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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 mine is mine, what's yours should be mine also if I can profit from it.
"Do as we say, not as we do," apparently.
(this post brought to you by the ASDRWDRTA... the Association for SlashDot Readers Who Don't Read The Article)
Don't you know it is now both immoral and criminal to think beyond the next quarterly report?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
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.
LXG is based on a comic book entitled The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen
I say this acronym doesn't have a LEG to stand on.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Ahh... but that's not what Disney is afraid of...
what Disney is afraid of is that, as soon as it becomes legal to do so, someone will create a "derivative work" that is contrary to the disney image.
For example, some company would likely take it upon themselves to create R or NC-17 rated cartoons that feature Mickey.
I am farily certain that it is the concept of an "unwholesome" Mickey cartoon that concerns them most, because, as you said, Disney could and would continue to sell his likeness...
Also, realize that this would introduce a bit more competition into the Mickey Merchandizing business, not to mention that any continuing licenses for Mickey would be dropped.
...to the link at the bottom of the editorial - http://eldred.cc - where a campaign to petition Congress to effectively add registration to patents over fifty years old is underway.
Granted, if they want to mess with anything below fifty years, they are on seriously shaky ground - a $1.00 tax isn't enough to be considered more than a formality, in my opinion. Still, just imagine how much stuff Disney will find itself dealing with on a yearly basis to keep all of its creations and movies locked from the public domain - even if they're a large enough corporation to deal with it.
Nicholas Eckert
vidstudent
Everyone is griping about how long copyright is, instead lets lobby congress to reduce the length back towards the origional 28 years.
What congress can do, it can undo. All that is needed is a little pressure. In fact there is a large lobby group that already exists in trying to reduce the copyright period to 50 years, unless the owners pays $1 at:
http://eldred.cc/
So lend your support to it.
..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.
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.
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