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Irony Alert: Disney About 'Overzealous Copyright Holders'

103 points by vezycash 8y ago

whiddershins 8y ago
I still don’t get the “Mickey mouse” theory of copyright law. Mickey Mouse remains a trademark. Trademarks don’t expire. What am I missing?
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  I think it's about the content Micky Mouse is in.
- lylecubed 8y ago
  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
  - apetresc 8y ago
    I'm not a lawyer, but I'm almost certain trademarks protect against much more than just being used as a company logo.
- Something1234 8y ago
  http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-232 http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-232 This my preferred theory as to why copyright keeps getting extended. Take that as you will. Makes more sense than the alternatives. Especially considering that most works aren't actively published anymore, and their authors are dead.
  - davvolun 8y ago
    Had never heard of SCP before: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCP_Foundation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCP_Foundation At least it's a more reasonable explanation than "reality."
- eikenberry 8y ago
  It is rent-seeking, plain and simple.
- techdragon 8y ago
  Trademark law requires (at least in the USA, I can’t speak for other jurisdictions) you to actively defend your trademarks in order to keep them, or you risk losing them. Trademark law also has the risk of your trademark becoming “generic”, bandaids vs band-aid brand adhesive plasters, this process which is completely out of control of a company and its lawyers, if everyone uses your trademark to refer to any product like yours, too bad, you can’t sue your consumers (you can and have to, sue your competition if they refer to their products with your trademark) to make them stop and the process will continue and your trademark eventually “dies”. Trademarks are also not automatically valid internationally and also require you to specify what the trademark will be used for, which allows for potentially annoying overlapping uses of a simpler trademark for different products which can hinder later market expansion into other industry if you don’t expend effort registering a trademark for everything from movies to medical devices and machine lubricants. You have a lot of room to fight over these things these days thanks to the internet and global branding, but your not guaranteed to win just because of money, just ask Nissan for example. Copyright on the other hand, while limited in duration, is implicit and automatically exists for any creative work or expression, is yours for free unless you sign it away to someone else or a corporation, with no need to litigate anything about it should you choose not to.
  - furi 8y ago
    What the parent comment is referring to is the oft claimed reason for Disney lobbying for extensions to the duration of copyright law: that they do so every time the copyright on the original Mickey Mouse cartoons is about to expire to prevent them from entering the public domain. This explanation doesn't really hold up under scrutiny as the important part of Mickey Mouse is the trademark, which doesn't expire, not the original cartoons and I somehow doubt the requirement for active defense of trademarks includes lobbying for the continued protection of the source material it was derived from.
RachelF 8y ago
Disney has a long history of screwing other copyright holders over. The song "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" was stolen from Zulu musician Solomon Linda. His estate fought Disney for years for compensation. Most of their stories are based on public domain fairy tales from the Brothers Grimm.
- jacquesm 8y ago
  The brothers Grimm just wrote them down, old ladies told the stories. So they were in the public domain long before the Grimm brothers got involved. I still have the original German edition of the book somewhere in storage, the engravings with some of the stories gave me the shudders as a young child, and the stories are pretty grisly too.
  - GW150914 8y ago
    Incredibly grim stories... the harshest one I recall is Wie Kinder Schlachtens miteinander gespielt haben or “Children Played Butcher Together” and it’s exactly as it sounds. From the second part of the tale... A man once slaughtered a pig while his children were looking on. When they started playing in the afternoon, one child said to the other: "You be the little pig, and I'll be the butcher," whereupon he took an open blade and thrust it into his brother's neck. Their mother, who was upstairs in a room bathing the youngest child in a tub, heard the cries of her other child, quickly ran downstairs, and when she saw what had happened, drew the knife out of the child's neck, and in a rage, thrust it into the heart of the child who had been the butcher. She then rushed back to the house to see what her other child was doing in the tub, but in the meantime it had drowned in the bath. The woman was so horrified that she fell into a state of utter despair, refused to be consoled by the servants, and hanged herself. When her husband returned home from the fields and saw this, he was so distraught that he died shortly thereafter.
    - jacquesm 8y ago
      Nice coincidence that we use the word 'grim' in English in that particular way.
  - 8y ago
leot 8y ago
Few things in American law are more reprehensible than the retroactive extension of rights that only exist as an incentive to create.
matheusmoreira 8y ago
Hopefully they'll cite all of Disney's past legal cases and use them against Disney in court for extra irony.
mesozoic 8y ago
I propose Banksy (Or another artist who can charge top dollar) create a series of images. These would go from regular mouse and slowly each one would be slightly more anthropomorphic and closer to Micky Mouse but never exact. Each would be sold for $300k to cover the copyright infringement fine and lawyer fees for the piece. Each one is sold only once so is a single instance of infringement possibly. See which ones Disney can win and which they can't.

103 points by vezycash 8y ago

I still don’t get the “Mickey mouse” theory of copyright law. Mickey Mouse remains a trademark. Trademarks don’t expire. What am I missing?

maxxxxx 8y ago
I think it's about the content Micky Mouse is in.
lylecubed 8y ago
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- apetresc 8y ago
  I'm not a lawyer, but I'm almost certain trademarks protect against much more than just being used as a company logo.
Something1234 8y ago
http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-232 http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-232 This my preferred theory as to why copyright keeps getting extended. Take that as you will. Makes more sense than the alternatives. Especially considering that most works aren't actively published anymore, and their authors are dead.
- davvolun 8y ago
  Had never heard of SCP before: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCP_Foundation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCP_Foundation At least it's a more reasonable explanation than "reality."
eikenberry 8y ago
It is rent-seeking, plain and simple.
techdragon 8y ago
Trademark law requires (at least in the USA, I can’t speak for other jurisdictions) you to actively defend your trademarks in order to keep them, or you risk losing them. Trademark law also has the risk of your trademark becoming “generic”, bandaids vs band-aid brand adhesive plasters, this process which is completely out of control of a company and its lawyers, if everyone uses your trademark to refer to any product like yours, too bad, you can’t sue your consumers (you can and have to, sue your competition if they refer to their products with your trademark) to make them stop and the process will continue and your trademark eventually “dies”. Trademarks are also not automatically valid internationally and also require you to specify what the trademark will be used for, which allows for potentially annoying overlapping uses of a simpler trademark for different products which can hinder later market expansion into other industry if you don’t expend effort registering a trademark for everything from movies to medical devices and machine lubricants. You have a lot of room to fight over these things these days thanks to the internet and global branding, but your not guaranteed to win just because of money, just ask Nissan for example. Copyright on the other hand, while limited in duration, is implicit and automatically exists for any creative work or expression, is yours for free unless you sign it away to someone else or a corporation, with no need to litigate anything about it should you choose not to.
- furi 8y ago
  What the parent comment is referring to is the oft claimed reason for Disney lobbying for extensions to the duration of copyright law: that they do so every time the copyright on the original Mickey Mouse cartoons is about to expire to prevent them from entering the public domain. This explanation doesn't really hold up under scrutiny as the important part of Mickey Mouse is the trademark, which doesn't expire, not the original cartoons and I somehow doubt the requirement for active defense of trademarks includes lobbying for the continued protection of the source material it was derived from.

RachelF 8y ago

Disney has a long history of screwing other copyright holders over. The song "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" was stolen from Zulu musician Solomon Linda. His estate fought Disney for years for compensation. Most of their stories are based on public domain fairy tales from the Brothers Grimm.

jacquesm 8y ago
The brothers Grimm just wrote them down, old ladies told the stories. So they were in the public domain long before the Grimm brothers got involved. I still have the original German edition of the book somewhere in storage, the engravings with some of the stories gave me the shudders as a young child, and the stories are pretty grisly too.
- GW150914 8y ago
  Incredibly grim stories... the harshest one I recall is Wie Kinder Schlachtens miteinander gespielt haben or “Children Played Butcher Together” and it’s exactly as it sounds. From the second part of the tale... A man once slaughtered a pig while his children were looking on. When they started playing in the afternoon, one child said to the other: "You be the little pig, and I'll be the butcher," whereupon he took an open blade and thrust it into his brother's neck. Their mother, who was upstairs in a room bathing the youngest child in a tub, heard the cries of her other child, quickly ran downstairs, and when she saw what had happened, drew the knife out of the child's neck, and in a rage, thrust it into the heart of the child who had been the butcher. She then rushed back to the house to see what her other child was doing in the tub, but in the meantime it had drowned in the bath. The woman was so horrified that she fell into a state of utter despair, refused to be consoled by the servants, and hanged herself. When her husband returned home from the fields and saw this, he was so distraught that he died shortly thereafter.
  - jacquesm 8y ago
    Nice coincidence that we use the word 'grim' in English in that particular way.
- 8y ago

leot 8y ago

Few things in American law are more reprehensible than the retroactive extension of rights that only exist as an incentive to create.

matheusmoreira 8y ago

Hopefully they'll cite all of Disney's past legal cases and use them against Disney in court for extra irony.

mesozoic 8y ago

I propose Banksy (Or another artist who can charge top dollar) create a series of images. These would go from regular mouse and slowly each one would be slightly more anthropomorphic and closer to Micky Mouse but never exact. Each would be sold for $300k to cover the copyright infringement fine and lawyer fees for the piece. Each one is sold only once so is a single instance of infringement possibly. See which ones Disney can win and which they can't.