12 ms·
Disney’s Influence on U.S. Copyright Law
- nobodyandproud 5y agoHow much does it cost tax payers to police copyright? The rent-seeking is ridiculous.
- judge2020 5y agoThe lawyers do most of the heavy-lifting.
- nobodyandproud 5y agoMaybe? The resources to chase and prosecute Kim Dotcom certainly weren’t just lawyers (New Zealand resources, but still). Also, how many judicial resources are tied up for the cases that aren’t on the front page? All of the lawyers certainly drive up the cost of the ever fragmenting streaming services, which only makes piracy more appealing.
- causi 5y agoI think most lawmakers have lost sight of the fact the original mandate of the entire legal concept of IP in the United States is explicitly to foster creative output for public good. Intellectual property was given legal enforcement as a necessity for adding to the public domain. Nowadays they act as if it were the opposite, the public domain being a "necessary evil" to keep the plebs happy.
- y7 5y agoI see this as a symptom of the stranglehold that money has on policymaking. Creative output is seen not as good because of the positive effects that creative expression has on people (both makers and consumers), but because it is a method to make money. The balance then turns towards the "creatives" that have money (Disney), rather than the not-yet-established makers that could re-mix or create derived works based on public domain content.
- londons_explore 5y agoI think there's an element of national economy to it... When country A public domains some IP, then country B might use it to earn money. Whereas if Country A allows company A within the country to keep a license to that IP, total revenue might be lower, but at least it occurred within country A.
- 10000truths 5y agoLicenses are just paper. Country A has very little recourse if Country B decides not to honor the intellectual property laws of Country A. The most that can be done is an embargo/sanction, which may or may not be a worthwhile tradeoff for country B, depending on the IP in question.
- londons_explore 5y agoUSA IP laws are stuck to in most of the developed world. There are a lot of trade deals that have the enforcement of IP laws globally as a condition.
- freejazz 5y agoIf I am in the US and someone in a foreign country infringes my IP I almost definitely cannot sue them for copyright infringement in the US.
- londons_explore 5y agoYou can usually sue them in their country though, which normally will enforce US copyright. You can also prevent them bringing any of their product into the USA through US courts.
- cwkoss 5y agoThis only applies to IP owned by megacorps with armies of lobbyists.
- 5y ago
- antihero 5y agoIt surely is and always was to protect a return on investment?
- iso1631 5y ago"As we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this we should do freely and generously" Benjamin Franklin.
- quantified 5y agoNowadays that’s called “socialism” and highly denigrated.
- derekp7 5y agoYes, but that return on investment was simply a mechanism, not a goal in itself.
- quantified 5y agoIt also was limited. The continuum between self-interest and greed was marked off quite differently then.
- rtkwe 5y agoI think that's getting things backwards. The goal in the Constitution is "to promote the progress of science and useful arts" so IMO the goal has always been the advancement of culture and sciences by allowing a brief period of protected money making followed by releasing the idea to be used by other people. Imagine how much slower we would advance if patents were given the same Life + 70 years. No invention that comes out in your lifetime would be accessible to be iterated on without paying the inventor in your or your kids lifetimes! That's where we are with copyrights and there were decades where no new works entered the public domain because of how long extensions were granted. 1925 works are just now entering the public domain. > [The Congress shall have power] “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.”
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Zak 5y agoI think it might me interesting to ask the HN crowd: if you were to fix copyright, how long would it last and why? I like a fixed term of around 50 years. That's long enough for a creator to monetize a work over a majority of their adult lifetime, but short enough that people would have the unrestricted opportunity to remix works they enjoyed in their youth later in life.
- tsimionescu 5y agoI think a much shorter time would be better, maybe at most 20 years? That's enough time that it won't cause perverse incentives (publishers/studios sitting on a work of art until it goes into the public domain), and plenty of time for an author to profit; but, it's also short enough that it could still be relevant by the time other artists can start adding to it and improving.
- Mindwipe 5y ago> That's enough time that it won't cause perverse incentives (publishers/studios sitting on a work of art until it goes into the public domain), Twenty years is absolutely short enough for that to happen.
- tsimionescu 5y agoThe way companies chase short term profit, twenty years is almost certainly an eternity.
- zdw 5y agoI have a proposal that allows for indefinite copyright, but also with a tax regime that would require someone to pay for this right handsomely. 1. 14 years automatic copyright (enough time for anyone to file registration paperwork) 2. Free 14 year renewal, to 28 years on formal registration. 3. After that, taxing it like regular property - a valuation must be created on which it is taxed like other real property at a reasonable rate, and with the caveat that anyone can buy the rights for that valuation, and then either keep paying tax or let it lapse into public domain. This is like the government buying a piece of land at assessed value if they need to build a public work. 4. Tax in 4 goes up over time, starting at say 1% of valuation yearly up to 10% of valuation yearly after 100 years. Don't pay the tax, copyright lapses and enters public domain. Value too low, someone buys your copyright out. The end result would be that most normal copyrights last 28 years, before the tax comes into effect. Also, Mickey Mouse can be held in copyright for perpetuity, but Disney has to pay a lot for this right and continually increase the valuation/tax if someone wants to buy it from them.
- 1cvmask 5y agoFrom 14 years to what now will be an eternity: This original provision allowed authors the right to print, re-print or publish their work for 14 years, with the option to renew the copyright for another fourteen years. Today, copyrights can last well over 100 years, with the 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act extending copyright protection for most works to the life of the creator, plus 70 years.
- dorchadas 5y agoIt's really damn annoying. One of my interests is Celtic Studies/Linguistics and there's a thesis that was written in 1939. It's our one representation of this particular dialect of Irish. I've seen it, it's literally falling apart and the pages are see-through. There's been no digitization of it, and no interest in digitizing it by the University. But I can't check it out for in-library use and make a copy of it myself. When it's lost, it's lost, all because of stupid copyright laws, and won't be in public domain until 2076 in Ireland. It was literally written in 1939 and is our one description of a now extinct part of the language, and will literally be in pieces by then. Copyright should be no more than 10 years, renewable if there's a sizable re-release (.i. > 1000 copies) to make it constantly accessible at reasonable prices, and only for the original creator's life. That's the only way. If people stop publishing and using stuff, copyright ends.
- xfz 5y agoThis perpetual copyright extension fails to take into account the public's investment and contribution to keeping characters such as Mickey Mouse relevant. It really should be public property by now. Another example although, thankfully sanity eventually prevailed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Birthday_to_You https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Birthday_to_You
- judge2020 5y ago> the public's investment and contribution to keeping characters such as Mickey Mouse relevant Such as?
- laumars 5y agoWhy is this greyed out? It’s a fair question and not clear to me either what the OP is referring to
- LocalH 5y agoFandom, ensuring the works stay in the public consciousness. If it weren't for the fans who have enjoyed Mickey Mouse over the years, he wouldn't be relevant at all. Imagine if Mickey had been a total flop. We'd be lucky if any Mickey Mouse stuff survived. This is not hyperbole, there are tons of lost media franchises today because they weren't popular and nobody cared to preserve them.
- hnlmorg 5y agoI think it is unreasonable to ask for iconic characters like Mickey Mouse, who still see regular content, to fall into public domain because they've become more analogous to a trademark (Mickey Mouse might even be trademarked?). However original media like the 1920s Mickey Mouse cartoon "Steamboat Willie", absolutely should. I look at like how a song might be in public domain but that doesn't mean the singers voice is. Likewise for actors vs TV shows. edit: getting downvoted but no explanation why people disagree. I'd love to hear why edit 2: there seems to be some confusion about my statement above. I don't like nor agree with how Disney 'steal' public domain stories. I don't like nor agree with how Disney extend copyright. However there is a difference between published works (like the 1920s cartoon exampled above) and a mascot that is a trademark and still in common use (like Mickey Mouse). And that is the only point I'm arguing. You can just assume I'd agree to all the other points about how "Disney is evil" etc because I've made those exact same points myself in other conversations in the past (eg https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26805071 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26805071)
- vmception 5y agoThis is very inspirational, goals
- evancoop 5y agoI would be curious where the economic costs truly lie. Is Disney rent-seeking? Well, that would depend how many non-Disney entities are deploying Mickey Mouse and paying royalties for so doing (probably not common). Is there Mickey Mouse content sold by Disney that would command lesser prices if a competitor could ALSO generate Mickey Mouse content? Probably (in which case consumers pay higher prices, and competitors lose the opportunity to partake of that money trough). However, the steel-manned argument for Disney is something like "look, you could always make some other character (e.g. Rowdy Rat), sell tons of them, and compete with us...what's so damned special about OURS apart from the creatives who build a world around him? If this were REALLY harming consumers, wouldn't there be all sorts of derivative works inviting lawsuits to determine what is and is not too close to the original?" The real question is whether Disney is so large and their litigiousness so frightening as to chill even that type of battle?
- cwkoss 5y agoI think the costs of the chilling effects are several orders of magnitude greater than the costs of royalties.
- tzs 5y agoAs far as I can tell, the article is massively overstating the role of Disney in bringing about the Copyright Act of 1976. There had long been widespread agreement that the 1909 Act needed significant revision to deal with the large technological developments since then in how copyrightable works were created, copied, distributed, and consumed, and to make US copyright law more compatible with the rest of the world. The copyright term provisions of the 1976 Act are straight out of the Berne Convention, and were included in the act to pave the way for the US to eventually join that and other international copyright agreements. Disney may have been in favor of the 1976 Act, but it would have come about in substantially the same form if they had said nothing or even lobbied against it. The 1976 Act was one of those "its time has come" things.
- Mindwipe 5y agoYep. It's literally nonsense and factually wrong, but gleefully posted here because it agrees with HN's general ideological slant.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y agoOne of the reasons that I have been boycotting Disney for years. I refuse to give them money. If somebody asks me if I've seen <disney movie> I tell them, "yes, and it was horrible! They've ruined <movie franchise>!"
- redm 5y agoI don't see why IP such as Mickey Mouse should be treated any differently than patented IP. 20 years is a fairly length time to have a monopoly on your creation before it becomes public domain.
- easton_s 5y agoMy meta theory of the new movies is that Snoke was a representation of Mickey Mouse and First Order was Disney. The movies was an analogy of how Lucasfilm would survive a corporate takeover.
- Mindwipe 5y agoThis is a fairly poor article. I can't take seriously anything that notes US copyright was increased primarily to reach some form of life+70 and then claims that Disney was responsible, not mentioning it's that exact number because the US had already agreed to it in international treaty negotiations because it's was the duration of copyright in Germany. It's US centrism gone wild.
- advisedwang 5y agoThe Berne Convention was life+50, no? Can you share what treaties specify life+70?
- AtlasBarfed 5y agoSupreme Court decisions on copyright and trademark are shamefully pro-business, and really show how there is shadow money flowing through all American positions of power from business, even in the US Supreme Court.