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UK rejects music copyright extension
Echo
ski-bapba-dapModerator, Administrator admin
ski-bapba-dapModerator, Administrator admin
BB link | Reuters source
This is great news. Some choice words from Doctorow:
Personally, I think 50 years is way too long as it is, but at least they didn't extend it.
Copyrighted works being orphaned is something that horrifies me - and it's done just so the big copyright moguls can squeeze the final cents out of that ancient best-seller on its 347th Best Of album.
This is great news. Some choice words from Doctorow:
Reuters is reporting that the British government has rejected a proposal to extend music recording copyrights from 50 to 95 years. Virtually all music is out of print in at 50 years, and extending copyright for another 45 years would only ensure that the vast majority of British recordings were long vanished and forgotten before they returned to the public domain. Economists calculated the net present value of the 95th year of copyright at less than the net present worth of a lottery ticket [...]
This is the first time that I know of, in the history of the world, that any country has given up on extended copyright terms. In the US, the Supreme Court found that 98 percent of the works in copyright were "orphans" with no visible owner and no way to clear them and bring them back into the world.
Personally, I think 50 years is way too long as it is, but at least they didn't extend it.
Copyrighted works being orphaned is something that horrifies me - and it's done just so the big copyright moguls can squeeze the final cents out of that ancient best-seller on its 347th Best Of album.
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I think some economist did some work on the optimal copyright length and I think he came out with 14-15 years. It has a Goldilocks feel to me too, so I would support that.
Frankly, I have little knowledge on the subject, I just don't think Mickey Mouse should be allowed to go into the public domain while Disney still uses him so much.
Yeah, I have a copy of the book Free Culture and it talks about everything from Mickey Mouse, to the Happy Birthday song to doujin comics.
I wish this meant The Grey Album could be re-released (yeah right.) That would be a big LOL EMI and LOL DEF JAM.
Sucks to be them.
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Mickey's not a trademark, he's a copyrighted character.
Maybe Disney should come up with something new?
I'm sure Disney has trademarks with the mouse ears and such, but the character itself is copyrighted.
of course not. Just released for free on the interweb and downloaded by millions of people.
They wouldn't lose the exclusive right to "Mickey Mouse". He's a trademark, not a copyrighted work. He's not going to go into the public domain.
What would happen if Congress would stop extending these absurdly long copyright periods is that people could start *gasps of horror and shock* distributing the Steamboat Willie short
Because you're 18 kinds of wrong, if you're serious.
Edit: Quoth Wikipedia
Obviously not, since people can't trademark names or graphics because that would just be silly... :roll:
Anyway, three cheers for a sensible decision on this. Can't wait to start selling old Beatles songs in twenty years...:P
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That reminds me of the Peter Pan horror story. The original Peter Pan is a play where a girl playing Peter Pan asks the audience to clap to summon Tinkerbell's mad fairy skillz and such. When the original creator of Peter Pan died, he handed the rights over to a children's hospital in the UK. But when the hospital demanded their cut for various Peter Pan creations by Disney, they were refused and there was a big drama over it.
That's why there's 30 copies of GUN and 2 copies of The Darkness at Blockbuster.
Yeah, that was pretty shitty of them. The hospital is supposed to get a cut of every adaptation of Peter Pan, but Disney didn't want to pay them over merchandising. Plus several times Disney have tried to shut down companies / shops that use Peter Pan somewhere in their advertising, but Disney don't even own the copyright..
Oh, I get it now. So the cartoons that have Mickey are public domain, which makes sense, but you still wouldn't be able to make your own Mickey Mouse cartoon, right?
There is no possible interpretation of trademark law that would make this remotely correct. Trademark law would prevent you from using Mickey Mouse on any type of product specified in the trademark registration. Disney has registered "Mickey Mouse" as a trademark on an incredibly broad and exhaustive list of product categories... For example, one of the 15 live trademarks found by a quick search of the USPTO lists:
If you were able to find a product for which Mickey Mouse was not registered as a trademark, you could theoretically sell it and not be infringing on Disney's trademark. (You would likely be infringing on their copyright, anyway, and even if you somehow managed to skirt both, Disney's lawyers would certainly use every method at their disposal to convince you, and a court of law, that you were.)
No amount of "making it clear" that your work was unrelated to Disney would excuse your infringing use of the trademark. In the same way, you can't call a computer an "Apple Computer" and sell it even if you plaster it with stickers that says "This product is not sold by or in anyway related to the Apple Computer, Inc of Cupertino, CA." Trademark law simply does not work the way your post describes.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Strike three, you're still wrong. Similarity is a significant part of trademark law, if a logo or graphic is too similar to a registered trademark it can still be infringing even if it is not exactly the same. An obvious clone of a registered trademark is still an infringement, by virtue of it being an obvious clone.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Someone should (Hypothetically) try to:
Claim Hicky Mouse was a satire of Micky Mouse har har har and not a knock-off job.
Claim Hicky Mouse is expressing my deep routed concern about the current political system, Hicky Mouse represents my version of political free speech, take that Disney!
Actually, I dunno, I'm just being a dick.
Anyway, on topic, I feel 50 years is a good length. I'm not going to want my shit being public domain whilst I'm still alive. Lest some hip hop guy make something out of it.