[shakes head] I really need new glasses.

If Shakespeare’s ROMEO AND JULIET was covered by copyright, WEST SIDE STORY would not have been a copyright violation although it borrowed the plot.

If you want to discuss copyright, I suggest you learn what it is, first.

Here are two sites that should start anyone interested off on this journey.

http://www.rcfp.org/handbook/c10p02.html

http://www.umuc.edu/library/copy.shtml

Really? You don’t know or care who Mozart was? Really?

As to Disney, it’s completely ironic that the one company who has made the most money FROM the public domain refuses to contribute to it. Hypocrisy much? If copyright were ‘forever’, Disney wouldn’t exist.

The vast majority of creative works (particularly in music and literature, but also in the more visual arts) are derivative. They borrow plot lines, themes, ideas from existing works.

Ideas are not property in the normal sense of the word; they are not tangible, and the only way to control them completely is to keep them a secret. Of course a secret idea has no value to either the creator or to society in general. And once they are in the public domain, they can be replicated without real cost — something that can not be said of normal property. Copyright and patent laws are there to provide an incentive to creators to make their ideas, their stories, their music public. In turn, these ideas should serve as the seeds to new ideas. Ultimately, the most successful ideas are the ones that spawn new ideas. Unfortunately modern copyright is enforced in such a way as to inhibit this spawning of new ideas.

The same clause of the Constitution that allows for copyrights, also allows for patent law. Originally both types of law have rather short periods associated with them. Patent law still does. Imagine if patent holders had successfully lobbied for the extension of patents to 100 years? Imagine a world where the airplane just existed patent 6 years ago? And if most of our modern drugs were never developed because the drugs that inspired them were still under patent? Yet the creators of the airplane, the light bulb, modern drugs and all the others wonders of the age we live in, did not in any sense work less hard for the creation of their inventions than any artist. If we believe that copyright should extend for 70, 100, or 1000 years, then shouldn’t patents also extend that long as well?

We recognize that overly long patent terms hurts the general welfare; isn’t it time we recognized the same about overly long copyright terms?

–
Bill

By your argument though, Disney should be paying to use Snow White, for example.

But in 2008 there was a fascinating claim reported in the Los Angeles Times. The article titled “Disney’s rights to Mickey Mouse may be wrong” reports that the cartoon “Steamboat Willie” is already in the public domain according to several researchers.

Film credits from the 1920s revealed imprecision in copyright claims that some experts say could invalidate Disney’s long-held copyright, though a Disney lawyer dismissed that idea as “frivolous.” …

“That ‘Steamboat Willie’ is in the public domain is easy. That’s a foregone conclusion,” said copyright scholar Peter Jaszi of American University’s Washington College of Law after studying the issue at The Times’ request.

The Wikipedia article about Steamboat Willie has more details on the controversy.

Businesses also have a right to protect their business. Disney is very protective of it’s works, and guess what? It’s made a fortune from them. It only works that way because their property is exclusive to them. Take that away and you take away the motivation for this company to do what it does. And the same is true for many companies in the world. I don’t feel I have, or should have, some magical right to steamboat willie just because it’s a certain number of years old. They made it and they’re still using it. It’s theirs.

I don’t know the answers, but I do think the attitude that nothing should be copyrighted (or have some similar protective law) is very wrong – we don’t, and shouldn’t, have any magical right to other people’s work. Nobody is obligated to work and give that work away freely.

but…

we already have everything he’s asking for, don’t we?

Sure, we don’t have ‘copyright will now last forever’ because that’s explicitly forbidden in the Constitution. But we have the next best thing, a term that will be extended, and retroactively, every time Mickey Mouse in Steamboat Willie comes up for entry to the public domain.

Endless extensions, each one longer than the one before it. No worries, mate!

Plus people need to make money to live. Many people are working on things to make a living. If all their work can be stolen and used by anyone, their ability to earn a living creating is taken away. What about all the filmmakers in Hollywood? Disney? Medicines? It’s the driving force behind many industries. You could change the whole system to something like communism where everyone gets paid regardless, but I doubt that’d go over well in America. So people are creating for the purpose of making money and if you take that away, they will stop and start doing something else to make money.

I don’t know what Mozart did, and I don’t care who he is – he should not steal from others. Period. Now, if the atmosphere in which he worked was one in which they shared their work and the others didn’t mind I’d think that’s fine. A creator can do whatever they want with their work. But to take it without their consent is wrong.

My only problem with drm, as it is today (and I know this article isn’t about drm, but it’s related), is that in an attempt to protect the rights of the author and publisher, they’re taking away rights from the consumer. That’s not right, and it’s not smart. Consumers provide the MONEY, sticking it to us is not going to be good for business in the long run. They need to come up with a way to protect everyone.