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Lawsuit Claims Buck Rogers Is In the Public Domain
An anonymous reader writes: As reported in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, a court will decide whether Buck Rogers is in the public domain. The Buck Rogers comic strip first appeared in 1929. Team Angry Filmmakers claim that Buck Rogers entered the public domain in the mid-1950s, and they want to make a Buck Rogers movie called Armageddon 2419 A.D. They filed a federal suit this year in Los Angeles against the trust claiming ownership of the name, and the trial has been moved to Pittsburgh.
Doesn't the current mouse protection rule set the clock to death of creator plus 70 years for copyright?
Shouldn't that be not only enough for anyone but utterly overboard?
PS - Just to tweak the /. crowd, guess which party they've bought?
The (D) stands for "Disney".
Or perhaps Duck Dodgers in the 24th and a Half Century!
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
1) Hollywood producers want to make new Buck Rogers movie based on his very first book appearance. Announce it at Comic Con.
2) Trust that says it owns the character threatens to sue producers.
3) Producers try to reach deal. Trust apparently refuses to reach a deal. They simply don't want the film made.
4) Producers are now going to try an argument that Buck Rogers is actually already in the public domain, so screw the trust as they don't need their permission anyway.
[They] claim that Buck Rogers entered the public domain...and they want to make a Buck Rogers movie called Armageddon 2419 A.D.
Well, hopefully the case is wrapped up by then.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
"Estate of 'Buck Rogers 2017' movie producer claims copyright protection to stop holographic remake scheduled for 2092."
Pretending this is my office full of bitter coworkers..
PS - Just to tweak the /. crowd, guess which party they've bought?
I'm not sure what that proves. If you pay off the democrats to vote for your issue because the republicans are going to support it anyways (or vice versa), it still makes both parties culpable. Sometimes the money is spent on the side that already supports their views and sometimes the money is spent to get them to support your views. To me the later is a lot worse as instead of just helping support the group that you agree with, you are actively bribing the opposing group. You have to look at the bigger picture and connect a lot of dots to figure out which one it is though.
The two original stories are in the public domain in the US. Here are Project Gutenberg links.
Armageddonâ"2419 A.D.
https://www.gutenberg.org/eboo...
and
The Airlords of Han
https://www.gutenberg.org/eboo...
Of course no where in the stories was the name Buck Rogers used. That name didn't start until the comic strip.
Yes. Here's a post which explains why that is the case: http://the-digital-reader.com/...
Smith?
The expiry of 70 years after the end of the calendar year in which the last surviving author died applies in Europe. It also applies in the United States to works of individual authorship first published in 1978 or later. But Buck Rogers was first published before 1978, and U.S. copyright in pre-1978 works follows the rule for works made for hire, expiring 95 years after the end of the calendar year in which the work was first published.
Here's a summary of the U.S. copyright term:
Disney might lose the copyright of the Mickey Mouse character, but they would still have a trademark restricting others from marketing said character.
A U.S. trademark cannot be used as an ersatz copyright. Dastar v. Fox.
3) is more likely be producers don't want to pay the going rate and lowballed them with a derisory offer.
If an exclusive license was already sold to another studio, "the going rate" can be tens of billions of dollars to acquire a controlling interest in the exclusive licensee.
They would have to alter the character so that it could not be confused with the trademarked character. Duck Dodgers, etc.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
I dunno if it states that, BUT it does seem to be a popular thing to do these days...turn classic white characters black for some reason.
I mean, if Little Orphan Annie wasn't the whitest cartoon on earth....and yet turned into a black girl recently, I don't know what would stop the transformation of any other character.
Hey, they're free to do what they want, but I'm puzzled why this trend to change the race of classic characters, rather than create NEW characters of various races to be new heroes, or cartoons, etc.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
the trademark does not expire
Trademarks do not expire, but they can become no longer distinctive. In Dastar v. Fox (2003), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 8-0 that a trademark cannot be used to restrict derivative works of a work whose copyright has expired. I guess the title and likeness trademarks associated with such a work would be deemed generic.
It will have to be through a treaty or some other mutli-government agreement.
Under current law, both Mickey and Pooh enter the public domain in the United States in 2024 because their copyrights are anchored in works first published in 1928: Milne's The House at Pooh Corner and the original Disney/Iwerks Mickey trilogy (Plane Crazy, The Gallopin' Gaucho, and Steamboat Willie). If NAFTA II gets proposed before 2024, watch Disney and Gershwin lobby the USTR to include Mexico's life plus 100 year copyright term in the agreement.
2419, isn't that the 24 1/2 century?
They should do Chuck Rogers. Starring Mr. Norris of course.
You just pulled the same bullshit you were railing against. Fucking hypocrite.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
One cannot use trademarks to restrict the use of public domain. Once your copyright expires and the work passes into the public domain anyone has the right to do what they want with it. You can't then use Trademarks to deprive us of that right. Dastar Corp. v. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp 9-0 decision.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
I know most people here hate the "Disney extension" of the copyright term, but what is the "community" losing, besides the ability to get Warner Bros. and Disney plush toys for practically free?
Economics answers this by referring to the effects of monopolies in general. Copyright is a government-granted monopoly. Insofar as Disney is able to function as a monopoly they increase their profits. That implies that there will be a shift of goods and services to Disney and away from their customers. Monopolists accomplish the increase in profits by reducing supply. That means that there will be fewer monopoly-associated goods and services produced than there would have been had there been no monopoly.
The point that hardly anybody remembers who Buck Rogers was, cuts both ways. Why can't the makers of this movie come up with a different name and tweak things a little bit? It's not like that would be a violation of precedent. Is their movie going to be so lame that they need this tie-in to prop up the box office?
Characters can be incremental, just like inventions can. Perhaps I want a can opener with a bottle opener on the other end. Perhaps you want to read about a character who's trying to do good, but who had a tortured past.
~Loyal
I aim to misbehave.
Why do you give a flaming fuck if he's black or not? Is there some meaningful point in the Buck Rogers story that depends on race, or is the character white simply because when he was created, all lead characters in every story were white?
I can't help but wonder why that was posted anonymously...
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
I don't have thoughts one way or the other on this - I don't give a shit if the characters I'm looking at in a movie are black or white because in the end, if the story is any good, that's what matters.
But why aren't new characters being created? Because it's much easier to repave the road someone else already cut than create something new. Hollywood wants to squeeze every drop out of what already exists before they take a flyer on something new.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
The novells, Armageddon 2419, first appeared in Amazing Stories in 1928 (I don't suppose anyone here has actually thought to google that title).
However, as noted in wikipedia, that, and the sequel novells, The Airlords of Han, were collected into a book in the sixties, and I assure you that was copyrighted.
I'll check back later this afternoon, and if someone wants to argue, I'll go look at my copy of that book that I bought back then, and check the copyright info, and post it here, tomorrow, though I doubt anyone else will go to the end of the comments here....
mark "now, if I could just find some inertron...."
Thats what the law says at current but we know that's horse shit.
The moment Disney's (Or anyone else's) copyrights are due to expire they'll bribe some congrescritters to extend them again.
This will continue forever.
Copyrights no longer expire, and there is no reason to expect they will ever again.
et an old timey phone book, close your eyes, flip to a random page, and point to a name.
I used to know a guy that was in radio, and when he was starting as a teenage intern, some crusty old disc jockey from the payola era told him that his name sucked, and he should do exactly this.
So he became "Rick St. James" bringing you all the hits etc. blah blah.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
The moment Disney's (Or anyone else's) copyrights are due to expire they'll bribe some congrescritters to extend them again.
The Supreme Court in Eldred v. Ashcroft was careful to distinguish harmonization to the copyright term of another established major market from the possibility of "perpetual copyright on the installment plan". It allowed the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 because its express purpose was to harmonize to the European Union. In fact, harmonization is the only excuse that the Supreme Court has ever accepted for multiple successive extensions: 1978 harmonized to the Berne Convention, and 1998 harmonized to Europe. So to what established major market would an extension between now and 2025 harmonize?
Doesn't this give all creators a perverse incentive to have an infant contribute to the work, just to ensure maximum copyright duration? I mean, if the main author is in her 30s at the time of creation, and life-expectancy is mid-late-70s, she's losing some 30 years of copyright duration, whereas if she simply has an infant fart on the cover, she gets it back.
Hell, keep that "anchor-baby" on life-support as long as possible in old age, just to keep the dream of everlasting copyright alive!
I know most people here hate the "Disney extension" of the copyright term, but what is the "community" losing, besides the ability to get Warner Bros. and Disney plush toys for practically free?
"Mickey Mouse" plush toys would still be covered by trademark. The community loses the ability to make up their own Mickey Mouse stories. To answer what would happen if Mickey met Kermit in a dark alley? Or if Mickey and Jerry teamed up against Tom the cat? The community loses the ability to make a Mickey Mouse costume for your favorite Destiny character.
Sherlock Holmes, pre-1923, is in the public domain, and look how many adaptations that's spawned. Or (less well known) Allan Quatermain, the original Indiana Jones.
That goes back to at least the late 80s. I remember the second Batman movie (the one with Keaton and Nicholson) had Billy Dee Williams as Harvey Dent. It made me wonder if there would eventually be a black Two-Face.
This space unintentionally left blank.
Ahh, the old "My side proven guilty and corrupt well beyond any reasonable doubt so I counter with both sides are equally bad" added with a hint of "actually your side is still worse despite no evidence" to top it off.
Leftists are so funny these days with the contortions they have to do to still support candidates that are as corrupt as the average DNC member in DC is.
Funny how you jump to conclusions about me. I'm definitely NOT a leftist and I do think both sides are corrupt. You also flipped my conclusion. My conclusion was that the democrats are "more corrupt" because they supported something they probably wouldn't have naturally supported in the first place. I in no way was trying to defend the democrats. I think like most people, you are seeing what you are wanting to see instead of actually looking at what I said. The average DNC member and the average RNC are both crooks. Luckily people are starting to realize it and that's why people like Sanders, Trump, and Carson are leading in the polls. Whether they will be less corrupt remains to be seen but people are at least making an attempt to vote for people who they perceive as outsiders.
Protecting the right of the son or grand-son to sell it to some corporation to pay for their coke habit, who in turn owns the works forever, never dies, and actively lobbies for copyright extension using profits until the eventual heat death of the universe.
It doesn't technically move to the richest entity.
It moves to the entity with the largest lobby group.
Steamboat Willie was a STEAMBOAT Captain.
You know, those big boats with the paddlewheels that they forced the slaves to load the cotton onto back in the good old days.
And since he was the Captain, he was in charge, and you can bet he damsure kept those darkies in line so they didn't deservedly murder him in his sleep.
Every single word of that logically follows from the job description Steamboat Captain.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
A child would be a safer bet than an infant. Probably one taller than the rear window of an SUV, since kids get run over by parents.
(Note - direct links to project Gutenberg bibliographic details)
Armageddon - 2419 A.D.
The Airlords of Han
I have fairly high confidence that PG has at least one competent lawyer and knows what they're talking about when they say those works are in the public domain.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Sonny Bono was a Republican.
Which is not to say this is a partisan issue, merely to point out that it's quite the opposite.
When steamboat willies goes into PD, anyone can upload it to youtube. Anyone can make movies about a dancing mouse on a steamboat, and even use the same music that it's paired with it etc. But that mouse still can't *be* Mickey Mouse; nor so similar as to be confused with Mickey Mouse.
Disney posted Steamboat Willie to You Tube in 2009.
If the geek were honest about the thing, what he has in Steamboat Willie is simply a tech demo of synchronized sound. The only other reason to watch it is to see Mickey, Minnie and Pete in their earliest, but still recognizable, form. Now fixed and trademarked.
The entire intellectual property debate is backwards.
The 'creators' or their descendants, in most cases, aren't the ones who are doing the plebs a favor when ip enters the public domain. It is the public who are doing the creators a favor by pretending that thoughts are equatable to actual property. Once a thought leaves somebodys fruity little mind it's no longer theirs. You can think up a unique set of words or a cartoon mouse, but once it is out of your head, I can say those words or draw that mouse. The only reason you can stop me, is because society decided it is worth pretending that those ideas are the same as actual property so that the creators will be able to make a living bettering society with their works.
The problem is that this idea has gotten twisted beyond the breaking point. To the point that people believe ownership of ideas is the same as owning a rock, and that people who are sick of literally paying forever to protect the ideas of dead men from being used freely, are thought of as parasites.
That is so screwed up and far worse than I imagined. Let's hope that such copyright idiocy remains only in the USA since the death plus 70 is stupid enough without adding the rest onto the pile.
The original Anthony Rogers novel was heavy on the Yellow Peril, so race was important in the original. It didn't actually have to be, since Rogers discovered that it wasn't actually the Orientals who were behind it all.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
"Thou" was already obsolete in many dialects by the late seventeenth century according to The Merriam Webster Dictionary of English Usage. Perhaps breaking up the long periodic sentences in old writing might be a better analogy.
Anyway: Copyright in the United States operates not on "sweat of the brow" but on originality. Just as spelling corrections do not confer originality, and color corrections do not confer originality (Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp.), a mechanical replacement of a small number of widely recognized archaisms with their widely recognized contemporary counterparts likely confers very little originality if any. What would more clearly confer originality is modification of other parts of the text to confer the connotations that had been inherent in the T-V distinction or to break up long sentences. But in any case, a competing translation into contemporary English could make different choices of which archaisms to update, how to rearrange sentences, or how to express politeness distinctions, much as translations from Japanese have to represent honorific distinctions.
harmonization to the copyright term of another established major market
the Free Republic of Liberland [...] would enact a copyright revision extending copyright to 200 years
From the opinion in Eldred v. Ashcroft: "Nothing before this Court warrants construction of the CTEA’s 20-year term extension as a congressional attempt to evade or override the 'limited Times' constraint." So anyone using the argument of "harmonization" to the copyright term in a recently established micronation or a tiny, less-developed country would have to make it clear that the copyright policy of said other country was not unduly influenced in such an "attempt to evade or override". For one thing, what reasoning prompted this change in Liberland's copyright policy well in excess of Berne? (For comparison, the purported reasoning behind life plus 70 is that an author's children and grandchildren who knew the author personally are in the best position to follow the author's wishes in the work's exploitation.) Is the country even sovereign enough to enter treaties? What's its GDP?