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"Is the creator still earning from this product" is a test that congress believes doesn't matter. Walt is dead, Mickey lives on (with copyright restrictions)..

by furyg3 12y ago

"Is the creator still earning from this product" is a test that congress believes doesn't matter. Walt is dead, Mickey lives on (with copyright restrictions)...

toxican 12y ago
I think they define creator as Disney the company rather than Disney the man.
- smacktoward 12y ago
  Which is convenient, since Disney-the-company will never die, and need not have any actual human connection to Disney-the-man-who-actually-created-the-intellectual-property. So it provides a mechanism for people other than the person who created the work or his heirs/designated beneficiaries to profit from his work forever. Defining "creators" as actual human beings provides a useful marker for how long a copyright is useful: at some point that human dies, and then at some point later his heirs die, and then at some point later their heirs die, etc. So you can look at the question in terms of how many generations should have a monopoly on their forefathers' works. Defining corporations as creators takes that marker away.
- pbhjpbhj 12y ago
  Copyright protects the works of natural persons, not corporations. It protects the individual creators when they make a work; they can of course immediately assign their rights to the company, eg by a work-for-hire arrangement, but [co-]creators are always natural persons. http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/201 http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/201
daktanis 12y ago
Disney's legal team has big pockets to make sure they dont lose copyrights
delecti 12y ago
Sure, but there's a difference between selling copies of something and pirating it for personal use. Maybe not legally, but in my opinion at least morally, and also you're much less likely to get noticed for doing the latter.
basseq 12y ago
This also isn't an apt comparison, because no one is claiming that enthusiasts should own the copyright to Mario Kart. A better comparison would be Steamboat Willie, but even that is confusing because copyright is so caught up with trademark Disney characters. IANAL, but it seems to be that Disney should be able to have exclusive ownership over Mickey the character, but not the work in which he first appeared. (Which muddies the water, I know.) Does Disney make any significant money off Steamboat Willie? (They actually might, given its culture status, I just don't know.)
- smacktoward 12y ago
  An even better comparison would be if the only way Disney would let you view Steamboat Willie in a Disney-owned-and-operated facility. Like, they'll sell you a ticket or a DVD or a download, but in all cases you have to bring it to a Disney facility to actually play it back. And then one day Disney closes all the facilities, and now you have some copy of the work without any legal way to view it. Which, if you accept the analogy, brings the situation pretty close to the one addressed by U.S. v. Paramount Pictures in 1948 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pictures,_Inc. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pict...), which ended the practice of studios owning their own theaters and refusing to show their pictures anywhere else.
- DanTheManPR 12y ago
  You can still buy Steamboat Willie on DVD. Using it as an example is sort of problematic, because it is not an orphaned work, and a lot of people don't see the problem with Disney maintaining control over it. A better example would be the many orphaned animated features from the late 20's and 30's who languish in legal limbo instead of being released into the public domain (if you can't think of any examples, that's a symptom of the problem more than anything else).
  - dublinben 12y ago
    >You can still buy Steamboat Willie on DVD On an expensive (~$100), out-of-print DVD, only released in 2005. The work has been orphaned for far more of its lifetime than it has been available.
dingaling 12y ago
And the actual creator of Mickey is also long dead... Walt Disney was given a crash-course by his artists so that he could draw a passable Mickey face when kids met him and asked him to do so.
- michaelbuddy 12y ago
  I'd be interested in the source for this. I can see Walt having to relearn the newer Mickey style, kids only know the movies from the past 5 years anyway, but I'm pretty sure he drew the original ones. There's a lot of evidence for Ub Iwerks's really making the Disney empire's early important innovations happen in terms of animation but it wasn't like Walt was talentless at drawing.

by furyg3 12y ago

"Is the creator still earning from this product" is a test that congress believes doesn't matter. Walt is dead, Mickey lives on (with copyright restrictions)...

toxican 12y ago

I think they define creator as Disney the company rather than Disney the man.

smacktoward 12y ago
Which is convenient, since Disney-the-company will never die, and need not have any actual human connection to Disney-the-man-who-actually-created-the-intellectual-property. So it provides a mechanism for people other than the person who created the work or his heirs/designated beneficiaries to profit from his work forever. Defining "creators" as actual human beings provides a useful marker for how long a copyright is useful: at some point that human dies, and then at some point later his heirs die, and then at some point later their heirs die, etc. So you can look at the question in terms of how many generations should have a monopoly on their forefathers' works. Defining corporations as creators takes that marker away.
pbhjpbhj 12y ago
Copyright protects the works of natural persons, not corporations. It protects the individual creators when they make a work; they can of course immediately assign their rights to the company, eg by a work-for-hire arrangement, but [co-]creators are always natural persons. http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/201 http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/201

daktanis 12y ago

Disney's legal team has big pockets to make sure they dont lose copyrights

delecti 12y ago

Sure, but there's a difference between selling copies of something and pirating it for personal use. Maybe not legally, but in my opinion at least morally, and also you're much less likely to get noticed for doing the latter.

basseq 12y ago

This also isn't an apt comparison, because no one is claiming that enthusiasts should own the copyright to Mario Kart. A better comparison would be Steamboat Willie, but even that is confusing because copyright is so caught up with trademark Disney characters. IANAL, but it seems to be that Disney should be able to have exclusive ownership over Mickey the character, but not the work in which he first appeared. (Which muddies the water, I know.) Does Disney make any significant money off Steamboat Willie? (They actually might, given its culture status, I just don't know.)

smacktoward 12y ago
An even better comparison would be if the only way Disney would let you view Steamboat Willie in a Disney-owned-and-operated facility. Like, they'll sell you a ticket or a DVD or a download, but in all cases you have to bring it to a Disney facility to actually play it back. And then one day Disney closes all the facilities, and now you have some copy of the work without any legal way to view it. Which, if you accept the analogy, brings the situation pretty close to the one addressed by U.S. v. Paramount Pictures in 1948 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pictures,_Inc. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pict...), which ended the practice of studios owning their own theaters and refusing to show their pictures anywhere else.
DanTheManPR 12y ago
You can still buy Steamboat Willie on DVD. Using it as an example is sort of problematic, because it is not an orphaned work, and a lot of people don't see the problem with Disney maintaining control over it. A better example would be the many orphaned animated features from the late 20's and 30's who languish in legal limbo instead of being released into the public domain (if you can't think of any examples, that's a symptom of the problem more than anything else).
- dublinben 12y ago
  >You can still buy Steamboat Willie on DVD On an expensive (~$100), out-of-print DVD, only released in 2005. The work has been orphaned for far more of its lifetime than it has been available.

dingaling 12y ago

And the actual creator of Mickey is also long dead... Walt Disney was given a crash-course by his artists so that he could draw a passable Mickey face when kids met him and asked him to do so.

michaelbuddy 12y ago
I'd be interested in the source for this. I can see Walt having to relearn the newer Mickey style, kids only know the movies from the past 5 years anyway, but I'm pretty sure he drew the original ones. There's a lot of evidence for Ub Iwerks's really making the Disney empire's early important innovations happen in terms of animation but it wasn't like Walt was talentless at drawing.