Mickey’s Copyright Adventure: Early Disney Toon Is Set to Be Public Property
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Creative work benefits the public in at least two ways: primarily, by being itself. People like reading the original Harry Potter books. Copyright encourages that by allowing creators to sell their work: Rowling is rich.
Secondarily, by inspiring other works. Fifty Shades of Grey started out as Twilight fan fiction. Art inspires more art. Copyright hinders this process.
Based on the above, copyright should now be much shorter: on the order of a few years.
In the past it took time to extract value from a work. Successful books had dozens of printings. Shipping books around the world was slow. Discovery of material to adapt into film took time. Note, this wasn't universally true: the Gone With the Wind film adaptation happened only three years after the book was published.
But take for example the Lord of the Rings books. They were published in the UK in 1954 and 1955, but some sort of copyright issue/loophole caused them to be widely available in the U.S. in the 1960s, before authorized editions came out. When they did become available, authorized editions then had a note that included a phrase something along the lines of, "Those having a courtesy for living authors (at least), will purchase this edition (of the book) and no other."
In any case, now with the internet and digital media, the majority of the value for most publications should be available within just a few years of release. As such, the balance between the time allotted for initial value production and the value as material to inspire other works should shift forward substantially.
If I were setting copyright law, I'd probably make it something like 5 years automatically, with extensions available yearly after that by filing inexpensive paperwork, up to a maximum of 10(?) years.
If your copyright is so immensly valuable that it's worth paying to renew it, that's fine. The longer you keep something in copyright, the larger your harm to society becomes due to preventing legal fan works and derivatives from being made. The fee to renew would reflect that.
In fact, groups representing authors and photographers have opposed orphan works legislation in the past.
The US used to require affirmative action to gain copyright protection but this was phased out to be consistent with most other countries.
Over time, this would exponentially not be the case
Copyright applies from the moment of creation for all creative works in the US today. But registering, which as I understand makes it easier to collect damages, costs money (call it $100, the details are somewhat complicated). I probably wouldn't go through that for most things even today.
It is easy to oversimplify what is going on here if it is only viewed through the lens of copyright. While it would be easy to dismiss trademarking a character in most fictional works as doing an end-run around copyright law, The Mouse appears to have been a fairly consistent and identifiable part of Disney's image for decades. In the casual meaning of the word, it has been a trademark of the company. There is also a question of how the evolution of the character plays a role. As far as I can tell, Steamboat Willy is dead an Mickey took his place. Disney's trademarking of Steamboat Willy can be construed as an attempt to do an end-run around copyright law, but the visually similar Mickey has had a more enduring (and endearing) history.
Or perhaps certain types of trademarks, in the legal sense, should have a limited duration as well. I don't know of many companies that have maintained an immutable corporate image across decades simply because it does not make sense. Culture changes, and companies should be adapting with the times.
You shouldn't be able to hold a trademark on "Star Wars" or "iPhone," but should be able to for LucasFilm or Apple. All product names should be effectively generic.
Copyright and patents should just be straight up abolished, or at least severely scaled back and limited to 1-3 years.
The character in Steamboat Willie is Mickey Mouse. There’s no one named Steamboat Willie in the animation. That said there have been several visual evolutions of the character given the same name, and Disney may claim newer versions are still copyrighted.
I think reasonable copyright would be 10 years or lifetime of the author which ever occurs later. This way the author would be in charge of their characters while alive and their kids would still gain from works done in the later years
If someone holds a copyright, you can license it from them if they so desire. The fee is determined by your legal team and theirs.
For example, as I understand it, a playwright can basically say "I don't let high schools or colleges stage my works." With respect to book adaptations, there were actually some issues with Sorkin's script for To Kill a Mockingbird because he made some changes in Atticus Finch's character development relative to the book.
"Within copyright law within the United states, such mechanical licenses are compulsory; any party may obtain a license without permission of the license holder by paying a set license fee, that as of 2018, was set at 9.1 cents per composition or 1.75 cents per minute of composition, whichever is more, which are to go to the composition copyright holder."
Note "compulsory". There are a multitude of written and art works that are effectively copyright zombies: they are clearly within the term of copyright, but there is no clear owner to reach out to in order to license them. Hence generally out of fear of a lawsuit, they are dead as inspirations for other works.
Further, to your exact point, "if they so desire. The fee is determined by your legal team and theirs." If the author wants to be restrictive, their work will never be able to be inspirational to another work. Even if they are open to the idea, the concept that lawyers (probably) have to get involved reasonably has to diminish the number of works that are likely ever to be inspirational for other works by an enormous number.
But yes, abolishing copyright other than ensuring credit is given is the right move. The scenario you bring up wouldn't happen like you're thinking though. Disney or Sony would be free to make a movie using other people's art, but they'd have no legal means to enforce that people give them money to watch it, so behaving unethically would be a great way to not get any money from making it.
Even now it is perfectly fine for you to make your own original character influenced by Harry Potter or Mikey Mouse. Heck make it a Wizard Mouse called Marry Motter. Still you can't - and in my mind shouldn't - be able to write Harry Potter and the Magical Mouse.
Editing to clarify: I fully accept that copyright is a good thing to give incentives to people to make art and music and creative works, I just don't understand why that incentive should be transmissible to their kids, i.e. people who were presumably not involved in making it in the first place.
I don't see why it wouldn't be reasonable for the inheritors of a author to benefit for a little while for their parent's work. 10 years feels very reasonable.
That seems entirely reasonable to me.
If you look at the history, the purpose is to enrich publishers, and everything else is simply to make the legislation more palatable.
If there was truly concern about enriching the public domain, the system would be dramatically different.
I'd be curious to know how other countries' laws justify copyright.
Getting a copy of the original is also something of a challenge for this practically. (VHS and DVD releases are probably subject to a new copyright, remastering is often copyrightable.) If all extant accessible versions of a work are under copyright, then the work being in the public domain is only theoretical.
Here are US trademarks.
The trademark does not stop people from making a cartoon featuring Mickey Mouse, copyright does. We saw this with “Winnie the Pooh”. New horror movie can use the Pooh bear and friends, but can’t use the red shirt as that’s still copyrighted.
Trademark stops people from being able to use the name Mickey Mouse or the stylized type version they trademarked.
I am not a lawyer, but I suspect this means that is will be fine to redistribute specific early mickey films, however any remixes, or reuse of the content, you may find yourself violating Disney's mouse trademark. You would have to successfully argue that your use of Mickey came form a public domain source and does not exist in the same market as Disney's trademark... Good luck on that, you'll need it.
Trademark issues will be tricky, there is a concept of fair use in trademarks, and it seems to me, if you can sell a copy of the film, you must be able to use elements of the film to sell it. If you can create and distribute derivative works, you must be able to use elements of the works to sell them. But maybe we'll just have to have white boxes with 3rd party Mickey (as seen in Steamboat Willie) movies, and boring movie posters too. I expect to see a stream of lawsuits until clear rulings are available.