4 ms·

About copyright in general: Micky Mouse is still in active use. Can anyone tell me some reason that Warner Brothers should be allowed to make a Mickey Mouse mov

About copyright in general: Micky Mouse is still in active use. Can anyone tell me some reason that Warner Brothers should be allowed to make a Mickey Mouse movie just because it's old now? One other example: sales of Ayn Rand's books currently help fund the spreading of the ideas from the books, after her death. That seems fair enough to me. Why shouldn't books sales be able to fund promotion of the book's ideas as long as people keep buying the book?

avdempsey 16y ago
I'll bite. I don't care if WB makes a Mickey Mouse movie. Walt is dead. We're not talking about the state stealing "Rearden Metal" shortly after its invention. Generations have grown up with this character and it seems just as outrageous as state-based exploitation to hold this character captive forever. How does inifinite copyright extension do anything but favor the sad corporatism you oppose? Entire generations will never re-sow the seeds of these cultural works. If you're on this planet to tell the next great Mickey Mouse story then you better be lucky enough to get the right spot inside Disney. So I don't see any compelling Randsian arguments here. Each generation should get a shot at profiting (or simply engaging publicly) with the cultural fruits of a prior generation. Creators will be fine.
- blasdel 16y ago
  I wouldn't even consider Mickey Mouse to be a character - he hasn't been used that way by Disney for at least 50 years, and never had much character development to begin with even when he 'starred' in minstrel cartoons. Mickey Mouse is a logo, deserving of trademark protection and nothing more.
  - pavlov 16y ago
    Mickey is an actively used character in European-drawn Disney comics. He's usually either a serious detective protagonist, or just a friend of Donald or Goofy. For all his detective skills, he somehow has never figured out that Goofy is the same person as Super-Goofy (there is a peanut plant in Goofy's backyard that turns him into a Superman-style hero).
- xenophanes 16y ago
  One thing I don't agree with here is the concept of generations. Immortality is coming and the idea of generations, and the expectation that authors will die, will become outmoded. The philosophically correct view has to be able to deal with that, not be based on parochial, temporary conditions. That said, I don't see that Micky is "captive". No one has a right to Micky. Micky's creator created him and he would not exist otherwise. This isn't like a math formula, or a medicine, that if one guy didn't invent it then someone else would have invented it later. It would never exist at all without its creator, so even if the creator has full rights over it forever the world hasn't lost anything that it would have had otherwise.
gjm11 16y ago
Book sales themselves already promote the book's ideas as long as readers keep buying it. Why should they also fund further promotion?
- xenophanes 16y ago
  It wouldn't exist at all without its creator so why should its creators' rights (including transferable rights) ever end? The idea of rights with a time limit is kind of strange, isn't it?
  - Jach 16y ago
    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; I'm not a constitution expert, so my interpretation is probably wrong in several ways, but this line suggests to me that it's not so much a right with a time limit, the works of authors and inventors belong to Society and this passage grants to the creator a temporary exclusive privilege to capitalize on the ideas. For my own bias, I'm with the crowd that feels "Creators gonna create" whether this passage existed or not.

avdempsey 16y ago

I'll bite. I don't care if WB makes a Mickey Mouse movie. Walt is dead. We're not talking about the state stealing "Rearden Metal" shortly after its invention. Generations have grown up with this character and it seems just as outrageous as state-based exploitation to hold this character captive forever. How does inifinite copyright extension do anything but favor the sad corporatism you oppose? Entire generations will never re-sow the seeds of these cultural works. If you're on this planet to tell the next great Mickey Mouse story then you better be lucky enough to get the right spot inside Disney. So I don't see any compelling Randsian arguments here. Each generation should get a shot at profiting (or simply engaging publicly) with the cultural fruits of a prior generation. Creators will be fine.

blasdel 16y ago
I wouldn't even consider Mickey Mouse to be a character - he hasn't been used that way by Disney for at least 50 years, and never had much character development to begin with even when he 'starred' in minstrel cartoons. Mickey Mouse is a logo, deserving of trademark protection and nothing more.
- pavlov 16y ago
  Mickey is an actively used character in European-drawn Disney comics. He's usually either a serious detective protagonist, or just a friend of Donald or Goofy. For all his detective skills, he somehow has never figured out that Goofy is the same person as Super-Goofy (there is a peanut plant in Goofy's backyard that turns him into a Superman-style hero).
xenophanes 16y ago
One thing I don't agree with here is the concept of generations. Immortality is coming and the idea of generations, and the expectation that authors will die, will become outmoded. The philosophically correct view has to be able to deal with that, not be based on parochial, temporary conditions. That said, I don't see that Micky is "captive". No one has a right to Micky. Micky's creator created him and he would not exist otherwise. This isn't like a math formula, or a medicine, that if one guy didn't invent it then someone else would have invented it later. It would never exist at all without its creator, so even if the creator has full rights over it forever the world hasn't lost anything that it would have had otherwise.

gjm11 16y ago

Book sales themselves already promote the book's ideas as long as readers keep buying it. Why should they also fund further promotion?

xenophanes 16y ago
It wouldn't exist at all without its creator so why should its creators' rights (including transferable rights) ever end? The idea of rights with a time limit is kind of strange, isn't it?
- Jach 16y ago
  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; I'm not a constitution expert, so my interpretation is probably wrong in several ways, but this line suggests to me that it's not so much a right with a time limit, the works of authors and inventors belong to Society and this passage grants to the creator a temporary exclusive privilege to capitalize on the ideas. For my own bias, I'm with the crowd that feels "Creators gonna create" whether this passage existed or not.