss Franc Trader: PRETTY PLEASE!
Primary Submitter: 41 & 51
Swiss Franc Trader: if u did that[,] i would lvoe [sic] u forever
Primary Submitter: 41 & 55 then …
Swiss Franc Trader: if u did that i would come over there and make love to you[,] your choice
Primary Submitter: 41+51 it is
Swiss Franc Trader: thouht [sic] so
Primary Submitter: so shallow
Then again, most of the guys doing this kind of trading is likely to be in their early 20s or so...
Again and again the biggest assholes and criminals in this world either wear a suit, or a uniform.
The most likely chance of success would be a fight for better handling of orphan works. We could free 99.9% of all material that should be coming out of copyright while having very little or no impact on the copyright mafia.
Mickey would be safe from entering the public domain and everything else would automatic become public domain.
Probably a better idea to look for a non-monetary solution. Then you don't even need to fight in that battlefield.
Maybe we can do it the way protagonists of the book Makers did? They figured out a way to make some IP lawsuits against Disney look profitable enough that it attracted VC investments and suddenly all the power of startup funding industry was redirected to destroy Disney.
Care to explain how copyright does not achieve that? The term isn't overwrought, it actually perfectly describes what it achieves. It puts a lock on cultural works.
Nothing has entered Public Domain until 2019 IF it isn't extended.
Good case of how it sucks: Sherlock Holmes. Half the stuff is copyrighted and the earlier stuff is Public Domain. So we only get half the stories and nothing about an older Sherlock.
In the US, it’s a bit more complicated, and they’re still illegal to copy, despite being out of copyright in the country of the copyright holder.
The biggest part of lobbying is just getting people to notice your issue. Meeting the right people and getting the right language crafted is like 9/10ths of the process. Not all (probably not even most) lobbying is bribery.
It's a lot easier to offer a group of high power individuals a 5 star dinner with a realistic expectation they'll who up, as opposed to cold calling them as just another average joe. Once that connection is established, the relationship is much less active bribery and much more "let's have a little chat and see if we can't find something mutually agreeable"; although to be frank, I'm not sure I'd say the latter is any less worrying.
Of course, the U.S. could instead do something sensible like create a "Mickey Mouse law". e.g. For ongoing fees of a fairly large size, companies can retain a copyright indefinitely. Set the fees to a little less than the amount Disney spends on lobbyists and graft and everybody wins. Disney keeps the rights to Mickey and saves money. Things not named Mickey Mouse start entering the public domain again.
More and more it feels like USA internationally right now is a rerun of Victorian England.
Democracy requires a large number of people to agree on on party/person and to reach these people and to convince them to vote for your candidate, you have to spend tons of money. Either:
A) You use your own money. Which means you fall under "the financial elite".
B) You take money from financial elites, which means you will owe them and pay back in some form. Why else would they give you their precious money?
Thus the power remains restricted to the the financial elite. The elected candidate represents the elites more than the common person because while the common person just gave the candidate a singular vote, the investor gave the candidate much needed money that helped gather all those votes
I recall reading from freakonomics that (according to them) inverse is actually true: candidates do not do better because they have bigger budgets, but they're likely to receive more financial support if they are more likely to get elected. Truth probably lies somewhere in between, but stating that "democracy is fundamentally broken" is just too naive.
IMHO, democracy is definitely not broken, and it's biggest threat stems from those who peddle in FUD relating to government & democracy. Essentially, things aren't as bad as most would like you to believe, and individuals getting involved in politics are the ones with the biggest influence in politics. It's far more accessible than many would have you believe, especially because politics runs on the hard work of young people, who then become insiders, write policy, and affect change.
I'd expect cosmetic plastic surgeons, patent lawyers, payday loan providers, NSA employees, beauty magazine writers, oil company execs, planned parenthood employees, NRA employees, parking wardens and censorship software writers to believe their work had a genuine positive impact on society too.
There's a question of whether lawyers are a net good for society, and I would expect a lawyer to think 'yes' whether or not that's true. But there's also a question of, how much of a lawyer's job involves being friendly with the judge?
I'd expect a lawyer to know the true answer to that, independently of whether or not [she thinks] lawyers are a net good.
(At least, I'd trust the lawyer more than I'd trust a randomer.)
> I'd expect a lawyer to know the true answer to that, independently of whether or not [she thinks] lawyers are a net good.
A lot depends on your relationship with that lawyer. If they're your brother or wife, or your long-time friend, then you'd probably get the true answer. If they're just a colleague, you'd probably get the official answer.
So, is the politicking of democracy perfect? No. But the view that democracy is fundamentally broken misses the good aspects that it can and does provide, and seems like naive radicalism.
1. Obviously, people working in politics believe in it as a vehicle of change, by means of self-selection. A person who doesn't believe in politics will go somewhere else.
2. I wonder just how much real influence can an individual have, especially as they gain more power. Power is gained through deals and friendships, and the more you entangle yourself in the exchange of favours, the more autonomy you lose. I theorize that the people at the top positions are mostly just puppets with no real power and autonomy - because a person that looks uncontrollable will not be allowed by their party to reach higher positions.
2: That's theorizing without experience or evidence.
For example, motorcycle driven rickshaws were recently banned in Pakistan. The official statement says they were unsafe and a menace to society. But it doesn't take a genius to see that other forms of public transport (such as buses) stand to gain from this decision and must have had something to do with it.
PS: Public transport is largely owned by private parties in Pakistan.
The government will be selected randomly from all citizens.
This could be improved with quotas like 50% have to be selected from the female citizens, 14% from the african american citizens, etc.
The massive speedup in the election could then be invested in the time those random people need to form a government.
He has a related shorter variation here:
This was what campaign finance reform was supposed to be about. It can be done differently: in the UK, the parties are not allowed to buy TV advertising! Instead there are a few fixed, free slots for the parties.
The Scottish Independence referendum had a spend limit of a few million £ for each side. Much less than a lot of California ballot propositions: http://time.com/3532419/ballot-measures-corporations/
The way they're all introduced by a BBC continuity announcer saying "This is a party political broadcast on behalf of the Whatever party", and the fact that most of the people doing the electoral groundwork are volunteers, lends the whole thing a very British dignity.
Doesn't get money out of politics entirely though. We're still beholden to the finance industry and the landlord industry.
The UK press doesn't pretend to be independent though, and is very big on telling voters who to support.
If the ECC thinks you breached that they can take you to court, but the results will almost certainly stand.
Democracy by itself only requires that a large number of people agree on something. And not all "somethings" are party/people.
...Disney has ingrained Mickey Mouse so deeply in its corporate identity that the character is essentially afforded legal protection for eternity, so long as Disney protects him (trademarks last indefinitely, so long as they are renewed).
If that's true, then why does Disney care whether the copyright expires?
Of course, that's an awfully long ways off by a time-value-of-money analysis at the rates a modern company would normally use, so the other thing to look at and be... outraged? perturbed? surprised?... at is just how goddamned cheap Congress has historically been. Did you notice this line:
"In one instance, Eisner paid Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS) $1,000 on the very same day that he signed on as a co-sponsor."
I mean, I presume that's not necessarily their only cough "donation" to the Senate Majority Leader, but one presumes that the Majority Leader ought to command a price premium, too, and for $1000 to be a notable donation to talk about, well, holy cow. I'd bet Disney wouldn't pay $10 billion as a lump sum in 2023 to extend copyright again... but we're not talking anywhere near that sort of money to get copyright extended. If they can do it for <$10 million, the cost/benefit is a no-brainer.
Remember, the value to Disney only has to exceed their expected costs. If their expected costs for a copyright extension is an accounting rounding error, of course they're going to try to extend it.
[1]: Which, if you've never seen it before, I recommend giving it a view: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBgghnQF6E4 The past is a foreign country!
The limits are pretty low on individual donations.
http://www.fec.gov/info/contriblimitschart1516.pdf
For 2015-2016, you can only give $2,700 to a specific candidate as an individual.
Less cynically, most contributions aren't about bribery for legislation (superPACs looking increasingly like an exception), but about simple access, ensuring that your calls get returned and your point of view is at least heard. It's still quite arguably a corrupt system, but the corruption is slightly abstracted from the simple act of giving money.
But corruption talk that centers on the individual donations made to politicians is mostly wrong. That's not how corruption works. That's a reflection through a mirror of the actual corruption happening, which is mostly about influence, not money. Politico A and Entity B have made a deal to use their influence to support each other, and that is reflected in some puny $1000 donation somewhere, but it's not mostly about the $1000.
"We allow people to speak to their politicians. And not just during campaign season. By pledging money, ShiftSpark lets you signal the issues tied to your support when politicians need it - BEFORE the election. This gives us more candidates, less corporate influence and politicians who listen."
[1] He was previously the president of the Manhattan Young Democrats and is currently a Vice President at the Young Democrats of America.
It is much more expensive to compete in an open and free market than it is to buy a barrier to entry etc.
Just another example of the corrupt state of American governance.
TurboTax Maker Funnels Millions To Lobby Against Easier Tax Returns
http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/27/turbotax-maker-funnels-mill...
As derivative works those should never have been afforded the level of protection they got.
If corporations are already buying the government and avoiding taxes...why can't we put that money to the public good?
It does seem to me that we could possibly reach a compromise with Disney in that respect; to be honest, I don't really care whether Mickey falls into the public domain anytime soon anymore. But it's stupid to hold the entire culture hostage for the vanishingly small percentage of things from the early 20th century that are still ongoing commercial concerns.
Disney spends millions a year promoting the Mickey Mouse brand. If anyone could use the brand then they would be freely benefiting from that.
But I think as someone else suggested, the reason they care is because of not just Mickey, but their back catalogue of other material which may not fall under that same brand protection. And because Disney doesn't know any better than to continue their campaign of paying people off to get their precious copyright extensions. It's what they do.
Public domain works are an important creative incentive for new works and increased availability of art. Old and new Art enriches our culture, is a source of wisdom and inspiration for young and old, and the more we have the better. We need a strong connection with out artistic past. Society is worse off for this Disney sponsored 100 year blind spot in our cultural rear mirrors.
Suppose you make paper, but instead of white, it's light blue. You sell it under the brand "Blue Paper". You can (I believe) trademark that (for example, your logo probably has the words in a particular font), but you can't stop anyone else from selling blue paper as "Blue Paper", because that's purely descriptive of the product.
Similarly, once a video featuring Mickey Mouse is out of copyright, it's perfectly OK for people to sell that video. And it seems to me that they could defend using an image of Mickey Mouse on the packaging, under the same logic -- despite the fact that the image of Mickey is trademarked by Disney for the purpose of selling cartoons. It's not obvious that the trademark is actually protective there.
Further more, if you're in the business of selling public domain works, don't expect the courts to protect you when Disney comes knocking about your use of their character on the video cover. Even though you can sell the video, you don't own the rights. You would have very little to say in court except "I want to make money from public domain art".
And you wouldn't be permitted to sell collections of Disney films, even those expired. From what I understand, that is not allowed when selling public domain works. For example you wouldn't be allowed to sell a "best of old Disney films" collection, or have a website called "Mickey Mouse Movie Store", even if all the movies were in the public domain.
The irony is their movies, atleast most of them, come from the public domain.
Although Disney would continue to own the Mickey Mouse trademarks, you can probably tell that they wouldn't be fond of the potential dilutive effects that may flow from the free commerce of public domain works involving these characters. To them, Steamboat Willie going PD is the death knell not only of the Mickey Mouse cash cow, but the entire brand icon empire (without which Disney becomes little more than a mediocre theme park destination).
I think the strongest argument in the article is about the disappearance of works, but, as pointed out, this doesn't really apply to Mickey Mouse. Instead of having a universal expiration, which is causing some works to die, have a shorter expiration but then allow those who are still monetizing their works to pay a portion to extend it. This would provide a less grey market alternative to lobbying and perhaps the revenue generated could be put back into the arts.
This is especially true for software games where you can't even get the hardware, thus software sales are essentially 0. A lot of the older games will just get forgotten while the copyright runs out. Some get remade and sold and have no problem with that.
Companies won't like it though, because some will forget to register and loose out on potential profits.
The other major benefit is that if something is successful and people want it such as a book you have a monetary incentive to publish it to pay the copyright fees. When it's not popular enough to make money with the copyright alone than that's a good signal that it's been copyrighted long enough
Let Disney have indefinite copyright on mickey mouse. But let's not lose the last century of our history.
People who don't pay the tax can involuntarily donate to the public domain after the previous reasonable term of say, 56 years after creation.
Have you heard of discounting and present value calculations?
Even an infinite stream of (say constant) income is worth only a finite amount in the present.
So if one wants to continue to hold some copyrighted material out of the public domain for longer than the original term, sign up on a form to list the property. The gov't audits the value of that property and takes some small percentage of that value.
Ie first twenty years are free, the n-th year after will cost you some multiple of n USD. (Or make it grow quadratic or exponential.)
Or you can get a fair valuation pretty easily: let Disney post a value for Mickey Mouse they'd want to be taxed on. Lower value means less tax. But the self-declared value comes with the obligation to sell to any comer who offers that much in cash.
Maybe even a requirement that it sells decently.
You could have this increase as a percentage each year, allowing a slow ramp up and much higher fees for something that's been kept for 100 years.
http://www.slashfilm.com/lucasfilm-tells-darth-vader-that-re...
Or would they just come up with new tricks?
- 0-20 years post publication - free, automatic protection (i.e. basically what we have now)
- 20-30 years post publication - nominal fee and continuous (yearly?) registration required to maintain protection (to prove active use/interest)
- 30-40 years post publication - large-ish fee and registration required (most works would probably be 'abandoned' to public domain here unless continuing to be commercially successful or backed by a large corp.)
- 40+ years post publication - increasing fee each year indefinitely. Disney et al. can keep major works protected if they wish, but most works will enter the public domain
https://mobile.mmedia.me/lb/ar/analysisar/%d9%81%d8%b1%d9%81...
That way Disney gets to keep Mickey Mouse, things that are abandoned or neglected get released into the public domain, and the fee stops people from just throwing everything into some software that reapplies indefinitely without thinking.
It could be tweaking by increasing the period(maybe 14 years would be better), by changing the fee(maybe $5 or free is better), or by changing the initial period(maybe 20 years for the first period, and it renews for 10).
Now their time is limited. I bet Disney would be happy with this compromise.
I'd played with a doubling of costs, but that fails to get sufficiently expensive without being reasonably painful, fast enough. Shortening renewal periods might help.
Another option would be to provide some limited revenue-based protections (similar to music's mechanical copyright), but otherwise allow general use.
At renewal, term = max( 1, round( 20 x .97 ^ duration in years ))
Cost = round( duration in years x ln( duration in years)) x median individual income
The total assumes that MII will have roughly constant relative purchasing power.
| YEAR | TERM | COST (x MII) | TOTAL | AVG |
| 0 | 20 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 20 | 11 | 60 | 60 | 3.00 |
| 31 | 8 | 106 | 166 | 5.35 |
| 39 | 6 | 143 | 309 | 7.92 |
| 45 | 5 | 171 | 480 | 10.67 |
| 50 | 4 | 196 | 676 | 13.52 |
| 54 | 4 | 215 | 891 | 16.50 |
| 58 | 3 | 236 | 1127 | 19.43 |
| 61 | 3 | 251 | 1378 | 22.59 |
| 64 | 3 | 266 | 1644 | 25.69 |
| 67 | 3 | 282 | 1926 | 28.75 |
| 70 | 2 | 297 | 2223 | 31.76 | (biannual renewal)
...
| 84 | 2 | 372 | 4603 | 54.80 |
| 86 | 1 | 383 | 4986 | 57.98 | (annual renewal)
...
| 100 | 1 | 461 | 10928 | 109.28 |
...
| 200 | 1 | 1060 | 86673 | 433.37 |
...
| 1000 | 1 | 6908 |3197517|3197.52 |
...
| 2000 | 1 | 15202|14199586|7099.79 |
In theory, this would allow a work to remain copyrighted for millennia, but at that point, you are essentially employing tens of thousands of middle class workers to do nothing for you at all. The annual renewal bill for a 2000-year-old copyright would be about $500 million now. The Christian Bible, all editions--the bestselling book--has annual sales around $500 million.
But in reality, a one year consumer boycott on any copyrighted work older than 85 years old would probably be enough to force it into the public domain.
Of course it's possible to say that: "Disney’s efforts directly impacted politics". There, I said it.
Image probably, but the phrase "Mickey Mouse" has acquired a fairly common meaning (at least in the UK and Ireland, don't know about the rest of the world) outside of the character - roughly meaning something like simplistic, shoddy or cheap.
For example, this (http://www.independent.ie/regionals/droghedaindependent/news...) article talking about a plan as a "'Mickey Mouse' solution to a much bigger traffic problem in the Dublin Road area." I suspect that few people over here would immediately think about Disney when they read this article.
Also after a certain period of time, it becomes a bit of a stretch to suggest that nobody else would have thought of that same idea over a long enough time frame.
Now of course, I'm not really speaking to Mickey Mouse, so much as I am scientific breakthroughs and good ideas that improve on old concepts, but it's all IP.
Also, if copyright can be transferred, then there'd be 2.1 billion lifetime copyrights available. A substantial portion of that would be available on a secondary market, I bet. It still might be better, since not everyone will want to use copyrights on minor works. Then again, you'd be encouraging people to do 'big' works rather than lots of small works, which doesn't seem like something a copyright system should be changing.
BUT, iirc, there was some grumbling along the lines of "if they try this again, Lessig's argument will carry more weight".
so it will be interesting to see what happens next time around.
Governments love taxes, so this would be another tax...
That way companies don't squat on "long tail" copyrights and squelch creativity.
THAT is his conclusion? What about radio, TV, increased film production, and finally the internet and other sources of distraction for people?
Edit: Oops, late 1800s vs 1990s is not add unbalanced as a century vs a decade. The dupes are still a big issue if he didn't handle those.
That is, more books in the years 1800-1809 than 1990-1999.
> Ultimately, none of this may matter: Even if Mickey’s copyright does expire in 2023, Disney has no less than 19 trademarks on the words “Mickey Mouse” (ranging from television shows and cartoon strips to theme parks and videogames) that could shield him from public use.
It goes on to talk a little more about it as well.
USA doing kind of like China, trying to make it the easier it is for companies to prophet from the people even if it's something supposed to be owned by the people... =
> Eisner paid Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS) $1,000 on the very same day that he signed on as a co-sponsor.
Wow. Not only you can buy law. But you can do it on the cheap. Lobbying is great. Go USA!
Anyone at Google want to get behind this?
Fat chance of that, though.