5 ms·

I can finally retire the "Sherlock Holmes' emotions are still copyrighted" legal argument that I used to use for explaining the penumbra of the public domain.

EGreg 4y ago
Tell us !!
- bena 4y ago
  Eh. The Conan Doyle estate argues that the characterization of Holmes was materially different in some of the final stories. So any story that materially changes Holmes to be less of an ass was using that characterization. Netflix was about to take them to court over Enola Holmes, but all parties eventually settled and the suit was dropped. Likely the Conan Doyle estate realized their final copyrights were about to be up and it wasn't worth the legal battle they would likely lose because "having emotions" is incredibly vague.
  - PicassoCTs 4y ago
    Emotions about the character of persons, that are deducted by the length of the nose and the span of the eyebrows? Seriously, reading the books with a detectives eyes, one can see all the nonsense they believed aeons ago..
    - bena 4y ago
      I mean, Holmes can only really be as smart and capable as Arthur Conan Doyle was. Any blind-spots or nonsense Holmes engaged in was because Conan Doyle believed it. Which means Holmes believed in some really batshit ideas. But since the world of Holmes is defined by Conan Doyle, shit like phrenology was real in that world.
      - PicassoCTs 4y ago
        Or that ridiculous quak-science with the monkey stem cells transfusion. The deduction stories were excellent, but some of the outlier-stories or the "nationalism" race characteristics are the insanity that gave us WW1 and WW2.
        bena 4y ago
        Even the deduction stuff is only because Conan Doyle says so. Like he could determine cultivars of tobacco from looking at and feeling the ash. And other people never pick up on things that even the reader could. But Holmes does. And then you feel smart, because you even beat Holmes to the punch. My wife has been watching Bones (again) and I've noticed this a lot there too. It was an episode where the victim was a nine-year-old child. They "digitally reconstructed" the child's appearance and couldn't find a match, but then noticed the hair was dyed, the teeth were veneered, etc. And it's obvious, the child was on the pageant circuit. But they didn't put it together until the answer was given to them. Later on, same thing with a murder weapon. They assumed it was a steel-toe boot, but it's pageant contestants, tap shoes are also available. Etc. etc. And yes, tap shoes were used in the murder. And there's two reasons for this. This is how smart the writers are. They honestly think this takes significant deductive ability. And making the characters figure it out faster would be implausible. Or. They want the viewers/readers to feel smart. And one way to do that is to make them able to figure out the pieces before the characters. Characters who are the smartest because we're told they're the smartest.
        robswc 4y ago
        I love Sherlock Holmes. I know it's implied he is just a normal human but I find it more entertaining to realize its impossible for someone like that to exist. It falls apart due to the sheer probability of the events involved. However, the stories are almost always entertaining, despite that. i.e. This story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Red-Headed_League https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Red-Headed_League Summary; Man hired to copy books for a large pay. Lots of things don't add up at all. Turns out, it was a long con to use his shop space (he was gone while copying books) to tunnel into a bank across the street. How Sherlock Holmes found this out is completely improbable. For some reason though, I just love watching all the clues fall together. They're also relatively short stories. I really like stories like the one you describe too though. I think I just like mystery genre in general and I'm not super picky, haha.
  - akuchling 4y ago
    Editor, Sherlockian scholar, and lawyer Leslie Klinger took the Doyle estate to court about this idea, and got a judgement that it didn't hold. His blog about the case is at https://free-sherlock.com/ https://free-sherlock.com/ .
  - anothernewdude 4y ago
    When does the estate become less of an ass?
    - bryanrasmussen 4y ago
      Assness of an estate, as most human organizations, directly correlates to potential power.
    - JohnTHaller 4y ago
      It already did. Unfortunately, it being less of an ass is still under copyright.
- kmeisthax 4y ago
  Ok. For old time's sake. So, the rules of copyright are conceptually very simple: - Authors own a copyright over their work for a limited amount of time, then it is escheated to the public domain. While a work is under copyright, you need to get permission to copy it. - You can't copyright ideas - that requires owning a patent, which has a far higher bar[0] to clear in order to get. You only get copyright over expressions of ideas - at a minimum some combination of uncopyrightables that itself can be considered to have a "thin copyright". - Works that are "based on" another work are called derivative works. If a work is under copyright, you also need permission to make derivative works. If you got permission, then the new work gets its own separate copyright owned by the new artist. Now, you would assume that whatever is in the public domain is public domain, right? Well, only sort of. Because derivative works get a fresh shiny new copyright, that casts a shadow on the public domain. So I can publish the original text of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, but that doesn't mean that I can perform West Side Story just because it's a derivative of Shakespeare. But at the same time Jerome Robbins can't sue me for performing Shakespeare. The exact shape of a derivative's copyright is the amount of creativity added, and no more. Therefore, I can still make my own twist on Shakespeare. But I have to be careful. If I decide "hey let's make our own 1950s New York gang warfare take on Romeo and Juliet", then I'm getting closer to just ripping off West Side Story. In fact, there's even a term-of-art for the minimum quanta of copyright: "thin copyright", which is applied to creative combinations of uncopyrightable elements. Sherlock Holmes is a series of detective stories published as serial fiction[1]. Notably, the series was ended by the creator killing off Sherlock[2], and then brought back about a decade later. This is known by Sherlock fans as "The Great Hiatus"; and after Sherlock was brought back the author started writing him with a lot more emotion. Let's go forward about one life plus 70 years ahead of time. You're a descendant of Arthur Conan Doyle and your gravy train is about to end, because people can just use Sherlock Holmes and not pay you anymore. Except that only part of the franchise is in the public domain. Specifically the part before the Great Hiatus. And afterwards, Sherlock is arguably a different character. So obviously, if someone makes a Sherlock Holmes adaptation where he acts like post-Hiatus Sherlock, then clearly it's infringing the copyrighted stories! And if it weren't for those meddling kids, the estate of Arthur Conan Doyle would have gotten away with it, too. Actually, I'm kinda toning down the original argument. They thought that they could recopyright all of Sherlock Holmes by just owning one of the stories with him in it, which is not how copyright works. "Only copyrighted Sherlock is allowed to emote" was their second argument, which they abandoned when settling with Netflix. It just occurred to me: next year, Mickey Mouse is public domain. I REPEAT: THERE IS ONLY ONE YEAR UNTIL THE COPYRIGHT ON STEAMBOAT WILLIE EXPIRES. So we're going to see all sorts of litigative fireworks as Disney tries to hold onto that cartoon mouse for dear life. [0] Copyright is automatic, patents require a filing fee. Please stop laughing. [1] Specifically, as part of a larger magazine. Victorian Brits subscribed to magazines to read Sherlock Holmes in the same way that Japanese teenagers subscribe to Shonen Jump today to read One Piece. [2] Which was just as controversial and shocking as, say, a manga ending its run in a magazine today. Sherlock Holmes is basically the ur-fandom that all other fandoms were cloned from.

EGreg 4y ago

Tell us !!

bena 4y ago
Eh. The Conan Doyle estate argues that the characterization of Holmes was materially different in some of the final stories. So any story that materially changes Holmes to be less of an ass was using that characterization. Netflix was about to take them to court over Enola Holmes, but all parties eventually settled and the suit was dropped. Likely the Conan Doyle estate realized their final copyrights were about to be up and it wasn't worth the legal battle they would likely lose because "having emotions" is incredibly vague.
- PicassoCTs 4y ago
  Emotions about the character of persons, that are deducted by the length of the nose and the span of the eyebrows? Seriously, reading the books with a detectives eyes, one can see all the nonsense they believed aeons ago..
  - bena 4y ago
    I mean, Holmes can only really be as smart and capable as Arthur Conan Doyle was. Any blind-spots or nonsense Holmes engaged in was because Conan Doyle believed it. Which means Holmes believed in some really batshit ideas. But since the world of Holmes is defined by Conan Doyle, shit like phrenology was real in that world.
    - PicassoCTs 4y ago
      Or that ridiculous quak-science with the monkey stem cells transfusion. The deduction stories were excellent, but some of the outlier-stories or the "nationalism" race characteristics are the insanity that gave us WW1 and WW2.
      - bena 4y ago
        Even the deduction stuff is only because Conan Doyle says so. Like he could determine cultivars of tobacco from looking at and feeling the ash. And other people never pick up on things that even the reader could. But Holmes does. And then you feel smart, because you even beat Holmes to the punch. My wife has been watching Bones (again) and I've noticed this a lot there too. It was an episode where the victim was a nine-year-old child. They "digitally reconstructed" the child's appearance and couldn't find a match, but then noticed the hair was dyed, the teeth were veneered, etc. And it's obvious, the child was on the pageant circuit. But they didn't put it together until the answer was given to them. Later on, same thing with a murder weapon. They assumed it was a steel-toe boot, but it's pageant contestants, tap shoes are also available. Etc. etc. And yes, tap shoes were used in the murder. And there's two reasons for this. This is how smart the writers are. They honestly think this takes significant deductive ability. And making the characters figure it out faster would be implausible. Or. They want the viewers/readers to feel smart. And one way to do that is to make them able to figure out the pieces before the characters. Characters who are the smartest because we're told they're the smartest.
        robswc 4y ago
        I love Sherlock Holmes. I know it's implied he is just a normal human but I find it more entertaining to realize its impossible for someone like that to exist. It falls apart due to the sheer probability of the events involved. However, the stories are almost always entertaining, despite that. i.e. This story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Red-Headed_League https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Red-Headed_League Summary; Man hired to copy books for a large pay. Lots of things don't add up at all. Turns out, it was a long con to use his shop space (he was gone while copying books) to tunnel into a bank across the street. How Sherlock Holmes found this out is completely improbable. For some reason though, I just love watching all the clues fall together. They're also relatively short stories. I really like stories like the one you describe too though. I think I just like mystery genre in general and I'm not super picky, haha.
- akuchling 4y ago
  Editor, Sherlockian scholar, and lawyer Leslie Klinger took the Doyle estate to court about this idea, and got a judgement that it didn't hold. His blog about the case is at https://free-sherlock.com/ https://free-sherlock.com/ .
- anothernewdude 4y ago
  When does the estate become less of an ass?
  - bryanrasmussen 4y ago
    Assness of an estate, as most human organizations, directly correlates to potential power.
  - JohnTHaller 4y ago
    It already did. Unfortunately, it being less of an ass is still under copyright.
kmeisthax 4y ago
Ok. For old time's sake. So, the rules of copyright are conceptually very simple: - Authors own a copyright over their work for a limited amount of time, then it is escheated to the public domain. While a work is under copyright, you need to get permission to copy it. - You can't copyright ideas - that requires owning a patent, which has a far higher bar[0] to clear in order to get. You only get copyright over expressions of ideas - at a minimum some combination of uncopyrightables that itself can be considered to have a "thin copyright". - Works that are "based on" another work are called derivative works. If a work is under copyright, you also need permission to make derivative works. If you got permission, then the new work gets its own separate copyright owned by the new artist. Now, you would assume that whatever is in the public domain is public domain, right? Well, only sort of. Because derivative works get a fresh shiny new copyright, that casts a shadow on the public domain. So I can publish the original text of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, but that doesn't mean that I can perform West Side Story just because it's a derivative of Shakespeare. But at the same time Jerome Robbins can't sue me for performing Shakespeare. The exact shape of a derivative's copyright is the amount of creativity added, and no more. Therefore, I can still make my own twist on Shakespeare. But I have to be careful. If I decide "hey let's make our own 1950s New York gang warfare take on Romeo and Juliet", then I'm getting closer to just ripping off West Side Story. In fact, there's even a term-of-art for the minimum quanta of copyright: "thin copyright", which is applied to creative combinations of uncopyrightable elements. Sherlock Holmes is a series of detective stories published as serial fiction[1]. Notably, the series was ended by the creator killing off Sherlock[2], and then brought back about a decade later. This is known by Sherlock fans as "The Great Hiatus"; and after Sherlock was brought back the author started writing him with a lot more emotion. Let's go forward about one life plus 70 years ahead of time. You're a descendant of Arthur Conan Doyle and your gravy train is about to end, because people can just use Sherlock Holmes and not pay you anymore. Except that only part of the franchise is in the public domain. Specifically the part before the Great Hiatus. And afterwards, Sherlock is arguably a different character. So obviously, if someone makes a Sherlock Holmes adaptation where he acts like post-Hiatus Sherlock, then clearly it's infringing the copyrighted stories! And if it weren't for those meddling kids, the estate of Arthur Conan Doyle would have gotten away with it, too. Actually, I'm kinda toning down the original argument. They thought that they could recopyright all of Sherlock Holmes by just owning one of the stories with him in it, which is not how copyright works. "Only copyrighted Sherlock is allowed to emote" was their second argument, which they abandoned when settling with Netflix. It just occurred to me: next year, Mickey Mouse is public domain. I REPEAT: THERE IS ONLY ONE YEAR UNTIL THE COPYRIGHT ON STEAMBOAT WILLIE EXPIRES. So we're going to see all sorts of litigative fireworks as Disney tries to hold onto that cartoon mouse for dear life. [0] Copyright is automatic, patents require a filing fee. Please stop laughing. [1] Specifically, as part of a larger magazine. Victorian Brits subscribed to magazines to read Sherlock Holmes in the same way that Japanese teenagers subscribe to Shonen Jump today to read One Piece. [2] Which was just as controversial and shocking as, say, a manga ending its run in a magazine today. Sherlock Holmes is basically the ur-fandom that all other fandoms were cloned from.