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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."
What's interesting is with their 100 year copy rights, disney coudln't have made thier rip-off of the brothers Grimms' Snow White without paying royalities to the Grimms' descendants.
..that they still advertise a long distance telephone number on TV commercials for Disney World. 1-407-WDISNEY. As if it's not bad enough that a days' admission to Disney World for your family will set you back a week's pay, they won't even pick up the tab for you to call and order the tickets. This company with all its money can't be bothered to promote a 1-800 number like every other TV advertiser has been doing for 15 years.
And yet, people go for it. They pick up the phone and pay for a long distance call to contact a multibillion-dollar corporation with the intent of giving it money. I don't understand it, but I guess it's sort of like the rest of entertainment. Everyone hates the RIAA/MPAA and cries "boycott"... Until the new Eminem CD or the next Matrix comes out, and they fork over more money.
I will never, ever visit a Disney park and I make an effort to avoid Disney products. The copyright issue and the toll-free number issue are just two reasons. They're just a low down company, greedy and moneygrubbing to the end.
I mean, only one OTHER than the fact that the media companies could and would spend BILLIONS to prevent it...
The United States government has signed numerous treaties (including the one mentioned on the Eldred page).
It would be difficult (although not impossible) for the U.S. to extricate itself from these treaties without significant damage to our already lagging credibility.
Otherwise, I'm all for it. Go ahead, lobby Congress, sign the petition. It might have some impact. eventually.
Good Luck,
-- Fareq
GameSpy recently ran a feature called The 25 Dumbest Moments In Gaming. The Universal vs. Nintendo infringement suit made it to number 20. They discuss it here.
Hee-hee. Dying tickles!
> No, they are (and should be) perfectly balanced
so were they not "perfectly balanced" in the past when copyright had a term of 28 years?
Music for example lives and always has lived of variations on earlier themes. But if in 100 years someone writes a piece that picks up some theme of say Jackson's Thriller, there is a good chance some great-grandson of Michael is going to come out and sue him for copyright infringement....
I understand the point of having a fixed term copyright, to reward the author for his work. How this could possibly necessitate the extension of copyright 70n years after his death, I can not follow...
Ponxx
I was looking at the $5.98 DVD's (they are that for a reason) but found a combo DVD with Mulan and Pocahantos. Also found one that was Moses (Prince of Egypt) and something else based on a recent movie.
The cover art was more or less similar poses of the characters on the mainstream release. Of course, because these are based on past events, there is nothing that Disney or whoever could do. I wonder how many people have been duped by this.
I'm not saying it is wrong, but is definatly interesting and is the outcome if disney does lose the mickey copyright - lots of things that look like Disney releases.
I remember when spiderman came out on DVD - there was a release of some old spidey cartoon on DVD about "Spiderman vs the Green Goblin" that had no pictures anywhere on it to indicate that it was a cartoon and not the recent movie.
Someone used a super charged ray of static electricity on a pair of mice in my roleplaying game:
InterGalactic Bounty Hunter in 1990... (BTW someone is releasing a video game named that now, and I have it poor man's copywrighted-registered mail)
Rolled 1,1,1 on a 20 sided dice...
So they became parapallegic mice, with super intelligence.... They used robotic parts to create transportation, and schemed to seek revenge on the guy who did it in future episodes of the game.... Then when they realized he also helped them get intelligence, instead of killing him, they started to take over the universe.
One or two years down the line, Pinky and the Brain came out.
Theres only so many novel ideas out there that are original and artistic... Let alone copywrightable ideas in engineering and physics.
God spoke to me
You are exactly correct. The public domain is competition, and brutal competition at that. That's the problem with recording music, making movies, etc. At the beginning, people can't get enough of it. But the recordings never go away, and after a while there is so much great stuff available that people are not tempted to buy new works (unless they are really, really good).
In Soviet America the banks rob you!
Wouldn't that make the copyright extensions illegal then, since they're being applied ex post facto after the works were created? Or are they pretending it doesn't count because the works haven't left copyright yet?
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
I'm sorry, but I disagree. I suspect it is the way you phrased this rather than necessarily the concepts behind it.
Corporations and people that work in corporations don't act with continuity. There is no continuity of people, they certainly are more mobile in choosing employers than years ago. I would also dispute that there is continuity with people within corporations. Even those within a corporation rarely stay at the same job longer than 3 years. YMMV with different cultures, but given the above corporations *can't* act in a continuous fashion.
They act short term. Focus on Profits this year, sales this quarter, share price tomorrow. IMHO (yes, opinion this time), this is mutually exclusive with multi-year strategies.
Why do they worry about copyright expiration? Because the cash cows that make their profits this year, revenue this quarter and share price tomorrow are about to disappear.
So does Anonymous Coward have good karma?
Only profits are protected, at the very expensive of fostering creativity that the Constitution is supposed to protect.
Now wasn't that simple? Why can't Congress and the Supreme Court understand this?
Just for grins and giggles, try explaining this to your local representative and see what they really say about it.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Not that it would make any difference. There's a similar principle that applies: Congress is only allowed to grant copyrights and patents for limited periods. One would think that extending the period every time it expires effectively negates this requirement. But in the Eldred v. Ashcroft decision (warning, big PDF file), the majority said otherwise. I suspect that they'll change their minds when Congress extends the expiration yet again, as I'm sure they will. But that's in the far future.
It's definitely got to be a phrasing disagreement, because you both seem to be saying the same thing. Quarterly profits and weekly stock prices may be short term, but corporations are usually looking at maintaing a status quo while also striving for constant growth. It's an interesting situation in any case.
"The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion."
They also care about keeping you from making any money, unless, of course, they are in turn making more money off of your actions than you are.
It's about control. They (the coporate masters) interpet any oportunity that you might encounter/take/create as a threat unless it is an oportunity that they offered to you (for a fee) themselves.
They want more than your money, they want your loyalty, your adoration, your undying love for the crap that they offer and want to punish you if you dare to try to do it yourself or look elsewhere.
They want you to envy them, they want you to want to be like them, because every whore wants to think that everyone else is a whore too.
They offer you employment, they offer you money, they offer you Big Macs at $2.99 and an hour and a half of questionable entertainment for $10.50. They offer you a mortgage, a car loan, partially garaunteed government backed tuition loans, credit cards, time share condos at ski resorts even though you hate skiing.
They want to license things to you instead of sell them. They want you to borrow, lease, rent instead of buy. They want to own all that you live in, drive, watch, wear, read, listen to, or enjoy.
They want to own you. They offer you crap and call it Creme Brule. They destroy the good in everything they encounter. They hate that something good might be available for free (think SCO, Microsoft, etc)
They'll shoot themselves in the foot to keep you out of the game, which is why they'd rather extend copyright indefinately. It's not about making movies, or entertaining you, or art. It's about owning every last thing imaginable.
Including you.
Read, L
Then all of sudden, Aaron Spelling informed everybody that you couldn't show the film without paying him royalties. How did he seize control of a film in the public domain? By buying the rights to the story it was based on, and also to a song played in the movie.
This is basically correct, except things just got a little better. There was a recent supreme court ruling on a case that sounded very similar to this one - essentially a TV show based on a book that was not renewed. The court decided that the TV show was in the public domain, even if the book was not.