Comment by vidarh | Hacker News Reader

Comment by vidarh | Hacker News Reader

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The cynic in me things that this idea is probably the reason why Disney have been so aggressive about using their oldest characters in the last few years. E.g. Steamboat Willy in opening sequences, and the short film before Frozen.

Even if they fail to extend the original copyrights, there are other potential "loopholes" to making it harder to reuse these characters:

The more Disney uses variations of them, the bigger the minefield becomes in terms of sticking to the depictions that enters/have entered public domain. And they may also be going for making it harder to make any use of some of the imagery without running into trademark law as well.

In this case, the author "only" had to deal with the threats and the small minefield of avoiding character aspects revealed in the last 10 Sherlock stories, and so presumably had a reasonably simple task. Perhaps the Arthur Conan Doyle estate now wishes they'd pursued a more aggressive licensing strategy aimed at creating a bigger minefield..

But this ruling will create a precedent that will make it harder to justify, that Sherlock Holmes entered the domain public and Mickey Mouse should not, although I am pretty sure that Walt Disney's lawyers are already carefully preparing their argument for the next few hundred years of protection extension.

I am actually not for Mickey entering public domain, he is still representative of a very active and well known company. There are certain characters in the Disney domain that would be wholly out of place anywhere else.

Whereas book characters from long dead authors are a whole different matter. While I think estates should be able to protect the rights of the estate for a period of time the fact that no new content can be created by the author should discount extending the protection. Now interesting cases do arise where direct descendant or designated authors do keep stories and characters progressing, Dune and Pern come to mind.

So where the association is very strong with an active entitle I say let them keep it, where there are degrees of separation, like book examples, then perhaps one generation?

I don't really care either for Mickey Mouse specifically.

But somehow, I think it is impoverishing what's is added to global culture, and in the long term is self-defeating.

Look at the very bottom of this article, the graph about available books by decade. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/10/25...

The Twentieth Century has a big hole in the middle, because copyright holders tend to stop publishing what is not profitable enough, but do not release their rights just in case, something could put the book back at the forefront.

In the long run, if Mickey Mouse remains the sole property of Walt Disney, it will disappear with the company, while something entering the public domain has much more chance of being revivified. You just have to look to the Sherlock serie. Again, I don't really care for Mickey Mouse specifically. After all, we can't remember everything and some thing will be forgotten in a century or two. But since the law is the same for everyone, there are plenty of works from the 1940's or 1950's that are languishing unpublished, and could have be made available, especially now with the rise of e-books.

I believe existing IP law already covers this. Disney still maintains exclusivity over Mickey as one of their trademarks (and will forever). It's the Steamboat Willie shorts themselves that would be going into the public domain when the copyright expires.

A good example is the Fleischer Superman cartoons. No one disputes that DC (and Warner Bros.) owns Superman, but these cartoons have all entered the public domain.

Then you don't understand why copyright was created.

It's not there to give forever and ever protection. It's there to allow you to get some money before society, which made your product worth something in the first place, can incorporate it into culture where it belonged in the first place.

Disney themselves love using other people stories constantly, but no-one can use theirs for extreme amounts of time because they've distorted the meaning of copyright.

There's no good reason for someone else's ideas to be protected, it doesn't benefit society at all. Copyright should be 10-15 years, not this ridiculous century.

Apart from America as it exports the stuff, so, surprise, surprise, they've bullied the rest of the world into making stupidly long copyrights so that everything created in the last century is languishing in untouchable hell so a few big brands can continue making money off things that should be public domain.

> Then you don't understand why copyright was created.

Just because someone disagrees with you, doesn't mean that they don't understand the issue. Your post would have worked just as well without this line.

That may have been why copyright was created, but over time, the justification has evolved, at least in Europe, into one based on the moral rights of the author.

My personal opinion is that copyright should never expire. Think about it: you can have an indefinite government granted monopoly over land, something you didn't create, something that existed before you and will exist after you, but you have weaker protections over something you brought to life? Something that would not exist without you? To me, the moral case for indefinite copyright protection is stronger than the one for indefinite land ownership.

I think you're mistaken in both directions.

On the one hand, you do not have a monopoly over land in the sense of copyright. Sure, you control the use of the particular piece of land, but if someone else wants to copy it by reshaping their own land to have the same topography as yours, you have no recourse. Also, if someone wants to make a derivative work, like a map, they are free to do so. In this sense, the land is in the public domain.

On the other hand, you already have indefinite government granted monopoly of creative works in the sense of land ownership. You can write a novel, print it, bind it, and put it in a drawer. As long as you just have the one copy and don't give it to anyone else, the government will protect your right to exclusive usage and ownership of the work. In this sense, the book is protected property like land.

Where the equivalence falls apart is when you want to sell or transfer the property. If you sell your land, you have no say in what the new owners do with it. If you sell a book, you expect to be able to control what the new owners do with it. This is why this comparison is not very useful.

> That may have been why copyright was created, but over time, the justification has evolved, at least in Europe, into one based on the moral rights of the author.

It's interesting that you bring this up, as in many European countries, moral rights of the author are explicitly separate from copyright:

You can assign copyrights, but not moral rights. I believe that distinction stems from France, but I'm familiar with it from Norway, and variations of it is widespread throughout Europe.

For example, you typically have a legal right to have your name on a work, regardless of copyright. You also typically have a legal right to have your name removed from the work if alterations are made that affects the integrity of it, or that may be detrimental to the creators reputation (e.g. imagine someone deciding to alter key sentences in your political treatise to make it mean the opposite of your original), again irrespective of copyright.

So the protection of a creators moral rights does in Europe explicitly not require a wider interpretation of copyright.

You're conflating tangible with the intangible. Land ownership stems from natural law.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_law

Animals are territorial and that's really the end of that.

However, the idea of owning an idea ... that's a legal construct and a very recent one at that. The idea of owning an idea would be entirely foreign to someone a thousand years ago.

And the idea that you have a moral claim on owning an idea is just patently absurd, for a very simple reason.

You have no means of proving one way or another that you were the first person to have that very thought. It is entirely possible someone else had it long before you. What claim to ownership can you have? Because you commercialized the idea first?

Most countries are moving to a "first to file" system to simplify bureaucracy, so now your moral claim is contingent not even on your business acumen, but on your ability to quickly fill out a form.

I have the opposite view.

Artists contribute to world culture. George Lucas may own Star Wars in a narrow technical sense (something something disney, I know), but from a cultural standpoint, he can't take it away. It has become part of our culture, part of our written and visual language. A vast amount of energy and derivative art has been spent enjoying and celebrating Star Wars. It has outgrown the original author, because that is what all human artifacts are: derivatives, copies, reinventions, reimaginations.

If copyright were 40 years, Star Wars would be up in 2017. That's more than enough time.

I vehemently disagree with you rayiner (which is pretty rare) on this particular point.

Imagine, if you will, that a "corporation" had existed since ancient times that owned the copyrights on all of the Art, Maths, Literature and other intellectual treasures that have enriched humanity as a whole. Do you really want an immortal, gatekeeper entity that could hold back the entire progress of humanity?

Before you claim that supposition as absurd, consider that we now have at least one company that has "existed" since 705 A.D. (1,309 years ago):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_companies

So, one thing you completely fail to take into account:

Land is a limited, scarce resource. Ideas are infinitely reproducible, mutable, and changeable.

I can copy your words and you've still got them.

Disney wouldn't be here today as we know if if that were the case back when they were creating their feature-length cartoons.

What if that were true? How many works that we enjoy today could not exist under that sort of copyright regime? Disney is the obvious example, but many other works are on some level derivative of previous works and would be banished from existence by such a law.

Works of art survive because they are reproduced. This is why still-existing older works are so much better, having been heavily selected already.

Given the already ridiculous difficulty in identifying copyright holders in some cases presently, creating an eternal paperwork burden is a sure way to ensure that works become legally unusable, preventing them from being reproduced and ensuring their demise.

If you want to keep your creation forever, then don't tell anyone about it. Don't even write it down.

The Matrix should be in the public domain. Copyright should last 5 years, plus another 5 years if it's made available to the public without DRM.

> The more Disney uses variations of them, the bigger the minefield becomes in terms of sticking to the depictions that enters/have entered public domain.

That's a two-edged sword. If someone else produces material featuring Steamboat Willy which does not violate recent usage, it could seriously curtail Disney's future ability to use the character as well.

Copyright law would not prevent us from creating derivatives of Steamboat Willie, but trademark law probably would. We could still sell Steamboat Willie on those dirt-cheap DVDs, though, as-is. For what that's worth... it's really of primarily historical interest, I doubt modern audiences will find that much to be terribly entertained by in it.

I don't have a problem with this. While it's not likely to any of the tastes of anybody reading this sentence, since Mickey Mouse right now is mostly being used to entertain those too young to read, he's still actively producing things. (And while Mickey Mouse Clubhouse is hardly a masterpiece for adults.... there's much worse out there to have to listen to ad infinitum.) The offensive thing about infinite copyright extension is locking up things that the creators are done with, and have been for decades, but won't let anyone else do anything either, thus essentially killing the cultural artifact in question.

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