Copyrights, Trademarks, Patents, and branding irons

[Thad]

Now in the public domain: the last of Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, The Jazz Singer, Metropolis, The King of Kings, The Lodger, the first three Hardy Boys books, and many more.

Public Domain Day 2023 is Coming: Here’s What to Know

January 1, 2023 is Public Domain Day: Works from 1927 are open to all!

Next year's the biggie: the first three Mickey Mouse cartoons.

[Mongrel]

Metropolis, oooooohhhh

[beatbandito]

Weirdly was thinking about Metropolis all day today, and how much more anti-industrialist I remember both the original and anime being.

[Mongrel]

Also, while "The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes" was mostly mediocrities due to Conan Doyle phoning it in by then, it does have a few particular and unique wrinkles in some of its stories. Probably doesn't affect anything relevant, but having NO Holmes be under copyright at all may be more meaningful.

[Thad]

The Doyle estate used it as a cudgel for years, claiming that Sherlock Holmes was not "fully formed" until all the stories were published and therefore anybody who wanted to write an original Holmes story had to pay them.

A court finally threw that legal theory out a few years ago, but this is still an important development because it means everything in the Doyle canon is available for anyone to use, including plot developments and exposition from those last few stories that was off-limits until now.

[Mongrel]

Yeah, authors being able to tell the Doyle Estate to go fuck themselves was basically what I was getting at with that last bit. The estate wasn't an impassable barrier to telling Holmes stories, but they were still a drag you might potentially have had to deal with.

[Thad]

The Ed Sheeran lawsuit is a threat to Western civilization. Really.

I mean it's nice that we're finally getting copyright op/eds with headlines like that in the Washington Post, but y'know, copyright law and enforcement have been utterly deranged for the past 30 years or so and it would have been nice to see this kind of mainstream backlash when this shit got started. Better late than never, I guess.

[pacobird]

The Ed Sheeran lawsuit is a threat to Western civilization. Really.

I mean it's nice that we're finally getting copyright op/eds with headlines like that in the Washington Post, but y'know, copyright law and enforcement have been utterly deranged for the past 30 years or so and it would have been nice to see this kind of mainstream backlash when this shit got started. Better late than never, I guess.

Really coming around to the idea that the cultural moment where Everything Changed was not GamerGate but rather Blurred Lines, one of the consequences of which was possibly the worst Copyright decision of the modern era, setting theses vulture on the course we find ourselves today

But nobody wanted to hear it at the time because Robin Thicke is kind of a skeeze so everybody had to act like they'd never heard a Prince song before

[Thad]

Sheeran wins. Small favors.

[Thad]

The Warhol Decision: How SCOTUS Forgot The First Amendment & Turned Copyright Into A Liability Time Bomb

Gets into the legal weeds a bit, but the gist is that the majority places entirely too much emphasis on whether or not the work is commercial (which is meant to be one factor of determining whether it's fair use, but not the principal factor) and seems to create a scenario where the same work may infringe in some contexts but not others, and that whether or not it infringes may be based on financial decisions made by third parties well after the artist's death.

[Büge]

Judge rules that Reddit doesn't have to share IPs of users who discuss torrenting

[Thad]

Internet Archive’s legal woes mount as record labels sue for $400M

[Thad]

Scientologists Ask Federal Government to Restrict Right to Repair

Thank you, Scientology, for finally demonstrating how fucking stupid the DMCA's anti-circumvention clause is in a way that everyone can understand.

[Mongrel]

In "lame claim to fame" territory, a classmate friend of one of my oldest buddies was (AFAIK) the first person to ever swipe an e-meter from a Scientology office. I dunno what phony digital faffery they are now, but back then it was literally just a box with a wire in it hooked up to a tensioning knob the tester entirely controlled. Quel surprise.

Incidentally, that same office is now, like many Scientology buildings, disused and in dire need of repair.



Right on the main drag downtown too, just an unbelievable eyesore. Perfect advert for Scientology though!

[KingRoyal]

The Mouse belong to us* now

At least, the 1928 version of the character. Anything resembling the post-Fantasia version of the character is not up for grabs, and you'll probably never be able to put him on a tote bag or coffee mug. On the plus side, maybe this will stop Disney from sending cease & desists to day cares.

Also up are Peter Pan, Tigger, The Man Who Laughs and Lady Chatterley's Lover


*valid in America, check your local country's existing copyright laws to see how he's doing there. Lots of countries have Life + 95 years which would mean Mickey's expiration starts in 2061.

[Mongrel]

Minnie Mouse too, right off the bat.

[Thad]

*valid in America, check your local country's existing copyright laws to see how he's doing there. Lots of countries have Life + 95 years which would mean Mickey's expiration starts in 2061.

How does a life-plus copyright work for works of corporate authorship, anyway? Some kind of Schrodinger's Author thing where it was created by a corporation for purposes of ownership but created by human beings for purposes of expiry?

[KingRoyal]

Per Wikipedia, for authored works it's Life + 50-70 depending, and for work-for-hire, it's 95 from date of publication or 120 from date of creation. This only applies to works created after 1978 though, for the purposes of the copyright extension act. For works starting in 1928-1977, it's just a flat 95 years (and things 1928-1963 needed manual copyright renewal or they expired at 28 years)

Seems like for these purposes Walt Disney is the author of Mickey, so for places that had Life + 70 years that applies. But because he was created before 1978 in America, his copyright is only 95 years

[Thad]

Looking for The Circus on YouTube, this is the only post I've found that's got it in its entirety besides the paywalled HBO Max one, because YouTube's content filters aren't designed to recognize when something is no longer under copyright.



Also, the stage version of Animal Crackers is now PD, but the movie won't be for two more years.

[Mongrel]

Another fine work by the famous Charles Entertainment Chaplin.