[HN Gopher] Willingham sends Fables into the public domain
___________________________________________________________________
Willingham sends Fables into the public domain
Author : Tomte
Score : 686 points
Date : 2023-09-15 06:51 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (billwillingham.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (billwillingham.substack.com)
| loughnane wrote:
| I think this strikes a great balance. Creators have a comfy
| window for financial reward and big firms have less of a
| stranglehold on culture.
|
| > In my template for radical reform of those laws I would like it
| if any IP is owned by its original creator for up to twenty years
| from the point of first publication, and then goes into the
| public domain for any and all to use. However, at any time before
| that twenty year span bleeds out, you the IP owner can sell it to
| another person or corporate entity, who can have exclusive use of
| it for up to a maximum of ten years. That's it. Then it cannot be
| resold. It goes into the public domain. So then, at the most, any
| intellectual property can be kept for exclusive use for up to
| about thirty years, and no longer, without exception.
| tetris11 wrote:
| > the IP owner can sell it to another person or corporate
| entity, who can have exclusive use of it for up to a maximum of
| ten years.
|
| This could be abused in an infinite loop. There should be a max
| resell limit of 2
|
| Edit: I should learn to read. Indeed it cannot be resold.
| mpsprd wrote:
| >it cannot be resold
|
| He covered it.
| marcinzm wrote:
| Reselling seems fine if the clock doesn't reset in subsequent
| sales. You also can't really avoid it since they can have an
| LLC buy the IP and then just sell the ownership of the LLC.
| phkahler wrote:
| The problem with that is the same as with current copyright
| law. It's easy for lobbyists to get simple changes like
| changing "10 years" to "70 years". Or resold once to resold
| twice, because what's good for the economy one time must
| certainly be double good if we do it twice.
|
| I lean toward making copyright non-transferable. The author
| keeps it for X years. They are free to license it if someone
| else can do better at making money from it. The problem with
| this seems to be group works like movies. Not sure how that
| would work.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > They are free to license it if someone else can do better
| at making money from it.
|
| An exclusive sublicensable license is effectively identical
| to transfer, so there's no meabingful difference between
| licensable and transferrable (especially the status quo
| "transferrable, but reclaimable after a set period of years
| irrespective of the nominal terms of transfer".)
|
| > The problem with this seems to be group works like
| movies.
|
| Movies generally don't rely on cooyright transfer, they
| rely on legal (not merely natural) persons being original
| copyright holders, and works-for-hire having copyright
| owned by the hiring party _ab initio_.
| xiaq wrote:
| It seems that the one-time reselling clause can be easily
| abused by the original IP holder to effectively extend their 20
| years to 30 years and enable unlimited reselling? Just sell it
| to a company you control at the end of 20 years, and you get
| another 10 years. You can then sell the company to whoever is
| interested in the IP, and they can also do that, as long as
| it's the ownership of the company rather than the IP that's
| being transferred technically.
|
| It seems much simpler to just shorten copyright protection.
| Whether 20 years or 30 years, the world will be a more creative
| place than it currently is.
| justinclift wrote:
| DC Comics have followed up with an official statement saying
| Fables is NOT in the public domain:
|
| https://www.cbr.com/fables-dc-statement-not-public-domain/
| jccalhoun wrote:
| Bleeding Cool points out that Willingham has don't this public
| domain thing before with his Elementals comic book:
| https://bleedingcool.com/comics/bill-willingham-declares-fab...
| (they link to this clip where Willingham says it:
| https://www.youtube.com/clip/Ugkx7E0hDkYBOAdDIvVymTsdPoFnv4g... )
|
| From this perspective it seems like what he is doing by declaring
| things public domain he is basically calling the bluff of the
| companies. Whether it is whoever claims to own Elementals or DC,
| he seems to be hoping that someone will take up his offer and
| take the companies to court for him.
| toyg wrote:
| This is why we can't have nice things: greed.
|
| In an ideal world, the DC agreement is substantially fair: it
| gives independent authors the chance to receive better exposure,
| access to limitless amounts of incredibly talented professionals
| to help them polish their work, and a steady flow of income - in
| exchange for exclusivity, a chunk of money, and a certain regard
| for DC's investment.
|
| But at some point, greed kicks in. DC "forget" to send a royalty
| check or three. They start making plans to make more and more
| money (games! movies!), for which original authors are just
| annoying roadblocks. And it all goes to hell.
|
| It's so sad, because it's all so unnecessary.
| LegitShady wrote:
| 8kagine you're a creator who has just been accepting dc /
| marvel payments without auditing them until now. Maybe time to
| hire a professional to start working through all past payments
| and see how much they've been screwing you out of.
| 867-5309 wrote:
| yeah, imagine being a millionaire and noticing missing pocket
| change
|
| oh wait, you're still a millionaire..
| toyg wrote:
| Comics creators are famously exploited. Superman's creators
| died in poverty, and most work by Marvel and DC is
| performed as "work for hire", i.e. not generating royalties
| for actual authors. This is also why authors increasingly
| try to publish independently, but that also means working
| on brand new series that may or may not attract any
| popularity and actually generate profits. For one Mark
| Millar or Todd McFarlane there are hundreds faring worse
| than Joe Shuster.
| LegitShady wrote:
| Ya all those millionaires comic book artists - you're
| totally out of touch with what marvel and DC are paying.
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| Most comics creators are not millionaires, and if DC is
| screwing a highly visible, highly successful author, I have
| to wonder how well they're treating the less visible
| creators
| mbork_pl wrote:
| If I understand correctly, it wouldn't be so bad if greed were
| kept in check by honesty.
| isk517 wrote:
| Unfortunately, considering this exact sentence shows up in
| every discussion on forms of government and modes of economy
| it isn't a easy problem to solve.
| mbork_pl wrote:
| Agreed - I don't claim it's simple. What I mean is roughly
| this: greed is bad, but it's even worse when combined with
| dishonesty.
| isk517 wrote:
| Sorry, I never meant to imply you thought the solution
| was simple, just lamenting the fact that greed +
| dishonesty (+ stupidity if we're being thorough) is such
| a universal problem with untold amounts of time and
| energy dedicated to debatable mitigation but no real
| solution in sight.
| mlhpdx wrote:
| I can tolerate, and even respect an honest cheat. But a
| lying cheat has a special place in hell.
|
| Related: "It's a miracle any of this works. People were
| involved."
| orf wrote:
| At a certain scale those who are dishonest have a competitive
| advantage over those who are not. So they win.
| prewett wrote:
| > This is why we can't have nice things: greed.
|
| It sounds like this crossed the line into gluttony and
| premeditated long-term theft (defrauding? expropriation? ip
| annexation? I'm not sure what a good word is). Greed is Unity's
| problem, but it sounds like DC has intentionally and
| systematically attempted to steal from the author over many
| years and that is qualitatively different. Let's not let DC off
| with simple greed.
| me_again wrote:
| This may seem like quibbling, but I think when large companies
| do this kind of thing, "greed" is the wrong kind of
| explanation. Greed is an emotion, or moral failing if you will,
| humans have. A company like DC is a complex, non-sentient
| system. It doesn't have emotions, it has interlocking sets of
| incentives (sales bonus plans, executive compensation based on
| beating last quarter's numbers, etc) which collectively and
| incrementally nudge the behavior of their employees towards
| unethical shortcuts. This tendency can be temporarily reined in
| by regulations, civil suits, strong-willed executives and
| employees, or a company culture that prizes integrity and
| longer-term results. When those restraints don't apply strongly
| enough, this behavior kicks in. I'm not sure what the right
| term is, but I'm reluctant to call it greed for the same reason
| that ChatGPT isn't "lying".
|
| Not making excuses for DC, btw.
| heresie-dabord wrote:
| > "greed" is the wrong kind of explanation. [...] A company
| like DC is a complex, non-sentient system. [...] it has
| interlocking sets of incentives [...] which collectively and
| incrementally nudge the behavior of their employees towards
| unethical shortcuts.
|
| _Institutionalised Greed_ is a form of Complicit
| Exploitation.
|
| "I was just following orders," is one of the typical
| apologies.
|
| > This tendency can be temporarily reined in by regulations,
| civil suits, strong-willed executives and employees, or a
| company culture that prizes integrity and longer-term
| results.
|
| These are checks on greed, dishonesty, and cruelty. All that
| stands between healthy social order and chaos is the _social
| trustworthiness_ of people.
| posix86 wrote:
| I would guess though that such arguably corrupt structures
| always emit from the leadership. The way to have a moral
| company is by having moral leadership. The issue is that
| there is no incentive for a company to have moral leadership
| (or not for that matter). It just gets the leadership it
| gets. If the leadership is into cutting corners, this will
| radiate out in the form of the mechanisms you mention, where
| in lower levels people WILL do immoral things not because
| they're greedy, but because of the compan structures put in
| place by the people who are.
|
| Ultimately thoug I believe the market corrects for it. We're
| seeing that right now with Unity. It just takes a lot of time
| for a bit company like this.
| ta8645 wrote:
| > It's so sad, because it's all so unnecessary.
|
| That's a rather naive take. There's no point moralizing, or
| being wishful about it. Just embrace the game theory nature of
| reality.
|
| Corporate and governmental power structures will always be
| susceptible to capture and exploitation. We need to set up
| structures that can not be co-opted by the psychopaths, or at
| least contain a poison pill that makes them much less
| attractive targets for such people.
|
| The lesson from this example is that the author maintained
| ownership, and so in the end could do something meaningful to
| combat the company that has become corrupted.
| djmips wrote:
| I'm kind of more afraid there's no psychopath to pin the
| blame on. I haven't done my homework but I suspect the system
| and a bunch of normal type people exhibit the same outward
| behavior.
| phreack wrote:
| The worst part is the perversion of justice of the author being
| provably right yet unable to enforce his legally binding
| contracts as an individual against a well resourced company.
| Hopefully this sparks a copyleft movement of public freedom.
| nottorp wrote:
| If only courts would award legal fees to the winner...
| solardev wrote:
| Who could afford the upfront costs of fighting this stuff
| for years, even if you claw it back at the end?
| njharman wrote:
| > What was once wholly owned by Bill Willingham is now owned by
| everyone
|
| Public Domain IP (USA) is owned by no one. As the preceding line
| alludes to
|
| > surrendered my Fables property to the public domain
|
| their property rights were surrendered. Now, no one has those
| rights (which are really the power to restrict other's "rights".
| copy"rights" are rights of denial, you can't copy, you can't
| perform, etc.). Meaning the property has returned to its natural
| state, unrestricted.
| ralferoo wrote:
| I don't really understand what the point of this is. The
| complaints largely seem to be "DC weren't respecting me, so now
| anyone can do what they want with this". One of the things he
| complains about is how they wanted to do something, thinking they
| owned the rights, he said no and then they couldn't do it. But...
| now they can, because it's now in the public domain.
|
| Actually, all this is ignoring the fact that AFAIK, you can't
| just revoke copyright and put something into the public domain,
| you have to explicitly grant a non-exclusive licence to everyone
| instead. That's why all the CC style licences exist.
| mpsprd wrote:
| The point is to hurt DC financially in reprisal.
|
| Also, characters from fable came from the public domain, so
| it's a logical conclusion from the point of view of the author.
| ralferoo wrote:
| Except that now he's put this into the public domain, DC can
| also do what they want with it to the extent that anyone else
| can.
|
| It doesn't hurt DC financially, other than potentially
| diluting the Fable brand because anyone else can also use it
| now. There's also a strong likelihood that DC do in fact own
| partial copyright over anything that isn't the comic - so any
| figurines, film spinoffs, etc., in fact anything that wasn't
| wholly created entirely by Willingham, even if he still owns
| the underlying IP, so people almost certainly aren't free to
| make copies of anything other than just the comics.
|
| Also I don't understand why my comment (the GP to this
| comment) was been moderated down so much. Is it just that my
| opinion is unpopular with fans and so it was downvoted rather
| than debated? For instance, re my comment about public domain
| vs explicit license there are many articles like this:
| https://www.techdirt.com/2015/01/23/why-we-still-cant-
| really...
| mpsprd wrote:
| IANAL obviously, but nothing now stops me from selling
| T-shirts, figurines and lunchboxes of fable with my own
| drawings/designs. Any such sale is money not in DC pockets.
| ralferoo wrote:
| Sure, you can make whatever you want from the original
| designs (but note not from any elements from figurines or
| films or anything else DC made that deviate from the
| comics).
|
| However, that in and of itself isn't depriving DC of
| anything, as they're no worse off financially than if
| whatever you make never existed. Arguably, if you create
| something that's a runaway financial success, and someone
| has to choose between buying your thing and the DC
| produced thing, then sure maybe then DC loses a sale. But
| sales are rarely binary like that. If you do something
| that promotes the brand, it probably benefits DC's sales
| as well.
|
| The only thing that might actually impact on their profit
| is someone producing an exact copy of the original
| comics, at a lower price, and of better quality. Even
| then, people might still buy the DC version so it matches
| the rest of their collection. And if it is an exact,
| exact copy of the original comic, there's always a risk
| there might be something with a DC copyright on it, e.g.
| the font that's used in the title, maybe a reference to
| some other DC property, etc...
| shafouzzz wrote:
| [flagged]
| corethree wrote:
| Wait so does this mean it's legal to download scanned copies of
| the entire fable comic series?
| [deleted]
| calibas wrote:
| > The current laws are a mishmash of unethical backroom deals to
| keep trademarks and copyrights in the hands of large
| corporations, who can largely afford to buy the outcomes they
| want.
| michaelbuckbee wrote:
| A meta aspect of this is going unspoken: the stories and
| characters in the Fables comics are (mostly) pulled from the
| public domain.
|
| Snow White, The Three Little Pigs, Beauty and the Beast,
| Cinderella, and Peter Piper are all characters walking around and
| with jobs in the Fable Universe.
|
| I see Bill putting his work back into the public domain as a kind
| of "thank you" to the original creators.
| kybernetikos wrote:
| He explicitly says something like this in his follow up
| https://billwillingham.substack.com/p/more-about-fables-in-t...
| michaelbuckbee wrote:
| Oh cool, hadn't seen the follow up.
| glogla wrote:
| > Mark Buckingham is free to do his version of Fables (and I
| dearly hope he does). Steve Leialoha is free to do his version of
| Fables (which I'd love to see). And so on.
|
| ... does anyone have Alan Moore's phone number?
| freddie_mercury wrote:
| You mean the guy who has been retired from comics since 2017?
|
| 'In 2022 he confirmed it, saying "I'm definitely done with
| comics, I haven't written one for getting on for five years.'
|
| Not sure why he'd be interested.
| mst wrote:
| Given how DC treated him there's maybe a slight hope he'd do
| it out of spite as a "one last hurrah."
|
| I doubt it, but I wouldn't blame somebody for trying.
| toyg wrote:
| Alan Moore writing Fables to spite DC would be the comic
| event of the year. It would easily outsell anything on the
| market right now.
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| The implication is that Moore might potentially be able
| to pull the same move, releasing the watchmen, top 10, v
| characters into the public domain
| toyg wrote:
| Moore has a complicated relationship with Watchmen (and
| VfV), spurring from his complicated (and constantly
| changing) relationship with superhero comics. One of his
| bones of contention with DC is precisely that he didn't
| want the work to grow offshoots; I doubt he'd want the
| world to write them freely either.
| glimshe wrote:
| It goes without saying that one should _never_ let go of the
| ownership of their IP when signing a contract for distribution of
| said IP.
| skywhopper wrote:
| Good for him. I'd love to see more creators taking this route.
| arp242 wrote:
| > If I understand the law correctly (and be advised that
| copyright law is a mess; purposely vague and murky, and no two
| lawyers - not even those specializing in copyright and trademark
| law - agree on anything), you have the rights to make your Fables
| movies, and cartoons, and publish your Fables books, and
| manufacture your Fables toys, and do anything you want with your
| property, because it's your property.
|
| The tricky bit with this is, are you okay accepting a lawsuit
| from DC comics, possibly one that will drag on for years and
| years?
|
| Aside from the murky nature of the law, anyone can sue anyone in
| the US, for more or less any reason. And unless it's complete
| bogus and gets thrown out at an early stage, you can cause
| someone a whole bunch of hurt. Who is right and wrong according
| to the law only marginally comes in to play.
|
| In this case, it's not even clear to me Willingham has the right
| to single-handedly place something in the public domain; did no
| one else work on those comics? Don't they also own a piece of
| copyright (which they perhaps signed over to DC?) This is like
| the main author of an open source project single-handedly
| changing the license, which isn't something you can "just" do
| even if you wrote 95% of it (even though many small one-line
| contributions often don't meet the threshold of originality for
| copyright to apply, it's not so easy to determine where this
| threshold is, legally speaking, and things can get quite murky
| rather fast).
|
| It's essentially the same problem Willingham has, where suing
| D.C. is just too time-consuming and expensive, except that
| Willingham can choose to sue DC or not, whereas you don't choose
| if someone sues you or not.
|
| I'm very sympathetic to Willingham's plight and I'd love it if
| more people would just place things in public domain (or other CC
| licenses for that matter), but here I'm not sure if he legally
| can, and even if he could it's murky enough that DC most likely
| _will_ sue, so practically speaking he can 't anyway.
| gaganyaan wrote:
| I doubt that he's trying to put stuff he didn't work on into
| the public domain. This is more like an open source project
| maintainer relicensing their code and not that of contributors.
|
| Everyone else can now write stories using the characters
| without worry. Anyone depicting the characters visually will
| want to make sure that they don't strongly resemble the art
| that DC presumably still has a copyright on.
|
| I suspect if he got sued that he'd be able to get good legal
| help either from organizations like the EFF, or with
| crowdfunding. I'd certainly donate to that.
| marcinzm wrote:
| Exactly.
|
| As I see it this move helps DC since they can now do whatever
| they want with Fables (make a movie, change characters, etc,
| etc.) without the author having any say as they also now own it
| 100% as the author says. At the same time they have enough
| lawyers to keep everyone else at bay for long enough that it
| won't matter.
| phreack wrote:
| According to the article, their contract still stands as it's
| legally binding, so DC specifically still needs to abide by
| it as it can't be unilaterally revoked. But the rest of the
| world doesn't, so there's loopholes if they do it not as DC
| but another entity.
| marcinzm wrote:
| And DC can create an LLC which is legally owned by DC but
| also not legally DC which can do whatever it wants. As I
| understand it that pretty standard for movies and how
| Hollywood accounting happens.
| dalbasal wrote:
| I know we're supposed to be jaded by our past defeats, licking
| our wounds and cringing at the echoes of naive digital ideas we
| once thought had legs... I know that he's tricking me into liking
| him by writing well, with conviction and to the point. I know
| that it's hopeless now. That the empire has won. I do know these
| things, but... it's hard for me not to have hope.
|
| Is it really possible that modern culture will all just be owned
| in one or three portfolios.
| r3trohack3r wrote:
| We build the world we want one decision at a time.
| dspillett wrote:
| _> I guess you won't be getting much work from DC in the future._
|
| I like the response to that.
|
| Many years ago I had "You'll never work with us again if X" from
| a company, where "X" amounted to expecting them to keep their
| side of an agreement wrt payment terms, to which I enjoyed
| responding "Oh, I insist on X. Whether I work for you again is
| not entirely your decision to make. I won't be doing BTW.". A
| couple of months later they asked me to look at something and
| were surprised when I didn't jump to make myself available...
| They were also upset that I wouldn't give them contact details
| for other people I knew who could help (I did offer to pass
| details out to my social circle, but they said to not bother
| myself - presumably they knew I'd include warnings with the job
| spec!).
| BasilPH wrote:
| I can't seem to find that statement and the response to it.
| Could you link or copy/paste it?
|
| Edit: Nevermind, I found it in his follow-up:
|
| > Q: I guess you won't be getting much work from DC in the
| future.
|
| > Bill: I haven't worked with DC for the more than two years
| since I handed in my final script for this new run of Fables.
| At that point I fired the lot of them and haven't regretted it.
| Why spend my remaining years continuing to work with thugs and
| conmen?
| cwkoss wrote:
| This is super cool. Not usually a comic guy, but makes me want to
| read the series to be able to recognize what derivatives pop up
| in the future.
| fsloth wrote:
| Fables is an excellent work of fiction by any metric, not just
| as a comic. Some of the protagonists are among the most
| memorable characters in _any_ fictional work. I warmly
| recommend it to anyone.
| kybernetikos wrote:
| Well this is awkward, because after hearing it's in the
| public domain and reading all these recommendations, I'm
| interested in reading it, but also knowing that the author
| doesn't like DC, I don't want to give them money.
| rnhmjoj wrote:
| I guess you could pirate the comics, it's legal now.
| cfiggers wrote:
| I'm not a lawyer, but I don't think that's what this
| announcement means.
| toyg wrote:
| That's not technically correct, although it's definitely
| the most moral approach in the circumstances.
| LocalH wrote:
| It's not legal, but it's always moral to pirate the
| output of scumbag leeches.
| rnhmjoj wrote:
| Why not? If Fables is public domain shouldn't I be
| allowed to make scans of my copies and share them?
| bmacho wrote:
| Not the pdfs created by DC. But someone probably can
| republish Fables, maybe or maybe not using the DC version
| as a source, and you can download that legally.
| LocalH wrote:
| I was talking in a general sense there.
|
| Also, DC _does_ have rights to past output, the "new"
| public domain rights are for the general public to create
| stories in the universe using the unique creative
| elements that Willingham formerly retained copyright for,
| as per his contract.
|
| Willingham and DC are still bound by the contract between
| them. But, the rest of the world is not. That doesn't
| mean that DC won't still try to strong-arm anyone who
| wishes to make their own Fables stories, it just means
| that Willingham has given the copyrights _that he
| retained as per contract_ to the general public.
|
| IANAL, this is layman analysis, etc.
| fsloth wrote:
| I would guess Bill does get a share of that money though?
| This was the impression I got from Bill's explanation of
| his contract?
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| He may eventually get the share to which he's legally
| entitled, though the lack of clarity on that topic is one
| of the points of contention
| costanzaDynasty wrote:
| Fables wouldn't exist without public domain, so in a way its come
| full circle.
| jshaqaw wrote:
| Not surprising that the omni-shambles which is WBD (Warner Bros
| Discovery) continues to hemorrhage any remaining goodwill with
| the creative community. There is a mandate there to get short
| term cash flow up to service all the accumulated acquisition
| leverage and nothing else.
| bmacho wrote:
| I don't know Fables, but I'd love to see more things going to
| public domain. All fictional characters and stories, after 10
| years. All software stuff, API/ABI, formats, UI and leaked source
| code, you should be able to use it, modify it, or even sell it.
| Everyday products like a washing machine, or a microwave, someone
| created a reliable and easy to produce microwave, now anyone
| should be able to mass produce it, and sell it cheaper. Produce
| and sell an iphone, a compatible, a partially compatible, an
| improved version, or whatever you want. And so on.
| ipsin wrote:
| The Telltale Games serial "Wolf Among Us" is based on Fables. I
| enjoyed it, definitely.
|
| The world is based on the public domain (fairytale characters)
| but with many interesting touches, set in the modern world.
| pid-1 wrote:
| That was such a good game. Also RIP Telltale Games.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| There's a new company of the same name continuing work on a
| Wolf Among Us 2, which is one of Bill Willingham's
| complaints that led to the public domain PR release because
| Willingham still believes he was severely underpaid for his
| property for the first game, and that DC licensed it
| without his permission in the first place.
| keerthiko wrote:
| Telltale is more or less reincarnated, and [actively
| working on WAU2](https://telltale.com/the-wolf-among-us-2/)
| ptman wrote:
| original 14 (+14?)
| derangedHorse wrote:
| It's one of the best comic series I've ever read. I'd recommend
| reading through them.
| TRiG_Ireland wrote:
| > All fictional characters and stories, after 10 years.
|
| Girl Genius has been publishing a page of their comic three
| times a week for twenty years, and the story is not yet done. I
| think they deserve to hold it for a little longer.
| bmacho wrote:
| > I think they deserve to hold it for a little longer.
|
| I don't see why. I don't see why should they have the
| exclusive right to sell it anymore, and sue anyone that
| creates a derivative work based on their work older than 10
| years.
|
| Also Girl Genius still would have a lot of options to make
| money of it. I just think derivative work should be able to
| appear, and more than 10 years old stuff should be free as in
| freedom and as in free beer. And we, as a society could
| choose this by modifying our laws.
| Pet_Ant wrote:
| They would only lose ownership to their earlier strips by
| now. Also anything else would be fan fiction. It wouldn't
| remove the primacy of author created works. I mean if I
| create a XXX Fables movie no one will consider it authentic
| or canon.
| jzb wrote:
| "Only" handwaves away a lot. It would put the characters
| into public domain and rob the authors of the ability to
| sustain themselves selling collections of early strips.
|
| "No one will consider it authentic or canon." Citation
| _very much_ needed. When there 's demand for something,
| people will take what's offered. I would be fine with some
| sort of easy licensing scheme that would allow others to
| write stories, etc., in someone else's universe / with
| their characters... but they should see a taste. Especially
| when we're talking about mid-tier or lower-tier creators
| who are probably depending heavily on that large body of
| work to keep the lights on.
| bmacho wrote:
| > "No one will consider it authentic or canon." Citation
| very much needed.
|
| I'm not saying that you should be able to claim yourself
| to be walt disney, but you should be able to sell a hand
| made mickey mouse plushie, or a mickey mouse comic (under
| your name). That's different.
| TRiG_Ireland wrote:
| There's a lot of Girl Genius stuff on AO3. The Foglios
| (authors) seem okay with fanwork existing (there's even a
| fanfic-discussion channel on the semi-official Girl
| Genius Discord server). Of course, stuff on AO3 doesn't
| make money, which _may_ be a sticking point.
| autoexec wrote:
| > It would put the characters into public domain and rob
| the authors of the ability to sustain themselves selling
| collections of early strips.
|
| That's not true. It might make it harder to make as much
| money, but there's nothing that says the author can't
| still profit from selling something after it's in the
| public domain. I've paid for works in the public domain
| multiple times, sometimes directly to the author of the
| work.
|
| Creators have a massive advantage when selling their own
| stuff. They can include things like signed copies and
| extras that no one else ever could. Fans _want_ to
| support the creators of the things they love because they
| want more of it.
| LegitShady wrote:
| They would not just lose ownership of the strips. Ownership
| of the characters and world setting would also be open.
| Other people would be free to publish stories using their
| characters.
| pmontra wrote:
| Maybe not authentic or canon but with proper execution and
| marketing it could make a profit 10 times bigger than an
| authentic and canonical movie.
| autoexec wrote:
| If someone creates a new version so good that vastly
| outclasses the original version it deserves to make that
| profit. That's kind of the point. We want more amazing
| creative works. That's what copyright was for: to
| encourage the creation of new works.
|
| We've already been robbed of all the amazing creative
| works that might have been but never were because of
| excessive copyright restrictions. It's hurting artists
| and it's hurting our culture.
|
| We want copyright to give authors a chance to profit for
| a limited time, but it we need it to be much less
| excessive and restrictive so that new works and new
| artists can thrive.
| ateng wrote:
| Why isn't there a charity that specialise in "liberating" IPs &
| patents into public domain?
| [deleted]
| Steuard wrote:
| A friend of mine worked for a while as part of the team
| building http://unglue.it, which IIRC is a pretty close match
| to what you're envisioning.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| To some extent I think that was always an early aim of
| Creative Commons. I don't think Creative Commons ever saw
| their job as being a charity owner of IP, but they certainly
| tried their best to provide as many tools as possible to
| liberate IP and patents to either copyleft or the public
| domain (CC0) as they could.
|
| I could certainly imagine an alternate future that if CC got
| enough donations to back a big enough budget they could help
| pay for lawyers to full time help creators claw back IPs from
| major corporations with the hopes to CC or CC0 license the
| rights that they win back. I also imagine that would cost a
| lot of money and that hypothetical arm of CC would need a
| huge budget to win the legal fights it would want to take on.
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > Why isn't there a charity that specialise in "liberating"
| IPs & patents into public domain?
|
| Google for Library Genesis, Sci-Hub, Z-Library, ... ;-)
| livrem wrote:
| That was basically what happened to Blender, I think? I have
| been thinking it would be nice if someone was organizing
| crowdfunding and taking care of all the legal work to buy out
| old works properly. Thinking mostly of stuff with little
| value, that ought to be cheap. The rights to records released
| on small labels a long time ago that never sold very well to
| begin with. Obscure comicbooks. B horror movies. Low-budget
| video games. Old boardgames and tabletop-RPG books
| (illustrations included, ideally). Things that no one is
| making any money off anyway. Maybe something more high
| profile now and then.
|
| But on the other hand if that was done on a large scale it
| might set an expectation that old things are bought out, or
| even that anyone ought to be paid to release anything free at
| all, and that sounds very bad.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Legally speaking this would involve actually purchasing those
| outright. Sidestepping any questions about copyright
| assignment and rights reversion, the main problem here would
| be cost. Most companies that own works anyone of us care
| about significantly overvalue their ownership in the work,
| like to the point where ownership is either not for sale or
| would only be offered for a ludicrous price.
|
| You'd be better off lobbying to weaken copyright protections.
| There are several charities interested in doing so, but they
| all have different kinds of baggage: donating to the FSF
| means Stallman's Way or the Highway, donating to the EFF
| means supporting Protect The Stack[0]. RPG[1] is run by Louis
| Rossmann who is fairly chill[2], but they're also the weakest
| in terms of anticopyright. Nobody wants to purely abolish or
| reform copyright; they want to do so _as a means_ to achieve
| some other ends.
|
| Putting that aside, there's also the problem that proposals
| to reform copyright go absolutely nowhere. Copyright
| maximalism is pretty uniformly supported by almost the entire
| US political class[3] and even very mild reforms like right-
| to-repair face fairly extreme bipartisan opposition. Not even
| the fascist-lite (DeSantis/Trump) wing of the Republican
| Party is willing to kick Disney in the copyright balls.
|
| _Illegally_ speaking, the Internet Archive is perfectly
| willing to publicly archive works they don 't own, and they
| are saints for doing so. But they are also having their balls
| sued off.
|
| [0] To paraphrase a _lot_ , it means "ISPs should not have
| abuse desks".
|
| [1] Repair Preservation Group
|
| [2] He does have a right-libertarian bent and an axe to grind
| against New York's government, though that can be explained
| by them trying to kill his business
|
| [3] Corporate leadership inclusive. Most corporations should
| be considered to be a kind of shadow government, not just as
| private entities.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| As I understand United States copyright law, it is impossible
| for an author to voluntarily enter something into the public
| domain. They can license it to whomever they like, of course,
| on any terms that are legal within a contract (including
| creative commons licensing), but they can't just say "this is
| public domain".
|
| It is _especially_ true when they fail to give license terms.
| People using it as if it were public domain don 't have a
| license, or any proof of having a license, and if the author
| dies tomorrow, his or her heirs inherit the copyright (which
| will still last for another 75 or 95 years, I forget which).
| They now own it, and can go after those who use it for
| copyright infringement, with all the penalties that go with
| that. If the heirs were particularly powerful or have political
| influence, they might even manage to get the DOJ to pursue the
| matter as criminal.
|
| Thought I've never watched the show, doesn't one of the
| characters in The Office start talking about how he's
| "declaring bankruptcy" by saying those words emphatically,
| where the other characters try to explain how it doesn't work
| that way? He then goes on to say "I'm not just saying it, but
| _declaring_ bankruptcy " as if this is somehow a legally
| important distinction?
|
| That's what this guy is doing.
| thedailymail wrote:
| Relevant wikipedia article:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Granting_work_into_t.
| ..
| WorldMaker wrote:
| This is partly why the CC0 license exists, with Creative
| Commons lawyers putting some thought into how to actually
| make a legally recognizable declaration of public domain:
| https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/public-
| domain/cc...
| [deleted]
| sokoloff wrote:
| > someone created a reliable and easy to produce microwave, now
| anyone should be able to mass produce it, and sell it cheaper.
|
| What part of this is not already the case for microwave ovens?
| oaiey wrote:
| 10 is a bit hard to bootstrap R&D and regain the invested money
| (especially when you build something over multiple years). But
| 20 years .. should work. Was not the original copyright for
| books something like 30 years.
| Pet_Ant wrote:
| My qualm is that it can take a lifetime of pushing around a
| script or a novel before it gets made. Publishers and studios
| would have an incentive to accept every script submitted and
| purposely ignore it for 20 and then look at them now that
| they are free... ideally it'd be 20 years after it got big
| but that's not enforceable and vague.
| autoexec wrote:
| > Publishers and studios would have an incentive to accept
| every script submitted and purposely ignore it for 20 and
| then look at them now that they are free
|
| If publishers and studios refuse to ever publish anything
| for 10 years artists will be free to publish things for
| themselves and you can bet that they will. I seriously
| doubt there'll never be a studio or publisher smart enough
| to pay for a script or book and bring it to the market
| first though.
|
| Once a property is out there and has a fanbase they'd be
| total idiots to wait until every last person on earth can
| churn out media involving that property because for
| anything remotely popular the moment the 10 years are up
| the market will be saturated with new versions and remixes
| of it. They don't want that kind of competition, especially
| from people outside of the industry. Copyright has been
| corrupted into the restrictive vice on our culture that it
| is today in part because of that fear.
|
| If you are a studio or publisher it'd be far better to pay
| the licensing fee and rake in the massive profits within
| the 10 year period before everyone is tired of seeing a
| billion versions of something on offer everywhere and avoid
| having to spend the kind of money and effort it would take
| to differentiate your work and pull attention from
| everything else springing up.
| kibwen wrote:
| That only works if every single publisher and studio are
| participating in an anticompetitive cabal who are all
| colluding to prevent the work from being bought, in which
| case you have bigger problems to worry about.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| lol, lmao, even. What do you think studios are doing
| right now prompting huge strikes among actors and writers
| in Hollywood?
| kibwen wrote:
| And yet that has nothing to do with the current length of
| copyright, so I think you're simply proving my point?
| belenos46 wrote:
| I think he's pointing out that an anticompetitive cabal
| _already exists_ , so assuming it would continue to
| follow anticompetitive practices is not a leap of any
| kind.
| brightlancer wrote:
| > I think he's pointing out that an anticompetitive cabal
| already exists,
|
| Of course, they're called _unions_, which prevent
| companies from hiring or contracting anyone who isn't
| part of their cabal -- I mean union.
|
| Disney and Comcast and WB/Discovery are _competitors_ who
| would cut each other's throats for a nickel. Would they
| collude for profit? Sure, but they treat this as a zero-
| sum game, so they don't want to help their competition
| too much.
| abecedarius wrote:
| U.S. copyright was 14 years, renewable once.
| coldpie wrote:
| Indeed. Here is an excellent & maintained summary of the
| lengthening terms (from 14 years to more than a century)
| and its effects: https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomain
| day/2023/shrinking...
| bmacho wrote:
| Now this is really sad. This is why we don't have nice
| things.
|
| I believe the "natural" state of the society where we can
| build on each others work, but copyrights make that
| practically impossible.
|
| It lowers the quality of art significantly (I do believe
| that most art pieces could be significantly improved, but
| we can't do that).
|
| It lowers the quality of cars, electronics, and other
| products, also their reparability from 100% to 0% or so,
| as they constantly discontinue past products, and make
| them shittier, and they prohibit 3rd party to make
| replacement parts, and we can do nothing against it.
|
| And it allows rent-seeking behaviour, for example we gave
| Intel a hundred of billions of dollars or so, because the
| prevented other companies to produce x86 compatible
| chips, and they could get away with ridiculous profits.
| This would be illegal if Intel was a 'monopoly', but the
| same rent-seeking and abusing the market is not illegal
| since Intel is not a monopoly. Or countless other
| examples.
|
| The article states that we almost developed a sane
| society where we could build and sell whatever we wanted,
| and use whatever we found (even if it was made by an
| other person), but the exact opposite happened. The
| article does not mention the reasons.
| jzb wrote:
| 10 years is nothing. I'm against copyright maximalism and would
| love to see copyright terms whittled down, but 10 years is a
| non-starter.
|
| For every Stephen King that has a massive following and would
| easily earn enough in those 10 years, there's 100 mid-tier and
| lower-tier creators that need any income they can get from
| works still earning in some fashion.
|
| Also, think about how a 10 year limit would be used against
| creators by the Disneys of the world. "Well, damn, we don't
| need to arrange a movie deal with King... we'll just wait 10
| years and a day and then make a movie on this book."
|
| Hey, indie band that still scrapes by on royalties and touring?
| The minute your best-selling album is 10 years old, it's going
| to be repackaged and sold without you seeing a dime.
|
| Yes, it's more complicated than that, but... an arbitrary 10
| year limit wouldn't fix things or make the world substantially
| better and might make things worse.
|
| Now - I'd be willing to talk about things like drastically
| shorting terms for works for hire/copyright owned by
| corporations and not individuals.
|
| We might also need to think about not having one term for all
| things. There's no reason the copyright term for software
| should be the same as that for a song or a movie or a book.
| Books, songs, paintings, basically _art_ should probably have a
| copyright term in the 25-50 year range. Certainly no longer
| than 50 years.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| I've thought about this quite a bit. I think one fair
| approach would be to have a 2 tiered copyright release, where
| there's still a pretty long time before a work lapses into
| the public domain, but before that, a relatively short amount
| of time after the release of the work (say, 10-15 years) the
| original owner loses the power to dictate who uses their
| work. Basically, between that point and the public domain
| lapse, anyone would have the option to accept a default
| contract of paying the creator some standardized % royalties.
| The creator would still have the option to accept explicit
| contracts with weaker terms, for example waiving the
| royalties for projects they want to give away.
| MrDrMcCoy wrote:
| This is my view as well. Compulsory licensing after a
| period of exclusivity, then public domain, would be a good
| deal for everyone. I think this would additionally work
| well for patents.
| steamer25 wrote:
| > 10 years is nothing
|
| It depends on how much was invested up front.
|
| Spend a couple hours recording a joke song on your phone that
| happens to become a viral hit? Ten years of monopolizing it
| seems more than fair.
|
| Spend millions of dollars hiring a research team and running
| gene sequencers for years to develop a state of the art drug?
| Maybe 10 years isn't enough.
| xxs wrote:
| The drug stuff is covered by patents - they last 20y
| autoexec wrote:
| 14 years was good enough in the 1700s, when it was
| prohibitively expensive to publish anything and global
| distribution was effectively impossible. Today, those things
| are basically free and happen at close to the speed of light.
| If you can't make money off of something published globally
| after a decade, you fucked up. 10 years might even be too
| long.
|
| It's 100% fine if disney wants to wait a decade to make a
| movie about something. After that 10 years so can everybody
| else! There's no amount of time disney couldn't hold out for
| anyway. What matters is that artistic works get into the
| hands of the public faster, not how much money an author
| might lose out on in licensing deals. Copyright doesn't exist
| to protect possible film deals for authors. It exists to
| promote the creation of new works. If disney waits 10 years
| and makes their film then without a license fee, mission
| accomplished. That's a new creative work. They can then
| compete with every one else making new works based on that
| property.
| troupe wrote:
| Well life expectancy was only 37 years in the 1700s as
| well. So for an adult, 14 years was basically the rest of
| their life.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| For an adult, life expectancy then was 55 or better!
|
| See, infant mortality was shit back then which accounted
| for a big bias in that lifetime '37'. If you survived
| childhood then you did pretty well.
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/its-not-just-about-child-
| mortalit...
| troupe wrote:
| Good point.
| bmacho wrote:
| > Hey, indie band that still scrapes by on royalties and
| touring? The minute your best-selling album is 10 years old,
| it's going to be repackaged and sold without you seeing a
| dime.
|
| Yes, indeed. Will it be harder for indie bands? I don't think
| so. Will it be different? Sure. Will it be better for the
| society if you could have live concerts or disco parties with
| great songs? Absolutely.
|
| Also bands play each others songs without asking or paying
| royalty in practice where I live. I've gone and have paid a
| band to perform someone elses songs. It is definitely a good
| thing.
| posix86 wrote:
| It might improve thr situation a lot for Spotify etc.
| because without a legal instrument determining ownership,
| they might just let the first poster of a song be the owner
| of a song - which means anyone tries to post their song
| asap, even if they don't believe in Spotify.
| mbreese wrote:
| _> bands play each others songs without asking _
|
| Live performances are a different act than recording and
| selling albums. Live performances are always (?) allowed,
| but IIRC, the songwriter/composer is due a royalty.
|
| How often that happens in real life is a question, but live
| performances (currently) have a different set of rules.
| jzb wrote:
| Have you asked indie bands? Cause... I'm skeptical they're
| going to be happy with your proposals given that they're
| already hanging by a pretty thin thread.
|
| Playing songs live != repackaging recordings. Not even in
| the same ballpark. Venues of size pay licenses to ASCAP,
| etc. for the rights to let cover bands do this -- but it's
| also a usage that requires a lot more factors than just
| copying the song. At least in the U.S. these uses are
| pretty much automated vs. negotiating rights to reproduce a
| full album or even a single.
|
| (Tribute bands are another animal entirely - I'm not sure
| how or if the various Pink Floyd tribute bands, for
| instance, negotiate deals with the original bands since
| they're not just covering the songs - they also get into
| likeness rights and trademark, etc.)
| labster wrote:
| Copyright should be 30 years for free, then 1 dollar doubling
| annually thereafter. 40 years of copyright should cost $2047,
| while 49 years costs a little over a million. So does the
| 50th year. Pay the public for your monopoly on publishing.
| melagonster wrote:
| Let me recommend Japanese way: it is impossible to sold
| copyright. so publisher always need to negotiate with
| authors.
| Anarch157a wrote:
| Copyrights should be more like trademarks. Use it or lose it.
|
| Put a limit of 10 years if the work is not available for
| purchase by the general public, so any work that goes out of
| print becomes public domain 10 years after the last copy was
| sold.
|
| But... Only for works owned by _corporations_. For works
| still owned by the original artists, works would enter public
| domain on the artists death or if the artist had under-age
| children at the moment of their passing, when the youngest
| completes 18.
|
| I think this is the best way to ensure that corpos can't sit
| on works for eternity while allowing artists to have an
| income for life, with some protection for their children in
| case of untimely death.
|
| In any case, any law that implements such limitations should
| mandate a complete removal of any DRM involved, or at least
| publication of the private keys needed to decrypt any work,
| once they become public.
| posix86 wrote:
| The result of that will be that Nintendo will sell exactly
| 1 cartridge of every game a year.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| >The minute your best-selling album is 10 years old, it's
| going to be repackaged and sold without you seeing a dime.
|
| The story is that most bands don't make anything on residuals
| and so have to tour to make money.
|
| But, in any case, one can already get the work for free,
| people choose not to.
|
| I have an idea on Origin Marks [1] that works here, only one
| source will be the lead singer, only one source will be the
| songwriter, buy from them _if_you_want_to_.
|
| [1] the reverse of Trademarks, kinda, they would show not the
| seller _per se_ , as Trademarks do, but the physical origins
| - and all historic details would attach to the mark. Change
| the factory, OM shows it, sell your Trademark, OM shows if
| it's still made in the same place or not; buying an article,
| OM shows which of your options are made in the same place. OM
| would show not just so sold it to you, not where they got it
| from -- cut out middlemen and optimise supply chains, that's
| capitalism, right?
|
| In this case, you buy a download, who did they get the TM
| rights from, ego did they get the cover art rights from, who
| did they buy the license for the music track from? Seller
| would be obliged to tell you, and there sellers too ... no
| money going to the band, don't use that supplier, go
| elsewhere.
| brett-jackson wrote:
| I wonder if tax policy could be used to encourage placing
| content in the public domain. This could especially be useful
| for software, since there probably isn't much money to be
| made in selling Windows 3.1 licenses, but a nominal tax
| credit could encourage Microsoft to put it in the public
| domain and let the public play around with it, inspire them,
| etc.
| bmacho wrote:
| > We might also need to think about not having one term for
| all things. There's no reason the copyright term for software
| should be the same as that for a song or a movie or a book.
| Books, songs, paintings, basically art should probably have a
| copyright term in the 25-50 year range. Certainly no longer
| than 50 years.
|
| Of course there is no reason, but 10 years seems about right
| to me for all of them. You create something, you get revenue
| for it for 10 years, now that's enough, stop hogging the art,
| invention, standard, whatever from the society.
|
| I think it is a fair amount of time, I don't get the
| arguments that they 'deserve' more.
|
| Also please notice, that the current copyright laws are made
| by the society and not by God, not a law of Nature, not a
| Human Right or such. We made the laws to support artists and
| research, but I think it restricts both culture and both the
| quality of life too much.
|
| Why does Wintel 'deserve' several hundreds of billions of
| dollars, just because they managed themselves into a rent-
| seeking position and we must pay them to run any software?
| Why there is no gold standard of microwave oven or a washing
| machine that everyone can produce, so a competition could
| push down the prices, and you could buy replacement parts for
| it? Why can't I pay very talented writers to write my little
| pony stories? I want to. Also why is it illegal to live on
| writing of my little pony stories? Why can't I buy a T-shirt
| with a custom my little pony image I like? Or why is it
| illegal to maintain and modify a 10 year old version of
| photoshop? Sure, then their own 10 year old versions would
| appear as a competition to Adobe, and that would hurt a lot
| compared to the current situation, but then it is their job
| to be better. Etc. How do all of this benefit the society?
|
| Copyright laws were created originally by the society to
| support artists and research, but they are way too long,
| mostly are just used for rent-seeking, and they restrict our
| lives. I don't think creators 'deserve' anything, but I think
| a hard 10 year period is about okay to the original creators
| or the publishers to monetize the product, then move on to an
| another product, or do whatever they want.
| nirvdrum wrote:
| > I don't think creators 'deserve' anything, but I think a
| hard 10 year period is about okay to the original creators
| or the publishers to monetize the product, then move on to
| an another product, or do whatever they want.
|
| If we're going to use terms like "deserve", then why are
| you deserving of someone else's work? It doesn't sound like
| you're even arguing that you could build upon that work,
| you just don't want to have to pay for it. Having some
| third party selling other people's art work without
| licensing them isn't exactly the proliferation of the arts
| typically argued for with lowering the copyright duration.
|
| You're also severely downplaying just how hard it is to
| earn money from a creation. Bootstrapping a business is a
| lot of work. It can be years before you earn even a paltry
| sum. A good chunk of that 10 years is spent earning
| nothing. Maybe an established player like Disney can turn
| on a spigot and cash comes out, but that's not how it works
| for most people. I also don't see how investing in the
| creation of something that others find valuable is "rent-
| seeking". You're completely free to ignore that body of
| work. Nothing is restricting you from creating your own.
|
| You see the free exchange of art without remuneration in
| this hypothetical future as a way to drive down costs. I
| see artists saying "why bother?" and an inevitable stifling
| of art. Most of us aren't independently wealthy or
| magnanimous enough to work for free.
| autoexec wrote:
| > If we're going to use terms like "deserve", then why
| are you deserving of someone else's work?
|
| Let's be honest, copyright is unnatural. Without
| copyright if I hear a story, what right has anyone else
| got to tell me I can't tell my version of that story as I
| remember it to someone else? If I hear a melody, what
| right does anyone have to tell me that I can't sing it?
|
| That's literally how society and art has worked for as
| long as humanity has existed. Hearing and retelling.
| Seeing and replicating. Re-interrupting and re-
| envisioning.
|
| The idea that certain ideas are forbidden, or that
| certain notes are owned is ridiculous. It's not normal.
| It's an invented legal restriction we put on ourselves.
| Copyright is an imposition on some very basic freedoms,
| we just all agree that some amount of imposition is worth
| it to support artists and their art. Art is so valuable
| to us that we censor ourselves for it.
|
| What I'm seeing with our current copyright system is that
| it's hurting a lot more than it's helping. Artists are
| routinely getting screwed over by large corporations,
| while other artists are silenced entirely. Amazing
| creative works are prevented from being brought into the
| world, and have been prevented from even being preserved.
| We need to strike a better balance between our freedoms
| to share and use our own culture and supporting artists
| and supporting art because our current copyright system
| is doing a terrible job at all of it.
| nirvdrum wrote:
| I think there's two different arguments going on. A key
| difference between today and the two thousand years that
| came before is you can make a perfect replica of the
| source material. Selling a bit-for-bit copy of a song or
| book is fundamentally different than oral traditions of
| story telling or an acoustic cover of a popular song.
|
| I'm not saying copyright is perfect. DMCA takedowns for
| songs playing in the background of live newsworthy events
| or video game play throughs aren't helping the
| author/creator. Legal battles over songs that
| coincidentally sound the same are silly to me as well.
|
| I'm less sold on the value of remixing art. It can be
| done well, but often feels like a lazy attempt at
| capitalizing on the original creation.
|
| We don't have to agree on any of that. The person I was
| replying to seemed to be making the argument that
| copyright terms were bad because he/she/they wanted to
| buy a copy of whatever on the open market where
| hypothetically everything is public domain. I can't
| comprehend the level of entitlement that leads to someone
| saying they should have free access to another person's
| work and then claims without evidence that this will spur
| innovation or creativity. To me, it seems clear the lack
| of copyright would just rapidly accelerate the decline of
| the humanities. Artists struggle enough. The patron model
| of the Renaissance is gone. The modern day minstrel can't
| afford rent and food. Copyright is central to how they
| earn a living and about the only protection they have
| against parasites that add nothing from taking
| everything.
|
| I'm all for revisiting and revising modern copyright law.
| I just think tossing it all together is going to hurt
| society. Whatever new duration we choose should reflect
| the reality of just how long it can take to build a
| business/following/audience. Ten years seems way too
| short; I see artists deciding the risk:reward ratio makes
| it not worthwhile.
|
| Maybe that means only the "true" artists will persist,
| but my experience with open source software suggests
| otherwise. There's some remarkable open source software
| out there given away freely by volunteers, but there's
| also a whole body of software that benefits society that
| only gets written because the rights holder can afford to
| make an investment that volunteers can't or won't. That
| works because there's a potential to earn something when
| all finished.
| [deleted]
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| > Also, think about how a 10 year limit would be used against
| creators by the Disneys of the world. "Well, damn, we don't
| need to arrange a movie deal with King... we'll just wait 10
| years and a day and then make a movie on this book."
|
| They might say that, but they're just signing their own death
| warrant. Those who watch, like myself, will just wait out the
| 10 years and download it. (Well, not really, I will probably
| download it the next day).
|
| It cuts both ways.
|
| > Now - I'd be willing to talk about things like drastically
| shorting terms for works for hire/copyright owned by
| corporations and not individuals.
|
| There is no legal distinction here, and there can't be. Even
| individuals will spin up an LLC which has ownership of that
| stuff, for tax/bankruptcy/whatever reasons. Do they lose
| copyright because they were business savvy?
|
| > We might also need to think about not having one term for
| all things. There's no reason the copyright term for software
| should be the same as that for a song or a movie or a book.
| Books, songs, paintings, basically art should probably have a
| copyright term in the 25-50 year range. Certainly no longer
| than 50 years.
|
| I'd go the other direction. 18 months, no renewals, and no
| criminal charges for infringement without proof of
| infringement for commercial sales, and most of all any works
| with DRM left out in the cold and can never get copyright
| protection (not even if they later release a version without
| DRM).
| brightlancer wrote:
| > They might say that, but they're just signing their own
| death warrant. Those who watch, like myself, will just wait
| out the 10 years and download it. (Well, not really, I will
| probably download it the next day).
|
| What does copyright length matter to people who wouldn't
| respect any of it?
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| My respect for copyright is proportional both to its
| duration and the propensity of corporations to try to use
| it to cheat creative people.
| Rygian wrote:
| Define it then in terms of "10 years or an X amount of
| revenue generated, whichever is achieved later" where X is
| defined in terms of the country's economic performance.
| [deleted]
| politelemon wrote:
| One thing I'm missing from all of this, how was it made public
| domain? Was there a special post he had to make or some legal
| document, or is it that substack post itself which is what makes
| it public domain?
| lnxg33k1 wrote:
| Oh, interesting, on a site note, this just gave me an idea, made
| me think that maybe one of the reasons why boomers think that
| millennials are lazy is that they don't know that contemporary
| managers/directors are piece of shit
| b3lvedere wrote:
| Why do anything beyond your part of the contract when the other
| party is doing everything to outmaneuver their part of the same
| contract, like paying a decent amount of money for instance?
|
| Strange world we live in that the client part of the contract
| can be more enforced than the company part of the contract,
| just because everybody is scared to be sued to literal death.
| SonOfLilit wrote:
| If I were a DC executive, and if he is not badly misinterpreting
| their contract, I would be very mad at the lawyer that drafted
| said contract. So I'm confused. What's going on? How did this
| happen?
|
| Was the DC contract drafted sloppily to allow this because no-one
| could imagine the edge case of him throwing away money?
|
| Is he creatively interpreting it ("it doesn't say anywhere that
| dogs can't play basketball" wouldn't really stand in court, and
| I'm suspicious about "I am not allowed to authorize anyone else
| to print fanfics of Fables but I am allowed to authorize everyone
| else to authorize anyone else to print them)?
|
| Is he reneging on an obligation towards them that they can and
| will sue him for (or maybe the way the contract dealt with this
| was saying he can't do this and if he does the contract is void
| and he pays a small fine, and he doesn't care about the small
| fine or the contract)?
| Spoom wrote:
| I would be _very_ surprised if his contract didn 't have the
| word "exclusive" in key places, which this change of ownership
| will now make incorrect, creating an actionable tort (in my
| layperson understanding). I like what the author is trying to
| do here but I expect it to fail when inevitably challenged.
| philistine wrote:
| That's the thing with the public domain; it's irrevocable.
| He's already done it. What he has done cannot be undone.
| Unless a court decides that because he have an exclusive
| license to DC he cannot release his rights to the public
| domain, the worst that can happen is that the copyright is in
| the public domain and he has broken his contract with DC and
| thus is liable.
| mjh2539 wrote:
| A judge could take it out of the public domain.
| toyg wrote:
| _> I would be very mad at the lawyer that drafted said
| contract._
|
| It actually sounds like the standard contract DC use with
| "author-owned" material at least since Watchmen (and possibly
| before): creators maintain ownership of the IP, but
| _publication /distribution rights_ of certain amounts of
| material are granted exclusively to DC - as long as such
| material is made available for sale.
|
| This is famously how they locked away Watchmen: they kept
| reprinting the original run in paperbacks every year, so that
| the publication clause would never expire and Moore/Gibbons
| would never be able to take it elsewhere (and never be able to
| claim full royalties rather than a determined, reduced rate). I
| think there were lawsuits at some point, but the outcome was
| just a little more money for authors.
|
| Willingham seems to have decided to take the nuclear option
| instead, by releasing the IP in the public domain. This means
| the already-published material will remain the preserve of DC,
| but anyone is supposedly free to write and publish new stories
| with the same characters. As others stated, it's unlikely to
| happen on a large scale, because of the chilling effect of
| potentially having to go against DC/Warner in court; but it
| should ensure fanfic and other creative expressions can
| flourish.
| Jiro wrote:
| To be fair for Watchmen, the Watchmen deal was made at a time
| where paperback reprints were rare, and they obviously kept
| reprinting it because they genuinely wanted to make money
| from directly selling it, not because they were reprinting 10
| copies a year just to keep the contract from expiring.
| toyg wrote:
| I don't think that's verifiable without receipts. I'm
| pretty sure at some point (late '90s) you could get such
| paperbacks on the secondhand market for pennies, and
| everyone had one already.
| ImAnAmateur wrote:
| You've misunderstood something.
|
| He owns the copyright for Fables. He has released the copyright
| for Fables into the public domain. He does not have the right
| to release the official comic series into the public domain
| because DC Comics has partial ownership of that. His contract
| with DC Comics is still in effect and has not been broken. He
| is not creating new Fables comics but is not preventing the
| official series from being sold.
| jprete wrote:
| I think fundamental to Willingham's action, and his intent,
| is that there now is no "official" Fables comic series.
| There's DC's version of Fables, but now anyone can make one
| with equal legitimacy.
|
| If people treat the DC version as "official", then that has
| some (not all) of the same effects as claiming that
| Willingham gave DC the copyrights in the first place. DC
| can't sue anyone if they aren't the owner, but they can take
| advantage of fandom's desire for an "official" version to
| crowd out anyone else writing such a comic, and threaten
| competitors with lawsuits to get them to stay away (IANAL and
| don't know exactly how much they could do).
| SonOfLilit wrote:
| Thanks. Edited to replace "copies" with "fanfics".
|
| However, my questions still remain just as strong.
| [deleted]
| njharman wrote:
| > If I were a DC executive
|
| Your reaction is why you are not a DC executive. Shareholders,
| your board would not stand for your concern for
| employee/contractor over profit.
| SonOfLilit wrote:
| You read my comment wrong. I'm asking "how come the contract
| allows for this outcome, which is very bad for DC?"
| RunSet wrote:
| This is going into my file of counter-arguments for when others
| adopt the posture of:
|
| "Without draconian legal fictions to the tune of intellectual
| property, all artists would cease creating entirely out of sheer
| greed."
| Chilinot wrote:
| While I understand he did this in order to not have the hassle of
| going to court over these issues he brings up. There is not a
| single doubt in me that DC is not going to try and take this
| decision to court anyway, no matter how few grounds they actually
| have for it.
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| Yes, but by putting it into the public domain, Willingham just
| created a large group with an incentive to fund the lawyers
| working against DC. Public interest groups and other publishers
| both could join lawsuits.
| tanepiper wrote:
| In this case, I hope they do - and that people keep making them
| do it - soon DC will need a legal team just to deal with these
| cases - or they will learn to give up.
| nwoli wrote:
| They can afford to not give up while his reserves deplete
| rapidly unfortunately
| tanepiper wrote:
| But now it's not just him they need to go after, it's every
| "defiant copyright infringer" that DC sees
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| > I've decided to take a different approach, and fight them in
| a > different arena, inspired by the principles of asymmetric
| warfare.
|
| There's nothing so formidable as an enemy who has nothing to
| lose.
|
| Relevant aside: Few know that not only did we British invent
| concentration camps, we more or less wrote the playbook on
| suicide bombing. I've seen rare and disturbing Home Guard
| training films. It was not all "Dad's Army". One tag-line was
| "You can always take one with you".
|
| Anyway, the point is not about improvised explosives, and women
| using prams to walk right into a group of occupying soldiers,
| but about how a struggle changes once the underdog realises
| they really have nothing much left to lose.
| RugnirViking wrote:
| I have to say i'd love to read about those sorts of things if
| you have a link. I've long been interested in british
| warfare, since learning about trench warfare going on in new
| zealand Maori and east india company battles
| tialaramex wrote:
| "You can always take one with you" is the proposed campaign
| in the event Sealion (German amphibious invasion of Great
| Britain) was attempted successfully. Having actually seen
| Overlord (the exact opposite scenario, "D Day") we know
| Sealion could not have worked, although of course in 1940 the
| British couldn't know that and were right to worry about it.
|
| Since Hitler's general staff believed Sealion wouldn't work
| it was never attempted and so although "You can always take
| one with you" was considered it was never actually used.
|
| There were guerrilla units established who had more targeted
| training (ie. To assassinate collaborators in any puppet
| government) but that wasn't necessarily a suicide mission and
| it wasn't general, the "you can always take one with you"
| messaging would have addressed the general population.
| ubermonkey wrote:
| It's the Paul Atreides model, right? If you can destroy a
| thing, you control it.
|
| He hasn't destroyed Fable, but he's drastically reduced its
| value to DC.
| ilaksh wrote:
| That's why everyone who has time should be publishing Fables
| projects this week. Let DC try to sue everyone.
| tanepiper wrote:
| For someone who isn't really into comic book stuff - Good.
|
| Watching from the sidelines it's clear these companies extract
| every bit of value from the creators, while also making sure they
| have 100% ownership of their output.
| LocalH wrote:
| It's the entire entertainment industry, and they've been doing
| this since the very beginning. Peak corporate entitlement on
| display.
| fsloth wrote:
| Don Rosa, who has drawn fantastic Donald Duck stories for
| Disney is a tragic example of this. The fans identify him with
| his work, but AFAIK Disney of course does not reward him in any
| way beyond the original contract terms.
| b3lvedere wrote:
| And these huge companies continue to wonder why people don't
| want to work beyond the things stated in their contracts.
|
| Don Rosa is an awesome artist. I love his style.
| mdtrooper wrote:
| I remember other case but may I am writing a big mistake,
| sorry...the saga gamebooks named Lone Wolf are as something
| similar to public domain. It is correct?
| riffraff wrote:
| I don't think so, the author granted Project Aon[0] the license
| to make them freely available, but they are still his
| copyright. It's a Free/Libre kind of distinction, IIUC.
|
| [0] https://projectaon.org/en/Main/Home
| scoofy wrote:
| We all owe this man a drink!
| kybernetikos wrote:
| So apparently I own Fables now. Anyone got a way for me to look
| at my property?
| ImAnAmateur wrote:
| DC Comics retains partial rights to the Fables work that they
| produced. You can make your own work that uses the Fables
| intellectual property and sell that now.
| ilaksh wrote:
| It's what everyone should be doing in order to support
| Willingham. DC can't sue everyone.
| omega3 wrote:
| I was interested in the technicalities around releasing something
| into the public domain and found that there is precedent and case
| law around it already in the US:
|
| "[T]he author or proprietor of any work made the subject of
| copyright by the Copyright Law may abandon his literary property
| in the work before he has published it, or his copyright in it
| after he has done so; but he must abandon it by some overt act
| which manifests his purpose to surrender his rights in the work,
| and to allow the public to copy it."[0]
|
| [0]
| https://www.lawcatalog.com/media/productattach/l/j/ljp_694pu...
| orblivion wrote:
| Since you're on the theme of technicalities I have a slightly
| different technical question: How could his work ever be
| released, practically speaking?
|
| Can he release it? No, according to his contract (per the OP
| blog post) he can only publish it through DC.
|
| Can some other entity release it? They'd need a copy of it. But
| are there any copies that are actually 100% _his_ work? If you
| alter a public domain work, I don 't think that altered work is
| public domain. It's not like the GPL. I'd imagine the altered
| work belongs to the alter-er. Surely DC had some slight nuance,
| a watermark, a logo, etc on whatever copies they released.
| Could they file a suit against somebody who scans and re-
| releases an old release?
|
| Maybe a old friend has a manuscript somewhere...
| Semaphor wrote:
| This is not about releasing old works, but releasing new
| content based on it.
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| Well, it's comics. I can't imagine he somehow ended up with
| the copyright on the art.
| kikokikokiko wrote:
| I'm not an expert on american copyright law at all, but
| personally I wouldn't touch these ips's. I can only imagine the
| nightmare of litigation it will bring. Being the "first" on any
| kind of legal gray area is usually just an enormous waste of time
| and money. But the decision by this artist to put his work on the
| public domain, while still under contract with a 3rd party, may
| create some interesting developments in the future. I just think
| waiting and seeing is the smarter option.
| RetroTechie wrote:
| > Being the "first" on any kind of legal gray area is usually
| just an enormous waste of time and money.
|
| You quoted "first" correctly: this is not. The concept of
| placing something in the public domain, is well established. So
| are its implications.
|
| If a 3rd party goes out to make a movie or something, what's DC
| Comics going to do? Assert IP rights they don't own, and never
| have? Prevent someone from using IP that's in the public
| domain? Sue for breaching a contract that 3rd party doesn't
| have with them? Good luck with that, and... Streisand.
|
| For a creator this is kind of a nuclear option. But warranted
| in this case. Well played, mr. Willingham!
|
| Jeff Ryan wrote: _I 'd love it if in the future this move was
| commonplace, and known as "The Willingham."_
|
| +1.
| ilaksh wrote:
| I think if people have courage then they will stand up for
| Willingham and publish their own Fables content.
|
| Easier said than done but if some artists can manage it, the
| theory is that DC can't sue thousands and thousands of people.
|
| That's what would really make this effective in some way
| regardless of legal outcomes. For the culture in general to de
| facto start ignoring DC's claims.
| b3lvedere wrote:
| Luckily American copyright law does not apply to this entire
| planet.
|
| Willingham also mentions he's 67 years old. Maybe he just
| doesn't care anymore what will happen to him or his creations.
|
| Interesting though. This is the second time in a few days i
| read that DC Comics is royally f-ing creators over their rights
| and property.
| rini17 wrote:
| > Luckily American copyright law does not apply to this
| entire planet.
|
| If you plan to never travel to the US.
| b3lvedere wrote:
| Why would that be an issue?
|
| Does everything thas has been created outside of the US
| suddenly become US creations under US law whenever its
| creator sets foot on American soil?
| troupo wrote:
| Brussels effect [1], but applied to the States.
|
| Also, a lot of copyright law around the world is very
| close to American copyright law, so what happens outside
| of the US is anyone's guess. For example, AFAIK, a lot of
| Soviet cartoons are in a copyright limbo of Russia
| because they infringe on Disney's (and others') IP [2]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brussels_effect
|
| [2] Fo example, Winnie the Pooh:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQmGXzNMw0E
| b3lvedere wrote:
| Ah, i get the effect idea/system. Way cheaper for a huge
| company/conglomerate to uphold all of the laws on the
| planet so they can operate and earn money everywhere.
|
| Willingham explains his actions a bit more in this post:
|
| https://billwillingham.substack.com/p/more-about-fables-
| in-t...
| prmoustache wrote:
| It is safe to say that a major portion of the world
| population doesn't have any plan to ever travel to the US.
|
| What cannot be controlled however, is the reach of the USA
| over other countries, extraditions treaties, corruption,
| exfiltrations, sequestrations and murders.
| Semaphor wrote:
| Crazy, I used to love Fables. But then I also used to love
| Vertigo (the "more adult" DC imprint that was closed in 2020
| after almost a decade of being killed off slowly) where it used
| to be published.
| chronicsonic wrote:
| Alan Moore's battles with them are well known. Corporate America
| sucked him dry and his hatred for them turned him into a Wizard.
| egypturnash wrote:
| A cute gesture I guess but honestly "adult revisions of old
| public domain children's stories" is a really glutted genre in
| comics, there's a constant churn of people trying to build a
| reputation in the field with "what if Snow White had guns and a
| sword and grudge against the Three Big Hogs who run all the crime
| in this town" or whatever.
|
| Effectively he's just handed this property off to DC for free, I
| sure wouldn't touch this without an expert IP lawyer willing to
| defend me for free and a deep dive into the exact
| copyright/trademark status of everything related to Fables. It
| _might_ be a decent publicity stunt for a small publisher to bait
| DC into suing them, I 'm sure there's a few people who are
| already pondering this and asking themselves who in their regular
| stable of artists and writers might be willing to spend a while
| on a risky project like this. And if they're willing to risk the
| whole company on it.
|
| PS. In issue 17, "The Guns Of Snow White" pivots to "The Fabulous
| Adventures Of Hans My Hedgehog" after he was introduced as Snow's
| sidekick in issue 12 and kinda stole the show with his snarky
| ultraviolence act.
| xoxxala wrote:
| DC has responded:
|
| "The Fables comic books and graphic novels published by DC, and
| the storylines, characters and elements therein, are owned by DC
| and protected under the copyright laws of the United States and
| throughout the world in accordance with applicable law, and are
| not in the public domain. DC reserves all rights and will take
| such action as DC deems necessary or appropriate to protect its
| intellectual property rights."
|
| https://icv2.com/articles/news/view/55100/dc-responds-bill-w...
| prmoustache wrote:
| Honestly I don't think it will change anything. I doubt anyone
| will touch it without a contract with DC.
|
| Public domain is not even recognized in every country which mean
| that international commercialization of any derivative work would
| be complicated or even impossible. Even worse, in this case Bill
| Willingham do not even have contract right to republish Fables.
| He cannot republish it and add an anti-copyright-notice to it.
| According to my short research it seems to be a requirement to
| waive copyright and put something in the public domain according
| to the Bern Convention. I doubt a blog post is enough, at least
| internationally.
|
| I won't expect to see any movie of Fables without DC permission.
|
| Feel free to chime in and correct me if you are an international
| copyright laws expert.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| I'm not entirely sure you need to republish a work in order to
| disclaim copyright on it. The only thing I'm aware of in US law
| is that you have to make some kind of 'overt act', which just
| means you have to actually intend to make something public
| domain. I think posting two Substack posts detailing
| contractual breaches and bad faith at DC as motivation
| qualifies.
|
| Germany and Japan don't recognize public domain dedications in
| the law. However, this isn't a German or Japanese creator we're
| talking about - Bill Willingham is American. And _generally
| speaking_ , the Berne Convention is just a promise to treat
| other countries' copyrights the same as your country would, not
| an obligation to provide more copyright to foreign works than
| domestic ones[0]. I doubt Germany is going to ultimately
| enforce copyright that has already evaporated in America,
| especially on behalf of DC, a party that doesn't actually own
| the copyright in question and only has an exclusive license.
|
| What's really going to complicate this is the nature of the
| agreement between Bill and DC. DC could argue that an exclusive
| license is equivalent to copyright transfer. Copyright is
| corporate Calvinball, so we could see American courts trying to
| roll back the public domain dedication purely for the sake of
| submission to monied interests. I could see all sorts of stupid
| arguments being adopted by judges that want to see DC win and
| artists lose:
|
| - Well _actually_ , he was trying to revert rights from DC by
| making his work public domain, but he didn't follow the notice
| period requirements, so the dedication is null and void
|
| - Well _actually_ , the publishing agreement constitutes an
| effective copyright transfer, so he's just releasing DC of
| their obligations to him, so DC now owns Fables in perpetuity
|
| - Well _actually_ , Bill Willingham didn't draw the art[1], so
| you can't put Fables on Project Gutenberg, Standard Ebooks, or
| Wikimedia Commons, all you can do is have all the male
| characters in your folklore be one man named 'Jack' and nothing
| more
|
| As far as I'm aware, "artist burns down the copyright on their
| work to moot a publishing agreement" is uncharted legal
| territory. How any of these arguments would fare would depend
| on the exact text of the DC Comics publishing agreement Bill
| signed, which isn't public, and Bill probably can't proactively
| publish it. If he can, he should. Otherwise you'd only learn
| how much he can actually disclaim iff you get sued by DC and
| are able to bring the contract into the scope of discovery,
| which isn't exactly guaranteed.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_the_shorter_term
|
| [1] Copyright is not only viral, but also _leprotic_ : every
| new instance of creativity accrues a separate copyright on that
| part of the work that is owned by that creator insamuch as it
| can be separated from the whole. This is why the GPL needs to
| have a copyleft clause.
| prmoustache wrote:
| >Otherwise you'd only learn how much he can actually disclaim
| iff you get sued by DC and are able to bring the contract
| into the scope of discovery, which isn't exactly guaranteed.
|
| Wouldn't the legal and financial burden be only on him?
|
| He is by all account the copyright holder. He says you can do
| the f. you want with his work. You haven't signed any
| contract with DC.
|
| You release some derived work commercially.
|
| DC might sue him for granting rights to a third party that
| infringe n exclusivity clause.
|
| But you aren't bound by any contract with DC, you aren't
| infringing anything if the sole copyright holder expressely
| gave you the permission.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| DC's argument would be that the exclusivity clause bars
| Bill from declaring his work public domain, and thus the
| dedication is null and void.
|
| The law does distinguish between a license and a public
| domain dedication. If Bill had instead put Fables under,
| say, CC-BY, that license absolutely would be invalid - you
| can't license rights you don't have, and the person with
| exclusive rights would be able to sue anyone who used the
| work under CC-BY[0]. But the public domain is not a
| licensing agreement, it's dissolving the foundation of that
| license agreement, and there's no precedent for what
| happens when there's exclusivity clauses in play.
|
| Because there's no clear precedent[1], that means any
| lawsuit involving these rights would survive a motion to
| dismiss, meaning that the "fuck around and find out"
| liability falls on anyone actually trying to use Fables as
| a public domain work. This is to DC's favor: if they sued
| Bill directly, Bill would be able to point out the
| _numerous contractual breaches_ DC executed, which would
| dissolve their agreement. But if they sue a rando, they
| might just settle to make the suit go away. Even if the
| rando was motivated to prove DC wrong, they don 't have
| standing to legislate contractual breaches DC made to third
| parties, so DC would be able to legally assert rights they
| might not even have.
|
| [0] While Creative Commons wasn't involved, the situation
| would otherwise be identical to the Harmony
| Gold/Mechwarrior lawsuit. BattleTech, a tabletop giant
| robot miniature game, licensed some mech designs from
| various Japanese cartoons. Those same cartoons were also
| licensed by Harmony Gold and Frankensteined together into a
| single cartoon called Robotech. BattleTech licensed out
| their miniature game to Activision to make a PC game called
| Mechwarrior. Harmony Gold sued because mechs from their
| cartoon were in their PC game, and the ultimate result was
| that _because of the exclusivity clauses in play_ ,
| BattleTech's license to Activision for those specific mech
| designs was null and void, so Activision was infringing
| Harmony Gold's rights.
|
| Yes, this is one of those legendary lawsuits that you hear
| about from MechWarrior fans in the same way that rhythm
| game fans will never forget what Konami did to In The
| Groove.
|
| [1] I fully expect an actual lawyer to reply with clear
| precedent in DC's favor. The best search engine is to reply
| with the wrong answer on Hacker News.
| esrauch wrote:
| I've been advised that in the US it's not possible to declare
| something public domain, that the closest thing is CC0 or a
| similar license.
|
| But surely if he doesn't have the right to give specific
| licenses to individuals he doesn't have the right to CC0
| license it either. Based on what I understand, DC will be able
| to win this that he can't actually do this.
| starkparker wrote:
| Since Wikipedia deals quite often with licensing and public-
| domain works, there's a reasonably relevant summary at
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Public_domain.
| voxic11 wrote:
| Some countries like Germany and Japan don't recognize public
| domain dedication. But afaik the United States does. There is
| one oddity in the US which is that Section 203 of the
| Copyright Act grants the author of a work the right to cancel
| "the exclusive or nonexclusive grant of a transfer or license
| of copyright or of any right under a copyright" up to thirty-
| five years after the grant or transfer occurred (only
| applicable to works not created "for hire"). So you could
| argue under that until 35 years have elapsed the work isn't
| truly in the public domain because the original author of the
| work has the statutory right to reclaim its copyright.
|
| That said, could the author here have used Section 203 to
| revoke DC's license? I see section 203 requires that "Notices
| of termination may be served no earlier than 25 years after
| the execution of the grant or, if the grant covers the right
| of publication, no earlier than 30 years after the execution
| of the grant or 25 years after publication under the grant
| (whichever comes first)."
|
| So maybe the author could have waited a few more years and
| done that?
| kibwen wrote:
| The other way around. The US has a public domain, and in many
| other countries CC0 is the best you can do.
| Pxtl wrote:
| So what exactly did Willingham own of Fables? Like, does this
| mean the books themselves are now free of copyright? Or is it a
| matter of owning the characters for derivative works?
|
| Edit: his follow-up post says he signed away publishing and
| adaptation rights to DC... isn't that.... all of the rights?
| isitmadeofglass wrote:
| > In my template for radical reform of those laws I would like it
| if any IP is owned by its original creator for up to twenty years
| from the point of first publication
|
| I've always said that I find it wrong that someone who dedicated
| their life to finding a cure for a life threatening desease is
| told: "You get 20 years to turn a profit, then it's a free for
| all" yet if someone draws a cute mouse we say: "You get your
| lifetime, plus 75 years of exclusivity then it's a gray zone case
| of which derivatives you own and what you can sue for" (looking
| at Winnie the Pooh's red shirt).
|
| You'd think that drawings and written content would be ranked
| lower than literally curing life threatening deseases and saving
| lives, when it comes to how long we give the inventors and
| creators to monetize their creations.
| chmod775 wrote:
| > someone who dedicated their life to finding a cure
|
| Do you honestly believe that someone who spends their life
| looking for a cure, does it in the hopes of making lots of cash
| when they're 60?
|
| If you're that kind of person, there's other professions out
| there that will let you make bank before you're too old to
| enjoy it.
| ben_w wrote:
| > Do you honestly believe that someone who spends their life
| looking for a cure, does it in the hopes of making lots of
| cash when they're 60?
|
| It isn't just the creators of the intellectual property, it's
| the investors.
|
| > If you're that kind of person, there's other professions
| out there that will let you make bank before you're too old
| to enjoy it.
|
| From what I hear, that applies even more strongly to the arts
| than to the STEMs.
| toyg wrote:
| I suspect the parent poster was referring to certain
| professions known for being older than any other one.
| ben_w wrote:
| That sounds like you're referring to prostitution; I
| don't know the economics of that, but I'd assumed
| chmod775 was referring to the FIRE sector.
| penteract wrote:
| The laws reflect that it's much easier to tell someone "you
| can't watch a film" than "you can't have life-saving
| treatment".
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| > The current laws are a mishmash of unethical backroom deals to
| keep trademarks and copyrights in the hands of large
| corporations, who can largely afford to buy the outcomes they
| want.
|
| Succinct but accurate summary of the current state of the law.
| axus wrote:
| More quality input for machine-generated art, hooray!
| nottorp wrote:
| Is he taking donations for the legal fees from the upcoming
| Marvel lawsuit? He'll probably need them.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| Bill's motivations and ideas here seem broadly sane.
| "Intellectual property", in all it's manifest forms, no longer
| serves creators because most corporations and publishers act as
| if above the law, in such disgracefully unethical ways as to make
| the bargain worthless. There are honest, small publishers out
| there, but sadly they're a dwindling pool.
|
| It is also pleasant to read such a mildly written yet firm
| account of "the straw that broke the camel's back". I am very
| interested in 'thresholds' as part of system dynamics, for
| example in flocking, public movements and revolutions. Single
| actor tipping points such as Rosa Parks taking a "white" seat are
| fascinating from a technical, cultural and systematic view.
|
| I sense we have moved from a general "anti-capitalism" to some
| even more powerful latent undercurrents in tech, where
| disaffection with big-tech and surveillance capitalism is
| poised... for what exactly I don't know. But somewhere out there
| is a smart, mischievous hacker who will sow the seminal event.
| Well done to you Bill Willingham.
| raybb wrote:
| I wouldn't call Rosa Parks a single actor.
|
| > In shorter words, Miss Rosa Parks's decision to stay in a
| forward seat was the first move in a planned boycott of the bus
| company and the city law, a campaign organised long before by
| the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
| (NAACP) and run by a young, bland, handsome black parson, name
| of Martin Luther King Jr, who while I was in Montgomery, flew
| in from Atlanta twice a week to buy little vans for use by the
| boycotters.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/oct/04/9
| raybb wrote:
| On that note, I'll just mention I think that I read a short
| book called "Mutual Aid" by Dean Spade that really gave me
| some more ideas for what a world looks like where communities
| are really taking care of each other and don't have so much
| emphasis on doing everything yourself.
|
| https://openlibrary.org/works/OL20892439W/Mutual_Aid
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| Great share, Thanks. Have you read "Tools for Conviviality"
| by Illich ?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tools_for_Conviviality
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| Actually you're quite right. She was married to Mr. Raymond
| Parks.
|
| https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/rosa-parks
| mbork_pl wrote:
| Not the OP, but why the downvotes? I understand this was a
| bit off-topic, but I found it a witty reply.
| raybb wrote:
| I didn't downvote and it's not the guidelines[0] but
| generally hackernews doesn't look kindly upon witty or
| funny replies and tends to emphasize replies that add
| spread knowledge and encourage discussion.
|
| TIL the guidelines also say:
|
| > Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It
| never does any good, and it makes boring reading.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| orlandohill wrote:
| There's also a follow-up.
|
| https://billwillingham.substack.com/p/more-about-fables-in-t...
|
| Hearing how DC treats comics creators makes me want to boycott
| their future publications. Thankfully, there are publishers like
| Image that operate more fairly.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| Reading this, and hindsight being what it is, it seems like the
| contracts didn't have penalty clauses for non-compliance. It's
| horrible to say this when you're theoretically dealing with
| adults, but it is as if everything needs a big stick or stungun
| attached to it, and a lot of NO, BAD MONKEY penalties for every
| "crack" they fell through. That would be hard to build a
| contract around.
| a_bonobo wrote:
| >They just claimed this is how it had to be done.
|
| My previous employer (not even the employer, some HR person)
| tried to steal my outstanding leave payment with exactly the
| same sentence; this sentence is now a huge red flag for me. It
| comes from a position of arrogant laziness, a more accurate
| translation would be 'this is how I want it to be done because
| i can't be bothered finding out how it's actually done', which
| is then reflected in the rest of OP's post: they didn't even
| read the contract. I did end up getting my outstanding leave
| payment, too, but it took some threatening.
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| > Bill: Yes. Probably. DC has to continue paying me royalties
| on the books they've published and keep in publication, so, as
| long as I work hard to keep them honest each quarter, I still
| have some potential income from Fables.
|
| How does it work, legally speaking? I meant that now Fables is
| in public domain, would DC still need to pay royalties to him?
| I understand that they had/have a contract, but not sure if the
| contract is tied to copyright implicitly or explicitly.
| crooked-v wrote:
| A contract like that covers a lot more than just the material
| itself: there's branding, use of the author's name and
| likeness, editorial rights of both parties, etc. There's no
| particular reason to assume it would be tied to the copyright
| status of the work itself, and plenty of reasons to assume it
| wouldn't (after all, you don't want to have to pull the
| author branding just because something entered the public
| domain over time).
| jdboyd wrote:
| They still have to honor their contract with him, and if
| there's an exit clause, that means he gets to exit it as
| well, which I believe he would like.
| TylerE wrote:
| I think what's happened is he's placed the
| characters/concept/design etc into the public domain, but NOT
| his copywritten work product.
|
| IP vs Concrete Creation using that IP
| WorldMaker wrote:
| His FAQ in the follow up post makes it clear he believes
| that he's released to the public domain every part of it
| that he owns. That would include all of his writing over
| the years.
|
| There's certainly a lot of gray area left on the artwork,
| especially. DC probably owns most of it? It might take a
| lot of work to track down the original artists and find
| their thoughts on all this.
|
| At face value based on what Willingham seems to believe,
| you could probably remix the early comics, use the dialog
| word for word, maybe even panel for panel. But you'd
| probably need to use entirely new artwork and be very
| careful that the artwork is entirely new with fresh
| concepts.
|
| But there's a fun twist _there_ given how much of Fables is
| itself based on older public domain works and arguments
| that many of the core concepts of the characters have
| _always_ been public domain and even _very close_ artwork
| may be entitled to some interesting fair use judgments.
|
| (I'm not a lawyer of course, and neither is Willingham. If
| I had one suggestion for Willingham it might be to talk to
| Creative Commons lawyers and get something like the CC0
| involved, including legally binding descriptions of the
| parts of the series that Willingham now thinks are
| dedicated to the public domain.)
| crooked-v wrote:
| No, it's the whole thing. Under his contract he retained
| ownership of all the material, and presumably nothing about
| his contract actually bars him from releasing it as public
| domain.
| TylerE wrote:
| Does he own the rights to the art though? All the
| penciling and coloring was done by people under contract,
| not him.
| chipsa wrote:
| Depending on how the contracts are written, they may be
| works for hire, with the copyright owner getting the
| copyright for the art as well.
| autoexec wrote:
| Image has a ton great titles too. I never gave much thought to
| them until one day I realized how much space they take up on my
| shelves. Saga alone takes up a ton of that space, but other
| series I've enjoyed include The Wicked + The Divine, Monstress,
| Paper Girls, Skyward, and Injection (although I think that one
| has been canceled after the author was)
| solardev wrote:
| As someone unfamiliar with graphic novels, can you recommend
| some good ones that have more "adult" themes? I don't mean
| porn, but like storylines that are more interesting than bam
| bam pow pow. Maybe more like a typical novel than a comic
| aimed at younger readers, if that makes sense?
| colinflane wrote:
| "Arzach" by Moebius. "The Incal" by same and Jodorowsky.
| the-mitr wrote:
| Jodorowsky's worlds are a delight to read as are his
| films very unusual visuals in both.
| autoexec wrote:
| I've only ever dabbled in caped heroes, so most (if not
| all) of what I listed is what you're looking for although
| Saga deserves special mention. I'd consider The Sandman
| (sadly DC) a must read. It takes a volume or two to really
| find its footing but none of it is bad. Something Is
| Killing the Children is good too.
| TylerE wrote:
| Transmetropolitan. Basically cross Hunter S Thompson and
| Futurama. The blackest of black comedies. Likely to be a
| love/hate kind of thing... but it's one of the books that
| opened my eyes to what a non-superhero comic could be.
| orlandohill wrote:
| There are comics to suit every literary taste.
| _Understanding Comics_ , by Scott McCloud, is an
| examination of the medium in the form of a comic. _Maus_ ,
| by Art Spiegelman, is a dual memoir of holocaust survival
| and the creation of the book itself. Both are widely
| translated and available in public libraries.
|
| You could use the Eisner Awards as a source of
| recommendations. Read the blurbs and preview pages of the
| winners and nominees, and select the book or series that
| appeals to you the most. For example, _Ballad for Sophie_
| was a recent highlight for me, and was nominated for four
| Eisner Awards.
| fsloth wrote:
| 'Fables' is excellent :D
|
| Others my favourites:
|
| Alan Moore, 'V for Vendetta'
|
| Alan Moore, 'League of extraordinary gentlemen'
|
| Alan Moore, 'Watchmen'
|
| Neil Gaiman, 'Sandman'(series, but packed into albums)
|
| Frank Miller, 'Give me liberty'
|
| Mike Mignola, 'Hellboy' (series)
|
| Masamune Shirow, 'Ghost in the shell'
|
| Yukito Kishiro, 'Battle angel Alita' (series)
| the-mitr wrote:
| Add to the list
|
| Frank Miller's Ronin
| brazzy wrote:
| If you're gonna include manga, Miyazaki's 'Nausicaa of
| the Valley of the Wind' needs to be at the top of the
| list.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| >But here's the thing: No one will ever know how valuable the
| asset is that they threw away. Yes, they sell lots of Watchman,
| but how many sales did they lose from those who would have
| bought the book, but didn't, out of respect for Moore? There's
| no way to know, and because there's no way to know, the loss
| can never show up in their balance books. How many new and
| wonderful projects might Alan Moore have done with DC, had they
| been able to keep him happy (and in this case the way to keep
| him happy was easy and known: simply be fair in their dealings
| from now on. Quit trying to cheat him)? There's no way to know
| how much DC lost over the years due to something that didn't
| happen.
|
| Well we could go by antipiracy logic and take everyone who has
| ever bought an Alan Moore book post-DC and multiply it by what
| DC was charging for books. If it works for publishers it works
| for authors, right? /s
| karaterobot wrote:
| It's a lesson people have to learn periodically, I suppose. As
| noted in that FAQ, both Frank Miller and Alan Moore already
| went through this with them, publicly and loudly. I like his
| point about not knowing what was lost by poisoning those
| relationships. They robbed themselves of the fruits of two of
| the best writer/artists in comics history, at the peak of their
| creative ability, and robbed us of seeing what they'd have done
| if they'd stayed.
|
| (Frank Miller at least did more work for DC later, but sadly
| not at his peak)
| bazoom42 wrote:
| Interesting move, but I think a likely outcome is that nothing
| happens. In theory other publishers like Marvel are now able to
| publish Fables content, but why would they? They have their own
| IP.
| jl6 wrote:
| What precisely has been gifted to the public domain? As I
| understand it, Willingham was the writer, not the graphic artist,
| so the words are his to give away but the finished comic book
| product is not - is that right?
| belenos46 wrote:
| If he's the "creator" of record, then he can give away
| characters, setting, plots &c. The words and concepts, as you
| suggest. So derivative works based on the concepts would be
| kosher, photocopies of the existing books wouldn't. New art
| based on old scripts _might_ fly, though my gut instinct says
| it wouldn 't, but rewrites with new art probably would, that
| sort of thing.
| staticman2 wrote:
| No, without seeing his contract, you can't know what
| ownership he retained even if he's nominally the copyright
| holder. He can be the "copyright holder" of record and have
| exclusively licensed away the characters, settings, and plots
| in the contract. He obviously thinks he has not done this,
| but who is the "creator" of record tells you nothing.
| Multicomp wrote:
| My question is how can he give away a character in a legal
| sense? Can characters be copyrighted? Mickey Mouse is a
| Disney Trademark, same with Spiderman and other name-brand
| 'on the cover' characters.
|
| But what about if I make up a novel and sell it starring the
| character Peter Parker beat in the match ring in the early
| aughts film? I say this character is the same character, make
| up a story of how he recovered from his injury, opened a hot
| dog launching factory as a novelty theme park, then died of
| cancer.
|
| The story is set in Earth 616 ostensibly, but I don't use
| Spider-man beyond that being the past of this main character.
|
| Is that a derivative work? Can you copyright a name/character
| traits without using trademark law to focus on customer
| confusion?
|
| EDIT: I think this is laudable what he did, I'm just curious
| if he even needed to do so in the first place, or if the law
| already allowed you to do this, in the same way that the Open
| Gaming License of DND 5E only gave you rights to use the
| rules system of 5E that copyright law already allowed you to
| do in the first place?
| brightlancer wrote:
| The current legal status of "Winnie the Pooh" provides
| examples for all of this.
|
| The original book has entered the public domain and can be
| reproduced, in whole or in part, by anyone. This includes
| the characters.
|
| The Disney created works (books, animated, etc.) are still
| under copyright.
|
| The original Pooh did not wear clothes; the Disney Pooh
| wears a red shirt. I could write a story based on the
| original Milne book and it would be legal; if I put Pooh in
| a red shirt, I would be violating Disney's copyright.
|
| Many of the character names are trademarked by Disney;
| however, it is not a violation to use those names for new
| works that are not based on Disney works.
| chrismorgan wrote:
| > _The original Pooh did not wear clothes; the Disney
| Pooh wears a red shirt._
|
| Actually, Pooh wears just such a top in chapter three,
| perhaps because it's cold, and although all I can
| actually _check_ at present is https://www.gutenberg.org/
| files/67098/67098-h/67098-h.htm#CH... which clearly shows
| it in the original black and white line art, I _believe_
| that it was red in colourised versions (though I'm not
| actually certain when colourisation happened or what its
| status is).
| nikanj wrote:
| And Sherlock Holmes is in public domain, but only if he
| has no feelings
| https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/25/21302942/netflix-
| enola-ho...
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Yes, characters can be copyrighted. IANAL, and copyright is
| murky, but your example would be a derivative work.
| anotheraccount9 wrote:
| Where can I download Fables?
| jccalhoun wrote:
| I didn't see it pointed out but DC is owned by Warner-Discovery
| (or whatever it is called) so they have tons of lawyers on
| retainer to prevent anyone from actually publishing Fables but
| them.
|
| There's also the issue of trademarks which might also prevent
| people from using the Fables name.
| msla wrote:
| > I didn't see it pointed out but DC is owned by Warner-
| Discovery (or whatever it is called) so they have tons of
| lawyers on retainer to prevent anyone from actually publishing
| Fables but them.
|
| I don't see a way around this:
|
| > The one thing in our contract the DC lawyers can't contest,
| or reinterpret to their own benefit, is that I am the sole
| owner of the intellectual property. I can sell it or give it
| away to whomever I want.
|
| If he kept full ownership, and I obviously can't see any of his
| contracts, DC doesn't have any ownership and so can't stop any
| such publication. It's like how publishing a nice edition of
| Shakespeare doesn't give that publisher any proprietary rights
| to _Hamlet_.
| chmod775 wrote:
| > so they have tons of lawyers on retainer to prevent anyone
| from actually publishing Fables but them
|
| That's not going to be a long court case regardless of how many
| lawyers they throw at it, since they would have been unable to
| produce anything showing that they owned the IP that you are
| allegedly infringing - because they simply didn't own the IP.
|
| This was true before Willingham pulled this stunt. They never
| owned it, he did. The only one who could have sued would have
| been Willingham himself.
|
| With this recent event technically everyone owns it (they too),
| but bringing that up won't help them at all.
|
| Trademarks: I don't think they should have any, given that you
| can't trademark something you don't own. Searching trademark
| databases didn't yield anything.
| catapart wrote:
| Personally, I fully support this "Willingham copyright". 20 years
| for the creators (I would have said 50, but I guess I'm greedy),
| and then a limited private run so that the creator can sell it
| and get a nice mature payment for it (again, would have gone 20
| years on this, just to get the companies that are going to do a
| 10-movie saga plenty to salivate over), and then it's off to the
| public domain! Sounds perfect, to me!
|
| My way would have kept it out of public hands for ~70 years,
| which feels about right to me. I don't know if I, personally,
| feel like content made in the 90's shouldn't profit the creator
| anymore. Whereas stuff from the 50's and before definitely
| _feels_ like no one should be able to take ownership of it. If it
| stuck around that long, it 's in the pop culture and belongs to
| all of us. "Mickey Mouse" isn't just a character, it's a
| touchstone for other content to riff on. That's kind of the whole
| point of public domain; that and reinvention.
|
| All of that said, I guess "Ghostbusters" kind of has a similar
| pop culture weight so I'm happy to amend my numbers down toward
| Bill's. My main interest is in making sure creators get paid
| commensurate to the impact of their work (as opposed to the work
| they put in to make it), in such a way that they can make a
| living off any profitable endeavor for the duration of that
| project's viability. If 30 years works for that, then I'm
| completely for it!
|
| Fantastic work here, Bill! Thank you!
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| I would agree with your preference, especially because many
| artists have to retire off of their creations, and also
| disabled people are likely more represented in art. The woman
| who wrote Jonathan strange & mr norrell has severe chronic
| fatigue syndrome, obviously can't work. By the presented logic
| she's almost out of time for earnings, and she's nowhere near
| old enough where that wouldn't be significant.
| MrDrMcCoy wrote:
| I think 10-15 years of exclusivity, followed by 20 years of
| compulsory licensing before entering the public domain would be
| even more fair. That way, creators can get paid for longer,
| while further creativity is less stifled.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-09-16 23:02 UTC)