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Sherlock Holmes Finally In the Public Domain In the US
ferrisoxide.com writes "As reported on the Australian ABC news website, film-makers in the US are finally free to work on Sherlock Holmes stories without paying a licencing free to the estate of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle after a ruling by Judge Ruben Castillo. A quirk of U.S. copyright law kept 10 stories out of the public domain, on the basis that these stories were continuously developed. In his ruling Judge Castillo opined that only the "story elements" in the short stories published after 1923 were protected and that everything else in the Holmes canon was "free for public use" — including the characters of Holmes and Watson.
Holmes scholar Leslie Klinger, who challenged the estate, celebrated the ruling.
'Sherlock Holmes belongs to the world,' Mr Klinger said in a statement posted on his Free Sherlock website.
IANAL, but the ruling of Judge Castillo that "adopting Conan Doyle's position would be to extend impermissibly the copyright of certain character elements of Holmes and Watson beyond their statutory period," is surely going to have implications across U.S. copyright law. Mark Twain must be twisting and writhing in his grave."
I smell a lot of vile and unsavory SyFy productions ramping up with this ruling.
"SyFy, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained."
But of course US Law is World Law because the US rules the world by bombing the shit out of anyone who disagrees.
"Watson, come here, I want you!".
Disney will now be able to bring the stories of the the brothers Grimm to the big screen, like Snow White and Sleeping Beauty. No longer will our culture be stolen from us by dead people and uncreative "owners of intellectual property."
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
both Scottish based.
I thought that the subtle homosexual undertones throughout the entire series were well known. In fact, they play prominently at the start of the The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, a feature film from 1970. No, it's not a pornographic flic, but a comedic mystery directed by Billy Wilder that even features Christopher Lee.
In my personal view, however, there's nothing homosexual about Sherlock Holmes. Just because a man dislikes women, and prefers the company of another man, treating him as a life-long companion in work and play, even when at the Turkish baths, it does not mean that he's a homosexual. He might like to smoke a pole as much as he likes to smoke a pipe, but again, that does not make him a homosexual. It's perfectly normal and straight for two completely heterosexual males to touch one another's genitals. Just because two men love each other and form a bond stronger than steel it does not mean that they are gay.
How can Sir Arthur Conan Doyle be incentivised to write more Sherlock Holmes books, if he can't enjoy exclusive rights to his works?!
Nooooooooooooooooo!
Still, 90 years is an awfully long time... these copyrights should have reasonably expired several decades ago.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Holmes scholar Leslie Klinger, who challenged the SCUM SUCKING PARASITE LAWYERS AND WORTHLESS TWATWAFFLE DESCENDENTS OF DOYLE, celebrated the ruling.
TFTFY
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
From a the NYT:
I'm pretty sure Sherlock Holmes is gay. I was on tumblr the other day...
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
There's a slightly more detailed story posted on the plaintiff's website. They're also hosting a copy of the full decision from Judge Castillo, of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.
Reports of Mark Twain twisting and writhing in his grave have been greatly exaggerated. In fact, the late Mr. Twain has been quite immobile since the most recent reports of his death.
The Mark Twain article reproduces a 100 year old NTY microfiche where somebody corrected a spelling incorrectly.
Don't call me a spelling Nazi because it was 25 years before that.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Great, now he'll never write any more.
-Dave
Sherlock Holmes --- an imaginary character --- has more rights than real people.
... it's just bizarre!!!
Hitler, Albert Einstein and Elvis make frequent cameos in media and often star in YouTube videos, having no rights because they are *REAL* people.
But Mickey Mouse and Sherlock Holmes and Barbie have more rights as imaginary characters.
Curious legal system we have. Feel free to use Ronald Reagan or Jimmy Carter or Richard Nixon (hello Futurama!) in a story
Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
You're thinking trademark. In the United States, it appears per Dastar v. Fox that a trademark cannot be used to extend the term of an expired copyright. It might be different in Canada, given what I've read about Anne of Green Gables.
Hey now, Buckaroo Banzai is all kinds of cool.
Doyle has been dead since 1930. That means that Sherlock Holmes has been in the public domain in Scotland since 2000. If something is PD in the country of origin, it is PD to all Berne signatories. That's part of how the CTEA was sold to the US public, as our authors would be 'disadvantaged' if we kept a shorter term.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
There's no grave gymnastics to be had here. Clemens had planned to add to his stories over time, so that people would want to preferentially purchase his editions over the free-culture versions. He didn't want to sit on his laurels while jackbooted thugs ensured him a rent-seeking income - he was, after all, a writer.
Today, those against the Copyright regime frequently propose similar strategies.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I guess this means a US court will bravely stand up to bring Mickey Mouse into the public domain somewhere around 3500 AD.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
US law governs a copyright's enforceability in the US. How could it be any different?
Because of international treaties; the Berne convention, among others.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
No, according to US copyright law (17 USC 104(c)), the Berne Convention has no effect in the US.
And this isn't odd; copyright treaties are typically not self-executing. They obligate the various treaty states to enact domestic legislation that brings them into compliance with the treaty, but do not serve as copyright laws themselves. In addition, in the US, all treaties stand at an equal level with ordinary federal legislation, and a last-in-time rule dictates which trumps in the event of an irreconcilable conflict. This means that Congress is not bound to adhere to treaties, and can refuse to pass laws that treaties require, and can even pass laws that directly contradict the treaty. This may embarrass the executive branch, and may cause problems for the US in its foreign relations, but sometimes that's the way the cookie crumbles.
A fun example is WTO Dispute 160, the gist of which is that certain copyright exceptions in US copyright law violate our treaty obligations, a complaint was brought against the US by the Irish, the US lost the case, and we've never bothered to comply by changing our laws in the decade-plus since we lost.
-- 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.
US law governs a copyright's enforceability in the US. How could it be any different?
Because of international treaties; the Berne convention, among others.
The Berne convention requires that signatories' copyright statutes meet some requirements for duration and scope of copyright, but it doesn't say that people in one country must apply the law from another country.
US copyright laws apply in the US, regardless of whether the copyright owner is US-based. Same for other countries; they each get to apply their own laws.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Hmmm. A Donald Duck pr0n version?
Wait, a pr0n version of Sherlock and Wa..., err, John Holmes? A century worth of speculations is over?
The Berne convention requires that signatories' copyright statutes meet some requirements for duration and scope of copyright, but it doesn't say that people in one country must apply the law from another country.
Look up the "rule of the shorter term."
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Mickey also belongs to the world, yet we'll never see it hit public domain. Not until Walt's defrosted.
"We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over." - Aneurin Bevan
A judge in the United States of America ruled against an unreasonable extension of copyright law?
Look up cpt kangarooski's reply to you above or all those other replies you've ignored all the other times you've brought this up. It's your own nations laws at fault which your own nation is attempting to spread like a pox via conditions on "free trade" agreements. If it was all in the treaty and fully binding they wouldn't have to do that would they?
Face the facts - Hollywood bribed people and you ended up with this shit.
1) This conflates two things: the normal 1923 limit which kept 10 stories out of the public domain, and the "continuously developed" idea which was used to keep the characters (not the stories) out of the public domain based on the fact that the stories are not in the public domain.
2) Neither one of those two conflated ideas is a "quirk of copyright law". The 1923 limit is well-known and can't sensibly be called a quirk. The "continuously developed" idea is something that is not a quirk for the opposite reason: the Sherlock Holmes heirs pretty much made it up.
3) The judge ruled against the "continuously developed" idea on the grounds that copyright doesn't work that way. Only the incremental changes made to the characters in the last 10 copyrighted stories cannot be used, but the characters themselves can be used as long as only story elements from the public domain stories are used.
The convoluted story of Sherlock Holmes ownership was covered in a New Your Times piece a while back when the recent crop of movies came out
when other countries do the same, and rule that the works of American authors long gone is not subject to copyright law outside of the U.S. "Sherlock Holmes belongs to the USA" is probably what they mean here, and I think more of these rulings will come.
Signature intentionally left blank.
oh wait.... nevermind....
adopting Conan Doyle's position
Lying flat on your back with your eyes closed six feet under ground?
would be to extend impermissibly the copyright of certain character elements of Holmes and Watson beyond their statutory period
That sounds more like the position of Conan-Doyle's ancestors. Conan-Doyle himself famously replied to someone who wanted to stage a play in which Holmes got married with:
"You may marry him, murder him, or do anything you like to him."
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
And if you want it, then surely you should agree that it is _worth_ paying for. You can't seriously argue that you want it but it's not worth money.
The problem is, that logic runs into pricing issues. Take this book for example. At the time I wrote this post, the new price was $218, the Kindle edition was $180, and used copies also sold for $180. I would be happy to pay for that book, but not $180, and certainly not $218. I might pay $30.
In reality, I'll pay nothing, since it's so expensive that I'll just have to rely on the library's copy.
Now you can argue that this is a special case since it's a limited run academic book, but the point is that when there is a gap between what someone is willing to pay, and the actual price of the item, you have a lost sale. With respect to physical goods, maybe that's a sale you don't want, since you'd have to take a loss. But with respect to copyrighted goods, in many cases any price is going to net you a profit.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
I'm going to change my name to William Shakespeare and claim royalties for all those plays (and sonnets, of course) that have been reproduced without my permission. That'll show 'em.
A single copyright law would be nice. The book "1984" is public domain in Canada, but since the British author died in 1950, it won't be public domain in the US until 2045, allowing the author to benefit from ongoing royalties in case he wants to write again...
vi? Who's that?
I'm not sure this really matters. (Caveat: I'm not a fan and haven't read the books since I was very young.)
The BBC Benedict Cumberbatch/Martin Freeman incarnation is closer kin to the show Monk than to the Robert Downey Jr/Jude Law incarnation. Using the name Sherlock Holmes is more of a marketing decision than a creative one. Basically, the original stories donate two things: the pairing of a genius with a more ordinary sidekick and the names.
Meanwhile, there have been decades of stories with Holmes influence, which have suffered very little if at all from using different names.
-Dave
It was my understanding that international treaties ratified by the USA ranked higher than any law other than the US Constitution and it's amendments. ... would seem to be ambiguous as to whether treaties rank equal with the US Constitution or equal with federal law.
Although amendment six
Article VI simply says that the federal constitution, federal law, and treaties are all superior to state constitutions and state law. It doesn't otherwise set priorities. But Article V provides the only possible methods for amending the federal constitution: 1) 2/3ds votes of both the US House and Senate to propose an amendment, followed by ratification by 3/4ths of the state legislatures. Or 2) ratification conventions are called by 2/3ds of the state legislatures, followed by ratification by 3/4ths of the state legislatures. (The latter method has been threatened but never used; if it were it would likely result in an entirely new government, just as the current constitution was meant to be an amendment to the old Articles of Confederacy but would up replacing it altogether)
If treaties were equal or superior to the federal constitution, it would effectively permit the President and 2/3ds of the Senate to change the constitution if they can but find a foreign country willing to act as an accomplice to such a treaty. That can't happen, so the Constitution must be superior to treaties.
The only ambiguity left is federal law v. treaties, and the rule has been to have them equal in priority, to attempt to reconcile them if possible, and if not, for the more recent to override the earlier.
From Reid v. Covert, 354 US 1, 16-18 (1956):
The obvious and decisive answer to this, of course, is that no agreement with a foreign nation can confer power on the Congress, or on any other branch of Government, which is free from the restraints of the Constitution.
Article VI, the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, declares:
"This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof, and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; . . ."
There is nothing in this language which intimates that treaties and laws enacted pursuant to them do not have to comply with the provisions of the Constitution. Nor is there anything in the debates which accompanied the drafting and ratification of the Constitution which even suggests such a result. These debates, as well as the history that surrounds the adoption of the treaty provision in Article VI, make it clear that the reason treaties were not limited to those made in "pursuance" of the Constitution was so that agreements made by the United States under the Articles of Confederation, including the important peace treaties which concluded the Revolutionary War, would remain in effect. It would be manifestly contrary to the objectives of those who created the Constitution, as well as those who were responsible for the Bill of Rights -- let alone alien to our entire constitutional history and tradition -- to construe Article VI as permitting the United States to exercise power under an international agreement without observing constitutional prohibitions. In effect, such construction would permit amendment of that document in a manner not sanctioned by Article V. The prohibitions of the Constitution were designed to apply to all branches of the National Government, and they cannot be nullified by the Executive or by the Executive and the Senate combined.
There is nothing new or unique about what we say here. This Court has regularly and uniformly recognized the supremacy of the Constitution over a treaty. For example, in Geofroy v. Riggs, 133 U. S. 258, 133 U. S. 267, it declared:
"The treaty power, as expressed in the Constitution, is in terms unlimited except by those restraints which are found in that instrument against the action of the government or o
-- 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 disagree. Each country should enact whatever copyright laws are best for its own people. There's no need for treaties at all, or uniformity. The only constant rule should be unilateral national treatment: that copyright laws won't discriminate between domestic and foreign authors, copyright holders, etc. And there should be informal international cooperation to try to avoid mutually exclusive copyright laws (eg country A only grants copyrights to works first published only in country A and nowhere else, and country B only grants copyright to works first published in country B and nowhere else, forcing authors to choose between A and B or neither but not both).
The current craptastic regime is in part the product of a desire for uniformity as a goal more important that what's actually appropriate.
-- 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 disagree. Each country should enact whatever copyright laws are best for its own people.
So get rid of copyright law, then?
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Some places might. If that's honestly what they think will best serve their interests, I can't fault them for it. Other places will no doubt still have some sort of copyright laws on the books. Perhaps they will differ from the usual sort we have now, what with the lack of minimum standards allowing for experimentation; perhaps they'll be better. If they're worse, well, at least there are fewer obstacles to changing them for the better.
I for one would like to see the US continue to have copyright for as long as copyright can, and our laws actually do, provide an overall benefit for society. I don't see how entangling ourselves in the private affairs of other countries and listing our flexibility helps us, though.
-- 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.
It says so right there in the US Constitution. It is in fact one of the first things the Constitution says, so those who wrote it must have decided it was important. I think it was a reaction to Royal copyrights and patents which stifled creativity. And from the loos of it I think Jefferson and Franklin were two driving personalities behind it.
On another note, as far as Mark Twain twirling in his grave, I think he would have been very angry if he had know how abusive copyrights have become of late. Persecuting innocent people and ripping off artists while giving a pile of cash to people who produced nothing would probably enrage him.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
The Hobbit sucks.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Isn't the purpose of copyright the rights to copy the original work, and wouldn't the characters be part of trademark? So if book publishers wanted to make new copies of the Sherlock Holmes stories, they now have all rights to do so, but any new works, would still require licensing from the owners of the trademark?
That was literally the same character with a different name.... Starfleet admiral trying to start a war....
I guess we can be happy JJ even watched Enterprise... Although in many ways the nuTrek seems to be a continuation of Enterprise rather than redoing OTS.
It was flexibility that created the 95 year rule to protect Mickie Mouse and Sonny Bono's royalties for his work with Cher.
Those seemed to be the primary concerns at the time, and changing federal law to benefit a few while ignoring the compromise explained in the Constitution seems wrong. I'd agree about international treaties in general though, surrendering sovereignty in small degrees is done too flippantly by the current crop of politicians.
vi? Who's that?