Was there a copyright reason for Disney changing their opening logo sequence to the steamboat willy thing? Some kind of "it's now our trademark" claim?
I think it was intended as an indicator of the source. In the mid 2000s, Pixar was beginning to represent Disney animation, and as a result Disney Animation Studios started to take a backseat in the eyes of the public (and the eyes of Disney management). Having some successful pictures (Wreck-it Ralph, Frozen, Big Hero 6, etc.) meant owning the brand and indicating to audiences the source - and hopefully encouraging them to buy tickets to _non-pixar_ Disney films.
Call me naive, but I don't think there was anything calculated about it more than attaching a mascot to the studio - like the Luxo Jr Lamp on Pixar films.
Also it can be seen as Disney Feature Animation wanting to celebrate a 95th year anniversary of sorts [1]. Sure the anniversary means a lot now to the public domain, but don't forget that it is also still a big anniversary for the company itself and can be a fun reminder of how far the company has come and all the things they've done over that span of years [2].
[1] DFA itself as a division of the company hasn't existed continuously in that 95-year period, of course. It was shutdown by Eisner for a while in favor of cheaper (and mostly outsourced overseas) Disney Television Animation and various dalliances with Pixar.
[2] Including the years that Disney thought it didn't need an active Disney Feature Animation department. The Steamboat Willie logo does also feel a bit like an internal political statement in that respect, too, because it kind of also says "this company was founded on Feature Animation".
I do that a lot, and sometimes even consciously, because, if I may be bold, large companies have a lot of people, and among so many people there's surely some evil masterminds.
I'm saying this of course with a tongue in cheek but that doesn't mean it's completely false.
Basically the Disney brand has gotten so huge and diversified that a public domain Mickey isn't an existential threat to their business anymore. Terrifying in its own right, but at least we might see an end to the endless copyright extension. Interesting times ahead!
That doesn't go far enough. Copyright terms should be on the order of 20 years or so, and should have nothing to do with whether or not the creator is still alive.
It should preferably depend on the type of work. Books generally have a long, slow RoI. People are still buying Tolstoy. I don't believe Tolstoy should be copyrighted, but insofar as copyright is a system designed by eighteenth-century economists to incentivise creative works, it seems to function basically as designed with long terms for books.
Movies and music last a little shorter. For some reason musicians tend to have short natural lives, and copyrights start to seem like grave-robbing.
Video games and software are practically dead within two decades. The primary effect of copyrights on software more than 20 years old seems to be to stifle innovation and promote rent-seeking. I think this is why tech people have such a dim view of copyright, because the system as it exists seems to create a lot of busywork and headaches that just feel so unnecessary for anyone tasked with filling in the gaps.
It's probably too short. It would live authors with very little bargaining power particularly if they become bigger in their writing carriers. Corporations would just have to wait 20 years and save themselves the exclusive rights and royalties.
It should be looked form the frame of how long is appropriate to promote the creation of the arts etc. Realistically no author is thinking I won't create this art unless I get lifetime + 70.
I would think 50 years total is a much more reasonable figure.
40 years seems like the highest defensible limit. This would mean if you created a work in your 20s, copyright would expire when you're eligible for social security. It's safe to say that if you haven't made money on your work within nearly 2 generations since its publication and before you become a pensioner, you're not going to. Or it's at least not going to drive you to create new works.
Corporations can't wait even 20 years because tastes change. There's not much mainstream demand for Sum 41 anymore. Also corporations can't have much margin on public domain material; there's too much competition if anyone can publish it, and for digital creations they'd be competing with legal p2p sharing. So they need that exclusivity.
> There's not much mainstream demand for Sum 41 anymore.
Perhaps not for Sum 41. But how about Beatles? Elvis? Michael Jackson? Metallica?
I don't know if people will still be listening to Swift and Eilish in 50 years from now, but something tells me that Beatles, Iron Maiden, Michael Jackson, Sinatra, will echo for eons..
Not all copyright is owned or even licensed to organisations.
It really is a bad feel if you created something, then 20 years later someone releases the exact thing you created and make millions and you don't get a cent of that money.
Also many people after retirement age probably need the income from royalties a little bit more than when they were in their prime, not less.
The comment I responded to said eons to come. I’m perfectly ok with tying copyright expiry to death of the artist, plus a little extra for the immediate family. I don’t, however, think that someone should be entitled to free money just because their great grandparents or other ancestor was a successful artist, the same way I don’t agree that someone should be entitled to free money because their ancestors happened to start a bank or oil company or be a monarch or whatever.
A simple, naive solution I've seen proposed would enable copyright extension on an exponential fee scale.
This has the nice side effect of wildly-successful works disproportionately funding the copyright offices, thus enabling theoretically lower fees for newcomers.
> Corporations can't wait even 20 years because tastes change.
Corporations create the taste. They can even wait hundreds of years. Just look at how many old stories are remade today. Unless there is something extraordinary, hyped for longer than a summer, they will wait all they want.
>It should be looked form the frame of how long is appropriate to promote the creation of the arts etc
I agree, I don't see how 20 years isn't long enough from that pov.
What company is going to wait 20 years before signing a book deal, film deal, etc.
Further. This still ignores the fact that there's value to having the original creator attached. You don't want the author of the book trashing your new film, you want them promoting it.
How about copyright terms of 10 years for all works, or for a tiny nominal fee (between $1 and $10) you can list the work on a register for a further 10 years, which you can do multiple times up to a maximum of 50 years. The idea is to strike a balance between giving creators time to monetise their works while also allowing abandoned/unlicensed works to fall into public domain reasonably quickly.
I get the idea, but I think that's way too short. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone came out in 1997; imagine if instead of paying Rowling for the royalties to make the movie in 2001, the studios had just waited until 2017 and done it without her permission, paying her not a penny.
They most likely still would have done it. Books like this usually have a short shelf life in the public consciousness. Harry Potter being an exception to the rule is in large part based on the hugely successful long-running movie series.
That's actually very common in Hollywood. Wait if a work survives the test of time. And then reap on the now money-loaded customers and cash out from their reminiscence.
Except you forgot about competition within the movie making industry. They could very easily end up competing against each other by making 2 or 3 movies of the same thing, which lowers their overall return, and is a bad deal for everyone.
I think it just depends on the pricing the copyright holder wants. If you can pay a few bucks and get exclusive rights, it's totally a win. If you have to mortgage your business to get the rights, it's a much harder decision.
I think a reasonable compromise would be, by default a copyright lasts 10 years, but they can extend it another 10 or 20 years(or maybe even until their death), if they pay a fee of some sort, perhaps yearly, so the copyright will expire as soon as it doesn't make sense to pay the fee anymore.
This lets the long-term copyright winners continue to win for most of their lifetime, if they cut the people(the govt) in on some of that return. While most things that don't need long term copyright get dumped into public domain to help invigorate and make more awesome new ideas.
> They could very easily end up competing against each other by making 2 or 3 movies of the same thing, which lowers their overall return, and is a bad deal for everyone.
Public domain is not new. They already have this situation now, and usually avoid this, probably for exact this reason.
> This lets the long-term copyright winners continue to win for most of their lifetime
Seems not very reasonable to support the rich and paywall the poor.
I agree public domain is not new, and they do have this problem today. It's generally 1st mover advantage that wins and the rest give up the project, since they know they probably can't beat them to market and get good market share. That's not always the case though.
If you are poor, then there is zero reason to renew the copyright, you clearly aren't making any money off of it. I view it as a tax on the copyright, it could even be implemented that way, say 10% of your take rate or something.
Hollywood is already rebooting reboots of remakes of comic books vaguely based on historic events. Imagine if original copyright rules in the us applied (14 extensible by 14 for a living author). They could reboot anything before 1995 for free.
They already do that now, even for less stuff from less than 20, 30 years. They reboot, remake, continue anything for whatever reason. Money is relevant, but by far not the biggest hurdle to prevent them. The permissions of the right holders and the influence of the creators are more important IMHO.
For example, Netflix just now announced a reboot of One Piece Anime, a series running for 25 years. The creator is still working on the original source. Imagine if Netflix could just do that on their own, the creator had no influence at all on their work. They could just make shit along the way as they see it. Twist it, change it, with their power, they could be damaging the original work for good, simply because they are bigger.
Perhaps trademark law could help? E.g. Netflix can make their One Piece reboot without permission, but it has to be named in a way that makes it clear it's not licensed from the original creator.
The Idea is even worse. It's not uncommon for artists to work a long time for next to nothing, until someday they have a big breakthrough. 10, 20 years are nothing. And while newer works are usually then one bringing a breakthrough, making good money with early works is also happening often. Usually, artist grow in their own little niche, until they hit mainstream.
That's a term shorter than 1909, before Disney even existed. Seems pretty unlikely. The "life" stuff doesn't make any sense, either; it's always been a genuinely weird term.
In 1909 the US switched from a term of 28 years extensible by 14 if the author lived, to a term of 28 years extensible by 28 if the author lived. It didn't grow to life +50 until 1976.
Edit: I think the confusion may arise from the Berne convention. The US did sign, but not until 1988.
I've seen a lot of speculation that they've been slowly pivoting Steamboat Willie in preparation to use trademark litigation where copyright will no longer be effective.
This kind of thing has been attempted in the past. For example, after the Lego brick patents expired, Lego sued Mega Bloks (in Canada) claiming a trademark over the design of the brick. They lost the case, because the Supreme Court (of Canada) ruled you can’t double‐dip on IP protection by turning a functional (i.e., patentable) design into a trademark.
Disney putting Steamboat Willie in their logo is unlikely to actually allow Disney to effectively extend restrictions on the cartoon—but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a calculated move to deter people from reproducing Steamboat Willie after its liberation simply by the implicit threat of expensive litigation from a very large team of lawyers.
> They lost the case, because the Supreme Court (of Canada) ruled you can’t double‐dip on IP protection by turning a functional (i.e., patentable) design into a trademark.
Nintendo did attempt that trick, although the case you’re thinking of is Sega v. Accolade, which as you said, ruled that forcing your competitor to display your trademark unwillingly doesn’t mean you can smack them down for trademark infringement.
The case was SEGA v. Accolade, but the lockout system on the Genesis worked on the same legal theory (e.g. induced trademark infringement equals Doctorowian[0] interpretations of "intellectual property"[1]). For the Game Boy, the problem was that Taiwan[2] didn't have a copyright treaty with Japan, but they did have a trademark treaty, so if you induced pirates to commit a trademark violation you could get them with something. Same idea, but the jurisdiction is different, so all the existing case law about not turning trademark into mutant perpetual copyright wouldn't apply here.
[0] "Intellectual property is any law that allows you to dictate the conduct of your competitors." - Cory Doctorow, paraphrased
[1] Yes, it's a shitty made-up term to make you confuse four different kinds of law, no I don't care. There's enough negative sentiment around "intellectual property" these days that the Stallmanian position sounds like a defense of it now.
>Disney putting Steamboat Willie in their logo is unlikely to actually allow Disney
We're talking about a company that caused copyright duration to be extended, ha ha.
At very best, I'd say Disney might possibly be a tiny bit excited that something from inside Castle Disney is entering the world & will become semi exciting on its own.
Sure there'll be bad & ugly & awful things done with Steamboat Willie. But no press is bad press. And there's going to be some press about the things people do with the mouse.
Wasn't "Winnie The Pooh: Blood and Honey" a result of the characters entering public domain? I don't think it really did a lot to bring Winnie the Pooh to peoples mind, and I don't recall anything else based on Winnie coming out.
That movie ... seems messed up (but was a success, so more is coming). And the only other thing coming out I am aware of, is a Meme, leading to Winnie the Pooh being banned in china.
The legal question is discussed in the fine article.
> Disney has also started using this logo before some of its films.
> If you make your own Mickey cartoon, can Disney use trademark law to interfere? Trademark law is all about preventing consumer confusion – and not about getting in the way of creativity – so it depends on whether people are likely to be misled about the source of your cartoon. As long as no one thinks it is a Disney joint, there should not be a trademark problem.
This was my more generous, less cynical take as well. Disney has been approaching their 100 year anniversary (not passed), and Steamboat Willie was the first animated short under the banner of Walt Disney Animation Studios. It makes sense to honor one's first at one's hundredth.
