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> works by people who died in 1955 70 years. After death. The rules have to change. 70 years is way too long.
by shevy-java 10mo ago
> works by people who died in 1955
70 years. After death.
The rules have to change. 70 years is way too long.
- tombert 10mo agoI was actually extremely surprised that Disney didn't bribe congress and stop Mickey Mouse from ending up in the public domain.
- _trampeltier 10mo agoThey did. Before it was 50 years and get extended several times just before Mickey would enter public domain.
- culi 10mo agoYeah they've done a lobbying campaign about a dozen times when Mickey was set to enter public domain. I think GP was saying they're surprised they didn't do a 13th time. Like why give up now?
- prmoustache 10mo agoBecause in reality it hasn't entered public domain completely, only the very first movies and the way it was drawn in the 1930's. They are still protecting the one most people all know better.
- VBprogrammer 10mo agoThe funny thing is that Mickey Mouse barely registers for kids these days. We went to Disney World this year and Mickey had a bit part in some of the shows. Elsa, Moana and the other modern characters were the real stars.
- prmoustache 10mo agoIt is not even figuring in the Disney logo.
- miniwark 10mo agoNot exactly true, they have hacked the end of the copyright for SteamBoat Willie, by adding a few second extract of it, as part of the actual "Walt Disney Animation Studios" actual logo. They cannot sue anymore for copyright infringements, but they may do it the registered trademark way, by saying "It's in our logo !".
- bentley 10mo agoThe last (general) copyright extension in the US was the CTEA in 1998. What’s happened since then? Google, who has power, money, and incentive to lobby against future copyright extensions.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- permo-w 10mo agoI'm sure I'm being obtuse here, but what's Google's game in the copyright sphere?
- hulitu 10mo agoThey have Baby Yoda now, much better than Mickey Mouse.
- zozbot234 10mo agoSure, the term of copyright protection is quite long; but the amount of works that are legally 100% in the public domain and even Internet-accessible in some form but simply languishing in obscurity and have yet to be made comprehensively accessible to the general public (via digitizing, transcribing, indexing and comprehensive classification) may well be orders-of-magnitude larger! There's a whole lot of low-hanging fruit that's effectively free for the taking, should anyone be interested enough to put in the work; consider the huge amount of serialized publications that might have been issued throughout the 19th century, many of which are so obscure as to be essentially unknown.
- GeoAtreides 10mo agoNot sure why the amount of works in the public domain has any relevance to how long copyright protection is. Seems to me like they're two orthogonal issues.
- mlrtime 10mo agoBecause every-time this comes up it is the same Mickey mouse complaints over and over. If you're young and your read this the first time I'm sure you're outraged. Meanwhile there are 1000's of works that people are free to take. Better yet, there are 1000's of works that will be destroyed and not preserved that are open that should be preserved and used.
- GeoAtreides 10mo agoI'm not sure what the argument is here. That because there's a large corpus of public domain works, then the long copyright protection is ok? That people want a short copyright protection because they're done with everything in the public domain? Would that also imply that if the number of public domain works gets large enough, then the duration copyright protections should also increase?
- zozbot234 10mo agoLong copyright protection is not okay, but letting the huge corpus of existing public domain works languish in obscurity is not okay either; that does a lot more damage to our shared culture, and in a way that's even quite easy to address. But the damage done by keeping works in copyright is easier to see than the damage done by not making remarkably similar works accessible at all.
- m4rtink 10mo agoThankfully this is already happening thanks to the glorious AI - revolution. AI crawlers just ignore copyright - and any other rules and laws. ;-)
- bacchusracine 10mo agoAs do people. Which ends up weakening copyright even further as it becomes a law everyone ignores, on the level of speeding or jaywalking. The same knock-on effects as Prohibition, we become a nation of scofflaws. People don't know copyright law. They think they do and are alright with the construct they made up in their heads. But they don't actually know what it says and does and means, otherwise they'd hate it much more.
- ronsor 10mo ago> They think they do and are alright with the construct they made up in their heads. But they don't actually know what it says and does and means, otherwise they'd hate it much more. This is also why companies have slowed down on enforcing it too much: if people actually understood copyright, there would be too much pushback.
- mlrtime 10mo ago>70 years is way too long. Objectively, why? It's in our lifetimes, I'd say it's just about right.
- rhdunn 10mo agoIf someone publishes a novel when they are twenty and dies when they are 90 the novel won't be in the public domain for 140 years. That's rediculous.
- nemomarx 10mo agoHow often is 70 years in your lifetime? only if you read a book as a teenager or child, right?
- joquarky 10mo agoNobody can create derivative works from anything that was created while they were alive.
- layer8 10mo agoJust wait until they manage to keep creators artificially alive indefinitely.
- joquarky 10mo agoI wouldn't put it past some Jack Valenti type to arrange some kind of Henrietta Lacks scenario to create indefinite copyright terms.