6 ms·

Copyright applies to all creative works. Changing those laws to protect a handful of valuable properties is a global solution to a local problem. According to

• jerf 11y ago
  If they start losing copyright, they start losing back catalog. I doubt there's a huge demand for the 1920s Steamboat Willie [1], but in 2032 they'll lose Snow White and the Seven Dwarves and in 2035, Pinnochio. Of course, that's an awfully long ways off by a time-value-of-money analysis at the rates a modern company would normally use, so the other thing to look at and be... outraged? perturbed? surprised?... at is just how goddamned cheap Congress has historically been. Did you notice this line: "In one instance, Eisner paid Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS) $1,000 on the very same day that he signed on as a co-sponsor." I mean, I presume that's not necessarily their only cough "donation" to the Senate Majority Leader, but one presumes that the Majority Leader ought to command a price premium, too, and for $1000 to be a notable donation to talk about, well, holy cow. I'd bet Disney wouldn't pay $10 billion as a lump sum in 2023 to extend copyright again... but we're not talking anywhere near that sort of money to get copyright extended. If they can do it for <$10 million, the cost/benefit is a no-brainer. Remember, the value to Disney only has to exceed their expected costs. If their expected costs for a copyright extension is an accounting rounding error, of course they're going to try to extend it. [1]: Which, if you've never seen it before, I recommend giving it a view: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBgghnQF6E4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBgghnQF6E4 The past is a foreign country!
  • ceejayoz 11y ago
    > I mean, I presume that's not necessarily their only cough "donation" to the Senate Majority Leader, but one presumes that the Majority Leader ought to command a price premium, too, and for $1000 to be a notable donation to talk about, well, holy cow. The limits are pretty low on individual donations. http://www.fec.gov/info/contriblimitschart1516.pdf http://www.fec.gov/info/contriblimitschart1516.pdf For 2015-2016, you can only give $2,700 to a specific candidate as an individual.
    • HillRat 11y ago
      That's what bundlers are for -- it's amazing how many corporate employees are willing to ante up to the maximum limit amount. Sometimes even folk making fifteen bucks an hour. Very civic-minded, they are. Less cynically, most contributions aren't about bribery for legislation (superPACs looking increasingly like an exception), but about simple access, ensuring that your calls get returned and your point of view is at least heard. It's still quite arguably a corrupt system, but the corruption is slightly abstracted from the simple act of giving money.
    • jellicle 11y ago
      And then you can also donate much more to the various party committees, and you can do it as a "directed donation", so that the money is credited to Politico X and the party committee immediately forwards the money back to Politico X. But corruption talk that centers on the individual donations made to politicians is mostly wrong. That's not how corruption works. That's a reflection through a mirror of the actual corruption happening, which is mostly about influence, not money. Politico A and Entity B have made a deal to use their influence to support each other, and that is reflected in some puny $1000 donation somewhere, but it's not mostly about the $1000.
  • gene-h 11y ago
    Well if congress is really that cheap, perhaps someone should make a kickstarter to buy back our government.
    • lotu 11y ago
      You mean raise the salery of congress? Literally no one wants to do that.
      • placeybordeaux 11y ago
        I think they mean start lobbying.
    • tamana 11y ago
      Lessig tried: Mayday PAC
      • danieltillett 11y ago
        I think it is time to try again.
        • brianclements 11y ago
          I think it's time to never stop trying.
    • hkmurakami 11y ago
      A friend of mine [1] has been building something that is exactly what you describe: https://www.shiftspark.com/content/how-it-works https://www.shiftspark.com/content/how-it-works "We allow people to speak to their politicians. And not just during campaign season. By pledging money, ShiftSpark lets you signal the issues tied to your support when politicians need it - BEFORE the election. This gives us more candidates, less corporate influence and politicians who listen." [1] He was previously the president of the Manhattan Young Democrats and is currently a Vice President at the Young Democrats of America.
    • 11y ago
  • throwawayhdhe 11y ago
    Most people do not understand how cheap it is to buy laws. It is much more expensive to compete in an open and free market than it is to buy a barrier to entry etc. Just another example of the corrupt state of American governance.
  • hkmurakami 11y ago
    As much as I hate the idea of lobbying as it works today, I can't deny the tremendous ROI that it represents for companies like Intuit whose entire business relies on convoluted, complex tax laws. TurboTax Maker Funnels Millions To Lobby Against Easier Tax Returns http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/27/turbotax-maker-funnels-millions-to-lobby-against-easier-tax-returns/ http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/27/turbotax-maker-funnels-mill...
  • derefr 11y ago
    Presumably, lobbying is cheap if there's nobody tugging in the opposite direction. $1000 would convince pretty much anyone to vote a certain way on an issue they're neutral/undecided on. On the other hand, $1000 probably won't "buy back" a vote that e.g. the oil lobby bought for $1mm.
  • cookiecaper 11y ago
    It's obviously not about the money. Ignoring the obvious fact that a massive monetary transfer would not be seen kindly by regulators, politicians employ the connections that they made while serving to make gobs of money for themselves after they leave office. Having Disney's CEO in your rolodex and owing you a favor is worth a lot more than any immediate monetary award.
  • jacquesm 11y ago
    > but in 2032 they'll lose Snow White and the Seven Dwarves and in 2035, Pinnochio. As derivative works those should never have been afforded the level of protection they got.
  • thebiglebrewski 11y ago
    I mean, what if we looked at it in another way? What if we could use that $10 billion to pay teachers better in poor school districts around the country? How impactful would that be just to not have the ability to make cartoons with one specific character? And people parody Mickey anyway and if it complies with parody law and isn't SUPER offensive, the Mouse would probably just send a cease and desist. If corporations are already buying the government and avoiding taxes...why can't we put that money to the public good?
    • jerf 11y ago
      A variety of solutions involving permitting extensive relicensing on some sort of exponential scale have been proposed, but it's all just pointless academic speculation as long as Disney can just keep buying extensions. It does seem to me that we could possibly reach a compromise with Disney in that respect; to be honest, I don't really care whether Mickey falls into the public domain anytime soon anymore. But it's stupid to hold the entire culture hostage for the vanishingly small percentage of things from the early 20th century that are still ongoing commercial concerns.
• onewaystreet 11y ago
  > If that's true, then why does Disney care whether the copyright expires? Disney spends millions a year promoting the Mickey Mouse brand. If anyone could use the brand then they would be freely benefiting from that.
  • exodust 11y ago
    You've missed the point, which is that even if the copyright expired on Mickey, Disney might have another legal option to protect him, as explained at the end of the article. But I think as someone else suggested, the reason they care is because of not just Mickey, but their back catalogue of other material which may not fall under that same brand protection. And because Disney doesn't know any better than to continue their campaign of paying people off to get their precious copyright extensions. It's what they do. Public domain works are an important creative incentive for new works and increased availability of art. Old and new Art enriches our culture, is a source of wisdom and inspiration for young and old, and the more we have the better. We need a strong connection with out artistic past. Society is worse off for this Disney sponsored 100 year blind spot in our cultural rear mirrors.
    • thaumasiotes 11y ago
      Words are (1) public domain, and (2) eligible to be trademarks. Suppose you make paper, but instead of white, it's light blue. You sell it under the brand "Blue Paper". You can (I believe) trademark that (for example, your logo probably has the words in a particular font), but you can't stop anyone else from selling blue paper as "Blue Paper", because that's purely descriptive of the product. Similarly, once a video featuring Mickey Mouse is out of copyright, it's perfectly OK for people to sell that video. And it seems to me that they could defend using an image of Mickey Mouse on the packaging, under the same logic -- despite the fact that the image of Mickey is trademarked by Disney for the purpose of selling cartoons. It's not obvious that the trademark is actually protective there.
      • exodust 11y ago
        But that video would be easy to obtain for anyone, so the business model of selling it would not be a threat to Disney. Further more, if you're in the business of selling public domain works, don't expect the courts to protect you when Disney comes knocking about your use of their character on the video cover. Even though you can sell the video, you don't own the rights. You would have very little to say in court except "I want to make money from public domain art". And you wouldn't be permitted to sell collections of Disney films, even those expired. From what I understand, that is not allowed when selling public domain works. For example you wouldn't be allowed to sell a "best of old Disney films" collection, or have a website called "Mickey Mouse Movie Store", even if all the movies were in the public domain.
• placeybordeaux 11y ago
  The law suites would be a bit tricker and therefore there would be more of them.
• jandrese 11y ago
  Because the protections afforded by trademark are far more limited and targeted. Trademark law is the scalpel that cuts out the fakes using your logo or companies trying to pass themselves off as you. Copyright is the blunt instrument (especially with the corporate insistence that fair use doesn't exist) that you can browbeat people with. There is nothing like the DMCA for trademark.
• jadoti 11y ago
  It's not about the mouse. If they lose copyright, all their start going into the public domain. They can no longer use their silly "it's in the vault" tricks to drive fake scarcity, as someone else can just copy it and publish it. The irony is their movies, atleast most of them, come from the public domain.
• cookiecaper 11y ago
  Disney is massively protective of its characters, especially what it calls the "core characters". Even Disney-authorized travel agents are told that they can never, I mean never, display an image of Mickey or Minnie Mouse without prior written authorization. There are a handful of artists whom Disney has granted a license to use their characters in specially-cultivated artwork and if these artists try to post their own art that uses licensed characters on their own Facebook accounts, Disney brings out the lawyers. They are rabidly, ridiculously protective of these characters and brands because they don't want to ever risk the consumer getting sick of them or associating them with something negative. Although Disney would continue to own the Mickey Mouse trademarks, you can probably tell that they wouldn't be fond of the potential dilutive effects that may flow from the free commerce of public domain works involving these characters. To them, Steamboat Willie going PD is the death knell not only of the Mickey Mouse cash cow, but the entire brand icon empire (without which Disney becomes little more than a mediocre theme park destination).