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The Double Edge of Copyright Extensions
porkface writes "The Morning News is running a simple, but eloquent editorial that plainly shows how Hollywood has routinely benefitted from the expiration of copyright, despite their adamant pressure on Capitol Hill to extend copyright almost indefinitely."
Corporations are run by people, beings with a great sense of need for continuity; it is this fact alone that keeps me from being surprised by the way in which some companies - from copyright-protecting movie companies which could make good out of expired copyrights to napster-fearing record labels which could use the heightened interest in their music that online exposure would bring to open-source-scared software giants who could use a little outsider criticism of their code - choose the status quo over slightly modifying the business plan to accommodate for a new world and possibly even larger profits...
"Do as we say, not as we do," apparently.
For me, the one argument I don't think big media understands here, is that Disney could still use Mickey Mouse heavily when the copyright on "him" expires. There's nothing about the expiration of copyright that says they have to remove him from Disneyland and stop selling his likeness.
It's not like they do anything these days that requires them to have some kind of exclusive rights. Even if Mickey becomes ubiquitous elsewhere, Disney can always remind us he's their child.
The public is served when copyright expires in a reasonable amount of time, because new derivitive works can flourish, and the former owner has to get of their ass and contribute something new if they want to make money.
This whole issue is yet another example of big media screwing the American public. Viva La Napster!
Hollywood has routinely benefitted from the expiration of copyright, despite their adamant pressure on Capitol Hill to extend copyright almost indefinitely.
That's because they benefitted from the copyright expiration of works that they didn't make. Now that they've made a ton of money built from the ideas of others, they want to protect themselves. This is not shocking, it's how companies work. It reminds me of how most companies feel about open source code. Sure, open source is great, when you're not the one writing it.
It seems to me that liberals at every free-thinking college would be outraged. All their "classics" are essentially public domain. Why hasn't anyone else pieced together that lasting culture is defined by that which is freely available for use by all. Culture used to be about legends, shared experiences, and artistic works. Now culture is defined by some mega-corporation's marketing department.
Examples: famous paintings (images thereof, not the works), books (as mentioned in the article), nursery rhymes (Eensy-Weensee-Spider (C) 1982 by ....), folklore legend (Sleepy Hollow), and so on and so forth.
There is a difference between Hollywood and a certain company. If the rights on Mickey Mouse expire I don't see what Disney gains in general with this. Since the company that makes the film doesn't have to pay anything to Disney for using it's toy, Disney won't benefit from it.
Of course, the sooner Mickey Mouse can be used, the sooner the second company could profit from it. But, they might think (or know) that keeping the rights for a lot more years will give them more money with the films they made, rather than what they'd get from using others productions.
You might also say that the use of a already worldly known character would make a film easier to sell to viewers, but since the film wouldn't be from Disney, who would be running to the theatres to see it just because of Mickey (it could even be a porn movie, not that you would like your kids to see that, would you?).
You can even add that Diskey could launch a parallel commercial campaign around the original Mickey. But, would Disney be interested in being associated to a XXX movie. Don't think so. So, in this case Disney itself wouldn't want to be in any way related to the film. Or in a case that the film is a serious piece of shit.
Of course who made the film, could generate more profit than the one it would generate from an unknown character. But the risk to the (former) copyright holder would be tremendous and possibly not worthy of the gain it would have.
So, there are, in my opinion, far more reasons to prefer an extension of copyright rather than a expiracy of it.
One thing I've been wondering is if many of the copyright holders are afraid of competition with the public domain. Some areas, such as literature, have this competition already because there are plenty of books in the public domain. However that's not exactly the case with pop music and movies.
From my experience, many of the CD's with classical music in public domain are often only 30% of the price of a popular music CD in public domain. That's not a big problem because classical music and popular music are two separate genres so the competition isn't all that significant.
What if the copyright was only 28 years and everything before 1975 would be in public domain? That would mean that we'd have lots of pop music and movies in public domain. Pre-1975 stuff isn't exactly the latest fashion but it can certainly compete with new music and movies. Pre-1975 would certainly be shown in television, heard on radio stations, sold on CD's etc. and that is something that makes me think that even if pre-1975 doesn't create all that much of money, preventing it from entering the public domain will help by making the competition easier.
It won't have any impact at all. The fact is, our current system is broken. The media companies have all the money and power, and they can buy whatever laws they want. They will lobby, spend, and do whatever it takes to extend and broaden copyright without limit. People are correct in believing that this will choke creativity and kill culture, but the media companies actually benefit. You see, people will put up with garbage, as long as they have nothing better to compare it to. Marketing will ensure that everybody only hears about the "hot new thing", and they can recycle the same ten or twenty movies, at minimal cost and zero risk, until the end of time.
We're not going to win that war, all of the decisive battles have already been lost, and our legal options are locked up. Either we admit defeat, and give in to a steady stream of Julia Roberts' movies and their ilk, or we fight on in a different arena. I propose that we build a digital library of all recorded works: music, films, books, etc. and put it on Freenet. There is really no other option available to us, and I think that this will be the endgame. Let's do it before technology becomes illegal too.
In Soviet America the banks rob you!
Hollywood isn't a bunch of new struggling studios anymore. They're the old guard. They'd rather have permanant copyright, thus being able to remake their own old stuff or license the rights from each other, while still preventing new companies from using it. It's part greed and part laziness. Free public domain stuff is more a threat to them now than a benefit.
Yes, yes, the tales that Disney stole from the Bros. Grimm were in fact public domain folk tales from the first. Yes, they changed them, making them all pretty and full of cute anthropomorphic fluffy bunnies and dishwashing chipmonks.
None of this changes the fact that Disney selected these very tales because they were in the public domain and he could make free use of them as he willed and keep all the profits.
Perhaps the Brothers Grimm weren't the best example though. Are there any identifiable authors from whom Disney took works? Why yes, there are.
How about Rudyard Kipling? Heard of him? Victor Hugo, Carlo Collodi, Lewis Carrol, Prokofiev, R.L. Stevenson, Defoe, Washington Irving, J.M Barrie, Davey Crockett (Yes, Davey was an author), the list goes on, and on, and on.
Disney has made billions of dollars on the backs of identifiable authors whose works they simply took, for free.
The thing is none of these authors suffered by it (ok, some of them had been dead more than 50 years, but some of them hadn't) and Disney serves as a prime example of how *everyone* makes money by a reasonable copyright expiration period.
KFG