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CBS, Others Sued For Copyright Infringement Over "Soft Kitty" In Big Bang Theory (arstechnica.com)
UnknowingFool writes: In the popular sitcom, The Big Bang Theory, Penny has sung "Soft Kitty" to the difficult Sheldon Cooper on numerous occasions as a lullaby and to comfort him. These scenes are such fan favorites that the song lyrics are sold on merchandise. The daughters of poet Edith Newlin are suing CBS, Warner Bros, and others claiming copyright infringement for her poem, "Warm Kitty".
The situation is not a simple copyright infringement case of Warner Brothers not obtaining any permission. The poem was created in the 1930s by Newlin, but she granted permission to Willis Music to be used as lyrics in their songbook Songs for the Nursery School. Warner Brothers obtained permission from Willis Music in 2007 for the song to be used in the show. Willis Music is also named as a defendant.
The situation is not a simple copyright infringement case of Warner Brothers not obtaining any permission. The poem was created in the 1930s by Newlin, but she granted permission to Willis Music to be used as lyrics in their songbook Songs for the Nursery School. Warner Brothers obtained permission from Willis Music in 2007 for the song to be used in the show. Willis Music is also named as a defendant.
For fuck's sake, it's 2016 and a fucking child poem from 1930 is still copyright protected?
Has the world gone fully retarded?
Did you know people with aspergers are unable to detect sarcasm?
The editors removed my last paragraph but my opinion is that CBS is probably legally fine because they used the derivative work (the song) as the song. Merchandise that show the lyrics are another matter and they may have to license the lyrics from Newlin's family.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Down Under (song) copied stuff from a 1932 song and that made it to a court case.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Hardly. The show is about 4 fictional people. Those kind of people exist in real life, all very different. I've seen the equivalents of each of them throughout my years. It is only insulting if you identify with one. I'm going to guess you are like Sheldon?
Or I suppose we should run sitcoms about a bunch of people sitting at the computer tapping on a keyboard. That will be far better. Does family guy insult your family? Does American dad?
I'm all for copyright, but set it back to 14 years, and no extensions. As far as I can tell, the current system allows for just two things:
1) People can take from the public domain but never contribute
2) People can profit off their dead ancestors' work.
Neither is particularly good for the public at large.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
The original author was alive for years while it was being used by the TV show.
Now ownership has transferred to their estate, they're suing, after it's been going on for 8 years.
make no mistake, copyrights in mid industrialized countries are now effectively infinite.
How so?
The 1998 extension was enacted soon after the European Union had standardized copyright at life plus 70, following the term then in place in Germany. The Supreme Court in Eldred v. Ashcroft justified the 1998 extension by being careful to distinguish harmonizing to the EU from what has since come to be called "perpetual copyright on the installment plan". But because the EU is still at life plus 70, Congress won't be able to use the EU again. To which other industrialized country's copyright term would a subsequent U.S. copyright term extension harmonize?
If a TV show like that offends you, you're the one with a problem.
You're taking offense because of your own personal issues, not because the show is 'insulting' you in some way.
Considering a couple of the actors have actual geek cred and all you have is a slashdot account, I'm really not sure why you're getting pissed off instead of being thankful.
Its not about the 'best' of a culture any more than Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Honeymooners, The Simpsons, Family Guy or any other TV show.
ITS A FUCKING FICTIONAL COMEDY OF COURSE IT PICKS ON STEREO TYPES AND YOU JUST CONFIRMED ITS RIGHT TO DO SO, Sheldon.
Seriously, you just gave the show even more cred by making these this stupid post.
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No they can't because the lyrics were created by Edith Newlin. She owns the copyright and it clearly stated that in the lyrics.
No they can't because the lyrics were created by Edith Newlin. She owns the copyright and it clearly stated that in the lyrics.
It would depend on the contract between her and Willis Music. She could have assigned her rights to them for use as a song, in which case they would own the rights to the song and and be able license it.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
...people would actually aspire to create something new rather than spend their lives trying to profit off the mental effort of their dead relatives.
Because all creative thought is entirely original and has no connection to the rest of the world... even disregarding satire, parody, sampling etc etc do you really think creativity takes place in some void in the mind and is spawned from nothing?
Someone's new creations will be connected to any copyrighted material they have absorbed because creativity takes place in the neural network which is the human mind, and ultimately the output of a neural network is the product of it's cumulative input and some noise. Your thoughts are a derivative of the sum of your experiences.
So who are you to judge how creative something is based on how connected it is to previous content, do you have some magic threshold that dictates when it is no longer creative?... Using others work in a new way is legitimate creativity. Banning such use is both dangerous and based on a flawed understanding of creativity. The real problem here is that copyright does not accommodate how the real world works. (i don't care if this is some massive network making millions or a penniless artist toiling away in obscurity, the principle is the same)
The melody & the lyrics have separate copyright. It's inaccurate to say that putting words to music causes the song to become a derivative work of the words. Copyright of the song is the combination of the copyrights of the lyrics and the melody, and additionally performance rights of the combined work which may be conveyed separately. In order to perform the work and reproduce (IE broadcast) the performance, you'd need performance right of the song and copyright of both the words and melody.
Wilis (it would seem) had rights to publish both the words and the melody in a book. The question before the court is whether they had the right to sell the performance right of those to anyone else. That should come down to interpretation of the original contract between Wilis and Edith Newlin, and of course her estate and heirs inherit the right to litigate any infringement of that.
How exactly this being litigated 86 years after the work's creation serves 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," is a different matter...
A copyright statement in a 1930's vintage book may have become inaccurate in the intervening 86 years. If Wilis subsequently acquired full ownership, existing copies wouldn't be retroactively updated. Don't believe everything you read.
All parties will have to show up in court with the text of whatever agreements they may have, and the sum total of those (as sussed out by 12 idiots) will determine who owns what and who owes whom.
Either that or they settle out of court...
While I'm not in favor at all of endlessly extending copyright, I feel that the Bono Act missed two very important points.
1. If people/companies can't be bothered to remember to file for an extension, tough. Tough tough tough. That's how it was in the past. The current situation where they just get extended automatically won't resolve the issue sometimes where certain old things (ie. photos) may be under copyright but nobody has any idea at all how to find anybody who actually owns the copyright to try to license it.
2. If these copyrights are so valuable then why on earth is the federal government giving extensions away for free? That makes no sense.
Here's my proposal. OK, if the current terms aren't enough (ie. perhaps Disney comes to mind here), then at expiration allow the copyright holder to apply for a 10 year extension. The price? $100,000. Then when that expires, let them apply for another 10 year extension at 10 times the price of the previous one. So the next extension is $1 million, then $10 million, then $100 million, then $1 billion, then $10 billion, and so on. Eventually even Disney won't pay for it anymore. Could Disney really justify to its stockholders paying $10 million to renew the copyright on the oldest version of Mickey Mouse for 10 more years? Maybe not. But I'm pretty sure that once it reaches $1 billion that nobody is going to want to do that. Exponentially rising costs allows the copyright holder the opportunity to renew if they are willing to pay for it, which I think is fair if these copyrights are so valuable that they just must be extended. Since few will agree to pay even $100,000 in my solution, stuff will at least finally enter the public domain. If it makes anybody feel better, the recent EU copyright extension was so contentious that I can't imagine there's any real political will in Europe to ever extend that beyond what it is now.
If the second artist *bought* the original licensed cards, glued them, and sold them, copyright shouldn't enter into it. No unauthorized *copy* was made. First Sale Doctrine should apply. You can buy a book, cut it up into little pieces, then sell the pieces.
If the second artist bought one copy, made additional copies on their own, and sold those, then no question it's a violation of the copyright.
It does actually. There's nerd chic now. People in the past who would never ever be called nerds are calling themselves that. The definitions of "nerd" in the past practically required them to be outcasts. I'd say a lot of the new nerds are really recovering nerds, able to fit in with mainstream culture better.
Oh UBUNTU, you're my favorite GNU plus Linux-based operating system.
*audience explodes in laughter*
Two hundred posts and not one joke yet about soft pussy, warm pussy.
I guess I'm the only pervert on slashdot.
Who wants to be a scientist when most of the population thinks that scientists are all socially-incompetent freaks? More broadly, who wants to learn more about science and technology when "the only people who care about that sort of thing" are complete losers?
I'm a scientist by profession and the main thing I think when I watch the show is "Wow, I wish I had time for such a great social life!"
Real scientists work very long hours. They might have time to get together with friends (e.g. to have take-away and watch a "nerd" TV show) maybe once every month or two. Most days, they'll come home from the lab, have a quick bit of supper, and then collapse from exhaustion.
And the failure, don't even get me started on the failure. You see, real science is about exploring the unknown - about pushing back the boundaries of human knowledge. It's about looking under rock after rock after rock in the hope of finding something interesting and failing to find anything time after time after time.
If someone were to make a TV show that conveyed what it's really like to be a scientist, after about 15 minutes of watching most of the audience would be curled up in fetal position in a closet sobbing "The horror! The Horror! Make it go away! Please make it all go away!"
No, I like the show precisely because it is such an over-the-top sunshine and unicorns fantasy.
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