January 1st public domain bids

[CrimsonGenius]

All of this because Disney tried to insert themselves into politics. If they did not they would not have lost Steamboat Willy, essentially Mickey.

 

[Tyranomaster]

Copyright is already wayyyyy to lenient because of lobbying from companies like disney. I say give property 25 years from the original creator's death then make it public domain. A company should be forced to declare the individual who gets credit for the idea as the copyright when they go to copyright the IP. The company could still own the rights, but public domain is tied to that individual.

The only reason I say 25 years is such that a spouse who outlives the copyright owner may have relied on them as their income source. If they're at retirement age, things would get complicated if it immediately became public domain. If they're young, they should start looking for work.

Your kids, wife, or your company shouldn't be able to milk your IP for so long after you die.

 

[georgelee5786]

The ultimate nightmare of all authors: the plebs being able to write fanfictions

 

[bulmabriefs144]

So a bunch of titles are going into the USA public domain on January 1st 2024. As a result, people can buy the rights to these titles as the official owners. This includes steamboat Bob(not entirely sure if that's it's name) from Disney, the call of Cthulhu, and more. I am personally excited about the Eldritch horrors being up for grabs. However, I want to know which titles you're most excited for.

On a similar note, I want to see if we can pool enough funds together to buy the rights to call of Cthulhu so that SH will be the only place people can post Eldritch abomination based stories but that's probably not going to happen. Other titles are fine too.

I think it was Steamboat Willy.

Isn't the public domain's whole shtick that anyone can use it without worrying about infringing on copyright? Am I missing something here?

There's a whole number of copyright levels.

Public domain, as I understand it, is basically not having a copyright. This means it can't even prevent that you can't buy the copyright and set up draconian restrictions against mentioning the name Cthulhu. "His name must not be uttered!" you say.

Creative Commons Attribution (aka CC By): you need to mention the author, so they can get royalties and such
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike: what you are talking about. The copyright cannot be more restrictive than the original terms
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial: You can't make money on it
Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivative: No fanworks or spinoffs
Mixes of the the above
CC Zero: Basically you waive copyright, and it's in the public domain. People can make full copyright spinoffs, or whatever.

The ultimate nightmare of all authors: the plebs being able to write fanfictions

Actually, see ShareAlike. The ultimate nightmare is for someone to steal your work wholly and get paid for it instead of you.

Disney lobbied twice to the gov to change the copyright laws so they can keep Hold of mickey. They extended the timeframe before something enters public domain. There is a stirct time limit. They simply no longer care to do a 100mil lobby campaign for a 3rd time for another law change to make the official time limit extend before public domain inclusion when they have grown so big.

What they ought to do is instead of lobbying to change the time limit to something outrageous (600 years?) they ought to just say that you cannot make money from any work that does not attribute the characters (you do attribute them, you can make some money but you must pay royalties, but if you claim it as yours, they can claim full royalty). That is, you have a copyright for the text of books, but a trademark is about protecting the characters. As long as Mickey Mouse is in use, all images of Mickey Mouse uphold the trademark, effectively treating the character as "still alive". If LoZ abandons the Triforce, after a certain number of years, anyone can use it. Lastly, there ought to be a religious copyright, where no matter how old the book is, the basic teaching is not allowed to be altered.

 

[TheMonotonePuppet]

So a bunch of titles are going into the USA public domain on January 1st 2024. As a result, people can buy the rights to these titles as the official owners. This includes steamboat Bob(not entirely sure if that's it's name) from Disney, the call of Cthulhu, and more. I am personally excited about the Eldritch horrors being up for grabs. However, I want to know which titles you're most excited for.

On a similar note, I want to see if we can pool enough funds together to buy the rights to call of Cthulhu so that SH will be the only place people can post Eldritch abomination based stories but that's probably not going to happen. Other titles are fine too.

It is time for Puppet Inc. to expand its domain. See us on titles coming to you soon... Our goal is to promote Eldritch horrors to beyond Disney, and encourage humanity to invite them into this reality more than they have.

 

[CubicleHermit]

Public domain, as I understand it, is basically not having a copyright. This means it can't even prevent that you can't buy the copyright and set up draconian restrictions against mentioning the name Cthulhu. "His name must not be uttered!" you say.

Trademark and copyright are two different things.

Trademarks don't expire, as long as they're defended. Trademarks are also specific to specific sorts of business or goods. https://tmsearch.uspto.gov/search/search-results shows 1500 results for Cthulhu, and the closest one owned by Chaosium is https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=...TION&caseType=DEFAULT&searchType=statusSearch which is specifically "For: rules book and supplements for playing a fantasy roleplaying game"

Copyrights expire. Once they expire, everyone owns something; that's literally what the "public domain" means.

Creative Commons Attribution (aka CC By): you need to mention the author, so they can get royalties and such
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike: what you are talking about. The copyright cannot be more restrictive than the original terms
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial: You can't make money on it
Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivative: No fanworks or spinoffs
Mixes of the the above
CC Zero: Basically you waive copyright, and it's in the public domain. People can make full copyright spinoffs, or whatever.

These are all licenses, which require the licensor to have a non-expired copyright (although CC Zero is basically equivalent to public domain in many ways.)

Here's an example of an artist putting their work into the public domain: https://tomlehrersongs.com/

 

[bulmabriefs144]

Just as a heads up, public domain doesn't always mean free from hassle. I spent a great of effort trying to avoid my book, Aiken Abridged Bible from being blocked on Amazon, because "this seems like it contains text that is in public domain." So I had to justify that I owned a book or had contacted the authors where the authors of the original were dead anything from 2000 years to nearly 10,000. It sorta went down like this.

And when I tried to upload it here, it pretty much got hidden.

 

[DaScoot]

I think it was Steamboat Willy.


There's a whole number of copyright levels.

Public domain, as I understand it, is basically not having a copyright. This means it can't even prevent that you can't buy the copyright and set up draconian restrictions against mentioning the name Cthulhu. "His name must not be uttered!" you say.

Creative Commons Attribution (aka CC By): you need to mention the author, so they can get royalties and such
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike: what you are talking about. The copyright cannot be more restrictive than the original terms
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial: You can't make money on it
Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivative: No fanworks or spinoffs
Mixes of the the above
CC Zero: Basically you waive copyright, and it's in the public domain. People can make full copyright spinoffs, or whatever.


Actually, see ShareAlike. The ultimate nightmare is for someone to steal your work wholly and get paid for it instead of you.


What they ought to do is instead of lobbying to change the time limit to something outrageous (600 years?) they ought to just say that you cannot make money from any work that does not attribute the characters (you do attribute them, you can make some money but you must pay royalties, but if you claim it as yours, they can claim full royalty). That is, you have a copyright for the text of books, but a trademark is about protecting the characters. As long as Mickey Mouse is in use, all images of Mickey Mouse uphold the trademark, effectively treating the character as "still alive". If LoZ abandons the Triforce, after a certain number of years, anyone can use it. Lastly, there ought to be a religious copyright, where no matter how old the book is, the basic teaching is not allowed to be altered.

To be clear, Creative Commons is not any special legal thing, it's just a very commonly used license. You can put something out under any license you want - you could release a story saying "You're free to use this setting and characters in any story you like, however all characters in your story must be naked at all times" and call it the Naked Commons.