This iconic mouse is weeks away fromn being in the public domain Jan. 1, 2024, is the day when ‘Steamboat Willie’ enters the public domain
I find it insane that anyone should be allowed to use Mickey Mouse. Similarly, the 30s version of Superman is in public domain, soon, and that is similarly insane to me.
These are still Active properties closely tied with a company’s marketing and image. We badly need to update our IP laws.
Companies last longer than a hundred years, now. It’s silly we allow these things.
Are you for real? The creators have been dead for decades. Apart from the discussion of who was actually creatively responsible for Disney’s as significant characters. Copyright was invented to protect them, not to be a gravy train for their useless descendants or the faceless companies owning the right for some (often murky) reason.
This doesn’t contain any reasoning behind why copyright shouldn’t be that.
Temporary monopolies are the governments reward to encourage new works of art and inventions. The trade off is that it’s temporary. By extending copyrights indefinitely it actually discourages new works to be created because they’re competing with more creations than ever, and nothing can be built as a derivative work. Trademarks, which Disney still owns, are protected basically indefinitely.
The point of patents and copyrights is to promote and reward creative artists and inventors, not create a permanent revenue stream for corporations. Walt Disney died in 1966 and he, his investors, his heirs, and even their heirs have all been handsomely rewarded.
Now let’s get Steamboat Mickey in Smash Bros.
Steamboat Mickey could be in Smash Bros if Nintendo wanted to license it, but IIRC Smash Bros is specifically only properties owned by Nintendo on purpose. Smash Bros is effectively free advertising for other Nintendo games, in addition to a fighter.
I don’t see why Disney, rather than Walt himself, shouldnt own the copyright on Mickey Mouse.
Smash Bros is supposed to be a celebration of the gaming industry, not just Nintendo. Minecraft Steve/Alex and Banjo/Kazooie are Microsoft properties. Joker is owned by SEGA, and Persona 5 wasn’t even on Switch until years after Joker was announced for Smash. Sephiroth and Cloud are Square Enix properties. Sora is a Disney property. There are way too many non-Nintendo characters in Smash for it to be “free advertising” for Nintendo.
You do realize there’s a metric ton of non-Nintendo characters in Smash, right? It’s essentially a celebration of gaming as a whole. Mickey isn’t a video game character though, that’s why they used Sora. Same reason Goku and Superman aren’t in Smash.
Because the whole point of copyrights is to promote creativity. No one at Disney today had anything to do with creating Mickey Mouse. Why should they have the exclusive right to create derivative works? The people who are there seem perfectly capable of coming up with new characters. And the copyright expiring will push them to do so.
And besides, it’s not really about Mickey Mouse. It’s also about art, music, and literature. Beethoven’s heirs shouldn’t be getting a check every time an orchestra plays the 5th Symphony.
We badly need to update our IP laws.
Yes, by abolishing IP as a concept entirely. You cannot own an idea after you published it, that’s insane.
I mean, IP isn’t all bad. I can’t start selling p*ss in a bottle and label it with Coca-Cola branding. I’d get sued into oblivion. In this particular case, that would be a good thing. It also means that if you find a rat in your coke, you can sue CocaCola. If there were no IP, everyone could make it and it would be almost impossible to know where it came from.
There would also be no widely distributed film, TV, music, books, etc. Do you really want to live in a world where WattPad is the engine of literature?
If you sell cheap knock-off cola and slap a Coca-Cola label on, that isn’t copyright infringement, that’s a trademark violation.
I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about how it’s ridiculous that a corporation earns money every time someone plays a song, because they bought the “rights” to that song, whose author may or may not even still be alive.
Getting rid of copy-right entirely would remove the predatory publishing industry and make art non-commercial again. Small artists will still be able to live from their art, by performing on stage or being employed (or self-employed on contract) and paid for their time while creating content.
Indie movies, games and music will still exist. Fast and Furious 12 will probably not get made. I fail to see any negative, unless you’re Disney.
I find it insane that tvshows regularly show people watching 70+ year old tvshows. Nobody does that in real life. Doesn’t feel authentic.
I find it insane that we’ve reused characters in stories for thousands of years, but just a century ago it suddenly became illegal until almost every character was old enough to be forgotten and culturally irrelevant.
Fan fiction of relatively new IPs should be sellable, imho, without having to beg a corporation for permission. Its stuff we’ve grown up on. Disney and others are literally holding our culture hostage and dictates terms.
Fan fiction being sellable would require significant changes to copyright. It seems like you’re agreeing with me?
Idk what you mean by Disney “holding our culture hostage” - that seems weirdly hyperbolic.
That we’ve retold and improved stories for the most of human existence, suddenly we don’t. Thats what I mean with holding culture hostage.
I agree there should be some protections for artists, but not a hundred years. It should be close enough that the media is still relevant to the generation that it was presented to. Yeah, it would take drastic changes, but we got ourselves into this, we should be able to turn it back.
We agree on updating IP laws, but I think they should be curtailed rather than extended. You should not have the monopoly on an idea your entire life. If you can’t milk a fortune from it in 50 years it wasn’t that good an idea, so everyone else should be free to build on and improve it after that point.
And even if you absolutely kill it and your brand is still going strong decades later, that 50 years will cover anything new your did in that time. Plus it’s not like people wouldn’t know yours is the original even after the copyright expire; something entering public domain doesn’t make it legal to claim you invented it if you didn’t.
If you make something, it should be yours to disseminate as you wish. It’s silly to suggest otherwise. You literally created it.
Copyright isn’t just paying for an idea, its giving a complete monopoly over a concept. We came up with the idea of copyright to give creators a much easier way to profit off their creation (not having to compete after its created) to make sure innovation is very rewarded. That said, its still a government enforced monopoly, with all the issues that come with that, and with how much its been extended, its far past the point of encouraging innovation and instead just works to cement large companies in place, resting on their laurals rather than making anything new. Even when a copyright ends, the current copyright holder wouldn’t lose the idea, they just no longer have a monopoly on it. Disney can and will keep making Micky Mouse content, and the mouse will probably keep being accociated with them for centuries to come unless someone makes something that dwarfs the impact of Disney’s work with the character, in which case its best that it was released anyway.
No-one creates something from whole cloth. All ideas are based on things that came before them. Locking those ideas up indefinitely will stifle creativity and stagnate culture.
You do know that Disney made money from other people’s works like the brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen right? Their works are in public domain
They made money off of their version of those works, yes. They’re quite different from the originals.
This is what I mean about our laws needing updating - time alone is not enough any more. We need to define levels of differentiation that are commercially acceptable. Right now, that essentially just includes parody, which clearly is not a thorough enough accounting of the many ways IP can be varied.
Why are you such a corpo boot licker? What exactly do we gain as a species by allowing companies to hoard IP of creators of which are long since dead?
Nek minnit you’ll be telling me I can’t put on a play from Shakespeare or recite Beowulf without paying some corporation a fee?
Seriously?
The public must gain it’s share of the revenue for allowing a private company to use public domain IP exclusively.
Hold a yearly auction to see who is granted rights to the property which is now the public’s.
The public must gain it’s share of the revenue for allowing a private company to use public domain IP exclusively.
Pretty strongly disagree with the idea of a company’s product just becoming the public’s because a certain amount of time has passed.
I cannot even conceive of what the argument for this could possibly be.
Disney themselves benefited from the public domain since they didn’t invent the stories of Snow White, Cinderella, etc.
Literally how it’s worked forever, how do you think books and films become public domain? Blame the Romans.
Copyright was never meant to be used how it is today. It was specifically made to protect small creators from having big companies come in and rip them off. Companies were never meant to be the beneficiaries. But lot of lobbying plus corporations are people too bullshit changed that.
Copyright is meant to last roughly the lifetime of the artist, but organizations can live forever. And then nothing ever goes in the public domain, a shared culture dissolves in to nothingness.
the argument is that the people, and the political system the people put in place enabled the company to create and benefit off its creations.
“we live in a society” but unironically.
