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
If your idea of retelling and improving upon a story is to carefully create a similar-ish general plotline in a different setting that doesn’t overlap enough to be sued by the previous author, for “retelling and improving”… You miss out.
How crazy it is that creators have to go out of their way to not name something that looks and act like a lightsaber, a lightsaber. For a century! Everyone knows what a lightsaber is. It is part of our culture now. But we cant re-use them as is in any creative work (except for parodies) without begging Disney to pay for the privilege to use it if we are well-known enough. Its silly.
I feel.like you keep bringing up stifling creativity being a reason to not enforce copyright, but then you suggest that there is simply no room for creativity outside of established universes.
This really doesn’t make any sense to me. I don’t see how anyone benefits by a glut of terrible Star Wars fanfiction being published, throwing the entire canon into disarray, and fundamentally changing what the material is about.
Terrible Star Wars fan fiction is what we get anyway, just look at Disney’s trilogy. Its already changed. Its creator(s) doesn’t even have a say anymore. If anyone could make Star Wars, we could vote for the one taking it in the best direction with our wallets.
Theres of course a bit room outside of established universes, but why should we, when its the in-universe story that has occupied our minds for decades? Why re-invent everything for every story now when we once didn’t have to? What gives modern people this permanent ownership of an idea that past people didn’t? Why aren’t we allowed to use Hobbits, but we use halflings which everyones know is just hobbits in all but name. Why can’t we use Beholders and Illithids when its common knowledge what they are? What if Santa Claus was a copyrighted character belonging to Coca Cola? Or still belonged to the Dickens family so Coke never hired an artist to create the Santa Claus as we know today?
Also this obsession with “canon”, its stories not actual events. Its fun to have a shared understanding of past fictional events, but obsessing too much over it isn’t healthy for the fiction. But thats a different discussion.
