Disney’s Influence on U.S. Copyright Law

I agree wit this part.

>This is inescapable so long there are regulators and so long it involves humans.

I don't agree with this part. Our nation has gone through periods of more corruption and less corruption. It's pretty simple to get back to a period of less corruption: keep voting out the incumbents. Will the people who replace them be corrupt? It's certainly possible, but we know the ones currently holding office are corrupt. Furthermore, when we have fresh politicians, because they are new to office, they won't have such intrenched interests. We will never get another TR, FDR or LBJ when someone corrupt is holding their seat of power.

Because Mickey Mouse is an icon, a mascot, a trademark, and one that is in active use in new media. So there is some sense in companies protecting that asset. Which is what is happening if these types of characters are covered under trademark law (I wasn't sure if that was the case when I made my earlier post).

I might dislike Disney as an org but I also don't think it's fair to say it's "creative" for other people to use that asset but not "creative" for Disney to reuse it. You're setting different standards for different people.

> Copyright's only base for existence is encouraging creating creative works after all.

Copyright is an English invention and the purpose of it has evolved multiple times over the years. Originally it was intended to prevent scandalous pamphlets rather than promoting creative works. Later it was used like patents where authors could recover the costs of publishing before those stories became free for the masses. It wasn't created to encourage creating creative works because people used to do that long before the printing press, eg by passing stories down by word of mouth.

> Note that you can't use elements still under copyright, e.g. his modern appearance won't be public domain once Steamboat Willie enters it.

Indeed. But I was responding to the OPs point about how they believed copyright should behave rather than how it currently does.

I've often commented that Disney are hugely hypocritical pushing for lengthened copyright periods and buying up intellectual property when they've built their fortune off public domain works. But such comments are usually replied with "companies don't care about hypocrisy" or something equally trite.

Oh there will be loads of subtle differences. I wasn't claiming it to be a perfect comparison but rather than illustration of how IP is complicated and how a single piece of work might have multiple different strands of IP against it.

> Characters (any creative work) are not created in a cultural vacuum.

Nothing we create is done so in a cultural vacuum. So I agree with your statement but not really sure how it applies (or even adds anything) to the discussion.

> It's actually especially egregious with Disney too, since their business model to no small degree is grabbing a piece of popular culture and transforming it into a Disney product, the company we know today wouldn't be anywhere near what it is without public domain to begin with.

I made that same point too

> Disney got content from it, it profited from it, and now it must , in my opinion, give back.

Here is my issue. We cannot and should not make specific exceptions for specific companies because we do not like them. I fully agree there needs to be a copyright reform that works for consumers, but it should be applied equally for everyone and not have some rules for one company but Disney has a different set of rules "because they're bad".

> There is hubris in the term "creator". Nobody is culturally a creator, merely a transformer.

This is a philosophical point and one that would be fun to debate in the pub over a pint. However it doesn't add anything to this particular discussion.

I do acknowledge my opening post was pretty poorly written. It was rushed so I didn't really compose it properly, more just brain-farted some words into HN. Had I expected the conversation it would then generate I'd have spent more time on it. However that doesn't excuse the barrage patronising strawman arguments you've attacked me with. There's 2 or 3 replies from you just to my OP, never mind deeper in the thread.

> Singers voices aren't copyrightable. They could be trademarked.

That's my point ;)

> You simply just mistake trademarks for copyrights.

No, I'm not. I was talking about the public domain not copyright in that quote. You're the one conflating two things: If something is trademarked but not under copyright then it still isn't in the public domain.

Though I will accept some blame because I could have made my post clearer.

Take the entire Star Wars canon for example, say they put the value at $10b, netflix could buy it relatively easily, but a 1% tax would mean Disney have to pay $1b a decade just to keep it registered. Bump that to $50b though and it will cost $5b a decade to register. Drop it to $100m and some individuals might buy it just for shits and giggles.

The point is to make the cost of retaining a copyright over time non-zero and subject to tax, so people aren't incentivized to retain copyright on everything for no cost.

Another option would be a revenue-based approach where any money earned through copyright ownership would be subject to a licensing tax.

This could be more easily spread around to multiple countries taxing within their jurisdiction, but would also get into hairy issues when multiple copyright applied to a single piece of media - how would a movie or game full of 3rd party characters like Kingdom Hearts, Wreck it Ralph, or Ready Player One split the value of each individual IP works within it for tax purposes?

I'd argue that the buyout should always be for the public domain. The buyer gets the right to use it (as a member of the public) but not exclusivity.

Then again, I'd also argue that copyright should not be granted in the first place…

It is important to note that buyout terms like this do not necessarily result in accurate valuations. Consider the chaos that would ensue if anyone could buy your home simply by paying the going rate for similar homes in your area—it may be just another house to them, but to you it's your home and an unplanned move would be a major inconvenience and expense, not to mention the emotional cost. People would naturally tend to set a buyout price well above the market price on their primary residence to avoid having their home bought out from under them, and to an extent the same would apply to other items such as copyright privileges. The end result is that 10% of the buyout price will generally be much more than 10% of the price the item would be likely to sell for on the open market, and may even exceed the market price of the good. You can compensate for that somewhat by lowering the tax rate, but since the degree of attachment varies from one individual to another it would be difficult to set a uniform rate that would be considered fair for everyone.

There are good reasons why eminent domain is not an option available to just anyone, and in most cases is only used where there is an overriding public interest in that specific property such as being in the path of a road or other infrastructure project which cannot simply be diverted elsewhere. Even then I would disagree with it as applied to regular property where there are natural rights involved. Copyright is a different matter, however, as an artificial creation of government. They can revoke those privileges at any time, without giving any justification or compensation. The buyout option allows them to continue using copyright as an incentive while reducing the impact to the public—hopefully as a first step toward phasing it out altogether.

Additionally, making sure that archival copies are kept when a copyright is registered, so we don't lose works over time would be a great idea.

The US patent system previously required a working model and diagrams to be submitted to prevent knowledge loss - this would extend that to cultural works.

If you want copyright to be something that can be inherited or otherwise gifted to someone else, a (short) fixed term like the original 28 year limit makes much more sense than anything based on the author's lifespan. There is no need to extent it "way past the original creator life". Most things that can potentially be inherited don't have longer lifetimes than their original owners. Even houses don't last forever. If they're still around they can be part of the estate; otherwise the heirs can inherit whatever is left of the invested earnings.

Not necessarily, unless you mean that copyright should always be able to be passed down should the holder wish. In your example, the father can double dip: write a (good enough) book, make money through sales (more guaranteed through state-enforced monopoly), buy a house with, maybe part of, that money, then have both the house and copyright inherited by the inheritors.

Today, 60 years later, people write articles about going to visit it.

I don't think anyone is going to build a monument to George R. R. Martin five years after his death.

And, I agree that creation requires a lot of up-front effort, and that copyright still provides some creators with monopoly profits. It's just that evidently those monopoly profits are no longer needed to stimulate that effort — if they ever were.

The pain from eliminating copyright doesn't hold a candle to the pain of parents cut off from the research about their child's rare disease, or to the pain of losing the recordings of your grandmother's voice to DRM.