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Sherlock Holmes and the Copyright Tangle
spagiola passes along a New York Times piece on the copyright travails of Sherlock Holmes. "At his age [123 years], Holmes would logically seem to have entered the public domain. But not only is the character still under copyright in the United States, for nearly 80 years he has also been caught in a web of ownership issues so tangled that Professor Moriarty wouldn't have wished them upon him."
So you create copyright works in country A, and when that expires you then renew your copyright in country B? After that expires will they just transfer it yet again to another country and extend it yet again? Since all of these countries have [evil] trade treaties copyright in one is copyright in all....
Copyright is seriously out of control and I point the finger squarely at the US for creating this greedy flawed system...
The article doesn't explain precisely why it's still under copyright, except that it was renewed in 1981 after falling into the public domain, as permitted by the Copyright Act of 1976. But why hasn't it fallen back into the public domain again? Looking through this chart, I can't find any combination of circumstances that would allow an 1887 work, whose author died in 1930, to remain in copyright until 2023.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I don't see why not, and copyrights can certainly be transferred. The screwed-up bit, in my opinion, is this:
In 1980 Sherlock Holmes and Conan Doyle’s other works entered the public domain in Britain. In America the passage of the Copyright Act of 1976 gave an author or his heirs a chance to recapture lost rights; Conan Doyle’s daughter, Jean, did so in 1981.
So here in Britain they would appear to be in the public domain, as one would expect, but in the US his daughter was given the chance to say "no, actually, I'd like to keep the copyright for longer please"? Or am I misunderstanding that paragraph?
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Huh? Incentive for creative work was an argument for copyright?
No. It wasn’t. Look at the word. It says copyright. The right to copy. To reproduce the work.
It has nothing to do with creativity or art. It has to do with publishers and money.
What you mean, is the author’s right.
Which, from what I heard, is nearly meaningless in the USA. Right?
In Germany we have the Urheberrecht instead of the copyright. The Urheberrecht (literally “originator’s right”) is the right of the one who created the work. And it can’t be given away. Ever. (The rule is, that if you’re payed by the hour, the payer is the originator. If you’re payed all at once, you are.)
Which is pretty nice.
Except that many people here start to think we are government by US laws. They always see the term “copyright“ and think that’s a German thing. Which results in silly things, like people stating to own the copyright on something they literally just copied. Like this idiot here, who really just scanned stuff in, and now thinks this entitles him to some right.
Nowadays, nobody needs publishers anymore. So they are clinging to the last twig they still got: Extending copyright as far as possible. Like with this thing here. If your life would depend on it, you’d do the same. It always gets looong and weird at the end.
But I don’t worry, since it’s impossible to keep this going forever. Sooner or later, there is no art and no artist left. New artists already couldn’t care less about them. And there will be a time, where their extensions will become just so silly, that everybody stops taking them seriously.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
You can blame Disney and their rodent for the current state of copyright laws. Don't think that when copyright period for Mickey once again draws to a close there won't be a large bundle of cash handed out to the nearest person able to extend the period another 20-50 years.
One way to stop this would be to turn Mickey into an pop culture symbol for a pedophile or terrorist...
Degrade the icon to the point where Disney would rather wash their hands of the rodent.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Nope. Actually fixed term copyrights are the best countermeasure against "incentive for movie producers to kill you so they can use your work for free".
If the copyright is fixed at 70 years after publication, then nobody cares you are alive or dead. If the copyright is your life + 70 years, then there is a higher incentive to kill you to get the work in the public domain ASAP.
BTW this extreme privileges that writers, singers and actors get. Painters and sculpturers never had those, and are now fighting to have a cut of their work's re-sales.
Consider the following point:
Holmes, in the country of his birth (Britain), has been public domain for TWENTY YEARS.
Holmes, in the US and thanks to our fucked up laws passed by paid-off, bribed, and otherwise corrupt legislators, is covered by "copyright" law in the US all the way until 2023. At which time the character will be 136 years old.
Keep in mind that the NORMAL term of our fucked-up copyright laws is supposed to be either 95 years for "works for hire" (bought and paid for by hookers sent to legislators courtesy of Disney Corp and Sonny Bono's widow), or "Death of the author plus 70 years", which means the copyright on all of Conan Doyle's Holmes stories should have passed into public domain in the US back in 2000 (Sir Artie died in 1930). Actually, they should have passed back in 1980 (and did), but every time it gets close, Disney sends another round of hookers and bags of cash to Congress to buy another extension.