Slashdot Mirror
Taiwan Rejects US Copyright Extension Demands
An anonymous reader writes "Taiwan has rejected the US's demand to extend copyrights from 50 years to 70 years. Here's the news article on the Mercury News."
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
Absolutely not! It's an anonymously published work, which fully qualifies for copyright protection.
Because Europe wanted, and got, 70 from the US. Not having actual parity makes it a bum deal.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo.
I think the way copyright works needs a major reform. Here's a few examples on how I think copyright could be reformed. (all numbers are just fictitious for the point of the argument and may not all work in conjunction).
* Standard copyright is 35 years. Everything falls into this.
* If something is still being produced. IE: Mickey Mouse, Superman comics, etc... by the original company/owner (Disney, DC Comics), copyrights for those works/characters can be extended up to 100 years.>BR> * There should be different copyrights for different mediums: litterature, movies, music would all have different lenghts of time for a copyright. Just a few ideas. I'm sure the lot of you have other ones that may be better than this.
It's better to burn out than to fade away
"no one can do to Disney as Disney did to the Brothers Grimm."
Actually, the Brothers Grimm didn't create all those stories, either. They went around and collected from the oral tradition. So it's not theirs either.
No sure what Disney stole other than the Mermaid.
Jungle Book from Rudyard Kipling.
Alice in Wonderland from Lewis Carroll.
Peter Pan from J.M. Barrie
That is just the animated features. Most of the "classic" Disney films are based on works with expired copyrights. (Black Beauty, 20000 Leagues Under the Sea, Heidi, etc.) Have a look at this list of books that have lost copyright and passed into the public domain. Then count how may are Disney flicks.
Disney had a rich culture of stories to draw from and reinterpret. They are trying to prevent the next generation of storytellers and media producers from doing to them what they did to earlier content creators.
Taiwan rejects some of U.S.' IP protection proposals at meeting
2002/10/12
The China Post staff
Taiwan yesterday flatly rejected the United States' request that the protection period for copyrights be extended to 70 years from the current 50 years.
Economics Minister Lin Yi-fu said the government has already imposed heavier punishments for violations against, and broadened the scope of, copyright protection. Thus, there was no reason to extend the protection period.
Speaking to reporters after a three-day meeting on intellectual property protection with representatives from Washington, the economics ministry said there is no reason for Taiwan to accede to all of the requests put forth by the United States.
But the government, said Tsai Lien-sheng, who is in charge of intellectual property-related affairs at the ministry, will definitely continue to improve its IP protection in accordance with World Trade Organization rules.
Representatives from Washington urged Taiwan to make 27 IP-related law revisions during the conference, ahead of the U.S. decision next week on whether to sign a free trade agreement with Taiwan.
Chen Chi-mai, a lawmaker from the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, said some of the U.S. requests were unreasonable.
Taiwan rejected those it believed had no legal basis or was beyond what was required of a WTO member, said government officials.
In a statement, Joseph S. Papovich, assistant trade representative for services, investment and intellectual property, said Washington had hoped the discussions would lead to real progress towards the lowering of IP piracy and counterfeiting in Taiwan.
"Specifically, we discussed the importance of Taiwan revising some of its laws to conform with international IP obligations," said Papovich.
He added that Taiwan should continue to "increase its enforcement efforts by shutting down and seizing equipment from optical media plants and owners found to be pirating, stepping up its level of prosecutions against IP violators, and working to shorten delays of this process."
Papovich said Taiwan is considered one of the largest makers and exporters of pirated CDs, DVDs and other optical discs in Asia, and is perhaps one of the largest producers of such pirated discs in the world.
Tsai's deputy Lu Wen-hsiang said the U.S. representatives will bring home the proposals both sides have agreed upon for further discussions, before a formal agreement is signed in November.
The U.S. representatives were happy that Taiwan was planning to revise its laws to impose heavier punishments on photocopying for profit purposes, said Lu. According to Lu, Taiwan plans to make photocopying an offense subject to indictment, and offenders will face punishment including imprisonment between six months and five years, on top of a penalty ranging from NT$150,000 to NT$1.5 million.
But Taiwan did not agree to U.S. request that photocopying for non-profit purposes should also be made an offense subject to indictment.
Add Victor Hugo's "Notre-Dame de Paris" to that long list of public domain works used by Disney.
Disney even stole stories from various Japanese anime series.
Lion King - based on "Kimba the White Lion", an anime series from the '60s (do you see the resemblance? "Simba" - "Kimba").
Atlantis - based on "Nadia and the Secret of Blue Water", made by Studio Gainax (which was based on books by Jules Verne, but at least Gainax give credit).
The complete list of Disney films that were adaptations of works in the public domain.
20,000 Leagues Under The Sea
Alice In Wonderland
Beauty and the Beast
Cindarella
Hunchback of NotreDame
Jonny Appleseed
Jungle Book
Kidnapped
The Little Mermaid
Mulan
Paul Bunyon
Pinocchio
Sleeping Beauty
Sleepy Hollow
The Buster Keaton movie, Steamboat Bill, was not in the public domain. However Steamboat Willie was a parody of the film, which constitutes fair use of the copyrighted work.
You answered your own question. Look at the lengths involved after Disney sent the letter to stop using the Donald Duck likeness (although thats not what Christensen was doing in his mind). Copyright does not only prevent you from creating exact duplicates, it also prevents you from making derivative works. That means anything based on the story using the characters, or bearing a superficial resemblance can be determined to be infringing. So if as you say it was an interpretation of Donald Duck as something else it is technically an infringing work, because it is derivative. Disney might not have dropped its legal suit so quickly if the comic was in english.
Or for another example look at the case of the Gone with the Wind Estate (note the author is dead) vs. the author of The Wind Done Gone, a parody of the Gone with the Wind book. Even though its very different and a parody as well it was found to infringe the copyright of Gone with the Wind, and although the ban on publishing was lifted a monetary settlement had to be made to the copyright holder of Gone with the Wind.
-------- This space intentionally left blank --------
On 1 Jan 1996 the copyright term throughout the EU was extended to life + 70 years by directive. This directive was published in 1993, back when it was the European Economic Community (EC or EEC).
The principal argument in the US Congress for passing the Sonny Bono copyright extension (in 1998) was to achieve parity with this.
If you read article 7 of the EU directive, you will see that this question of parity was, and is, a real concern. In Europe, copyrights would last 20 years longer on European works in comparison to US works, unless the US extended copyright terms as well.
Personally, I feel that this is not reason enough to justify a copyright extension in the US. But I am still seriously pissed off at the EU bureaucrats for being one of the instigators of this.
Even more obvious ones:
;o))
The Beauty and The Beast
The sword in the Stone
Tarzan
The Emperor's New Groove
Hercules (heh, this dates WAY back
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Pinocchio
Sigged!
Um, you can't go around copyrighting other peoples' stuff... the Bible is copyright (c) God,
Actually, the Bible is (c) a lot of crazy antisocial misfits and (c) some more moderate, less antisocial misfits, although to incorporate them all, including (c) a very social, prince gone bad and done turned revolutionary (Moses) you'd have to extend copyright terms to 6000 years or so.
Of course, the Catholic Church would probably own the copyrights on much of the new testament (and portions of the old) which bear little resemblence to the original gospels and torah, assuming of course there is no estate of the aforementioned Crazy Antisocial Misfits to sue the church for copyright violation in their own right.
And whether Moses was a raving, hallucinating lunatic driven mad by too much sun and too much sand (and lamenting his lost life of privelege), or whether he was in fact spoken to by a superior being (divine or otherwise), the fact is that the books of Genesis et. al. are his writings paraphrasing the alleged words of said being, and not the being itself. Therefor the copyright would belong to Moses as the authoring reporter of the event, not God as merely a participant.
In other words, God wouldn't enter the copyright equation regardless, even if he did have the bad taste to exist.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy