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Mike Norris
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 4274
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| Posted: 20 October 2012 at 6:59pm | IP Logged | 1
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JB wrote:
| Putting a time limit on copyrights has struck me all along as governments doing busy work. There is no reason, rationally, that a copyright should ever lapse. |
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JB wrote:
| The public domain serves a useful function… •• Can you give an example? |
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I have agree with JB here. I don't see why a copyright has to expire, especially if all it means is people get to do what they want with the properties involved. Frankly the number of awful adaptations and sequels of properties in the public domain alone is enough to make any fan of those properties and ones on the verge of entering the public domain leery.
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Clifford Boudreaux
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 19 July 2012
Posts: 443
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| Posted: 20 October 2012 at 7:47pm | IP Logged | 2
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I don't have a problem with perpetual copyright for things which continue to make a profit for their owners. This is why the corporations were able to successfully lobby Congress to extend the copyright. These are valuable properties and there's no real advantage for any of them going into the public domain... well, apart from a higher chance that someone would make a half-decent Superman movie this century.
But as JB pointed out, most ideas don't really succeed. Many that do only have a limited shelf-life. There's tons of orphaned copyrights which are caught in this nether-world between public domain and being commercially viable as no one really knows who holds the rights.
I'm a big fan of e-books and I'm also a fan of Wodehouse. Not a big fan of Wodehouse, so I only have a few volumes of his work because I don't really want his hundred or so books cluttering up my house. I would, if they were available, purchase e-book volumes of just about anything he's done.
The last time I checked (about a year ago), the only commercially available e-books from Wodehouse were those works which had fallen into the public domain. For whatever reason (be it low profits or technophobia), the Wodehouse Estate hasn't taken the effort to convert these books for a new market.
This isn't an isolated event. GOG (Good Old Games) runs into all kind of resistance when upgrading PC games to play on modern systems. These are all orphaned works which have no commercial value in their present state and GOG is willing to put up all the up-front money and share the profits to make these games commercially viable again... and they run into endless problems, whether it be companies which refuse the offer or simply not being able to find the owners of the games as ownership is often spread out among numerous partners.
There's a lot of abandoned intellectual property out there. If these were physical properties, the government would assume ownership and re-sell the land or use it for public use. This is what public domain is. It's the repository of our cultural heritage. Not everything is commercially viable and that's where the public domain comes into play.
And as someone pointed out, JB has, from time to time, enjoyed the benefits of it. Everyone has.
I have no interest in stealing the profits from corporations, they can keep Mickey Mouse forever, but a lot of this stuff (like Slam Bradley) will never see the light of day unless it were in the public domain.
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Mike Norris
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 4274
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| Posted: 20 October 2012 at 7:59pm | IP Logged | 3
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DC has used Slam from time to time. Who better than them to use the character?
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
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| Posted: 20 October 2012 at 8:20pm | IP Logged | 4
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Fantastic Four 274?••• I'm not sure some of the iconic figures of literature would fall into this category. Obviously characters like Dracula, Sherlock Holmes, the Frankenstein Monster, etc, are so well known that if they were not public domain, writers and artists would simply create their own avatars of them, just different enough to avoid litigation. On the other hand, if prolonged copyrights had somehow prevented these characters from becoming so iconic -- which I suppose could happen -- a story like the one seen in FF274 would not even have been conceived, and we wouldn't miss what never existed!
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Clifford Boudreaux
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 19 July 2012
Posts: 443
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| Posted: 20 October 2012 at 9:23pm | IP Logged | 5
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DC has used Slam from time to time. Who better than them to use the character?
I'm talking more about reprints of Golden Age and early Silver Age stories. Stuff that would have been in the public domain by now if not for the Copyright Extension Act.
The vast majority of DC's Golden Age material has not seen print since originally published. Will Eisner's The Spirit is kept in print, but the other two properties published with it (Mr. Mystic & Lady Luck) aren't.
There is, however, an interest in this stuff and there's quite a few people who freely distribute scans of these long out-of-print stories. This is a violation of the copyright, even though the companies who own them have no commercial interest in reprinting it. The only legal way to read these issues is to track down surviving copies of the issues, which DC makes no profit from.
Under the original agreement, these stories should have passed into the public domain where they could be distributed and enjoyed by anyone.
Under current laws, they gather dust in someone's metaphorical drawer because they're not commercially viable.
Edited by Clifford Boudreaux on 20 October 2012 at 9:24pm
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Mike Norris
Byrne Robotics Member
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| Posted: 20 October 2012 at 9:37pm | IP Logged | 6
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Them's the breaks.
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Clifford Boudreaux
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| Posted: 20 October 2012 at 9:42pm | IP Logged | 7
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Yeah, them's the breaks, but it's an example of how a situation could be improved by having something go into the public domain.
So, in the end, Warner Brothers is free to profit from the publication of increasingly horrible comic books and increasingly awful movies... and we get to not read a bunch of cool stuff from the past.
Pretty much a win/win.
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Clifford Boudreaux
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| Posted: 20 October 2012 at 9:53pm | IP Logged | 8
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And I'm pretty indifferent to who wins the case between S&S and Warners. It is scientifically impossible for me to care less about the fate of Superman, who will exist in one form or another regardless of who wins these legal cases. The only difference is the continued publication and release of awful comics and movies versus the possibility that someone might remember to do something interesting with the character without Warner Brother's endless attempts to make the character grim and gritty for today's audience.
Under the law which the corporations wanted, S&S were legally able to petition to have the copyright revert to them at the end of the original copyright term.
Nothing moral or ethical about it, it's simply the law, which is born out by successful law suits by the Siegel Estate.
Unlike say Marv Wolfman's or Dan DeCarlo's attempts to convince people that they didn't produce their efforts under a work-for-hire system. It is an undisputed fact that Superman was not created under work-for-hire conditions and the Copyright Extension Act gave the original copyright owners (in this case S&S) the right to get their creation back.
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Mike Norris
Byrne Robotics Member
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| Posted: 20 October 2012 at 10:02pm | IP Logged | 9
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Are their movies/comics increasingly "horrible" and "awful" and was it really "cool stuff"? Some of it might very well be awful and horrible. Being old doesn't make it good. YMMV.
So basically you want Warners to turn over their IP for nothing so you can read it.
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Michael Casselman
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 14 January 2006
Location: United States
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| Posted: 20 October 2012 at 10:08pm | IP Logged | 10
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Under current laws, they gather dust in someone's metaphorical drawer because they're not commercially viable....
Yeah, them's the breaks, but it's an example of how a situation could be improved by having something go into the public domain.
++++++++++++++++
How does something "commercially unviable" suddenly become viable simply upon going into public domain? Any new 'take' on the previously existing product is still subject to the same whims of interest as it previosuly existed. It's still a crapshoot. For every "It's A Wonderful Life", there's got to be hundreds of other things that remain un-rediscovered. And not every concept, idea, draft or story treatment is a goldmine.
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Clifford Boudreaux
Byrne Robotics Member
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| Posted: 20 October 2012 at 10:10pm | IP Logged | 11
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No, they can keep their IP. It's legally theirs. I've stated several times I have no problem with it. If the Siegels can win their legal challenge, then half of it will legally be theirs as long as the corporations continue extending the copyright. In a battle between the people who didn't create Superman and the people who didn't originally buy Superman, I can't be bothered to pick a side... but unless there's some agreement made after the new law was passed, then the Siegels are going to continue winning the appeals.
I'm only pointing out that there's a lot of stuff which would be freely distributed had they been allowed to fall into the public domain under the original agreement. There is a down side for consumers.
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Clifford Boudreaux
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| Posted: 20 October 2012 at 10:17pm | IP Logged | 12
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How does something "commercially unviable" suddenly become viable simply upon going into public domain?
Have you met the Internet?
There are plenty of people who are willing to expend massive amounts of time and money to make stuff available for free. There are people who buy $50 Archive editions, scan them, then risk legal reprisal distributing them on-line... for free.
If you go on Amazon, you can buy the entire works of HG Welles for $1. The "publisher" merely assembled the works from the Guttenberg Project (where many people volunteered their time to transfer them to ebook form), slapped a cover on it, and sold them for a nominal charge.
Or go into any Dollar Store and check out the $1 DVDs. A lot of that stuff passed into the public domain, someone copied it, manufactured it as cheaply as possible, and sell it for next to nothing.
There's a tiny amount of money to made and people have been doing it for a long time.
If the Golden Age was made public domain today, there would be no shortage of newly reprinted material being made legally available tomorrow. No exaggeration.
Edited by Clifford Boudreaux on 20 October 2012 at 10:19pm
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