Irony Alert: Disney About 'Overzealous Copyright Holders'
techdirt.com
techdirt.com
The song "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" was stolen from Zulu musician Solomon Linda. His estate fought Disney for years for compensation.
Most of their stories are based on public domain fairy tales from the Brothers Grimm.
A man once slaughtered a pig while his children were looking on. When they started playing in the afternoon, one child said to the other: "You be the little pig, and I'll be the butcher," whereupon he took an open blade and thrust it into his brother's neck. Their mother, who was upstairs in a room bathing the youngest child in a tub, heard the cries of her other child, quickly ran downstairs, and when she saw what had happened, drew the knife out of the child's neck, and in a rage, thrust it into the heart of the child who had been the butcher. She then rushed back to the house to see what her other child was doing in the tub, but in the meantime it had drowned in the bath. The woman was so horrified that she fell into a state of utter despair, refused to be consoled by the servants, and hanged herself. When her husband returned home from the fields and saw this, he was so distraught that he died shortly thereafter.
That reminds me of Struwwelpeter, another rather gruesome and explicit german children's book that was used during my childhood:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struwwelpeter
- https://archive.org/stream/englishstruwwelp00hoffrich#page/n...
One kid is a sociopath terrorizing animals, and the moral is a dog will steal your sausage. Another kid won't eat soup so he. fucking. dies. What the hell, Germany?
Mickey Mouse remains a trademark. Trademarks don’t expire.
What am I missing?
This my preferred theory as to why copyright keeps getting extended. Take that as you will. Makes more sense than the alternatives. Especially considering that most works aren't actively published anymore, and their authors are dead.
At least it's a more reasonable explanation than "reality."
Trademark law also has the risk of your trademark becoming “generic”, bandaids vs band-aid brand adhesive plasters, this process which is completely out of control of a company and its lawyers, if everyone uses your trademark to refer to any product like yours, too bad, you can’t sue your consumers (you can and have to, sue your competition if they refer to their products with your trademark) to make them stop and the process will continue and your trademark eventually “dies”.
Trademarks are also not automatically valid internationally and also require you to specify what the trademark will be used for, which allows for potentially annoying overlapping uses of a simpler trademark for different products which can hinder later market expansion into other industry if you don’t expend effort registering a trademark for everything from movies to medical devices and machine lubricants. You have a lot of room to fight over these things these days thanks to the internet and global branding, but your not guaranteed to win just because of money, just ask Nissan for example.
Copyright on the other hand, while limited in duration, is implicit and automatically exists for any creative work or expression, is yours for free unless you sign it away to someone else or a corporation, with no need to litigate anything about it should you choose not to.