12 ms·

The Bitter Legacy of Mickey Mouse

80 points by winestock 14y ago

columbo 14y ago
Why not follow the same system as domains? Allow for yearly renewal of copyrights. Failure to renew moves the item into the public doman regardless if it has been 2 or 200 years. The net-effect could be interesting; articles would move into the public domain fairly rapidly (why pay to maintain the copyright of an article from fifteen years ago about Y2K?) and established bodies of work with huge corporate incentives would stay copyrighted for decades. Disney want's to keep their mouse until the sun burns out and I couldn't care less. All these other works that are now in legal limbo because of that is what bothers me.
- Aloha 14y ago
  I have an idea myself to solve this; Unregistered works, are granted 10 years of protection, then either must be registered or become public domain. For individuals, After registration, Artist Lifetime, then renewal every 5 years thereafter. For corporate owned/created work, registration good for 30 years, and renewal every 5 years thereafter. Possibly, work must be kept in commercial availability somewhere in the 5 year cycle or you potentially could be challenged for the right to renew. I like this system because it solves something I see as a serous problem, abandoned works.
  - geon 14y ago
    Registrations sounds like a bad idea to me. As long as you have the original publication date well documented, any registration should not be neccessary.
  - josteink 14y ago
    Before Mickey mouse and similar ilk came along, copyright was 7 years. 7. No copyright which includes anyone's lifetime (and most copyrights are held by corporations anyway) can be deemed reasonable in an age where information and culture moves 100s of times faster than it did when the term was 7 years.
    - tzs 14y ago
      > Before Mickey mouse and similar ilk came along, copyright was 7 years. 7. It was 56 years (28 year first term, which could be renewed for a second 28 year term) when Mickey Mouse was created. The shortest it has even been under Federal copyright law in the US was 28 years (14 year first term, renewable for another 14 years) under the Copyright Act of 1790.
      - josteink 14y ago
        That may be, and if so thanks for correcting me, but I think my point still remains pretty clear. Copyright was granted to benefit the public, arts and sciences. It was not created as a right to profit indefinitely to mega corps.
        anigbrowl 14y ago
        Dude, you owe him an apology. I agree with your point but you made a major factual error and damaged your own standing in doing so. Look it up and correct your mistake rather than resorting to weasel words.
        josteink 14y ago
        Uh. No. I've been entirely civil and I've been open about corrections. What on earth would there be to apologize anyway?
    - wpietri 14y ago
      I think individual copyright is reasonable for one's lifetime. I'd be ticked if somebody used my photos from 10 years ago for profit. Corporate or collective works, though, I agree. I think a 7-year expiration would be fine. I expect that approximately zero investment decisions on new movies or TV shows turn on the money they expect to make in year 8. And even without copyright, modern studios are adept at producing new versions and higher-end editions that would get new 7-year terms.
      - 14y ago
- ErrantX 14y ago
  The body of work that could be copyrighted is vastly larger and more diverse than domain names (which have a fairly tight technical constraint). So managing such a system would be very complex. No to mention the administrative overhead for companies and individuals to renew their work each year. But, if those problems could be overcome; interesting idea.
- mongol 14y ago
  Because there is value to society if copyrighted works become public domain after reasonable time.
- zokier 14y ago
  Renewal model would work for commercial uses of copyright. But copyright is not limited for that only. Other uses artistic control and ideological (eg. copyleft).
- sethrin 14y ago
  Why have copyright at all? More to the point, if you're going to have it, how are you going to enforce it on the Internet? The number of ways in which a high-quality digital copy of a potentially copyrighted work is nearly infinite. Some of them are legitimate: reading a properly licensed file into memory in order to consume it. Some are clearly not legitimate, and others fall into a gray area. The practical ease with which copyright may be violated is in itself an argument against its rigid enforcement. Without a pervasive technical infrastructure the question of, "Can I copy these bits?" is essentially unanswerable. The duration of copyright is not nearly as large of a problem as enforcement -- the current system doesn't seem to work too well. To a first approximation, there is no such thing as copyright of a digital work. So why should that change, and how do you plan to do that?
  - mratzloff 14y ago
    The practical ease with which laws against murder may be violated is in itself an argument against its rigid enforcement. If you have a problem with copyright in and of itself, make a case based on that. The logical conclusion of your argument as it stands, however, is "laws may be violated so we should have no laws".
    - visakanv 14y ago
      My interpretation of his stance is- "there's not much point having a law if it's technically being violated all the time, and it's exploited by those with power and authority to suit their own ends". He's not promoting lawlessness, he's recognizing it as the current state of affairs, and suggesting that we address it differently.
      - duck 14y ago
        With that logic you could say the same thing about speed limits.
        habitue 14y ago
        Yes, actually, there are lots of places with much higher speed limits on the highways. Good point.
- MereInterest 14y ago
  Except that things in the common culture should be able to be built upon, and expanded. I do need not seek out the estate of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle if I should desire to write a Sherlock Holmes book. It has become part of the common culture. Similarly, I should not need permission to make my own animations involving Mickey Mouse, Felix the Cat, Betty Boop, Popeye, Superman, or any other of the creations from the early 20th century. It is not only the artificial scarcity of creative works that makes lengthy copyright so obscene, but also the inability to build upon earlier works.
gruseom 14y ago
Unz's archive of periodicals (http://www.unz.org http://www.unz.org) is really something. Its UI looks archaic, but the technology works surprisingly well and a tremendous wealth of content is hosted there. The whole thing is a significant public service. One wishes more rich people turned into people like Ron Unz. He continues to impress as an uncategorizable scholar and journalist, working on what interests him and uncovering significant (if controversial) things. And TAC is one of the best periodicals of its type.
- wpietri 14y ago
  Could you say more about TAC? I'd love to find more US conservative voices (as opposed to, say, radical reactionaries, theocrats, or cheerleaders for Team Republican) so that I can better balance my media input.
  - anigbrowl 14y ago
    They're what I'd call paleoconservatives, pretty similar to 'Rockefeller Republicans,' or so it seems to me. Although I consider myself more of a secular liberal, I find TAC well worth reading. Just looking at the comments on the articles, and you can see they generally form a respectful and considered discussion even when there are significant differences of opinions.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - gruseom 14y ago
    With respect to anigbrowl and [deleted], who probably know more than I do, I think "paleoconservative" might not be the best label for TAC, even though some of their authors might use it. They're ideologically pretty loosely formed, and as a group give me the sense of something new evolving rather than of something old returning. What I have found them consistently to be is (1) anti-imperialist (or anti-interventionist if you don't believe there's an empire) and (2) intelligent. A few of their junior bloggers are too prolific to be on average very good. But people like Daniel Larison, Dan McCarthy, and Scott McConnell write consistently thoughtful pieces. They also publish serious authors that get little attention elsewhere, like Andrew Bacevich. Then there are Unz's own pieces which keep getting more interesting. But those are an off-to-the-side eclectic sort of thing. They also stand outside MSM consensus in a way that has genuine integrity. Consider Eric Margolis' cover story from their inaugural issue (Oct 2002), a blistering critique of the impending Iraq War that got almost everything right. Not everything—in retrospect, he arguably overemphasized oil—but the piece was a truth-speaking deviation from the groupthink and propaganda that dominated that period. http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/iraq-invasion-the-road-to-folly/ http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/iraq-invasio.... I think most people would be pretty proud now to have launched a magazine with that in 2002. Basically, they've established themselves as freethinking conservatives who have nothing to do either with the decadence of party conservatism or the fanaticism of the right-wing base. That's what makes them valuable and worth reading—such voices are needed. Not that I agree with all they say, of course. (By the way, if you have time for podcast-type thingies, I've found a couple of other sources that are surprisingly good. But I'll save that for some other off-topic thread :) Or you're welcome to email me if you'd like to discuss any of this offline.)
tzs 14y ago
I wish we could consider different terms for the different aspects of copyright. Copyright is not a single right--it is a bundle of rights. In the US (whose law I will use for all of this comment), for instance, it includes: • The rights to make and distribute copies, • The rights to make and distribute derivative works, • The rights to publicly perform and display works. The power to even have Federal copyright law comes from this grant of power in the Constitution: 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. That gives a purpose for the power (promoting science--which is used in its archaic meaning, which means knowledge, rather than its modern meaning, which is what once was called natural philosophy), and also the mechanism by which it is to be exercised (giving authors a limited monopoly). Shorter terms promote progress by making works more widely available, but longer terms ALSO promote progress by letting authors make more money which improves things on the supply side, so setting the term requires balancing these, and I see no reason that the optimal setting for, say, copying should be expected to be the same as the optimal setting for, say, making derivative works. I also see no reason the term needs to be the same for different types of works. Music, literature, movies, and computer software are very different so why would we expect that a term that is good for music when it comes to balancing wide distribution vs. author incentive to also be good for literature, moves, and software?
- zokier 14y ago
  > I also see no reason the term needs to be the same for different types of works. Music, literature, movies, and computer software are very different so why would we expect that a term that is good for music when it comes to balancing wide distribution vs. author incentive to also be good for literature, moves, and software? The problem is that attempting to categorize works might be futile. Eg. chiptunes (a form of music) originally were software written for the sound chips. Would they fall under "software" or "music" category?
cromwellian 14y ago
Something I was just reminded of. Now that Disney owns StarWars, I wonder what will happen to fan videos? Will they pursue them aggressively?
ansible 14y ago
I've thought that all intellectual properties (patents, trademarks, copyrights) should pay property tax, else it goes into the public domain. Values are assessed just as with real estate. Mickey Mouse will end up costing more than my crude sketch. But that may change if my character starts to become popular. Basically, if you are making money on the property, you will be able to afford the tax. If the property is valueless, then you stop paying the tax, and it goes into the public domain.
- cdjk 14y ago
  While nice in theory, there's no way I can see that working in practice. With real property there are comparable sales and the like, which can be reasonably accurate - if another townhouse in the same complex sold for $x one month, $x is pretty good estimate of the other values in the complex. Even this gets tricky when you get out to a more rural area like wear I live, and the only other sales are significantly larger or smaller houses. I'm not even sure how you could do comparable sales for intellectual property. Yeah, Disney's publicly traded, but imagine an trying to assess the value of an asset owned by a privately held company that doesn't have to disclose any financial information. And even if you could assess values, look at the mess of property taxes in California with Prop. 13.
  - hermannj314 14y ago
    I think you could address that if you pay taxes based on a declared worth $X with the provision that anyone can exercise the option to buy the intellectual property from you for $X or you can reassess at a higher price/move your IP to the public domain. The problem with this is that the creators of marketable and valuable IP could not exercise creative control of their IP without paying a tax on the market value of their IP even if they don't make money on it. Not sure about that. I'm not buying into this idea at all, just adding a perspective.
    - cdjk 14y ago
      That might work for the likes of disney, but seems like it could be really unfair to smaller copyright holders. Suppose I write a successful novel, and that the "IP tax" is 1%. If I value it at $10m, my yearly tax is going to be untenable at $100k, but that $10m is a rounding error for a large studio that wants the movie rights. Yeah, I realize you could tweak the numbers, but I think it's a valid objection. One approach I have heard that might work is that you get some amount of time of free copyright (20, 30, 50 years), and then have an increasing copyright-registration fee for each year or extension period beyond that, up to some maximum term. It could either increase linearly or exponentially, or someplace in between. I'm not entirely sure it would work, but I think the idea has some merit.
RexRollman 14y ago
Disney's stance on this is incredible when you consider that they have profitted greatly on the back of public domain works.
- eddieroger 14y ago
  It makes sense in that context, though. Clearly, Disney knows what profit can be enjoyed from a public domain work, and wouldn't want others to profit on the back of their property. Besides, Disney is a red harring in the article - because of Disney's desire to protect their most iconic character, the author can't read some old magazines online.
Devilboy 14y ago
The cynic in me thinks the current system is acceptable. Everything is copyrighted forever and everything is freely available on The Pirate Bay anyway.
- DomreiRoam 14y ago
  I don't like the situation because authors doesn't get an honest compensation for their work and you can't easily create new works based on old copyrighted oeuvre. I think it would be in the interest of the public that you have a more limited in time copyright and after a certain delay an obligation to let other creator reuse assets with a compensation schema that allows new creations.

80 points by winestock 14y ago

Why not follow the same system as domains? Allow for yearly renewal of copyrights. Failure to renew moves the item into the public doman regardless if it has been 2 or 200 years. The net-effect could be interesting; articles would move into the public domain fairly rapidly (why pay to maintain the copyright of an article from fifteen years ago about Y2K?) and established bodies of work with huge corporate incentives would stay copyrighted for decades. Disney want's to keep their mouse until the sun burns out and I couldn't care less. All these other works that are now in legal limbo because of that is what bothers me.

Aloha 14y ago
I have an idea myself to solve this; Unregistered works, are granted 10 years of protection, then either must be registered or become public domain. For individuals, After registration, Artist Lifetime, then renewal every 5 years thereafter. For corporate owned/created work, registration good for 30 years, and renewal every 5 years thereafter. Possibly, work must be kept in commercial availability somewhere in the 5 year cycle or you potentially could be challenged for the right to renew. I like this system because it solves something I see as a serous problem, abandoned works.
- geon 14y ago
  Registrations sounds like a bad idea to me. As long as you have the original publication date well documented, any registration should not be neccessary.
- josteink 14y ago
  Before Mickey mouse and similar ilk came along, copyright was 7 years. 7. No copyright which includes anyone's lifetime (and most copyrights are held by corporations anyway) can be deemed reasonable in an age where information and culture moves 100s of times faster than it did when the term was 7 years.
  - tzs 14y ago
    > Before Mickey mouse and similar ilk came along, copyright was 7 years. 7. It was 56 years (28 year first term, which could be renewed for a second 28 year term) when Mickey Mouse was created. The shortest it has even been under Federal copyright law in the US was 28 years (14 year first term, renewable for another 14 years) under the Copyright Act of 1790.
    - josteink 14y ago
      That may be, and if so thanks for correcting me, but I think my point still remains pretty clear. Copyright was granted to benefit the public, arts and sciences. It was not created as a right to profit indefinitely to mega corps.
      - anigbrowl 14y ago
        Dude, you owe him an apology. I agree with your point but you made a major factual error and damaged your own standing in doing so. Look it up and correct your mistake rather than resorting to weasel words.
        josteink 14y ago
        Uh. No. I've been entirely civil and I've been open about corrections. What on earth would there be to apologize anyway?
  - wpietri 14y ago
    I think individual copyright is reasonable for one's lifetime. I'd be ticked if somebody used my photos from 10 years ago for profit. Corporate or collective works, though, I agree. I think a 7-year expiration would be fine. I expect that approximately zero investment decisions on new movies or TV shows turn on the money they expect to make in year 8. And even without copyright, modern studios are adept at producing new versions and higher-end editions that would get new 7-year terms.
    - 14y ago
ErrantX 14y ago
The body of work that could be copyrighted is vastly larger and more diverse than domain names (which have a fairly tight technical constraint). So managing such a system would be very complex. No to mention the administrative overhead for companies and individuals to renew their work each year. But, if those problems could be overcome; interesting idea.
mongol 14y ago
Because there is value to society if copyrighted works become public domain after reasonable time.
zokier 14y ago
Renewal model would work for commercial uses of copyright. But copyright is not limited for that only. Other uses artistic control and ideological (eg. copyleft).
sethrin 14y ago
Why have copyright at all? More to the point, if you're going to have it, how are you going to enforce it on the Internet? The number of ways in which a high-quality digital copy of a potentially copyrighted work is nearly infinite. Some of them are legitimate: reading a properly licensed file into memory in order to consume it. Some are clearly not legitimate, and others fall into a gray area. The practical ease with which copyright may be violated is in itself an argument against its rigid enforcement. Without a pervasive technical infrastructure the question of, "Can I copy these bits?" is essentially unanswerable. The duration of copyright is not nearly as large of a problem as enforcement -- the current system doesn't seem to work too well. To a first approximation, there is no such thing as copyright of a digital work. So why should that change, and how do you plan to do that?
- mratzloff 14y ago
  The practical ease with which laws against murder may be violated is in itself an argument against its rigid enforcement. If you have a problem with copyright in and of itself, make a case based on that. The logical conclusion of your argument as it stands, however, is "laws may be violated so we should have no laws".
  - visakanv 14y ago
    My interpretation of his stance is- "there's not much point having a law if it's technically being violated all the time, and it's exploited by those with power and authority to suit their own ends". He's not promoting lawlessness, he's recognizing it as the current state of affairs, and suggesting that we address it differently.
    - duck 14y ago
      With that logic you could say the same thing about speed limits.
      - habitue 14y ago
        Yes, actually, there are lots of places with much higher speed limits on the highways. Good point.
MereInterest 14y ago
Except that things in the common culture should be able to be built upon, and expanded. I do need not seek out the estate of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle if I should desire to write a Sherlock Holmes book. It has become part of the common culture. Similarly, I should not need permission to make my own animations involving Mickey Mouse, Felix the Cat, Betty Boop, Popeye, Superman, or any other of the creations from the early 20th century. It is not only the artificial scarcity of creative works that makes lengthy copyright so obscene, but also the inability to build upon earlier works.

gruseom 14y ago

Unz's archive of periodicals (http://www.unz.org http://www.unz.org) is really something. Its UI looks archaic, but the technology works surprisingly well and a tremendous wealth of content is hosted there. The whole thing is a significant public service. One wishes more rich people turned into people like Ron Unz. He continues to impress as an uncategorizable scholar and journalist, working on what interests him and uncovering significant (if controversial) things. And TAC is one of the best periodicals of its type.

wpietri 14y ago
Could you say more about TAC? I'd love to find more US conservative voices (as opposed to, say, radical reactionaries, theocrats, or cheerleaders for Team Republican) so that I can better balance my media input.
- anigbrowl 14y ago
  They're what I'd call paleoconservatives, pretty similar to 'Rockefeller Republicans,' or so it seems to me. Although I consider myself more of a secular liberal, I find TAC well worth reading. Just looking at the comments on the articles, and you can see they generally form a respectful and considered discussion even when there are significant differences of opinions.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- gruseom 14y ago
  With respect to anigbrowl and [deleted], who probably know more than I do, I think "paleoconservative" might not be the best label for TAC, even though some of their authors might use it. They're ideologically pretty loosely formed, and as a group give me the sense of something new evolving rather than of something old returning. What I have found them consistently to be is (1) anti-imperialist (or anti-interventionist if you don't believe there's an empire) and (2) intelligent. A few of their junior bloggers are too prolific to be on average very good. But people like Daniel Larison, Dan McCarthy, and Scott McConnell write consistently thoughtful pieces. They also publish serious authors that get little attention elsewhere, like Andrew Bacevich. Then there are Unz's own pieces which keep getting more interesting. But those are an off-to-the-side eclectic sort of thing. They also stand outside MSM consensus in a way that has genuine integrity. Consider Eric Margolis' cover story from their inaugural issue (Oct 2002), a blistering critique of the impending Iraq War that got almost everything right. Not everything—in retrospect, he arguably overemphasized oil—but the piece was a truth-speaking deviation from the groupthink and propaganda that dominated that period. http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/iraq-invasion-the-road-to-folly/ http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/iraq-invasio.... I think most people would be pretty proud now to have launched a magazine with that in 2002. Basically, they've established themselves as freethinking conservatives who have nothing to do either with the decadence of party conservatism or the fanaticism of the right-wing base. That's what makes them valuable and worth reading—such voices are needed. Not that I agree with all they say, of course. (By the way, if you have time for podcast-type thingies, I've found a couple of other sources that are surprisingly good. But I'll save that for some other off-topic thread :) Or you're welcome to email me if you'd like to discuss any of this offline.)

tzs 14y ago

I wish we could consider different terms for the different aspects of copyright. Copyright is not a single right--it is a bundle of rights. In the US (whose law I will use for all of this comment), for instance, it includes: • The rights to make and distribute copies, • The rights to make and distribute derivative works, • The rights to publicly perform and display works. The power to even have Federal copyright law comes from this grant of power in the Constitution: 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. That gives a purpose for the power (promoting science--which is used in its archaic meaning, which means knowledge, rather than its modern meaning, which is what once was called natural philosophy), and also the mechanism by which it is to be exercised (giving authors a limited monopoly). Shorter terms promote progress by making works more widely available, but longer terms ALSO promote progress by letting authors make more money which improves things on the supply side, so setting the term requires balancing these, and I see no reason that the optimal setting for, say, copying should be expected to be the same as the optimal setting for, say, making derivative works. I also see no reason the term needs to be the same for different types of works. Music, literature, movies, and computer software are very different so why would we expect that a term that is good for music when it comes to balancing wide distribution vs. author incentive to also be good for literature, moves, and software?

zokier 14y ago
> I also see no reason the term needs to be the same for different types of works. Music, literature, movies, and computer software are very different so why would we expect that a term that is good for music when it comes to balancing wide distribution vs. author incentive to also be good for literature, moves, and software? The problem is that attempting to categorize works might be futile. Eg. chiptunes (a form of music) originally were software written for the sound chips. Would they fall under "software" or "music" category?

cromwellian 14y ago

Something I was just reminded of. Now that Disney owns StarWars, I wonder what will happen to fan videos? Will they pursue them aggressively?

ansible 14y ago

I've thought that all intellectual properties (patents, trademarks, copyrights) should pay property tax, else it goes into the public domain. Values are assessed just as with real estate. Mickey Mouse will end up costing more than my crude sketch. But that may change if my character starts to become popular. Basically, if you are making money on the property, you will be able to afford the tax. If the property is valueless, then you stop paying the tax, and it goes into the public domain.

cdjk 14y ago
While nice in theory, there's no way I can see that working in practice. With real property there are comparable sales and the like, which can be reasonably accurate - if another townhouse in the same complex sold for $x one month, $x is pretty good estimate of the other values in the complex. Even this gets tricky when you get out to a more rural area like wear I live, and the only other sales are significantly larger or smaller houses. I'm not even sure how you could do comparable sales for intellectual property. Yeah, Disney's publicly traded, but imagine an trying to assess the value of an asset owned by a privately held company that doesn't have to disclose any financial information. And even if you could assess values, look at the mess of property taxes in California with Prop. 13.
- hermannj314 14y ago
  I think you could address that if you pay taxes based on a declared worth $X with the provision that anyone can exercise the option to buy the intellectual property from you for $X or you can reassess at a higher price/move your IP to the public domain. The problem with this is that the creators of marketable and valuable IP could not exercise creative control of their IP without paying a tax on the market value of their IP even if they don't make money on it. Not sure about that. I'm not buying into this idea at all, just adding a perspective.
  - cdjk 14y ago
    That might work for the likes of disney, but seems like it could be really unfair to smaller copyright holders. Suppose I write a successful novel, and that the "IP tax" is 1%. If I value it at $10m, my yearly tax is going to be untenable at $100k, but that $10m is a rounding error for a large studio that wants the movie rights. Yeah, I realize you could tweak the numbers, but I think it's a valid objection. One approach I have heard that might work is that you get some amount of time of free copyright (20, 30, 50 years), and then have an increasing copyright-registration fee for each year or extension period beyond that, up to some maximum term. It could either increase linearly or exponentially, or someplace in between. I'm not entirely sure it would work, but I think the idea has some merit.

RexRollman 14y ago

Disney's stance on this is incredible when you consider that they have profitted greatly on the back of public domain works.

eddieroger 14y ago
It makes sense in that context, though. Clearly, Disney knows what profit can be enjoyed from a public domain work, and wouldn't want others to profit on the back of their property. Besides, Disney is a red harring in the article - because of Disney's desire to protect their most iconic character, the author can't read some old magazines online.

Devilboy 14y ago

The cynic in me thinks the current system is acceptable. Everything is copyrighted forever and everything is freely available on The Pirate Bay anyway.

DomreiRoam 14y ago
I don't like the situation because authors doesn't get an honest compensation for their work and you can't easily create new works based on old copyrighted oeuvre. I think it would be in the interest of the public that you have a more limited in time copyright and after a certain delay an obligation to let other creator reuse assets with a compensation schema that allows new creations.