Conan Doyle estate seeks US copyright of Sherlock Holmes's 'complex personality' | Hacker News Reader

Conan Doyle estate seeks US copyright of Sherlock Holmes's 'complex personality'

theguardian.com

32 points001sky21 comments

Seems like that would cause a perpetual copyright paradox. If the characters remain reserved so long as one story or more containing them remains in copyright, the rights holders (the estate in this case) could simply authorize themselves to keep publishing stories containing them.

Locking characters themselves away from public culture forever seems like the exact opposite of the original notion of limited copyright. I cynically expect them to win handily.

All you really need to know about copyright is that Mickey Mouse and The Beetles will never enter the public domain. Extrapolate from there. Its like predicting the future. If it happened a little faster, it'd be a fun party trick.

At this point, I wish we could just pass a stupid special-case law granting Disney and Apple Music whatever copyrights they currently hold in perpetuity, so that the rest of the copyright system could get back to being useful/healthy.

Force them to, after let's say 28 years of copyright, to pay an ever increasing percentage of the revenue they earn from the characters as a tax to keep them out of the public domain.

35-50 years of extra copyright = 30% of revenue. 50-70 years of extra copyright = 65% of revenue. 70-100 years of extra copyright = 90% of revenue. 100+ years of extra copyright = 200% of revenue.

And so on. Just need to administer this scheme, which would be a logistical impossibility. Yay.

> Just need to administer this scheme, which would be a logistical impossibility. Yay.

Actually, ridiculously easy to administer: The enforcement you get depends on your reporting (and tax paid). If you claim to have made $x in a given year, you cannot sue any one individual for more than $x loss in that year.

So, if Disney properly reports - it is administered.

If Disney under reports - they let infringers off the (full) hook. If they do a Hollywood Accounting and claim loss every year - well, then, they can't sue any infringer for it.

The only thing giving them any standing is copyright law. Just tie it to taxation, and all will be well.

I seriously doubt that they'll win this, although I have to grant them Moriarty-like ambition.

Caseful, that comparison might be a copyright violation.

The Beetles -> The Beatles

Yeah. Noticed it just after I lost the ability to edit. Oh iPhone, of all the devices to betray me thusly.

Can anyone argue with a straight face that there exists any creative person anywhere in the world whose creative output is in any way dependent on whether or not their estate will have the legal right to collect royalties from derivative works 83 years after their death?

The folks at Disney can. Personally I believe that any copyright term that exceeds the average human lifespan does not live up to the spirit of "limited."

More to the point, can anyone argue that extending the royalties from works created 83 years ago makes the author more likely to have written them back them?

I suppose the rights are worth more if they can be protected for longer. A higher potential sale price is an incentive to invest more money/time into the development of a franchise.

How this scales down to the case of an individual author seems more dubious though.

What happens if the estate licenses another writer to pen a few more Sherlock stories (kinda like how Eric Van Lustbader is writing newer Bourne novels - http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bourne_Trilogy)?

In essence, wouldn't the character still continue to get more "complex" even after the original author was long dead?

This has happened already, a few years ago the Sherlock Holmes estate authorised a new novel The House of Silk written by Anthony Horowitz. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_House_of_Silk

So is this their end game? Perpetual copyrights by continuing to bring out one new Sherlock Holmes novel before the copyright on earlier ones expire.

Works for the drug companies with soon-to-expire patents.

That's a bit different. Getting a patent on a similar new drug to replace the old one doesn't prevent the patent on the old drug from expiring. When the patent expires, the generic drug manufacturers can start selling the old drug at a fraction of the cost. The new drug can only succeed if the company can convince doctors and insurance companies that it's better enough than the old one to justify the extra cost.

What these people are trying to do is to extend the copyright on the original characters forever.

I'm surprised that Conan Doyle was publishing Sherlock Holmes stories as late as 1927. I thought he had stopped long before that, since he hated the character.

He didn't really hate the character as much as he was tired of him and wanted to focus his time on writing what he considered more important works. He did try to stop writing Holmes stories in the middle of his career, and managed about 10 years before being forced back due to pressure from his publishers and the public.

Can I patent Conan Doyle estate's complex douchebaggery?

nope, it's pretty flat (like characters in TV shows)

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