7 ms·

It's been obvious for a few years that Disney wasn't going to pursue extending copyright anymore. It would have been politically difficult at any point in the l

It's been obvious for a few years that Disney wasn't going to pursue extending copyright anymore. It would have been politically difficult at any point in the last few years as the Senate does so little.

bluGill 3y ago
More importantly, those who care about the public domain were not paying attention the last time. They are now, so Disney realizes that it will be a harder sell. As soon as they get someone to propose a laws letters will be written. There is one thing more powerful than money in politics and that is votes. Letters to congress are a proxy for votes and so nobody will risk another extension.
hinkley 3y ago
The timelessness of those old cartoons has waned considerably. GenX was already getting reruns of Disney and Looney Tunes cartoons that were aimed at Boomers. As the boomers are aging out, a lot of the slices of both domestic life and leisure time in these cartoons are something alien. Women in the kitchen? Hunting rabbits? And with a shotgun? Really? Itchy and Scratchy are Tom and Jerry ad absurdum. The Flintstones were somewhere between Tom and Jerry and The Honeymooners. Most of this stuff does not deserve a replay.
- bongodongobob 3y ago
  Neither of those things are alien. A world exists outside of whatever metropolis you think is the center of the universe. Millions and millions of people hunt and millions and millions of women are primary caretakers or stay at home moms.
  - chownie 3y ago
    I would say the world shown in those cartoons is alien to viewers of today. There were millions of hunters and millions of stay at home mothers in the 40's during Tom & Jerry's original run, but there's many fewer millions now. Consider: Women jumped from a third working in 1950 to just over two-thirds (of those who have children under 6, even) working as of the year 2000. We've had another two decades and change plus recessions since then, how much smaller could the demographic be?
    - bongodongobob 3y ago
      I have no idea where you live but you are completely disconnected from the average reality. I'm going to guess NYC or SF because you don't seem to realize that things actually haven't changed that much. You're describing the woke utopia that the left from those places seem to pine for. I'm as liberal as they come but am from flyover country. Everyone hunts. Women do a lot of the cooking. There are lots of stay at home moms. And everyone is ok with it, shotguns and all.
      - chownie 3y ago
        > I have no idea where you live but you are completely disconnected from the average reality. This is a really bizarre response to hard statistics, just openly denying they exist? The "average reality" is indeed that mothers work. Stay at home mothers are in the absolute minority and have been for a couple decades. > I'm going to guess NYC or SF because you don't seem to realize that things actually haven't changed that much. You're describing the woke utopia that the left from those places seem to pine for. You seem to have uncritically swallowed some narrative using terms like "woke" "liberal" "metropolis" and you've assumed that it'l apply to me. I'm from neither NYC nor SF and I'm not liberal, now what?
- ahi 3y ago
  I recently attended a 90 minute marathon of those old cartoons. At least those 90 minutes absolutely hold up. Quite a few of them had themes that sailed right over your (and my) head when we watched them as kids. e.g. What's Opera, Doc? and Rabbit of Seville
  - ghaff 3y ago
    In general, I appreciated the Warner Brothers (vs. Hanna Barbera etc.) cartoons much more after I got a bit older than when I was a young kid.
sircastor 3y ago
Not to mention that Disney has run afoul of both parties a handful of times over the last decade, so it's a challenge to find support on either side.
jcranmer 3y ago
To expand on this point a bit, Ars Technica has some articles on the copyright extension saga. In 2019, when works started going into the public domain again in the US, they published https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/01/a-whole-years-worth-of-works-just-fell-into-the-public-domain/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/01/a-whole-years-wo...; in 2018, they published https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/01/hollywood-says-its-not-planning-another-copyright-extension-push/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/01/hollywood-says-i... which had interviews saying that there were no plans for another copyright extension term push. Of course, both times, comments were pretty incredulous that Disney would prevent Steamboat Willie from going public domain. And now we're 3 weeks from that happening, and 1 week from the US House planning to go on recess, and there's no sign of any bill that would extend copyright further. People who pay attention will note that Disney has seemed to prepare for Steamboat Willie going public domain: part of the short now appears as part of their film logo in movies, presumably to enable them to claim it as trademark and sue anyone who tries to upload it into oblivion. Nevertheless, I fully expect quite a few people to do stuff like upload Steamboat Willie to Youtube in January, and it will be interesting to see what the response of that is.
- jjulius 3y ago
  Where it also gets tricky is the creation of additional Steamboat Willie content - if you want to create and publish new Steamboat Willie stuff, you'll have to be crystal clear that it's not coming from Disney. If it looks like it's coming from Disney, that's when they can step in.
  - jcranmer 3y ago
    Legally speaking, they have a right to distribute copies. But Youtube isn't required to accept it though, and their copyright claim system is already somewhat notorious for the degree to which non-copyright owners to try to strike down videos for claimed copyright infringement. Steamboat Willie is probably the single most famous work to fall into the public domain since Youtube started. It is (formerly) owned by one of the most famously aggressive company in protecting IP. Youtube itself is also owned by an entity that is on the other side of IP law than Disney, but definitely far less aggressive in pushing those claims.

bluGill 3y ago

More importantly, those who care about the public domain were not paying attention the last time. They are now, so Disney realizes that it will be a harder sell. As soon as they get someone to propose a laws letters will be written. There is one thing more powerful than money in politics and that is votes. Letters to congress are a proxy for votes and so nobody will risk another extension.

hinkley 3y ago

The timelessness of those old cartoons has waned considerably. GenX was already getting reruns of Disney and Looney Tunes cartoons that were aimed at Boomers. As the boomers are aging out, a lot of the slices of both domestic life and leisure time in these cartoons are something alien. Women in the kitchen? Hunting rabbits? And with a shotgun? Really? Itchy and Scratchy are Tom and Jerry ad absurdum. The Flintstones were somewhere between Tom and Jerry and The Honeymooners. Most of this stuff does not deserve a replay.

bongodongobob 3y ago
Neither of those things are alien. A world exists outside of whatever metropolis you think is the center of the universe. Millions and millions of people hunt and millions and millions of women are primary caretakers or stay at home moms.
- chownie 3y ago
  I would say the world shown in those cartoons is alien to viewers of today. There were millions of hunters and millions of stay at home mothers in the 40's during Tom & Jerry's original run, but there's many fewer millions now. Consider: Women jumped from a third working in 1950 to just over two-thirds (of those who have children under 6, even) working as of the year 2000. We've had another two decades and change plus recessions since then, how much smaller could the demographic be?
  - bongodongobob 3y ago
    I have no idea where you live but you are completely disconnected from the average reality. I'm going to guess NYC or SF because you don't seem to realize that things actually haven't changed that much. You're describing the woke utopia that the left from those places seem to pine for. I'm as liberal as they come but am from flyover country. Everyone hunts. Women do a lot of the cooking. There are lots of stay at home moms. And everyone is ok with it, shotguns and all.
    - chownie 3y ago
      > I have no idea where you live but you are completely disconnected from the average reality. This is a really bizarre response to hard statistics, just openly denying they exist? The "average reality" is indeed that mothers work. Stay at home mothers are in the absolute minority and have been for a couple decades. > I'm going to guess NYC or SF because you don't seem to realize that things actually haven't changed that much. You're describing the woke utopia that the left from those places seem to pine for. You seem to have uncritically swallowed some narrative using terms like "woke" "liberal" "metropolis" and you've assumed that it'l apply to me. I'm from neither NYC nor SF and I'm not liberal, now what?
ahi 3y ago
I recently attended a 90 minute marathon of those old cartoons. At least those 90 minutes absolutely hold up. Quite a few of them had themes that sailed right over your (and my) head when we watched them as kids. e.g. What's Opera, Doc? and Rabbit of Seville
- ghaff 3y ago
  In general, I appreciated the Warner Brothers (vs. Hanna Barbera etc.) cartoons much more after I got a bit older than when I was a young kid.

sircastor 3y ago

Not to mention that Disney has run afoul of both parties a handful of times over the last decade, so it's a challenge to find support on either side.

jcranmer 3y ago

To expand on this point a bit, Ars Technica has some articles on the copyright extension saga. In 2019, when works started going into the public domain again in the US, they published https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/01/a-whole-years-worth-of-works-just-fell-into-the-public-domain/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/01/a-whole-years-wo...; in 2018, they published https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/01/hollywood-says-its-not-planning-another-copyright-extension-push/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/01/hollywood-says-i... which had interviews saying that there were no plans for another copyright extension term push. Of course, both times, comments were pretty incredulous that Disney would prevent Steamboat Willie from going public domain. And now we're 3 weeks from that happening, and 1 week from the US House planning to go on recess, and there's no sign of any bill that would extend copyright further. People who pay attention will note that Disney has seemed to prepare for Steamboat Willie going public domain: part of the short now appears as part of their film logo in movies, presumably to enable them to claim it as trademark and sue anyone who tries to upload it into oblivion. Nevertheless, I fully expect quite a few people to do stuff like upload Steamboat Willie to Youtube in January, and it will be interesting to see what the response of that is.

jjulius 3y ago
Where it also gets tricky is the creation of additional Steamboat Willie content - if you want to create and publish new Steamboat Willie stuff, you'll have to be crystal clear that it's not coming from Disney. If it looks like it's coming from Disney, that's when they can step in.
- jcranmer 3y ago
  Legally speaking, they have a right to distribute copies. But Youtube isn't required to accept it though, and their copyright claim system is already somewhat notorious for the degree to which non-copyright owners to try to strike down videos for claimed copyright infringement. Steamboat Willie is probably the single most famous work to fall into the public domain since Youtube started. It is (formerly) owned by one of the most famously aggressive company in protecting IP. Youtube itself is also owned by an entity that is on the other side of IP law than Disney, but definitely far less aggressive in pushing those claims.