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Jack Kirby Heirs Reclaim Marvel/Disney Rights
lbalbalba writes "Heirs to comic book legend Jack Kirby sent 45 notices of copyright termination to Marvel Entertainment, prospective Marvel buyer Disney, Sony Pictures, Universal Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Paramount Pictures, and others studios that that hold licensed media rights to Marvel characters. Some rights could revert to the heirs as soon as 2014, for characters that are among the hottest in Hollywood: The Incredible Hulk, The Mighty Thor, Iron Man, Spider-Man, The Avengers, and others. Among other things the heirs' demand could cause problems for Disney's as yet unconsummated purchase of Marvel."
Activision Blizzard and Marvel Disney, what's next? Googlesoft?
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has it's limits" - Albert Einstein
Lee and Marvel shafted Jack big time during the 60s. Jack did 90% of the work while Stan took 90% of the credit. It's about time he gets the recognition and money he deserves. Too bad he didn't live to see it. I had the pleasure of meeting him once, he was a lovely, soft spoken man.
Why?
What is Mr Kirby Jr's stance on all this? Does he want money?
He didn't do any of the work, he just inherited copyrights.
Worse than a patent troll.
Neither the summary nor the article (I know...) mention what it's going to cost the heirs to get the rights back. TFA states that they can regain control a certain period after the grant of rights had been made, but is this just a normal end of the contract or do they have to buy it back? In the article Disney is quoted as saying they knew this was coming, so I'm guessing this is just the normal end whatever contract the film companies had to license the characters. Are there any IP lawyers who could shed some light on this?
That was Stan Lee and Steve Ditko.
What should worry you is the fact that, thanks to Disney and massive amounts of bribery to congress, "copyright" now means that works don't pass into the public domain for nearly a century.
Disney, and their friends, have quite literally raped the public domain dry and given nothing back.
I can't fault Kirby's heirs for trying to regain some form of control on characters who have been treated like shit for years, but realistically, the characters themselves would be public domain by now in any sane system.
Literally, eh?
If anything will get the length of copyright reduced back to reasonable levels, it'll be creators reclaiming their IP from big business. Then it'll enter into public domain and big business will probably just settle it via trademark legislation as they divide up public domain.
Well. This should be interesting.
I wonder what Kirby's kids will do with the licensing money for the Kirby co-creations that've become major movie franchises if they win this. It'd be nice to hope that they use a little of it to create a non-profit that helps fund innovation in comics like Eastman did after he ran out of things to spend his TMNT money on; Jack was an amazing fountain of ideas and I think that'd be a great way to honor his memory.
egypt urnash minimal art.
I really hope this forces Marvel to rethink their strategy. I love comics. I don't like super hero books. Super hero books that run for hundreds of issues with no coherent message or vision suck. I don't care if the current run is good, or if it used to be good years or even a few issues ago. Marvel needs to get back to it's roots selling comics that everyone wants to read, not just 30 something fanboys who obsess over whether or not Kevin Smith did justice to the Green Arrow.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
No, it shouldn't matter to you.
But it is of interest to others around here.
Believe it or not, some people who read/post here are a little on the nerdy side. And some of them read comic books.
Then there's the occasional person who just comes on to a site labeled "News for Nerds" to attempt to boast about how he's not really interested in a specific aspect of nerd subculture.
Those people are sad. They are nerds, but rather than revel in it, they are desperately trying to convince themselves they're not.
If the masses can keep you down, you're not the Ubermensch.
Isn't it mostly the 30-50 year old crowd trying to make an investment?
If they're the only ones buying them it's probably not a good investment. While you might be able to show a stagnation in sales, the comic book publishers have no one to blame but themselves. If you can't survive changes in technology and you constantly rely on the same old tired franchises or crossovers, you're going to lose fans and you're not going to attract people like me that know the premise and details of all existing superheros. At least that's my opinion.
Woo boy am I holding my breath for spiderman 4 in 2011...
I share your remorse for the painful drivel that Hollywood (seq|pre)qualizes but to be fair comic books are based on this leave-you-wanting-more teaser serialization of the story ... so it should come as no surprise that Spiderman and X-Men are into this. Perhaps that's why I loved The Watchmen? I can't say for sure. One thing's for sure it might not be the 30-50 year old crowd looking to make an investment but rather (as the article put it) "superhero hungry Hollywood" looking to make an investment. The medium of the comic book may be dying but what they sold to youngsters will never die: the hero. It will live on in movies and video games until those methods succumb to emerging markets and we get retina implants or something.
... then we're just going to see Disney style Marvel heroes in surefire movies with the formulaic love plot + slapstick comedy + action + Disney ending = $$$$$.
I predict that Jack Kirby's heirs are in for the legal battle of their lives. Oh well, he's dead and I'm sure they're contributing to society somehow. I'm not really concerned about what they get out of this. And I will make the prediction that if by some miracle Disney opens up its animation resources to the folks at Marvel and leaves them as Marvel that we will see some good things come out of this. But if they (and this is a more likely scenario) just turn Marvel into Disney and homogenize them and scare away/fire the people who aren't afraid to try something new
My work here is dung.
"Give us money so we go away!"
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Newly discovered documents show that Hans Christian Andersen actually published his works under an Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike licence.
Disney made this press release: Oh shit!
Literally, eh?
Yep. Look at poor Snow White. And Ebenezer Scrooge, too! Their assholes are so much larger than they should be...
Yes. They pilfered the public domain. "To rape" means "to take from by force", as in "the Vikings raped the German coastline".
disney can go straight to hell. horrible damn company.
Copyrights will do nothing to keep Marvel/Disney from ruining these franchises. You have to take the trademark.
I don't believe Disney has any intention of imposing their style on Marvel. The very things you don't want changed is exactly what Disney are after. Of course, the possibility that they bugger it up is always there. :)
The bottom fell out of the comic book as investment market back in the mid 90's. Essentially as prospectors bought everything and anything, the publishers simply printed more books each month. Everyone seemed to have forgotten that Superman #1 was valuable, not because it was a first edition, but because there were only a couple left in existance. All of the "Golden Age" comics were rare because the kids moms would grab the stack of comic books and bring them down for the local paper to help the war effort and only a handful of any issue managed to avoid recycling. Once everyone realized that they weren't going to be making a fortune off of anything printed in the preceeding 40+ years, everyone stopped collecting unless they were actually intersted the books for themselves.
I'm not yet 30, although its comming up fast, and I buy 3 or 4 titles a month. None of what I buy is Marvel anymore, but they still have a small fortune in stories that can be made into movies. Hollywood has been long on useless executives and short on actual tallent for years. They've figured out that the stories from comic books are easily adapted for the large screen with a built-in following, and since the stories are already written (or at least at a good starting point for re-writting) there is less risk involved in script development.
Sounds like Kirby's looking for a little bit more of the pie he helped bake. Depending on what he's getting already, he may be entitled. Could put some excs at Disney and Marvel in hot water for a little while, but I doubt that they'll be unable to make some sort of compromise.
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
Oh, my. I remember lawsuits involving Jack Kirby and Marvel of the 1980's, when he was still alive.
For those of you who've not made friends with authors and artists, it's very common for companies to really screw the authors who create their most valuable intellectual properties. For any of us who've worked on a major software or hardware project and had it dropped by a VP whose goals it doesn't fit, or have a mediocre middle manager take credit for it, you can sympathize with what happens to these artists.
This doesn't mean that Jack's heirs have a real case, but be aware that Marvel and Jack had some serious disagreements about intellectual property and artwork ownership during his lifetime, and a lot of artists believed that Jack was screwed, really hard, by Marvel's last generations of leadership during his life.
... do a movie sequel where all those characters turn gay. Very gay. Then the Kirbys have to write around that.
This is what the copyright kings might call "The Heir of the Dog that bit you in the ass."
This has to be some sort of play to get more money for the rights than they are already getting and I think they should certainly go for it.
Copyright issues have become increasingly difficult for Hollywood, as it continues to trade on characters and stories that were created decades ago, but are now subject to deadlines and expiration dates under federal copyright law.
Copyright issues would become easy again if copyrights ever expired and the copyrighted material entered the public domain. Of course, Hollywood has worked to try to keep that from happening. The lesson Hollywood will take away from this is: get Congress to overhaul copyright law so that nothing ever expires.
Or did they already manage that, and the Kirby properties are only expiring because they are old?
I know that copyrights used to need to be registered, and could be renewed only once, and the total life of a copyright was thus limited. Now copyright is automatic and lasts for the life of the creator of the work plus 95 years. (Likely this will be extended again, right around the time Mickey Mouse would enter the public domain... 2023, I think.)
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
You are wrong.
A dictionary.
Get one.
Of course, the possibility that they bugger it up is always there. :)
It wouldn't surprise me, Disney has been known to ruin even the very thing that made them popular.
My work here is dung.
I don't think there's anything stopping you from mounting your own take on, say, on Snow White or Cinderella. The problem is that Disney managed to get something of a stranglehold on the imagery.
What I despise about Disney is singing animals. Every fucking feature length cartoon of even a story like Pocahontas (which was so obnoxiusly inaccurate in every other respect) requires singing fucking animals. In the Hunchback of Notre Dame, they altered the rule slightly and had singing fucking gargoyles, but the effect is the same.
Disney degrades everything it touches. It's run by some of the most vile, cynical bastards the entertainment industry ever produced (and that's saying something). It isn't the public domain these repugnant monsters rape, it's cultures. I quite frankly shiver at the thought of them taking any more popular stories from the fables and myths any more cultures and twisting them by their sheer hatred of anything that doesn't have singing fucking animals into grotesque caricatures.
Maybe in the early days there was a great artistic impulse, but even ol' Walt himself pretty much gave up the ghost after Pinocchio and it all turned into unforgivable pap, endlessly recycling the inventiveness of the early years.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
They've figured out that the stories from comic books are easily adapted for the large screen with a built-in following
Not to mention the money they save on storyboarding. Comics are effectively bound storyboards.
Downside is all the arguments and liquid lunches they miss out on in that stage, as it's effectively been outsourced as non-core process (grin).
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
Yes. They pilfered the public domain. "To rape" means "to take from by force", as in "the Vikings raped the German coastline".
I think the word you were thinking of was "Pillage".
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
Are you joking, or just a troll? Comic book-based movies have pretty much dominated the Hollywood box office for a decade or more. I bet if anyone sat down and thought about it they could easily name 50+ comic book-based movies that have grossed many billons in all. It's BIG business, and yes, people older than 10 do go watch movies.
for Superman/Superboy lawsuits.
First rename the characters or change the character to a different person being that character. Then drag the case on for years until a settlement is made.
Incredible Hulk, The Mighty Thor, Iron Man, Spider-Man, The Avengers, and others.
Bruce Banner is no longer The Incredible Hulk, the Rulk or Red Hulk absorbed his gamma powers and Skar The Hulk's son will replace the Hulk.
The Mighty Thor, Thunderstrike or Beta Ray Bill will have to sub in for Thor.
Iron Man, Tony Stark got lobotomized in trying to erase the super hero registration list from his head, Pepper Potts has her own suit of armor and James Rhodes can take over as War Machine for Iron Man.
Spider-Man, Eddie Brock is now Anti-Venom, can sub for Spider-Man as Peter Parker quits or loses his powers again. Either that or another Ben Reilly Spider-Clone.
The Avengers have changed so much, right now the Dark Avengers are fighting the New Avengers, but they could easily change the group's name to the Challengers or Defenders like the other groups Kirby didn't invent.
Captain America, James "Bucky" Barnes is the new Captain America and was The Winter Soldier. Steve Rogers is dead, but they are trying to bring him back, doubts are in if he'd still be Captain America or let Bucky keep the uniform. Other men have been Captain America in the past. The 1950's Captain America is still alive with Steve Roger's face.
Most of those characters have been so radically changed that they don't resemble the Kirby versions anymore. Besides I thought Stan Lee and Steve Ditko did Spider-Man and not Jack Kirby.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
I agree wholeheartedly. Disney only furthers the idea that "cartoons and animation are for kids." Or the clinically brain dead. Groups like Pixar and studio Ghibli, on the other hand, continue to prove that something can be "family friendly" and still be entertaining for everyone.
But Disney is too busy selling Disney Princess Makeup Kits and Hanna Montana DVDs to give two shits about the actual quality of what they produce.
Am I the only one who thought this article was about Jack Kilby, the Nobel laureate who invented the integrated circuit?
I think the word you were thinking of was "Pillage".
No, the grand-poster was technically right, although nobody has really used the word that way in a long time. Basically, the archaic meaning was "to take by force", which is a pretty descriptive metaphor for the current definition. Just add "sexually" to it and you're there.
The CB App. What's your 20?
The Kirby heirs are doing this pursuant to 17 USC 203, if anyone is interested.
The gist of it is, for works not made for hire, where the author licensed or sold his copyrights to someone else (except via a will), the author, or his heirs or estate, can get together and terminate the license or sale. It has to be done within a certain window of time, and it requires a sufficient number of heirs to agree to it, and there are some procedural steps that have to be taken. And this can be done even if the author signed an agreement that expressly said that he would not do this.
I am all for reforming copyrights to something sensible in both length and scope, and I am concerned at the political power wielded with regard to copyright by publishers. However, I have to side against the authors on this sort of thing. While it might be fun to see someone stick it to Disney, it's ultimately a bad policy.
If an author willingly signs an agreement transferring or licensing his copyright to someone else, then that agreement should remain valid. If the author wants to reserve a right to terminate the transfer or license because some sort of condition arises (e.g. licensing fees are no longer being paid), or arbitrarily at some point in time, then it should be written into the agreement. No one is forcing authors to sign these things; no one is forcing authors not to have an attorney help them out with it. If a contract is one sided, don't sign it. Hash out a more agreeable agreement or walk away. And if your bargaining positions are unequal, well, welcome to the real world; this happens a lot.
To have a law that mandates that authors can cancel their contracts at will, with no particular repercussions for them is offensively paternalistic. Authors should not be universally treated like children, able to escape their commitments. They are not any more or less sophisticated in their business dealings than any other ordinary person, who is not treated so astonishingly favorably by the law.
Further, it is unjust. While an author certainly is essential in the success of a particular creative work, publishers also often make invaluable contributions. To the extent that their agreements with authors permit them to do so, I think it is completely fair for them to share greatly in the rewards. Publishers that contribute little will tend to not be in as favorable a position to benefit as the publishers that contribute a lot. Authors who don't want to have to pay or share profits with publishers can always self-publish. It is entirely doable, but the difficulty tends to be off-putting. So long as it is the decision of the parties involved, and not of Congress, it's okay.
In this case, suppose that Kirby had never worked for a comic book company, but instead had started his career by self publishing comics. Would he have achieved so much success, thereby indicating that his estate deserves to profit from his comics and characters alone? I doubt it. So did Kirby, apparently; he chose not to go that route, and instead worked for publishers for whatever pay or other compensation both sides found agreeable.
For the Kirby estate to wrest away control of the work Kirby did under contract with Marvel, in contravention of contracts willingly entered into by both sides that state otherwise, and with no other penalties is just not fair, and the law should not permit it. It is no different than if Alice sold land to Bob, Bob invested in the land raising its value, and then Alice snatched it back contrary to the original agreement.
If you want to be able to end an agreement after you make it, make that part of the agreement. Otherwise, well, you'll know better next time.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
"Literally raped" the public domain? Are you sure "literally" is the word you want? Maybe "figuratively" is more appropriate.
I loved The Last Boy on Earth. That could make a great film too -- intelligent animals, humans gone, environmental disaster. Hmm.
Not a troll, just being honest.
I have always wondered, why exactly, because for me, comic books are for those who are literacy-challenged and/or don't have a developed fantasy. Nerds should be neither and rather go for real books.
Then again, I grew up in a country where comics were considered medieval junk.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Are you aware that Pixar and Disney recently merged?
No sig for the moment.
Just make up some new, open source, superheros.
Groups like Pixar and studio Ghibli, on the other hand, continue to prove that something can be "family friendly" and still be entertaining for everyone.
Which is why Pixar vets don't currently control Disney, and Disney itself doesn't distribute Studio Ghibli films in North America OH WAIT
O'Walt is still spinning in his grave.
I have always wondered, why exactly, because for me, comic books are for those who are literacy-challenged and/or don't have a developed fantasy.
For you, maybe. Others aren't so narrow minded, and realise that like any other expressive medium, comics can be used to cover the entire artistic range, from high art to complete crap. Only some of them "are for those who are literacy-challenged and/or don't have a developed fantasy."
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
First off we have no idea what his children intend to do with the money. They might keep it, or they might not, who knows?
And for me it's more about Jack finally getting the recognition and compensation he deserved for his achievements. It would be one thing if he himself had become wealthy from his creations, but he didn't. In fact he died practically penniless, despite the billions of dollars he made for Marvel. Not to mention the untold millions that Stan has made over the years.
It's not about his kids becoming wealthy off their dad's work. It's about their dad finally getting compensated for the true value of his work, something that was never done during his life.
There is no good reason for the Characters to copyrighted. In fact, I don't think you CAN copyright a character (you can copyright a specific instance of one, like a comic book, a still, etc).
You trademark characters, and trademarks don't expire so long as you actively defend them.
As horrible as this sounds to our standard knee jerk reaction on slashdot, this IS a good thing as far as I care. This is what makes it so that a company/person can create a character, make them famous, and continue to profit from their current work on the character, despite having made it ages ago.
Do Or Do Not, There Is No Spoon, There Is Only Zuul. Everything in the above post is probably opinion.
I do. I hope his heirs all die painfully and penniless. How are they any better than Disney when all they want to do is get money for something they were never a part of?
There are exceptions: The Rescuers Down Under, The Black Cauldron, Atlantis: The Lost Empire, and Treasure Planet - possibly their biggest flop, and certainly one of their best works. Go figure!
Circumcision is child abuse.
I got into that argument of semantics about 17 years ago in high school, she said rape meant the sex act, I said it could mean forcibly carried away.
She kept arguing so I raped her all the way to the dictionary.
"There are no facts, only interpretations." --Friedrich Nietzsche.
How dare you! The Disney corporation has, for decades, delivered countless hours of mindless, vapid entertainment and proxy childrearing to millions of happy All American Families. We have turned kitsch from a derisible concept, to a mass industry, to the very apex of American cultural achievement. I mean, what kind of monster would object to carpeting bombing our youth with bright eyed, euphoric, singing animals and animated gargoyles? A Communist monster, that's who!
May the Maths Be with you!
Three words: Get A Life. Sheesh.
I realize you intended this as flamebait, but you are hardly a capitalist.
Either someone owns his property or he is simply borrowing it from the state. The former is the heart of capitalism. The latter is socialism.
If someone truly owns his property, then it is his to do with as he sees fit. That includes giving it to his children when he dies. If he is only borrowing it from the state, however, then it is quite right to take it back when he dies.
Part of why parents work so hard is to provide for their children. Is it ok for parents to provide for their children? What about parents who die when the children are still young? Should the money be taken back as soon as they are 18?
If you get an inheritance and decide to give most of it to the state, that's fine. When I see you giving a hundred million of YOUR inheritance back to the state so you can live off your own labor, I'll consider your ideas seriously. Until then, I'll accept that they are just the result of class envy.
Nice idea, but the original copyright, if it even existed in Denmark in those days, would have long expired, and once it did disney would no longer need a license. Neither should we now for the mouse. Well, actually, where I live copyright is still fifty years, so the mouse is out of copyright. Although I suspect he is still covered by Trademark.
Burma Shave
I would contend something different. Inheritance is garbage IMNSOH - these kids did nothing to create this work, their father did. Why should they benefit from it? In fact, why should anyone receive many millions in inheritance?
And you'd have a great point if the heirs were keeping the characters out of the public domain, but that's not the case. If they don't repo the rights, they'll just be used by Disney for their next hundred copyright extensions.
To paraphrase Buffett, the children of the rich deserve to be rich as much as the children of Olympic athletes deserve to be gold medalists.
No doubt. But this isn't a case of do-nothing heirs vs the public, it's a case of do-nothing heirs vs a famously greedy conglomerate.
Other side of the coin:
As a parent, you often work to provide the best for your children, both for when you're alive and after you're gone. I might be a little miffed if I built up a multi-million dollar empire only to have it stripped from me when I die. Is my home not my children's home? Is my money not my family's money?
Granted this is more like a divorce settlement than family legacy. And that's business. When a business partner dies, his family does not necessarily inherit the business, especially when there are shareholders who might say otherwise. They might be entitled to a portion of the net worth of the business as a payout, but they shouldn't be able to claim future profits.
ridiculous inheritance, i.e. getting super rich off of your parents while never having accomplished anything yourself, is garbage. but as a nostalgic or maybe a personal event, it seems fair. a rare model computer or collection of some sort, or even $$ enough to pay for a degree OR a house, seem reasonable.
but in this particular case, considering what gets the rights if the heirs don't, i'm siding with the heirs, meritorious or not.
"To stop the terrorists."
There are exceptions
And most of those are decades old. Disney got into a rut after Little Mermaid and Beauty in the Beast: movie would be a fairy tale musical, with highly annoying side kicks. So lets hope they don't fuck up Pixar.
The Japanese, and to a lesser extent East Asian, Manga industry has been doing things like this for decades. Issues from the topical to the seemingly unpresentable. Remember the manga guide to statistics. By contrast, the now stagnant meme of superheros has proven itself utterly unable to discuss any topic that does not somehow involve men in leotards fist fighting one another.
The biggest problem with the western comic book industry is that it is not seen as a legitimate medium for adult discouse. It is not seen this way because publishers and writers deliberately market and censor their products for consumption by teenagers with their parents approval. The utter stagnancy of the American comic book industries is a testament to how successful this strategy has been in killing creativity. How many generations of artists have spent their lives drawing comics of characters invented by people 70 years ago?
Comics are a very legitimate medium, and a very powerful one. When the 9-11 commission sought a way to present their mammoth 571 page report to the wider public, they turned to the medium of comic books. Some people had the gall to ridicule them, but it was an incredibly brave and shrewd decision. The graphic novel of the findings is a power educational tool against the inevitable 9-11 conspiracy theorists. It was, all things considered, the single best way to tell the story of that day.
Comics are a medium of human communication. So is cartoon animation. The industrialisation of the comic book and animation industries in the Western world has robbed us of this medium. Because of the paranoia of 1950's American society, and the capitulation of the industry to hysteria like Comics Code Authority, the power of the medium comics, seen daily in newspapers across the country, is unable to be brought to bear in any arguments above the briefest of lengths. We are living with the bad decisions made by people 60 years ago and the effect of industry monopolisation and we are worse off because of it.
May the Maths Be with you!
The word rape can also mean steal. And yes, Disney is stealing the public domain.
That's nice and I can somewhat agree, but the obvious rebuttal is that the money belongs to the person who earned and they're free to give it to whomever they choose and no gov't has any business interfering with that.
He was correct no matter how you look at it. The word "literally" is a contranym. So even if "rape" were being used to mean forced sexual intercourse, that sentence was still semantically sound. Though I still wish we had a dedicated adverb to mean the opposite of "figuratively."
Also, doesn't "pilfer" mean to steal in small quantities? Maybe that's what the GP was suggesting should be replaced by "pillage?"
Spiderman is Ditko.
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
Believe it or not, some people who read/post here are a little on the nerdy side. And some of them read comic books.
Whoa. Glad I was sitting down when I read your post.
#DeleteChrome
And yet, all that's being discussed is imaginary property anyway...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
You *do* realize that Disney makes these films to children, right? Are you going to criticize children's books next for having an overwhelmingly large number of talking animals?
You would think so, wouldn't you? Unfortunately, the almighty usage panel (I imagine them to be a group of austere-looking men wearing black judges gowns and white powdered whigs) decided to make "literally" essentially an auto-antonym when used as an intensifier.
Try reading Spiegelman's Maus, or Alan Moore & Eddie Campbell's From Hell, before you characterize all comics as not "real books". There's a whole world out there without superheroes in it.
You're all primed to absorb some juicy intellectual property and it happens...
Merger Interruptus!
Well nothing to do now but head to the bathroom with a nice young DC Comics release to get a little... release...
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
Indeed they do. But Disney doesn't directly control what Pixar creates. They're more or less given total creative freedom.
In this instance, Disney is really just a distributor, not a producer.
See what I said above:
This is Disney being a distributor, not a producer. They're not over at Pixar/Ghibli telling them what to put in their movies, they just slap their names on the boxes, put out the ads, and ship them out.
This is too funny for words. The very studios who have essentially screwed everyone else over with unconstitutional copyright "reforms" and "extensions" are now about to get royal screwings of their own. Not that any of this helps the common citizen or does anything to enhance the Public Domain, but it is still fun to watch.
Funniest statement of all is Disney's CYA about how they had already factored all of this in when they offered billions for Marvel.
Definitely the best thing since eBay bought Vonage without getting the rights to the code that runs it.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
But in this case Kirby signed away his rights for money to provide for his children. He no longer owned the property. Shouldn't we honor his decision, and the new owner of the property rights?
But... that completely invalidates your point...?
I'm well aware of the target audience. That's the tragedy. And the animals in most fables are archetypal, not simply blue prints for toys that will be sold at McDonalds,
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
And hopefully when you die a corporation will seize your house and bank accounts and leave your family penniless. Why is the only person that can't benefit from an artist's work the artist and their family? They are the ONLY ones that should have that right. Most are forced to sign over rights. I know this first hand. I just had a film taken from me that I spent four years making and that I made singlehandedly. I lost it over a partner using a contract against me. He broke several laws doing it but still the contract won in the end and I hadn't the money to fight him. Artists are treated like scum in this world and we get it from both companies stealing our work and the public at large. After a while you have to say why bother creating something in the first place?
Except that John Lasseter has the title of "Chief Creative Officer" at Disney now. It remains to be seen whether he will be able (or want) to have an impact to turn that around.
Also, given the success of High School Musical 1/2/3 and Hannah Montana, it appears the new hotness is singing fucking teenyboppers, not singing fucking animals.
Cloud Guy 1: "Well, that the end of the show. I hope we've all learned a little something valuable about the fascinating world of animation, and can now think of it a little differently. An animated film is not just a random series of mindless self-indulgent cartoon images meant only to be enjoyed by young children and people with mental handicaps, but is a serious valid art medium, all unto itself in which the artist is free to explore the purity of the art medium done in each and every single frame! The animated arts are..."
Cloud Guy 2: "ROBOTS!!!"
[Cue robots and cloud guys killing each other.]
Starts at about 6:12. The first two are good too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUBBsA9wvXQ&feature=channel_page
Every fucking feature length cartoon of even a story like Pocahontas (which was so obnoxiusly inaccurate in every other respect) requires singing fucking animals.
Singing, fucking animals. Sounds kinda like Woodland Critter Christmas. :)
Sounds like Kirby's looking for a little bit more of the pie he helped bake.
Didn't even RTFT, eh? :P
"I'm not sure I like the fugnutish tone you used in your post!" -RogL (608926)-
Germany considers comic books medieval junk? American comic books during the CCA era, maybe. But there are a lot of excellent comics out there. Why does the pairing of image with words necessarily make a medium "junk" or for the illiterate? Are all films junk as well because they don't even have printed words? That just seems like a really arbitrary categorical accusation (one that reeks of pretentiousness). Does enjoying a good book once in a while mean you don't have an eye for art? Or is there something about visual arts that offends you? Would you rather Leonardo da Vinci have simply described the Mona Lisa in words so that you could use your well-developed "fantasy" to visualize it for yourself?
I've never been a big comic book reader, but I can still appreciate the quality of the writing and artwork of many works in that genre (for instance, Akira and various comics by Jean Giraud/Moebius and Masamune Shirow). Comics/graphic novels are such a rich and diverse medium that almost anyone can find something that appeals to them in this expressive art form. Perhaps Germany is just culturally behind the U.S. in regards to the acceptance/appreciation of alternative media, because the attitude you express is very typical of how the average American viewed comics/mangas/animes just a few decades ago. There's just no reason why creative storytelling should be restricted to book form, or why graphic art and literature have to be kept separate from one another.
the very basis of copyright in the United States is encouragement of innovation.
Well, that's half anyway; really the basis of copyright is encouraging authors to create and publish the most, in exchange for the least copyright, so as to maximize the net public benefit. Both creation and publication are necessary elements of good copyright policy. A work cannot benefit the public unless it is both created, just so it exists, and published, so that people beyond the author can actually get and use it.
When an author has created a work that they sell after the fact, however, they absorbed a considerable amount of the risk by taking the time to create something without any pay at all. ... But when they come up with something marketable, suddenly publishers want control.
Well sure. The authors are self-interested; having created a work, they want the benefits that a professional publisher can bring to the table -- inexpensive printing in bulk, good marketing, arrangements with lots of retail operations to get the work out to the public -- without wanting to cede the rewards that the work can bring them.
And likewise, the publishers are self-interested, perhaps being able to obtain a good work without having incurred any risk in its creation (though this is not always so; the recording industry has some interesting financial practices) they'll want to invest as little as possible into getting it into the marketplace, but get as much of a reward from this as possible.
No one can force the two parties to make an agreement they don't find acceptable. And there are plenty of authors out there. And plenty -- though somewhat fewer -- publishers. And there is the option to self-publish.
So while each side goes into negotiations seeking to get the best deal for themselves, mutually agreeable deals are entirely possible, with plenty of alternatives if it doesn't work out.
I don't see a problem with any of this.
Unfortunately, a lot of other IP industries have yet to catch on that creators should be treated well.
Creators should not be treated well merely because they are creators. Certainly it is not in the interests of any publisher to treat artists one iota better than the bare minimum they can get away with. A generous publisher runs a risk of being a badly run business, which leads to being an ex-publisher. Of course, I'm not saying that the publisher should go about whipping its authors, just that once an author worth keeping happy is made happy, it isn't necessary to make him any happier. There's no percentage in that. A publisher who wastes his resources doing that will be at a disadvantage in the marketplace, and either go out of business, or have to stop being so nice.
Anyway, the ability to take back a work that was not made for hire, but has instead been licensed, is not about deal-breaking. It is about preventing companies from taking a disproportionate share of the profits from the owner, who is the person we intended to incentivize.
It is about nothing other than deal-breaking.
The author was incentivized to create the work, because he did in fact create the work. The Constitution mandates that the copyright initially vest in the author. What the author decides to do with it after that point is entirely up to him. If he sells it for a mess of pottage, then that's his mistake.
But if a property becomes massively successful, why should a bunch of managers and lawyers who probably weren't even born when the property was created be entitled to perpetual profits?
Because the author apparently misjudged the value of his copyright. He should've held out for more. The publisher apparently was the wiser party to the agreement. But it was a voluntary agreement. No one twisted the arm of the author. He was happy enough with the deal to sign on the dotted line. Hindsight is no excuse for breaking the deal without consequences.
Remember also that the mere creation of a work isn't the only
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
And I wonder when all the Disney/Pixar/Marvel lawyers figure out The Incredibles ripped off the Fantastic Four?
So many of their films have dancing/singing animals because they love reusing shit.
Every fucking feature length cartoon of even a story like Pocahontas (which was so obnoxiusly inaccurate in every other respect) requires singing fucking animals
Whoooa, I think I missed that part! Are you sure you weren't watching the porn spoof, Poke-a-Hotass or something?
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
I have eliminated most of my commentary to present this analysis of Marvel motion pictures released since 2000. I mark that time period as the beginning of Marvel Entertainment's ability to bring characters and stories to life in a way they were never capable of before.
1. X-Men (2000) - 80% http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/xmen/. Released in July with a budget of US$75mil, it grossed more that US$296mil http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-Men_film without Arad and Lee on production.
2. Spider-Man (2002) - 90% http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/spiderman/. Released in May with a budget of US$140mil, it grossed more than US$821mil with Arad and Lee on production. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider-Man_(film)
3. Daredevil (2003) - 44% http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/daredevil/. Released in February with a budget of US$78mil, it grossed more than US$179mil with Arad on production. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daredevil_(film)
4. X2: X-Men United (2003) - 88% http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/x2_xmen_united/. Released in May with a budget of US$110mil, it grossed more than US$407mil with Arad on production. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X2:_X-Men_United
5. The Hulk (2003) - 61% http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/hulk/. Released in June with a budget of US$137mil, it grossed more than US$245mil with Arad and Lee on production. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hulk_(film)
6. The Punisher (2004) - 29% http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1131721-punisher/. Released in April with a budget of US$15mil, it grossed more than US$54mil with Arad and Lee on production. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Punisher_(2004_film)
7. Spider-Man 2 (2004) - 94% http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/spiderman_2/. Released in June with a budget of US$200mil, it grossed more than US$783mil with Arad and Lee on production. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider-Man_2
8. Electra (2005) - 10% http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/elektra/. Released in January with a budget of US$43mil, it grossed more than US$56mil with Arad on production. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elektra_(2005_film)
9. Fantastic Four (2005) - 26% http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/fantastic_four/. Released in July with a budget of US$100mil, it grossed more than US$330mil with Arad on production. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantastic_Four_(film)
10. X-Men The Last Stand (2006)- 56% http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/x_men_3_the_last_stand/. Released in May with a budget of US$110mil, it grossed more than US$407mil with Arad on production. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X2_(film)
11. Spider-Man 3 (2007) 62% http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/spiderman_3/. Released in May with a budget of US$258mil, it grossed more than US$890mil with Arad and Lee on production. http://en.wikip
I want to express my opinion more! lol
This has me wondering what they plan to "do" with the IP involved...do they think its time the franchise was reworked to resemble original ideas or messages? Will they use it for making $$$ by doing deals with Disney/Sony/Whoever, on their own terms? Or will they let some of these characters just "die" and use their influence to introduce new, exciting heroes and villains, new powers and situations, grabbing a new (and old) audience with compelling characters and deep stories, as did the very comics that led to Iron Man, Thor et al?
And I would like more of the industry to follow that last idea, its already a trend that needs more attention: dropping old habits. What we, as a nation (off topic) need to do is seriously rethink how we conduct business. interact socially and how we prioritize science and health. Newspapers are learning the hard way, car manufacturers are struggling to innovate faster, and the comic industry has a chance to retool and rethink how they appeal to the masses, or they may end up like the banks and the car companies.
Or not, I'm high.
Disney, and their friends, have quite literally raped the public domain dry
Quite literally? What the hell does that look like?
- 6 out of 15 films had budgets of US$100 or less. Out of those 6 films, all were first installments.
That should have read "... had budgets of US$100mil or less..."
I wasn't born in Germany.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Odd, considering that showing either on the Disney Channel is likely illegal.
> Either someone owns his property or he is simply borrowing it from the state. The former is the heart of capitalism. The latter is socialism.
Actually, that's feudalism and that's at the heart of modern real estate law. Capitalism didn't just spring forth from the ether like some cross between the big bang and an after-the-apocalypse movie. The idea that you're an island unto yourself in your own living room is a bit clueless.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
But then, are they TAKING things from the Public Domain, or are they taking steps to PREVENT things from moving to the public domain? Has there been any examples of things that moved into public domain, but then retroactively became private again after legislation changes?
Cos if they're just preventing things from going into public domain, then thats not the same as taking things from the public domain.
If we're going to argue semantics, that is.
Disney only owns copyright on what is produced by them, not what is distributed.
There's even comics on literary analysis of comics (and I heard of a phd thesis written partially in manga format)
See what I said above:
This is Disney being a distributor, not a producer. They're not over at Pixar/Ghibli telling them what to put in their movies, they just slap their names on the boxes, put out the ads, and ship them out.
Do they add unskippable content to DVD/Blu-rays and take full advantage of DRM? I think they do more than distribute. Also, being on a long leash is still being on a leash.
Disney, and their friends, have quite literally raped the public domain
So, they violently and sexually assaulted the public domain? You demean yourself, your argument and countless victims rape by comparing a business you don't like to forcibly violating someone. Before you start tossing around phrases like "literally raped" why don't you ask one of the women in your life who has has actually, truly literally raped or sexually assaulted if Disney's legal opinion of copyright fairly compares to their experience. Rates of attempted or completed rape hover around 1 in 6 to 1 in 8 so it shouldn't take too long for you find someone that you know and care about who was a victim.
Noooooo, rape used to mean "to take from by force." And while I supposed you can still find it used like that, its modern and primary definition is more along the lines of "the crime of forcing another person to submit to sex acts, especially sexual intercourse." But thanks for playing Who Wants to be a Rape Apologist!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Not a troll, just being honest.
I have always wondered, why exactly, because for me, comic books are for those who are literacy-challenged and/or don't have a developed fantasy. Nerds should be neither and rather go for real books.
Then again, I grew up in a country where comics were considered medieval junk.
Well, the literacy challenged people without a developed fantasy include :
Emma Bull, Orson Scott Card, Richard Laymon, Faren Miller and Darrell Schweitzer
They gave Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess the short fiction award in the 1991 World Fiction awards for "A Midsummer Night's Dream" (an issue of the Sandman comic)
I'm sure Orson Scott Card will be crushed to know he's not a nerd. Any recommendations on what he should read to develop his sense of fantasy? Maybe Ender's Game would be a good start for him?
The horror writers association had a whole category of the bram stoker awards for comics, so i guess they're illiterate tools too.
Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore have both won Hugo awards for comics, but those are voted on by Worldcon members. It's theoretically possible that the 700 (out of several thousand) or so people who are members or attendees of worldcon and take the time to submit votes for literary awards are literacy challenged and lack a developed sense of fantasy.
Or maybe the worldview you grew up with is inaccurate.
But hey, believe whatever you want.
Darth --
Nil Mortifi, Sine Lucre
And the rest of that, which was muttered under their breath, was: "We've already bribed the appropriate politicians and judges, so we're certain of victory. It's good to be a megarich megacorporation. Money is power to run the government."
Bribery has become the geek's all-purpose excuse for his own political impotence and ignorance of the law.
The Disney studio has been around since 1923. You might think in that time it would have learned something about work-for-hire.
was it as good for her as it was for you?
Well, by that line of reasoning, the word "Literally" has also shifted in meaning. It is slowly shifting from meaning that the statement is not a metaphor to simply adding emphasis. Why can one word shift in meaning and the other not?
Perhaps I should also point out that in other languages, the word for "rape" is still tied more closely to "taken by force in a way that causes trauma": "Vergewaltigung" in German, "Violence" in French are two examples.
Let me guess you're the sort of person who quips that "piracy is not a good word to describe copyright infringement unless it is done by a bunch of cutthroats at sea", right?
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
They did however make the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy, which I did think was very well done - especially the second two. While they certainly have made a mockery of many many things, you can't say it is ALL bad.
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
Yeah, american style superhero comics are widely regarded as junk. French comic tradition? Art. (Not my opinion, and yes, born and and raised in Dschermanny)
Hold my beer and watch this!
I don't think there's anything stopping you from mounting your own take on, say, on Snow White or Cinderella. The problem is that Disney managed to get something of a stranglehold on the imagery.
I can't stand most of the stuff Disney puts out either, but isn't this a fairly big point. Disney own copyright on the characters and the art work, not on the story. Actually there are a two or three movies a year that rehash, remix or reset Snow White and Cinderella. No one has to pay Disney to make those.
And if they Disney versions are so saccharine as we both agree, what does it matter if they own the imagery? Remember even if they do, parody is fair use. It seems to me inconsistent to say that something is devoid of merit and the problem is that people are not allowed to copy it.
In fact it reminds me of the joke "The restaurant was bad. The food was vile -and the portions were too small"
Incidentally much of the debate on copyright here seems to fall into this trap. To be brutally honest there are two types of culture. One is hyped by a multinational like Disney. It is popular for a short time during which its corporate owner will jealously guard rights to it. After that it will likely disappear without trace. Basically this is pump'n'dump applied to culture.
There's another sort of culture, classical music and literature, decent paintings and the like that is hyped by no one and owned by no one. The only reason people still talk about it is because it is good. Actually most culture is not pump and dump culture - it's just that the media concentrates on hyping ephemera because people pay them to do so.
Now the problem here is that people complain like mad about the pump'n'dump form of culture being awful and they're right. Still if it is so awful, why does it bother you so much that it is not in the public domain? Why not just ignore it completely?
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
And by French I mean Belgian *waves hand*
Hold my beer and watch this!
Has there been any examples of things that moved into public domain, but then retroactively became private again after legislation changes?
Arguably It's a Wonderful Life, although that was a judicial ruling and not a legislative change, so it depends on how you want to look at it...
A little of both, really. They take stories like "The Little Mermaid" or Notre Dame de Paris and aggressively try to prevent others from telling their own versions.
Class envy and flamebait? No. I wrote this, because it's my belief having a permanent aristocracy is poison to a country and not in anyone's best interest, and large scale inheritances perpetuate a permanent upper class. I was writing in a general sense, referencing this specific issue - I guess folks interpreted this as flamebait. Oh well.
On a macro-level, capitalism allocates the resources to those who deserve them (i.e. if you're good at business, you make more money, which you then can put back into your business). But there needs to be a way society can collect payment for the infrastructure which allowed for the business success in the first place. The most efficient way to collect the needed funds is to keep those that know how to allocate capital with low taxes, so they can go on and efficiently allocate capital (i.e. low taxes for businesses), but society still needs to pay for the items which made this success possible. The most efficient and sensible way to do that, in my view, is to heavily tax inheritance.
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
In fact, I don't think you CAN copyright a character (you can copyright a specific instance of one, like a comic book, a still, etc).
Wrong. Copyright law covers the artistic expression that is the character - the look, concept, etc., etc. Basically, everything that makes that character be identified as that character is covered under copyright.
You trademark characters, and trademarks don't expire so long as you actively defend them.
Wrong again. While you can trademark a character, it's generally not done since it doesn't prevent someone else from using that character in their works - trademarks are for identifying the source of goods, not for identifying the goods themselves. The usual instance where a character will be trademarked is if it's being used as a mascot, thereby preventing other companies from using same/similar mascots.
Either someone owns his property or he is simply borrowing it from the state.
And this is a false dichotomy. Who says that there cannot be resources that are not property? Personally I think a lot of ideas cannot be property. A lot of these ideas are considered property only because of government intervention, and not any property intrinsic in the idea itself. Sure, we both agree that you can own your car, but can you own an equation? I find the shade of gray seriously lacking in your statement (by the way, this shade of gray is owned by Pantone). Sure the State may muddle in this, but it still has nothing to do with intrinsic ownership, which some would argue is all that matters.
The former is the heart of capitalism. The latter is socialism.
As is this.
I am a socialist, but I also am a capitalist! How is this possible? I believe in a free market, but I also believe in regulation. How is this possible? These terms are not mutually exclusive. Markets, or more importantly the constructs that constitute them, are free until they cause harm to people, just like normal human individuals should be. No sane person would tell me that I'm some strange tyrant for claiming (like many people much smarter than I) that your rights end the second they infringe on someones else, but for some reason to apply this to greed we become "socialists". This is a nice fallacy.
Sure, we might disagree where the line can be drawn, but the very fact that there is a line is the larger point.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
First off we have no idea what his children intend to do with the money. They might keep it, or they might not, who knows?
Or even whether the money is the (only) reason they're doing it. For all we know, they might want creative control.
Class envy and flamebait? No. I wrote this, because it's my belief having a permanent aristocracy is poison to a country and not in anyone's best interest, and large scale inheritances perpetuate a permanent upper class.
That's what he said, you're writing out of class envy. On some level you know that you lack any special talent or intelligence, and have no real ambition to do anything worthwhile with your life. Something- a character flaw, some poor decisions, or a the cruel hand of fate- has consigned you to live out your life as a have-not. And you feel robbed, so you turn your blind, unfocused anger towards your betters. Your life is shit- why should they have it any better, right? These people have everything you could possibly want, and they will live out their lives without so much as ever even knowing you exist- let alone read the online rants of some mass of resentment and envy that has taken human shape to hunch over a keyboard and blame them for his failings. Deep down you know you are incapable of anything but futile gestures, but I applaud you for wailing and gnashing your teeth anyway.
^_^
Well, that's half anyway; really the basis of copyright is encouraging authors to create and publish the most, in exchange for the least copyright, so as to maximize the net public benefit.
AFAIK nobody has even tried to find out what the optimal copyright term might be to do this.
A work cannot benefit the public unless it is both created, just so it exists, and published, so that people beyond the author can actually get and use it.
Thing is that the publishing industry isn't always very good at doing this. As evidenced by very popular works which had a hard time getting initially published.
Because the author apparently misjudged the value of his copyright. He should've held out for more. The publisher apparently was the wiser party to the agreement. But it was a voluntary agreement. No one twisted the arm of the author. He was happy enough with the deal to sign on the dotted line. Hindsight is no excuse for breaking the deal without consequences.
Not that much different from publishers (and others) wanting extensions of existing copyright terms. Even though all parties were happy with the original deal decades ago.
On the same theme, I've been thinking about trademark law lately. Marvel and DC have a co-trademark on the term superhero, which is frankly absurd. Could they trademark Spiderman? How does that work?
By the way, and I'm sorry to nitpick, but I get terribly annoyed by abuse of the word "literally". Literally is not a synonym for "metaphorically" . In fact, it's an antonym for metaphorically. It's also not a synonym for "truly" or "totally" or "badly" or whatever other word you might be able to fit in that sentence. For disney and friends to literally rape the public domain, the public domain would require a body, and representatives of disney and their friends would have to force unconsentual sex on that body. So while your comments are otherwise intelligent and well though out, the misuse of the word "literally" weakens your intellectual position.
Ender's game is way overrated. Back in the seventies I read a short story about a dude playing the most difficult video game in his history and being told after he won, that it wasn't a video game - he steered the entire earth defence grid against an alien fleet. The dude got an award for his action but hanged himself a day after because he couldn't stand the thought that the fleet might have been a civilian one and he attacked first assuming that it was a video game.
The story, as short as it is, makes a much more powerful impact than Ender's game. Sadly I don't remember the author, but judging by the style it might have been Robert Sheckley.
In some countries, there have been cases where copyright extension laws moved things which had already passed into the public domain back into copyright.
Tell me, have you ever read Pratchett's "The Wee Free Men"?
Two word counterpoint: "The Boondocks".
You've confused copyright with patents. A patent must be filed (published) in order to receive protection.
The right of first publication inheres on creation of a work. This is a common law right pre-dating the Statute of Anne, as well as a statutory right (I can't quote chapter and verse but I believe it was in most cases covered by state statutes until 1976, when it was brought into federal law, but I may be misremembering here).
Well, he writes copyright transfer contracts for a living, so I think he knows how copyright is granted. I don't think you need to lecture him on that. I think you're reading things that he isn't writing. This is what he said:
...and this is what the Constitution says:
That looks pretty much the same to me.
Examples of market failure and the legal fiction of the "rational actor" are hot stuff in legal theory right now. Your cold utilitarianism suggests to me that if you didn't graduate from Chicago, you would nevertheless have fit right in.
What's with the ad-hominem attacks? And Poisoning the Well, to boot.
It's okay for you to believe that, but the Constitution says otherwise. Monopolies are not granted lightly, so the Constitution seems to say precisely that innovators should be treated well merely for innovating.
No, it doesn't. I encourage you to re-read the text. It says that creators are to be granted exclusive rights for a limited period. You could interpret that as an intention that creators be treated equitably, but it's a stretch to say it says they should treated well. "Well', to me, implies treatment more favourable to the creator than merely "equitable".
Nice try, but no dice. The author was incentivized to create the work, but the incentives are both backward- and forward-reaching. If people with good ideas see too many other people with good ideas getting screwed, it potentially discourages future innovation.
Potentially. However, frankly speaking, creators have been getting screwed over by publishers since year dot, and as yet we have no shortage of creators, so I think you're making an Appeal to Fear. It appears that at least some creators are wise enough to read and negotiate their contracts appropriately.
At this point I feel I should emphasize that, speaking broadly, I don't disagree with the principle you're espousing, namely, freedom of contract (and the associated responsibility of adhering to said contract). But you have written your response as though 17 USC 203 were the only exception to that principle you've ever seen. But if this were the case, you could teach contract law to anyone in about three minutes. Most of contract law has grown up around the numerous exceptions to the "agreement plus consideration equals binding commitment" formula.
It is, however, the point of contract law at issue. One problem at a time, please.
True, but if you haven't recouped your expenses plus a significant profit after 35 years, you also probably do not have a property that anyone is going to try and reclaim.
So do you also believe that copyright itself should be limited to 35 years, regardless of the lifespan of the author? That is after all, by
Rgasuya aata! : I have been coding Perl and cannot tell where my fingers are now!
Either someone owns his property or he is simply borrowing it from the state. The former is the heart of capitalism. The latter is socialism.
The only difference between capitalism and socialism is who you're borrowing from. Under socialism it is the state, under capitalism it is a bank. They'll both shaft you just the same, unless you're rich enough that you don't need to borrow - like Jack's heirs. In which case normal rules don't apply to you.
You linked to something that directly contradicts what you said. Or is it in another section?
don't delude yourself. as long as there IS a state, capitalists operate at the mercy of that state. the flamebaiter might have been right on one aspect of his flamebaitery - the rich only get rich because the state allows it. if the whims of the state change, which can and has happened in more unstable regions than the USA, you can find yourself with nothing, and no recourse to anyone.
wouldn't it be a little better in the long view to support a system that supports its participants even if that means sacrificing some of what you're "entitled" to? capitalism shouldn't be so short-sighted.
Just as finally hollywood was getting things right in the way they were making Marvel movies, and not only adding proper special effects to match the abilities the superheroes might have, they also were able to give some good stories , compared to let's say that failed attempt in the mid 80s to bring captain america to the big screen.
I got to say though, it does not surprise me, it is almost like it smells of some sort of shady dealing. Either someone wanted to hurt disney, and make them spend money on nothing , or bring up their own stocks, I wonder how much he will hold out for, before giving disney the rights they are looking for. 1billion dollars sounds right?
But Disney doesn't directly control what Pixar creates.
Only because they choose not to interfere. Pixar has a few flops and I promise you that state of affairs will not last longer than this sentence. Disney is smart enough to not interfere with something that is working but I promise you they will get heavily involved the moment something goes even slightly off the rails.
If someone truly owns his property, then it is his to do with as he sees fit.
There's your problem right there.
Yes, in capitalism you're free to give something to who you like, but in laissez-faire capitalism, there's also no Government to legislate against people who have made copies of information that you've chosen to distribute.
Part of why parents work so hard is to provide for their children. Is it ok for parents to provide for their children? What about parents who die when the children are still young? Should the money be taken back as soon as they are 18?
Nice straw man.
When I see you giving a hundred million of YOUR inheritance back to the state so you can live off your own labor, I'll consider your ideas seriously. Until then, I'll accept that they are just the result of class envy.
So how much hundred million have Jack Kirby Heirs given to the state? None? So why should we take them seriously when they claim they want to keep something from the public domain?
Either someone owns his property or he is simply borrowing it from the state.
BINGO! have you read the US Constitution? It allows authors and inventors limited time monopolies on their writings and discoveries, NOT ownership. And it isn't the government who owns the work, it's the people. Once a work reaches the public domain it belongs to everyone. Not the sate; the state can't even regulate a public domain work.
This "property" belongs to all of us. Its creator only has a limited time monopoly on its distribution. Too bad we, the people, have let them, the corporate greedheads, steal our property and call it theirs.
Free Martian Whores!
What should worry you is the fact that, thanks to Disney and massive amounts of bribery to congress, "copyright" now means that works don't pass into the public domain for nearly a century.
Author's life + 95 years. That is much more than a century.
Kirby was involved in the creation of both Spider-Man and Iron Man. Yes, Steve Ditko redesigned the character that Kirby created and drew the character's first stories. Don Heck drew the first story appearance of Iron Man because Jack couldn't draw everything. Kirby, interestingly enough, drew the covers for both first appearances of Spider-Man and Iron Man.
This is all well documented with citations on wikipedia.
Joe Simon also had a hand in creating Spider-Man. If you want to go back far enough, there's a pulp character called The Spider that one could argue was partial inspiration for Spider-Man.
-- Boycott Shell
There is actually a porno titled Pocahontas. I don't know if it has singing fucking animals, but it is rated XXX so I guess it's possible.
Rather that explain how I know this, I will simply post anon.
And to bring it back to the computer geek world, Google introduced its Chrome Browser with a Comic.
Just to add to the avalanche of repudiation on offer here. I figure that rather than point at comic books which have merit as comic books I would explain *why* they have more merit as comic books than as regular works of fiction or cinema.
There are some comic books which cannot be translated into other formats because they are. Well. Comic books.
Comic books allow for a particular style of narrative where words and images can be juxtaposed in a way they simply can't be in any other way. Sure a film can have a voice over but a comic book can group anything up to about 150 words together commenting, sometimes obliquely, on a single image. Also comic books allow for a type of storytelling that cannot be achieved in a regular novel or in a film. Neil Gaiman's Sandman relies on rich visuals and clever verbal scripting but beyond this on the juxtaposition of same with specific images accompanying items of speech or commentary.
To give a concrete example in a comic book you can have a sequence of visuals of events that are happening in a particular mise en scene but have box outs of commentary verbalising some completely separate and quite tenuously related incident that requires no visual accompaniment and established through conventions of font/box-out colouring etc. Although this can be done in film it's not a technique that can be deployed as effectively or as often due to the fact that the speech and filmed visuals have to synch far more closely than in a printed medium.
It is for these reasons that comic book afficionados refer to certain works as "unfilmable". I have to admit that even though I don't really enjoy the story of "Watchmen" for example the comic book has more artistic merit than the recent film precisely because of "Watchmen" the comic book being the story's intended medium.
I would recommend anyone who does not understand why comics continue to endure seek out the works of Scott McCloud such as "Understanding Comics" which explain in a great deal more depth the specific advantages of the sequential art medium.
www.nodicerpg.com - Some RP stuff for free, some not so for free, but still cheap.
It was also his right to sell his property to Marvel--which is exactly what he did. And his heirs have no more right to take it back now that I do to go demand back my old car that I sold to someone else years ago.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Everything's gotta come back to Jobs and co. doesn't it?
Copyright law includes a back out clause that allows renogiating sales of copyrights except for works for hire. Why would it be unfari for Kirby to sell rights to Marvel with the knowledge that he could get them back after Marvel got to exploit them and at least have a second chance to negotiate with full knowledge of the value of his works?
What's changed over the years are the rules as to what constitutes a work for hire. Today we have fairly clear statute, but the statute doesn't apply to Jack's work.
Disney pushed hard for nearly indefinite ownership of copyright & stifling the public domain. Now it's coming back to bite them on the ass. I love it.
YMMV, of course, but I think The Incredibles is a better Fantastic Four movie than any of the official, licensed Fantastic Four movies made.
No sig for the moment.
How do you like them copyright lengthy laws now?
I'll wager this will cost you more then the money you made with extended copyrights.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
On a macro-level, capitalism allocates the resources to those who seize and hold on to them (deserving has nothing to do with it).
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
Crivins!
No good deed goes unpunished. - Avon, Blake's 7
Your question assumes that "one of the women in [his] life" would have sufficient expertise to speak about Disney's copyright tactics. Yet there's no evidence that that's the case, given that most people lack that expertise.
It also assumes that only rape victims have the moral standing and experience necessary to compare things to rape. If the analogy were murder, rather than rape, would you argue that only murder victims should be allowed to speak?
I suppose one could argue that the only person who could evaluate the comparison would be a person (most likely female) who's both a copyright lawyer and a rape victim. No doubt, several of those people exist. Yet even so, this hypothetical person can't speak for all of us, since in forcing the Sonny Bono act et al. upon us, Disney's actions victimize the collective, not just the individual.
No one person can directly articulate the effect those actions have had on public discourse. OTOH, I'm guessing a decent number of people have landed in jail or prison, at least in part because of those laws. Given the state of the U.S. penal system, a few of those inmates have probably been raped, in the most literal sense. Would you speak for them as well?
In other words, you're being every bit as reductive and offensive as the OP (if not more so), and your righteous indignation is both misplaced and of no real help to rape victims, real or hypothetical.
The question then becomes whether or not ideas are property. If you think they are, why do you keep giving them away for free by posting here?
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
Almost like they're trying to appeal to 8 year olds~
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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The demographic they serve makes them a lot of money. That's their business. BTW, a lot of little girls like the quality that's being produces.
Get off you high horse and stop thinking you're some elite prodigal that gets to determine what quality is and what people should enjoy.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Well, even though you're an AC, I'll issue a brief response.
You're entirely incorrect. Not only do I enjoy my life and own several businesses, but I also enjoy economic theory. When I think about my businesses, allocation of capital and the need to run a society, I come to the conclusions I've stated above.
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
> Disney said in a statement, "The notices involved are an attempt to terminate rights
> seven to 10 years from now, and involve claims that were fully considered in the acquisition."
Nothing to see here, folks. Move along, move along.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
They're not over at Pixar/Ghibli telling them what to put in their movies, they just slap their names on the boxes
To be fair, Disney has had a direct hand in the casting for voice-over dubbing of the Ghibli classics. Most to rather surprisingly good effect.
I believe he is a "Get off my lawn" aged person, because according to http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/rape definition #4:
5. Archaic. the act of seizing and carrying off by force.
Which would apply to this particular case. So read up a little on words before you go off slamming people for using them in odd ways. Unless you really believe that when an army rapes a countryside they are truely raping every woman in site rather then taking food and supplies.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Neither does a copyrighted work - it *transfers* money from one person to another.
Did you read past that sentence? You know, where I said "so long as there are customers to buy them?" You're arguing a distinction without a difference based on a hyper-literal, selective interpretation of an offhand statement.
Try taking some Colon Blow lighten up.
As I and other have posted above, though obscure, what he is saying makes sense if you look up the alternate definitions for each of these words.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/literally def 4:
4. in effect; in substance; very nearly; virtually.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/rape def 5:
5. Archaic. the act of seizing and carrying off by force.
Disney has virtually carried off by force the public domain works, and never given anything back.
Does this sentence make more sense in the context of the argument?
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
"Good writers borrow from other writers. Great writers steal from them outright." -Aaron Sorkin
"Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal." -T. S. Eliot
"Plagiarize
Let no one else's work evade your eyes
Remember why the good Lord made your eyes
So don't shade your eyes
But plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize
Only be sure always to call it please "research" -Tom Lehrer
-Dave Haynie
Give me a fucking break.
You don't cite any examples of the "massive bribery," of course. The truth is that copyright law was revised to be relevant to modern times. You want copyright law to remain like it was centuries ago when we didn't live in a world of mass media in which properties continue to make money for copyright holders for longer than a century and don't deteriorate due to digital distribution.
Then you make a really stupid statement about how they "quite literally raped the public domain dry." First off, making money off a copyright property you own isn't evil, no matter how much anti-capitalist garbage you read around here. Second, you're saying they literally raped the public domain, which means you believe they actually did forcefully penetrate an orifice with a penis of some sort. You may want to look up the definition of "literally" before abusing it.
Finally, you make the crazy claim that the characters have been "treated like shit for years," despite hugely successful film franchises like Spider-man, Ironman, the Hulk, and more as well as countless videogames and comic books spanning decades. If you missed the summary, you'll notice that the companies have "licensed media rights," meaning they signed a licensing agreement which isn't a one-sided deal--someone representing Kirby also signed it. They didn't steal it. It was a legitimate deal. Slashdot is positioning it as some kind of reclamation from the evil media companies, because that's Slashdot's agenda to rile up people like you.
No sane system would throw beloved properties into the public domain and disallow the creators' estate to profit from the public's continued commercial interest in those properties. Despite what you've read around here, there's nothing wrong with making money off of something. Public domain access to popular superheroes isn't a right or a necessity of life.
If you're so opposed to copyrights, that must mean I can do anything I want with GPL code including violating the terms, since the GPL is a copyright license according to the FSF and relies on copyright law to have any legal power.
You've confused copyright with patents. A patent must be filed (published) in order to receive protection.
The right of first publication inheres on creation of a work. This is a common law right pre-dating the Statute of Anne
Well, that's an extremely common misunderstanding, actually. Remember, the House of Lords reversed Donaldson. Remember also that under the stationer's copyright, it was the publishers, not the authors, who had the sole right to publish. It was only after the Statute of Anne had become law that the publishers claimed that the authors had infinitely long-lived copyrights at common law. Which was entirely because the publishers had gotten their authors to sign contracts saying that all the rights of the author had be sold to the publisher in perpetuity. And even that was only after the publishers had tried, and failed, to get the statute amended to provide them with longer terms. No one had ever, ever had the idea that there was a common law copyright until long after Anne had been enacted.
But remember, I was discussing policy.
I will agree that it is certainly good policy to protect authors with regard to their manuscripts. A work does not usually spring like Athena, full-formed from the brow of the author. Usually it takes a significant amount of time, one draft followed by another, until the work is finally finished, or abandoned. If the work is finished, the author may decide to try to have it published, or abandon it. And having made attempts to publish it, whether by convincing a publisher to do it, or by self-publishing, the author may nevertheless abandon the work if those attempts are unsuccessful.
I say that if an author has abandoned his work to be left unpublished, then there is no public benefit in granting that decision the force of law to back it up. The public benefits when it can enjoy a work, when it can preserve that work for posterity, when it can make use of that work in the preparation of other works, and so forth. But if the greatest book ever written in the history of the world is sitting in a shoebox in a closet in a house in Peoria, and if the author takes the MS out and burns it in the fireplace, then I say that the public has not enjoyed even the tiniest iota of benefit from that work. And since public benefit is the touchstone of copyright policy, that author, having abandoned the work, should not have continued to have rights in it. The world would have been better off if someone had broken in, stolen the MS, and published it against the wishes of the author.
So I stand by my position that the policy goals of copyright are to encourage the creation AND publication of works, but to grant the least amount of protection necessary in order to accomplish the most amount of encouragement, so that the public is most able to enjoy the works without interference.
It's okay for you to believe that, but the Constitution says otherwise. Monopolies are not granted lightly, so the Constitution seems to say precisely that innovators should be treated well merely for innovating.
No, it says that Congress may -- it's not obligated, so there's no 'should' -- grant certain rights to authors if it promotes the progress of science. Secret books do not accomplish this as I've already discussed.
Your cold utilitarianism suggests to me that if you didn't graduate from Chicago, you would nevertheless have fit right in.
That's funny. I always viewed copyright as on the road to socialism, what with it being a system of government-based subsidies meant to benefit the public at large, though without abandoning free markets altogether either. And I like it like that. I'm just very hard-nosed about maximizing public benefit. I am neither pro- nor anti-author or publisher. Whatever they can get for themselves while the public benefits as much as possible is fine with me.
The author was incentivized to create the work, but the incentives are both backward- and forward-reaching. If people with good ideas s
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
I encourage you to re-read the text. It says that creators are to be granted exclusive rights for a limited period.
A minor nit: It says that creators may be granted the rights, not 'are to be granted.'
The copyright clause grants Congress a power which it may choose to exercise, or not, at its whim; provided that if it does exercise the power, it stays within the bounds set by the clause.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
He said "literally raped," which implies literal rape.
And nobody "pilfered the public domain." These are all licensed properties, as stated in the article. I know Slashdot is filled to the brim with nutjobs teetering on the edge of full-blown anarchy due to their irrational hatred for any kind of capitalism, but none of these superheroes were in the public domain to begin with. You don't have some right or necessity of life that guarantees access to superheroes, you fucking loon.
What I replied to was a statement about INHERITANCES and MONEY. If you consider money to be imaginary property, that's your problem. Maybe the problem is that you have none so you think it is imaginary?
Geez, you're still spewing your insane crap in comments to this article.
Disney got a stranglehold because their version was the most successful and popular. People chose it. This drives you crazy. The fact you despise singing animals doesn't make them "vile, cynical bastards." I bet you've never met any of the directors or animators who work or worked at Disney that you're making judgements on.
Now you're going back on your earlier statement that they rape the public domain and claiming they instead rape cultures and twist through "sheer hatred." All they're doing is putting out cartoons. If Disney degrades everything it touches, don't watch their movies. Nobody's forcing you. I repeat--nobody is forcing you to watch a Disney movie, you kook.
Disney isn't some faceless, supernatural entity. It's just another entertainment company that employs animators, writers, and directors who put out some things I like and some I dislike. They affect my life in no way at all, just as they affect your life in no way at all. All entertainment is optional. You're every goofy, anti-capitalist, anti-copyright stereotype Slashdot has ever produced, willingly consuming what Disney puts out just so you have a reason to get up on a tired, old soapbox and use irrational, emotional words like "rape" and "evil." You like playing the victim because it gives you a reason to bitch and moan. Eject your Lion King DVD and quit complaining.
You can't be serious. Your fanhood of Pixar is clouding your view. Disney owns Pixar--that means they control Pixar. They employ Pixar's workers, and Pixar answers to Disney. Pixar's founder, Steve Jobs, is on Disney's board of directors.
No, that's what Disney was before they bought Pixar. Now that Pixar is Disney, they are the producer.
So, they violently and sexually assaulted the public domain?
That's exactly how I see it.
Free Martian Whores!
Disney bought Pixar. They're not just a distributor anymore. They own the joint. The name "Pixar" now simply refers to that particular Disney animation studio, and that studio answers to Disney management, no matter how much you insist they have no influence on what Pixar puts out. Steve Jobs is on Disney's board of directors, and Lasseter is Disney's creative officer.
Pixar == Disney
that's too bad, I was kind of looking forward to the movie of "Slashdot and the Magical Ponies" due out next year. I hear they were going to have singing CowboyNeals
You said nothing about a "permanent aristocracy", you railed against inheritance. You claimed it should be nothing more than to put someone through school and start them off.
Well, pal, let me explain real life to you. When my parents die, I expect YOU to have no say in how much of their estate they can pass on to me. According to you, since I'm already through school and well into life I deserve nothing from the estate. I say, it's THEIR money, they get to say who it goes to, not you. You have nothing to do with it.
As for my being part of a "permanent aristocracy", I think you need to look elsewhere.
No, large scale OPPORTUNITY perpetuates a permanent "upper class", as you call it. Do you think that inheritance laws that prevent Donald Trump from passing his money along will do anything to stop him from hiring his kids in high paying jobs, thus setting them up for life? Did you think the political contacts Joseph Kennedy set up through his life would simply turn their backs on his kids when he died, even if he hadn't passed some money along?
Yeah, stupidity like the Kardasians who have no brains and shouldn't have money might not happen, but they are hardly a permanent upper class. If the kids don't do anything to produce money, they'll have nothing to pass along and the "permanent" becomes transitory. Once the public gets tired of seeing them waste their lives, they'll become "Celebrity Rehab" cast, and then dissappear.
On a macro-level, capitalism allocates the resources to those who deserve them...
Ok, now I know you are either a troll or just high. It's communism that says "to those according to their needs". Capitalism allocates resources to those who produce. Those who produce get to allocate it from there.
But there needs to be a way society can collect payment for the infrastructure which allowed for the business success in the first place.
There is. It's called "taxes". The rich in this country pay the vast majority of all taxes. It's only the envious and class haters that think they need to pay even more.
The most efficient and sensible way to do that, in my view, is to heavily tax inheritance.
The taxes were already paid on that money. Overtax the earning, overtax the savings? Right. "Heavily taxing the inheritance" is just another way of saying "confiscate".
Specifically, he says that securing publication is "half" the reason we have a copyright system in the first place. So I'll say it again: you don't have to publish at all to secure a copyright (as distinguished from patent law), so that must not be "half" the reason we have copyright.
First, I said that encouraging creation and publication was half the reason. The other half of the rationale of copyright is to have as little copyright as possible, if any at all. So I guess that encouraging publication would be more like one quarter.
Second, I think you're assuming that the current Copyright Act is synonymous with good copyright policy. I'd disagree. I've already discussed my reasoning for this in a recent reply post.
A better Copyright Act would grant a provisional right for unpublished but unabandoned works upon creation, so that an author who seeks to publish is not beaten to the punch by someone who has gained access to the manuscript. However, should an author abandon his work unpublished, the work should enter the public domain rapidly in the hopes that someone will do what the author did not, and get that work to the public.
Note that pre-1978 US copyright law only granted protection to registered, published works. Publication was key. But if an author was willing to publish without registering, then he got no copyright. This was appropriate since copyright was meant to encourage creation and publication that otherwise would not occur. An author who would publish without registration apparently needed no encouragement in the form of copyright, so he didn't get one.
This is the sort of thing we need to get back to.
I happen to believe that people will often create without any incentive at all--forgetting this leads to all sorts of strange interpretations of copyright law. The law wasn't made because without it, no one would create. The law was made to incentivize creation, so that it would happen more often. So anything that makes it happen less often would be against Constitutional policy, regardless of whether creation would stop altogether.
Well, I wouldn't say without any incentive at all. There are many 'natural' incentives to create and publish. Some people want to be famous. Some people create art for art's sake. Some people want to make money, but manage to do so in ways that don't involve copyrights (e.g. selling specific copies, taking commissions, providing artistic labor, patronage, etc.). In the case of this discussion, we are all writing copyrightable posts, but I sincerely doubt that any of us would not have written, online discussions even if there were no such thing as copyright at all.
Copyright is just an additional incentive, so regarding it being meant to get creation to happen more often, I agree with you. But that's not enough. We don't merely want creation to happen more often. We want works to be created and published more than they would be otherwise, since a created but unpublished work is of little value to the public. And we want that work to be in the public domain as soon as possible, since any given work is more valuable to the public when in the public domain, than when copyrighted. And we want the copyright to be as minimal in scope as possible, while still acting as an incentive, since more freedom for the public is better than less.
Merely maximizing creation and ignoring the rest would be bad policy.
So while one copyright law might encourage less creation than another, that's not the only basis on which to judge them. It is entirely possible that a copyright act in which there was, oh, 90% as much creation as we currently have, but which had drastically shorter terms, a greater rate of publication of created works, more freedom for the public, etc. could easily be superior to what's on the books today.
He is free to assert that the law is a bad idea, but his position that it is bad because it somehow violates basic contract principles is simply untenable. There are so many laws on the books inv
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
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AFAIK nobody has even tried to find out what the optimal copyright term might be to do this.
Well, it'll tend to change over time, and it would be tricky to figure out, but I'd be satisfied with an honest and well-executed attempt to figure it out. There was an interesting paper by Pollock a few years ago that came up with 15 years.
My general strategy is to allow the copyright holder to decide. By requiring registration to get a copyright on a published work, and by having a term that is extremely short, say 2 years, with multiple renewals permitted at the end of the term, where registration and renewal require affirmative acts by the author and token payments, the author will likely only register works for which he was incentivized by copyright, and will likely only renew works up to the point where copyright incentivized him.
In practice, during the nearly two centuries that the US required registration and renewal, most creative works were not registered, and most of those that were, were not renewed. Putting these policies into place again (and dispensing with anything that would interfere with it, such as our participation in Berne) would also tend to align with how we handle patents (which must be applied for, and periodically renewed until they finally terminate, lest they terminate prematurely), and federal trademarks (which must be registered and periodically renewed).
It's not an unusual burden for authors, nor is it more than minimal to simply evidence a desire to have and keep a copyright on specific works, rather than as a blanket policy.
Thing is that the publishing industry isn't always very good at doing this. As evidenced by very popular works which had a hard time getting initially published.
Oh sure. Of course, self-publishing is still an option for the author who is certain his work will be a hit, but who cannot convince any third party publishers of this. And modern technology has made self publishing easier than it used to be.
Not that much different from publishers (and others) wanting extensions of existing copyright terms. Even though all parties were happy with the original deal decades ago.
Well, I'm interested in improving copyright law for the benefit of the public. If maximizing the public benefit is good for authors and publishers, or bad for them, I'm not very interested, save for what that means for the public. I don't want a policy that is dictated by either authors or publishers, but if it is in everyone's interests to give them some particular aid, that's perfectly okay. They shouldn't be listened to, but they're not the enemy either.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Yeah, that's what everyone who likes superhero comic books says. But very few of them have actually read, or like those. They also told me how deep watchmen was. I am no longer open to taking literary suggestions from them.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
"Either someone owns his property or he is simply borrowing it from the state."
Got news for you, you don't OWN your property. You fail to pay taxes ONCE and they'll take it away from you. you're in a constant state of borrowing, no matter what you think.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
And if they Disney versions are so saccharine as we both agree, what does it matter if they own the imagery?
What you're missing is that Disney freely used public domain works to build their own work on, then bribed Congress to keep their own works from falling into the public domain themselves.
They get to have their cake and eat the Brothers Grimm's, too. It doesn't matter whether their stuff is garbage or high art, they want to take but don't want to give back. The Disney movies Snow White, Cinderella, Pinnochio, etc should have all been in the public domain long ago, and would have had the Disney corporation not bribed Congress.
Free Martian Whores!
Are you joking, or just a troll?
The two are not mutually exclusive.
Free Martian Whores!
Hyperbolic overuse of the words "literally" and "raped" has literally raped them of all meaning! (everyone else was discussing semantics; I just wanted to be popular)
How clueless are you exactly?
Definition of Rape. Educate yourself.
You don't cite any examples of the "massive bribery," of course.
You obviously have paid no attention to how government works, or of the fact that it got so bad during the various copyright extension maneuvers that the dishonorable Howard Berman was alternately referred to by "D-Disney" or "The Representative From Hollywood" rather than by his own district.
You may want to look up the definition of "literally" before abusing it.
See above. You may want to go back to school and finish something further than the third grade.
Finally, you make the crazy claim that the characters have been "treated like shit for years," despite hugely successful film franchises like Spider-man, Ironman, the Hulk, and more as well as countless videogames and comic books spanning decades.
The ability for various places/entities to spin out garbage after garbage after garbage after shovelware does not indicate "success." In fact, Marvel recently admitted they had made incredibly choices in a press conference where Ira Rubenstein spoke the words "Actually, wait ... we are not doing crappy movie-based games anymore. You can quote me on that."
No sane system would throw beloved properties into the public domain and disallow the creators' estate to profit from the public's continued commercial interest in those properties.
Wrong. No sane system would make it so that those whose entire success is built on the pilfering, plundering, yes raping, pillaging, (insert other word of choice here) of the public domain, and then spending decades sending lawyers against anyone else who chooses to create something else based on the same public domain work on the basis of "copyright" or "trademark", can prevail.
The purpose of copyright is to, and I quote the constitution (which you no doubt have never read), "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." The "limits" today are so long as to be meaningless. They do not allow for the required return of writings and discoveries and art into the public domain; instead, they serve as a brake and impediment to progress. It says nothing about passing these on to "heirs", nor handing them as perpetual goods-of-sale to corporations.
Once you're dead, your writings should be in the public domain. Your kids want to get paid for writing something? Let them go learn to write and come up with something new on their own that is worth buying.
Says the person who's never tried actually reading a sophisticated comic? Hate to break it to you, but not everything is Superman. And if you want a major culture that doesn't bat an eyelash at adults reading comics, and where in fact the majority of comics are probably written FOR adults, you might want to look into a little place called Japan.
Got news for YOU. The money and property I inherit from my parents has had the taxes paid on it already. Taxing it again is unethical and immoral.
I'm sorry but this is the typical ranting that completely ignores the other parts of the "success" equation. You don't just create a comic book character and then sit back as it magically becomes the next Superman. This is the typical mistake of thinking that just an idea is worth 99% of a successful product or IP.
I wrote this, because it's my belief having a permanent aristocracy is poison to a country and not in anyone's best interest, and large scale inheritances perpetuate a permanent upper class.
Permanent?
Never underestimate the ability of your lazy, talentless heirs to squander everything you spent your whole life working for.
Breakfast served all day!
Unconsummated...? Does that mean that Disney haven't yet "done the deed" to the catalogue of Marvel characters...?
"there needs to be a way society can collect payment for the infrastructure which allowed for the business success in the first place."
Well, off the top of my head I can think of many ways that person already paid society.
Since they managed to accumulate enough to trigger inheritance taxes we can presume they had a fairly high salary along the way and thus most likely they paid a bit more than their "fair share" in annual income taxes.
Suppose they augmented their income with some lucky picks in the stock market - that would have trigged capital gains taxes either in the past or future.
When they grew their business and created a chapter S corp they contributed to society twice - once when their S corp paid income taxes on the corporate return and again when they filed and paid their income tax on their personal return. So they had the privilege of repaying society twice for the same income.
Most likely they drove a car and would have paid sales tax, registration taxes, and gas taxes. For their education they would have paid a public or private institution a large sum to obtain a degree.
If they owned a nice house then they paid property tax each and every year. The nicer the house the more they paid. They also paid money to the school board, even for the 40 years they owned the house and didn't send any children to the school.
Every month they paid 10% of their utility bills to the local municipality. This includes their water, gas, electric, phones, cable tv, etc.
Every time they went to the store they paid their sales tax. I'm sure along the way they bought a nice car or boat and had to pay a little extra in "luxury tax".
You can see there were many, many ways that society "collect[ed] payment for the infrastructure" during their lives.
What the inheritance tax really amounts to is a decision that *we* (society) want their money. We have determined that their kids are probably stupid and *we* can spend it better. In fact, the kids probably don't need it anyway. In short, we're filled with envy that someone else has the money so our greed compels us to take.
I appreciate your coherent responses. I do disagree with you, but it is becoming clear that I don't disagree with you as much as I thought I did. And you're teaching me some things, which I appreciate.
Good debate is always fun.
It seems clear, from the way capitalism tends toward eventual oligopolies and monopolies, or the way that certain deals are made impossible by irrational greed or similar, that dogmatic adherence and deontological approaches and mechanical jurisprudence often warp good ideas into bad ones.
Indeed. I have no ideological attachment to capitalism, or any other sort of economic system. I value the efficiencies and other benefits that capitalism yields -- or that we're told it yields -- but if the system can throw itself off the rails due to a sort of positive feedback, which results in those benefits no longer accruing, then by all means, let's regulate it so that we can have the benefits and reduce the risks.
Similarly with copyright, I want to maximize the public benefit. However that is accomplished, within the bounds of the Constitution and our civil liberties, I don't much care. I'm willing to put anything on the table, and I'm willing to consider any sort of scheme, or scope and length of protection. The effect of copyright upon authors and publishers (whether professional publishers or self-publishing authors) is an important factor to be considered, but it is only a factor, with the ultimate issue being the public good. If granting a copyright for a million years would benefit the public more than any alternative, I'd support that. If abolishing copyright would benefit the public more than any alternative, I'd support that.
But I suspect, and maybe this is just a failure of imagination on my part, that an ideal copyright law would strongly resemble the 1909 Act, its amendments, and its predecessors more than it would the 1976 Act and its amendments. Well, except for organization; the older acts are not nearly so well organized as the current act.
the simple choice to include a particular kind of work in the statute is unique and paternalistic; the original statutes didn't cover a lot of what is today considered copyrightable (my favorite example is boat hulls--WTF??).
Oh, the boat hulls are in Title 17, but their chapter really has nothing to do with the Copyright Act. It's argued that it is sui generis pursuant to the commerce clause. But since it protects original useful devices, it probably isn't even constitutional, unless you think that the copyright and patent clauses are superfluous, and that Congress could ignore them in favor of the commerce clause instead.
A better example would be architecture, which was added to the actual Copyright Act in 1990 as part of Berne compliance, and it's worth considering now.
There has not been a material increase in the number of architectural works created and published since the enactment of the AWCPA, which appears to be attributable to its passage. This suggests that architects don't really respond much to the incentive of copyright. The buildings that get designed and built seem to do so according to natural incentives. They'd pretty surely get built just the same even in the absence of copyright for architectural works.
So we shouldn't grant copyrights for architectural works, since it has no beneficial incentivizing effect, but nevertheless causes harm to the public, as copyright inevitably does, yielding a net public detriment.
This is as opposed to, say, books, or sound recordings, or movies, where their authors do appear to respond strongly to the incentive of copyright, though we're probably granting them more than the minimum to incentivize them as well, which is not good when calculating the net effect for the public.
While deciding what class of works to protect or not may be unique, in that it is a case-by-case issue, I don't think it's all that paternalistic. We're not offering the subsidy of copyright to authors because we feel sorry for t
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Got news for you, you don't OWN your property. You fail to pay taxes ONCE and they'll take it away from you.
Got news for YOU. The money and property I inherit from my parents has had the taxes paid on it already. Taxing it again is unethical and immoral.
So what? If you have a job, I assume from your tone that you don't have actually have one, any income is taxed by the IRS before you receive it and then taxed again by the state government through sales taxes, gasoline taxes, and etc. after you buy something with it. There are plenty of people in this world with more talent than you, but born to parents with no money, and end up nowhere in life. All the ambition in the world won't help these people. Why should society let someone with as little talent as you, for instance, get a free ride because you happened to be born to the right family that is well off from its own inheritance? Also, if your grandparents farmed, for instance, and buying the land after World War II when farmland was cheap, farmed it, and you happened to inherit the land and decide to sell it, what happens to the capital gains taxes on the land? If your grandparents sold the land the capital gains taxes would be astronomical, would letting you get off without paying any capital gains taxes be reasonable? Of course not! Granted, the way that capital gains taxes are structured for small family farmers is absurd anyway, but not the capital gains tax itself in nearly every other case.
Oh yeah, and taxation "double" or otherwise is entirely moral and ethical. The GP may also have been referencing the consequences of not paying local property taxes, I think at least. However, the government will confiscate money, Social Security retirement benefits, and property if you are seriously delinquent on income taxes. You really have to be stupid though for this to happen though, not contacting the IRS after receiving delinquency letters and making really stupid arguments in Tax Court, are both good ways though.
Impersonating Tycho from Penny Arcade since before there was a PA.
If you trust in yourself... and believe in your dreams... and follow your star... you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.
Disney is the Queen of the Elves.
I think you need to reread my post above and depersonalize it. I don't know you, and I don't care if you get your inheritance or not. My point is that 1) Capitalism provides people the opportunity to allocate capital as they see fit and 2) if you allocate/invest your capital wisely, you are rewarded with more capital (IOW, invest well, get a return) 3) There are certain costs associated with running a society (roads, military, etc).
With those items as a given and with the understanding that producers must hand over a portion of their production to maintain a workable society (i.e. taxes), the objective should be to take as little away from the producers as possible. When someone knows how to create value, they will generally spend their money on creating more value, benefiting society at large (not always the case, of course, but generally true). When someone receives an inheritance they have, by definition not created the value that money represents and therefore may not have the skills to further create value.
My point is, why should another business-person working hard to build a business pay higher taxes because people want to leave an inheritance to their kids? From a macro-economic standpoint, this doesn't make sense - let the person creating money keep more of their money and let those that are receiving inheritances benefit from the business contacts and advice received from their parents (as you allude to above).
Your counter argument seems to be "well, it's not fair". But fair doesn't matter - I'm talking in purely economically mathematical terms here.
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Your point was none of those things. Your point was: Enough inheritance to go to a great school, start a business, get married, etc, etc - sure.
Implicit in that "enough" statement is YOU getting to decide how much is enough. Why do YOU think you have the right to make that decision for anyone else? Claiming that kind of right comes from class envy and hatred. YOU can't make it there, so you don't want anyone else to be there, either.
That is NOT what you said, and that is NOT the logical result of your argument. Your argument is about "enough".
My point is, why should another business-person working hard to build a business pay higher taxes because people want to leave an inheritance to their kids?
They aren't. The economy isn't a zero sum game. My inheriting more than you want me to doesn't increase your taxes. The taxes on that money were already paid. It belongs to my parents. They have the right to give it to me, if they want. Why should _I_ have to pay higher taxes (an essentially unlimited "death tax") just because YOU can't succeed and you think you have the right to decide how much is enough for me?
When someone receives an inheritance they have, by definition not created the value that money represents...
You're pulling that "definition" out of your ass.
My parents own a few hundred acre farm. I've worked on that farm since I was old enough to toddle. My brothers and sisters have worked on that farm since THEY were old enough to toddle. When my parents die, I fully expect the farm to pass intact to my siblings and myself, even though I've already been to school and I've already married and bought a house. I don't give a fuck what YOU think is "enough", and your claim that "by definition" I've done nothing to create the value that the inheritance represents is simply and utterly bullshit.
I'm sorry you have no money and think that taking it away from other people is how to make yourself feel better about it, but your sad state of affairs isn't my problem.
Your counter argument seems to be "well, it's not fair". But fair doesn't matter - I'm talking in purely economically mathematical terms here.
You are talking in purely socialist terms here. From those who have to those who haven't. Don't pretend you are taking "mathematical". You are insulting everyone's intelligence here when you make that claim.
Based on your arguments, and continued participation in this discussion, you care very much whether I get my inheritance -- you don't want it to happen, you want me to get nothing, because I've already got "enough". So you won't mind if I tell you to put YOUR money where your mouth is. When I see YOU handing your inheritance to the government I'll consider your arguments as something more than class envy.
That's fine - and you're right I'm done with this conversation... for your sake I hope you're young. For my sake, I hope I don't end up with kids like you (because I've got at least a few nickels, dude). There are at least a few economic counter arguments to my opinions, but you've deliniated none of them; you've just screamed and whined. You don't have to be a "socialist" to think the way I do. In fact, my opinions were inspired by Warren Buffett (one of the richest men in the world), and when I looked at his opinions, they made sense. Bill Gates also doesn't believe in uber-large inheritances. It would be very difficult to accuse either Bill or Warren as being "socialist"
And here's a (somewhat) friendly hint: estate taxes are already a total bitch - they are taxed at somewhere in the neighborhood of 50% of inheritable asset value. In many cases, this forces liquidation of hard assets (like real estate and/or businesses), triggering capital gains, which in turn force you to liquidate assets, which trigger capital gains / estate taxes, which in turn trigger more liquidation, etc - if managed incorrectly the 50% inheritance tax turns into a 75% inheritance tax. If managed properly, the 50% tax turns into tax credits (in a way).
Also, tenant in common ownership of any asset among siblings really is unsustainable; any number of case studies show this. It causes severe ruptures in family cohesiveness. **When people are bred from birth to believe they will receive an inheritance which will have them set for life, it breeds fear, resentment towards siblings (and mom and pop toward end of life), and (pertinent to this conversation) a loss of productivity for society - imagine if you hadn't been told you'd receive all this wealth and you could fend for yourself - society would be better off, and you would too...
Have you done *any* work or research in these areas to make sure you are properly positioned, or are you relying on mom and pop???
Anyway, I'm done emoting... We're done with each other... good luck dude... if you "fully expect the farm to pass intact to [your] siblings and [yourself]" and have no idea how you're legally going to accomplish that - you'll need a pretty big dose of luck.
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Of course language is mutable, and in America we don't have a "Duden" (a reference for what is the the official language). The use (or misuse, in my opinion) of the word has become common enough that dictionaries recognize it. My problem with this use of the word isn't that it makes the sentence unclear... it's obvious what the writer means... it's that it robs the English language of a good word which otherwise has a quite specific meaning. I could come up with a list of 50 or more colorful and effective adjectives to substitute for literally in this kind of context, and the sentence would only benefit from it. On the other hand, I can't think of a good substitute for literal in the original sense of the word.
I do freely admit that my comments have nothing to do with the subject at hand, and that my efforts to guide the evolution of the language are quixotic. I also appreciate having an intelligent conversation on the matter, so chapeau.
Followed by endless paragraphs of insults like "I hope I don't end up with kids like you". Done? No, you're not done yet.
Yeah, it's a bitch, having kids who spend their whole lives supporting you and your business for the cost of room and board, which you expect them to take over and carry on the fine family tradition, helping you build a million dollar farm and keep it running. It's a bitch having kids who think that the money YOU earned because of YOUR work was yours to do with as you see fit, and not limited by some socialist/communist schmuck who thinks you should only give "enough" to your kids and the rest to the government.
I hope you don't end up with kids, period. You trying to screw the people you envy is enough; screwing your children is too much.
There are at least a few economic counter arguments to my opinions,
Your complaint about "money to run the government" was dealt with. The taxes are already paid on that money. You got your bite of the apple. That leaves you with the sole argument that "it's not fair" that some people's children will get enough money that they don't have to work. Wow. Tough shit for you, huh?
And here's a (somewhat) friendly hint:
You've lied about the "by definition" claim that inheritance means the money wasn't worked for, so I am not surprised you'd lie about being friendly in your hint.
estate taxes are already a total bitch - they are taxed at somewhere in the neighborhood of 50% of inheritable asset value. In many cases,
Which only proves that your argument based on having to pay for the services of government as an excuse for taking away all but "enough" was just bullshit to start with. The death tax should be abolished. People who know that their estates are going to be confiscated when they die aren't going to waste time producing more than they need. Why should they? And taking away a farm that I've worked hard to help build just because my name wasn't on the deed is sick.
Also, tenant in common ownership of any asset among siblings really is unsustainable;
You are so ready to tell me what is good for me, aren't you? Why don't you go back to managing your own life and leave others to theirs?
imagine if you hadn't been told you'd receive all this wealth and you could fend for yourself
With every word, you prove you have no clue about anything relevant.
you'll need a pretty big dose of luck.
All the luck I need from YOU is to keep your nose out of my life and stop acting like you know how much is enough for other people. You have no clue what "enough" is, much less what other people deserve.
Proof you can't reason with the unreasonable...
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I'm glad to know I'm not the only Don Quixote out there.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Yes, you are. I'm glad you admit that confiscatory fiscal policies on the part of the government are unreasonable and unjustifiable. I'm glad that you understand that trying to tell others how much is "enough" for them is unreasonable.
I thought you said you were done with this.
How old are you? You might be a pretty intelligent 15 year old for all I know.
I'm done trying to reason with you being so unreasonable and emotive.
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Umm, you still pay a yearly property tax. Your inheritance probably got taxed as well right before you received it, an "Inheritance income tax."
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Yep. That's why the argument that "it's not fair for people to get the benefits of government without paying for it" when applied to inheritance is such a loser. You know it's a loser because it starts with "it's not fair" (the opening gambit of class hatred and envy), and it's based on the false premise that 1) the rich don't pay taxes (they pay the most) and 2) inheritances haven't been taxed (they were when they were earned the first time, and then again at a ridiculous rate when they were inherited.)
How many 15 year olds are married and own their own homes? Oh, did you simply ignore everything I said and focus on promoting your class envy agenda? Or is age somehow now relevant to the argument, and libertarian 15 year olds are outside your scope of concern?
I'm done trying to reason with you being so unreasonable and emotive.
As for being "unreasonable", well, you have yet to produce any reasons for me to change my opinion. Instead of assuming that I might have a different set of assumptions and experiences that would lead to an honest difference of opinion, it is the debating style of a 12 year old to assume that the failure to convince the other person to agree is not due to a lack of convincing argument from the 12 year old but that the "other guy" is "unreasonable and emotive". It's common online, and I've come to expect it. If you can't win an argument, claim a win anyway and insult the opponent for being stupid, unreasonable, or both.
Are you really done now? Or are you so emotionally tied up with this discussion that you have to continue?
Are you really done now? Or are you so emotionally tied up with this discussion that you have to continue?
No, actually you're pretty amusing, to be honest. And yes, I did skim through your comments (the "argument" was fairly redundant, so I didn't read too closely), so if you said you were married I either missed it, or read it and forgot it. You've got obvious emotional issues, and if your offline personality is similar to your online personality, I am quite sure you would have heard this before.
/. but you are the only one I've ever talked to that simply could not argue anything but their feelings - yet you're not exactly a troll either. You just seem to be totally, permanently wound up.
It's not about your different opinions, it's the way in which you convey your opinions and disregard logic in favor of your emotional arguments. I've disagreed with plenty of people here on
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Right. Sure. Like calling people unreasonable and saying I'm done discussing a topic, and then posting half a dozen more comments.
It's not about your different opinions, it's the way in which you convey your opinions and disregard logic in favor of your emotional arguments.
I'm sorry, but if you were using logic in your "it's unfair" arguments, I missed it. I dealt with your emotional and untrue "but they aren't paying for the government services they are using" claim, and demonstrated that your claim that you can determine what is "enough" for other people is patently absurd. What started all of this was your claim that you were a capitalist, which you have shown to be a lie. If you had something significant that would support confiscatory death tax rates that allow just "enough" inheritance for those you envy, you should have presented it before.
As it stands, you've demonstrated only that you have a serious hatred for the rich and a serious blind spot to the facts. And yet you claim MY arguments are emotional and ignore logic. Yes, that's the next phase of the "you're unreasonable because my arguments are perfect" discussion that so many online twelve year olds seem to use. You should be on Usenet. You'd be right at home there. You probably are.
You just seem to be totally, permanently wound up.
Yeah, I get perturbed by people who think they know how much is enough for other people and want the government to enforce their opinions. People who hate and envy others who have worked hard, and who think that the money those others earn is just a loan from the government, while holding on for dear life to every dollar they themselves come across and claiming they are "capitalists" just like the ones who have the money. Did I miss your statement that you had donated all of your inheritance to the IRS, and that you have a clause in your will handing most of your estate over to the IRS so your kids get just "enough"? No, I didn't think so. Those rules wouldn't apply to you. They're for the "rich" people you hate.
Are you through yet? Are you really done, or will I see more insults because you can't come up with an argument that convinces me you are right?
Are you through yet? Are you really done, or will I see more insults because you can't come up with an argument that convinces me you are right?
I'm through trying to convince you or reason with you on this topic, yes. But your general approach and outlook on things is still interesting to me. And perhaps there's something interesting to you, because you keep responding as well.
...
I certainly don't hate rich people, I'm working hard on trying to become one myself some day. I think people are generally rich as a result of their labors. I think those that work for their money should be maximally rewarded for those efforts and those that don't work for their money should not be. That's pretty close to the definition of a capitalist in my book. In your "counter-argument" you've built in several of your assumptions (I would contend which are based purely on emotion) which I've never once even alluded to, let alone stated as a support for my argument.
I'm curious, what do you think of Fox news? Do you believe it to be unbiased?
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Sorry, I don't read superhero comics. If you assume I do, then your conclusions aren't based on reality -- just like superheroes.