[HN Gopher] Welcoming Recorded Music to the Public Domain
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Welcoming Recorded Music to the Public Domain
Author : infodocket
Score : 106 points
Date : 2022-01-01 17:20 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.archive.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.archive.org)
| teeray wrote:
| So what has Disney done this year to contort our public domain
| laws?
| kibwen wrote:
| Nothing new so far, Steamboat Willie isn't scheduled to enter
| the public domain until 2024. And considering only the
| properties that Disney _actually_ cares about, Snow White has
| until 2032.
|
| Let's also keep in mind the difference between copyright and
| trademark; even if art containing Mickey Mouse enters the
| public domain, that doesn't mean that Disney loses the
| trademark to Mickey Mouse. AIUI you would be able to reproduce
| Steamboat Willie verbatim, but if you attempt to publish a new
| work derived from Steamboat Willie that includes Mickey Mouse
| they may be able to stop you based on trademark protections.
| MichaelBurge wrote:
| I think including a "Not official Disney merchandise" warning
| would get past any trademark concerns, since the goal of
| trademarks is preventing confusion between similar products.
| wgjordan wrote:
| > AIUI you would be able to reproduce Steamboat Willie
| verbatim
|
| The cynic in me suspects that even this might be challenged.
| Is there anything specifically preventing trademark
| protections from applying to unauthorized verbatim
| reproduction, and only derived works?
| kibwen wrote:
| The goal of trademark is to protect one's reputation by
| preventing other people from attributing work to you that
| you did not authorize. Disney unambiguously did authorize
| Steamboat Willie and its representation of Mickey Mouse, so
| a verbatim reproduction clearly cannot cause consumer
| confusion. Trademark law does not need to specifically
| prevent it, because there's no trademark violation in the
| first place. Only once you start making unauthorized
| changes to the source material does there start to be an
| argument that you are threatening Disney's reputation.
|
| Of course, just because using trademark in this way is
| nonsensical doesn't mean that Disney won't try and/or
| succeed. But it would be pretty outrageous. The only reason
| to entertain this notion at all is because Disney's past
| actions regarding copyright have been outrageously evil to
| begin with.
| extra88 wrote:
| > The goal of trademark is to protect one's reputation by
| preventing other people from attributing work to you that
| you did not authorize.
|
| I wouldn't put it that way. Trademark [0]:
|
| * Identifies the source of your goods or services. *
| Provides legal protection for your brand. * Helps you
| guard against counterfeiting and fraud.
|
| > consumer confusion
|
| Yes, preventing consumer confusion is an important reason
| for trademark laws to exist, as a protection against
| counterfeiting and fraud.
|
| [0] https://www.uspto.gov/trademarks/basics/what-
| trademark
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Copyright law in the US has a preemption clause specifically
| intended to prohibit people from constructing copyright-
| shaped legal claims out of things that aren't actually
| copyrightable[0]. So you probably couldn't sue someone for
| trademark infringement purely because they stuck a
| hypothetically public domain Mickey Mouse in an otherwise
| unrelated book, or remixed the crap out of Steamboat Willie.
| As long as you avoided implying that your work was an
| official Disney product, they probably wouldn't have a claim.
|
| What you _would_ have to worry about is the split between
| public-domain Mickey and copyrighted Mickey. The minimum
| standard for copyright infringement is access plus
| substantial similarity, so you 'd have to make sure to
| either...
|
| 1. Only ever watch public-domain Mickey Mouse shorts, and
| hope nobody can argue access to the still-copyrighted works.
| This sort of sequestration would be rather difficult to pull
| off; though fortunately the whole "inverse ratio" nonsense
| that got Katy Perry in trouble has been overturned.
|
| 2. Intentionally watch _all_ of the copyrighted shorts and
| use that knowledge as a guide of "what not to do". What
| actually constitutes substantial similarity is rather
| difficult; it's typically something juries decide on a case-
| by-case basis.
|
| You'd be best protected if you were doing something entirely
| different to what Disney was doing with his[1] own
| characters. The idea behind substantial similarity is that if
| I can squint at your copy a little and see the copyrighted
| original, then you're not legally distant enough to be a
| separate work. So you want to make sure to keep novelty in
| mind when reusing old Disney works. Things that would be
| "obvious to try" likely have already _been_ tried and are
| thus still under copyright[2].
|
| [0] The intended target of copyright preemption was actually
| state law; pre-1973 states had their own legal regimes for
| sound recordings which didn't get struck down until just
| today. Interestingly enough these common-law sound recording
| regimes also sidestepped the whole "for limited times" things
| and were actually perpetual in some states. That's why so
| much music is hitting the public domain today.
|
| [1] Historians of early American animation would probably
| argue that Disney did not create Mickey Mouse, but that Ub
| Iwerks did. This is correct; but you must also remember Walt
| Disney's villain origin story of having Ub's prior work on
| Oswald taken from him. Disney insisted on copyright
| assignment or work-for-hire status for _everything_
| afterwards, and that 's what actually matters legally.
|
| [2] This is the same reason why it's legally perilous to use
| public-domain Sherlock Holmes as a character; the stories
| where Arthur Conan Doyle decided to let Sherlock emote are
| still under copyright, so the character's emotions are
| copyrighted, too. This is an absolutely silly legal argument
| that the Doyle estate has actively pursued in court.
| TeeMassive wrote:
| > Nothing new so far, Steamboat Willie isn't scheduled to
| enter the public domain until 2024. And considering only the
| properties that Disney actually cares about, Snow White has
| until 2032.
|
| It makes me wonder if they will push DeSantis for president
| just to extend copyright?
| not2b wrote:
| They'd have to get a law passed, control of the White House
| wouldn't be enough. I don't think they could get a
| copyright extension through again because the issues are
| better understood now and it couldn't be done quietly.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| No. The last major term extension was a perfect storm of
| Germany, Disney, and everyone else in the industry bullying
| around the EU and US to go life+70. Mickey Mouse was also
| arguably one of Disney's flagship works back then. This was
| also in a world where copyright was a boring part of the
| law nobody cared about except the people who benefited from
| it's imposition.
|
| This isn't really the case anymore:
|
| - Copyright law was _already_ harmonized up. There are very
| few countries that regularly grant longer terms: Mexico,
| Columbia, Jamaica, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa,
| and Equatorial Guinea. None of those countries are
| international dealmakers and I do not see the US or EU
| raising terms to match them.
|
| - Disney's flagship properties aren't Disney works anymore.
| They're the Star Wars and Marvel universes. Those have
| greater cultural cachet, remaining copyright terms to
| match, and Disney owns them lock, stock, and barrel. Snow
| White isn't even their own work; it's a German folk tale
| that the Brothers' Grimm made a children's version[0] of, a
| century prior to Disney's animated adaptation. The
| characters and story are _already_ public domain, Disney
| only owns an animated adaptation of it.
|
| - In the sense that Disney might not fully control the
| Marvel Cinematic Universe, they stand to benefit by
| _weakening_ copyright (so they can stop having to share
| Spider-Man with SONY), not extending it.
|
| - There's less appetite among other creators for longer
| terms. The big hot-button issue with authors is the market
| power of large platforms; the sort of thing that can't be
| fixed by just lengthening terms out more. Furthermore, the
| Sonny Bono act was pushed through with a promise that the
| extra licensing money publishers got would result in more
| artists getting more money; this has not happened and I
| don't think they'll get fooled again.
|
| - Stop SOPA/PIPA happened. Furthermore, thanks to a
| combination of YouTubers having terrible copyright
| discipline and actual scammers using DMCA 512 as an
| extortion mechanism; there's far more public awareness of
| the downsides of having strongly-enforced copyright laws.
|
| [0] Ironically, the Grimm versions of these fairy tales are
| perceived as more "hardcore" and "uncensored", mostly
| because Disney softened them down _more_.
| jerf wrote:
| At this point, it's not a question of whether or not they
| need to buy off politicians of either party, who will pass
| pretty much anything asked for. It's a question about the
| Supreme Court, which has so far upheld the extensions but
| has showed signs of being increasingly crabby about them.
| But so far it's all words.
| rackjack wrote:
| It's probably cheaper to just pay off all the necessary
| politicians.
| sircastor wrote:
| IIRC, recently when works started entering the public domain
| again, one of the large Copyright orgs essentially said "We
| don't think we could get an extension through congress this
| time around, so we're not going to try."
| foxhop wrote:
| jacquesm wrote:
| You should stop spamming your stuff all over unrelated comment
| threads.
| analog31 wrote:
| Does anybody know how this affects performance rights?
| [deleted]
| Axien wrote:
| So what software can be used to clean up the hissing and
| cracking?
| pkAbstract wrote:
| These days, there are more audio plugins to add hissing and
| cracking than remove it; but iZotope RX is scarily good and the
| best noise removal plugin I've ever tried. ML has enabled a lot
| of pretty revolutionary capabilities in audio, songwriting, and
| music production over just the past couple years.
| kingcharles wrote:
| Adobe Audition is good for this, but I'm sure other free
| offerings like Audacity can do it. In Audition you can sample a
| quiet section of the audio to fingerprint the type of noise and
| then apply that noise reduction across the whole track.
| technothrasher wrote:
| Audacity has the same "fingerprint" feature for noise
| reduction and it works pretty well.
| Zenst wrote:
| Audacity
| kadoban wrote:
| I'm curious how https://jmvalin.ca/demo/rnnoise/ would do.
| Might work.
| sverhagen wrote:
| Per that article and one it links to, there seems 100 year old
| (1922) and 50 year old (1972) music to be coming into the public
| domain, and I'm wondering why this happens in bulk on January 1st
| and not x years after whatever release date mid-year?
| namibj wrote:
| I don't remember ever seeing a copyright date more granular
| than the year, in any copyright notices on blogs and source
| code.
| kadoban wrote:
| From everything I've ever heard, copyright notices don't mean
| a lot though, in that regardless of if I put one on my
| website or not, I still have a copyright on my works.
| kibwen wrote:
| Well, at least in the US, copyright wasn't automatic until
| 1978, which is important context when discussing works from
| 50 or 100 years ago.
| Zenst wrote:
| I was curious as to how much music is in the public domain with a
| per year breakdown. Equally, how much is released straight into
| the public domain per year these days compared to older
| copyrighted material lapsing into the public domain.
|
| Alas a quick search yielded nothing standout at all data wise.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| For a good time, peruse [1].
|
| At Google, I was running the Cinema Club (in-person only showings
| of movies on DVD every Thursday night). I came across this movie
| and loved it. It had 4 stars from Roger Ebert. How you gonna beat
| that? Lots of people including me wanted to show it at Google.
|
| It turns out that Ms. Paley had figured her 12 songs from the
| 1920s must be out of copyright, right? Wrong. The songs were not,
| and the publisher asked for (if memory serves) $40K or so per
| song.
|
| Rather than negotiate it down and use that 4-star review to make
| $$$ from it, she did this Creative Commons thing. But you can't
| give away what you don't own.
|
| Google's lawyer said No. She did some more complicated stuff, and
| the lawyer said "I've spent an hour trying to figure this out,
| and it's way more time than I should spend. So: still No."
|
| It's a fun movie, though. Watch it.
|
| [1] https://www.sitasingstheblues.com/
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Interesting link, thanks for sharing!
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