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
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
WTF is this shitty loophole? “Well, we changed his clothes, that’s a whole new different character!” This makes no sense. Copyright should be abolished.
I disagree. That would just result in corporations like Disney ripping off independent artists.
But limit it to the artist’s life time or perhaps 25 years.
IRC drug patents last only 20 years, and those often cost a lot of money to develop, research and bring to market.
Fucking thank you.
The whole “copyrights should be abolished” trope is regurgitated by people who have clearly never created anything in their life. For artists, musicians, and other content creators, copyright is vital to our lives.
If you think Disney is powerful now, imagine what Disney would be like if no other creators had any legal protection at all.
The problem is that copyright law is never used by the small artists to protect their work, it’s only used by big corporations to put down the small artists, fuck with each other and find loop holes to abuse of it.
There’s what it should be for and what it’s actually used for.
You’re approaching a relevant part (that big corporations have an overwhelming power advantage in this “negotiation”), but “small artists never use copyright law” is just wrong:
Without copyright law they couldn’t even sell their content (or more accurately: they could sell it, but the big corp could simply copy it and sell it better/cheaper due to the economics of scale).
So without copyright the smaller artists would be even more boned than they are right now.
There should be real punishments for companies that do stuff like issue fraudulent DMCA takedowns.
That I can get behind!
Right now the law allows them to basically say, “oops, we kinda thought we owned that. Our bad.” And walk away only to issue an identical takedown the next week.
I have a video series that gets a DMCA claim on the intro (that I made) every single time that I have to submit a counter claim. It’s always overturned, but I have zero recourse to stop it from happening.
I know numerous small artists who use copyright to protect their work and get paid when people use their music in streams/videos, take down misuse of their graphic work, work with publishers to license their work, etc.
Copyright works fairly well for small creators.
Of course corporations abuse it like every other law. We don’t say that home ownership should be abolished because landlords are shitty.
Tell me you’re not an artist without telling me you’re not an artist.
My friend, this is precisely the kind of thing I was alluding to in my previous post when I said “regurgitated by people who have clearly never created anything in their life.” I promise you that as an artist I have used copyright law to protect my work, and so has just about every artist I know. I don’t even know what you’re imagining to make you say something so patently false.
It’s funny how often that argument comes up in FOSS (Free and open source software) circles where people just claim copyright is fundamentally wrong, but at the same time complain when someone violates any FOSS license (all of which depend on copyright to be enforcable).
These two takes aren’t incompatible. It is possible to want to abolish copyright, while wanting everyone to comply to existing rules while they aren’t abolished yet.
Sure, but in most of these discussions the ones arguing for “getting rid of copyright” mostly just mean “stop big companies from owning everything”. When mentioning that FOSS licenses depend on copyright to work it’s usually some form of “we’d have to find a way to still make them work …”.
Easy. Just make open source mandatory.
“Easy.” You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.
Laws are made up. Really all it takes is public will.
Right but this is a child’s solution to an adult problem, as you point out
You say Disney would be better without copyright at the same time we see Disney spending billions on lobby to make copyright almost eternal.
To think that Disney would be happy if every artist could create, enhance and improve a Marvel version for themselves
???
That’s not what I said at all.
Did you reply to the wrong person?
You say Disney would be better without copyright at the same time we see Disney spending billions on lobby to make copyright almost eternal.
Wow. That’s not what I said at all. You quoted me and you still got what I said wrong.
It’s because this entire take is just from the “corporations bad” crowd and that’s literally as far as they take their thought process.
Any serious look at copyright and IP laws shows they badly need updating, across the spectrum.
IMO copyright as a concept makes sense, but it’s duration should be significantly shortened. In todays short-lived world most works lose the majority of their financial value after a few years (let’s say ~10) anyways. So to allow artists to benefit from their creations while still allowing remixing or reasonably recent content I’d say some sane compromise is necessary.
Either that or massively expand (and codify) what qualifies as fair use: let anyone reinterpret anything, but don’t allow verbatim copying.
Current copyright law is ridiculously long. Life +70 years in many countries. So my grandfather’s books who passed away last year, will be locked up until most of his great grandchildren are in their 80’s or older.
It should be moved to a flat 45 years, the expected career length of a working person.
Easy problem to solve: abolish corporations.
Simple solutions are not the same thing as easy solutions.
War bad? Simple solution: End wars.
Disney would find a way to dig up walt and reanimate him.
…or assassinate artists to steal their work.
they already do
Public domain can get weird. The works of Mozart are obviously public domain. But if I record myself performing some of them, that recording is copyrighted. It doesn’t stop you from doing the same, which would also be copyrighted. Now let’s say I add a few of my own touches to my performance- which would be a derivative work. You cannot copy those in your own performance without my permission. In effect, it’s the changes themselves that are copyrighted.
Once I’ve made my recording, you can face an uphill battle to prove that you either didn’t know about mine, or that it was so obvious that it wasn’t creative.
All of this ignores trademark law, which is related but distinct.
Completely agree, not just copyrights but patents too.
Open environments are way more productive and creative then lock stuff for decades.
Patents were invented to make things more open. Before patents, companies and people relied on trade secrets. They would go out of their way to hide how everything worked. At least with a patent things needed to be in the open and eventually became public domain.
Source?
The idea of copyright and patents is to ensure that you can get compensated for your own work. There’s no point in creating a unique idea when Disney can just copy it and take all the money for themselves.
There are flaws with how copyright and patents are implemented, but that doesn’t mean they’re fundamentally broken. The alternative would be much worse.
You should look at how creative commons works. It’s the best alternative imo
CC is a great alternative for some cases, but far from all. Most artists want to protect their work, and CC don’t help with that.
How much Creative Commons media do you consume?
I find copyright and patents very different, at least in the U.S. I support copyright, but not patents. Patents are used to stifle creativity and generate lawsuits.
Example, I designed something and was urged to patent it. It combines hardware, electronics, and in some iterations software as well. I released it copyleft instead. People make it in their garage, cottage industry sells it, a multinational profits from it.
The current designs are much better than my original. If I had patented it it might stagnate, or I could litigate and try to prevent innovation.
Look at Linux and open source projects as a whole, like Lemmy, or how 3D printer community flourished after some 80s patents lost their validity and so on…
They are the ones who most profit from this CR and patent scheme, if they would profit from open projects they would lobby in that direction not the other way around
The cynic in me would argue Capitalism is the problem here.
So sounds like we should be arguing to abolish the need for employment to survive instead of defending the status quo.
Who would make the stuff that you buy and consume?