• RustyWizard@programming.dev
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    5 months ago

    Copyright terms are so fucking stupid. Imagine getting into trouble for using Popeye. Make it the same as a patent duration and be done with it.

    • Blaze@reddthat.comOP
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      5 months ago

      You can really see how invested the copyright owners were to get such long durations.

    • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
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      5 months ago

      I feel like it should be the life time of the creator of the work provided that person is still getting a significant percentage of the royalties. Otherwise something like 20 years.

      That way companies might be less likely to force artists to sign away all rights to their work. So like “hey this kid could live another 50 years, so lets make sure he gets his percentage so we can keep control longer.”

      • Couldbealeotard@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        How would that work for anything produced by a company? If you’re a continuing run of stories, and a random artist dies, copyright on parts of your product suddenly evaporate? Getting a job as an artist would be like making an insurance claim: with a risk assessment. Good luck getting work as you get older or sick.

        • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
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          5 months ago

          Why would a copyright entering public domain cause a problem with your product? Public domain doesn’t mean you can’t use a work anymore, more the opposite really.

          And they’d still get 20 years for a work made by a 90 year with a terminal illness.

      • threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.works
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        5 months ago

        Could companies not also say “hey, this kid could live another 50 years, let’s kill them soon so their work will be in the public domain and we can profit from it”? Or would companies not want the work in the public domain?

    • Heavybell@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      I dunno what the patent duration is, but copyright should probably just be 50 years max IMO. If you can’t make bank in that time without changing the idea up (and thus getting 50 years on the new version) you don’t deserve it.

      • gerbler@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Originally I think it was closer to 20 years. Frankly I think 25 years is plenty. A quarter century is enough time to reward the creator of an IP and it respects the fact that all IP is built on top of the public domain so it’s return is a natural part of the cycle.

        • Heavybell@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          In any case it’s not like after it expires you could not trade on being the original. It’s not like others could then come along and claim to have been the original creator. And if you kept making works those would each get their own period of copyright.

    • Pyr_Pressure@lemmy.ca
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      5 months ago

      I agree with copyright in a sense that people should have a chance to profit from their ideas before it gets stolen, but you are right that it is way too long of a term. It stymies creativity when people can milk the same idea for many decades.

      I would think for creative license like an idea for a cartoon or comic, 10-20 years is more than enough. Then they should try and make new characters or start competing with others trying to improve the character.

  • Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee
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    5 months ago

    I want all of them to live together in one big house, reality TV style!!

    … it appears there are mockups:

    • averyminya@beehaw.org
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      5 months ago

      This show was really fucked up lmao my partner and I stayed at an Airbnb and while looking for something to watch and she saw this was like “honey this is kinda raunchy but we HAVE to watch it since you haven’t seen it” and then 10 minutes in we had to turn it off because of how awful it was haha. Fat shaming goth cutter Betty boop, gay link, racist Pikachu, hypersexual pedo superman, generally just racist to every possible point like the pig character and stereotypes.

      My partner just said, “the racist characters existing themselves I could handle, it was the racism they were perpetuating that made me tap out” lmao. [Edit: I said it already but I feel the need to re-iterate, this was all in the first 10 minutes!! end edit.]

      But to your point, this sort of show done right would be hilarious with the public domain characters lol

      • Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee
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        5 months ago

        Yeah, they (the showrunners) used incredibly bad stuff to produce humour (well).

        And I’ve heard that ‘the show didn’t age well’ but (iirc) the show absolutely at all times (with no doubt at all) portrayed all those characters as horrible.

        At no point was shaming-vagina tentacles presented as the morally right thing. If the jokes they did with that arent funny to you, sure, that’s legit, but if they were funny to you but aren’t anymore “bcs the times changed” that just means that you were wrong back then & now grown up, and you prob liked the shaming, not the jokes.
        Its like anti-lgbt stuff in recent history - it’s not that 100 years ago being a bigot was any less horrible than now, the only difference is that now it might ‘inconvenience you’.

        Its like people saying that It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia characters “might be bad” … you fucked up if you idolise them just because they are main characters, if you can’t comprehend how bad they are (even tho they make it extremely obvious at all times) and how bad the lives of everyone around them make. Its like the whole point of a setup like that. None of them are anti- or edgy- heroes, they just suck.

        I don’t think Drawn Together was like Family Guys Quagmires rapey jokes & deeds (that was his whole character for most of the shows run) that were always presented as “cool” & macho - that didn’t “age badly”, it was bad & horrible all along.

        And mass murderers with superpowers (Drawn Together, not The Boys) that indiscriminately and selfishly hurt absolutely everyone … well, racism of those chars prob isn’t the core issue or propaganda.

        And racism, shaming, etc, they exist. That’s just a fact. And you can make fun of anything.

        Its what Louis-Dreyfus is saying with ‘“woke” culture isn’t killing or limiting comedy’, it doesn’t (the context of that is that Seinfeld is bitching how anti-sexism is limiting (his) comedy, lul).

  • sik0fewl@lemmy.ca
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    5 months ago

    Snow White and the seven dwarves are 200 years old and already in the public domain.

    • sunzu@kbin.run
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      5 months ago

      Wouldn’t Disney harass somebody if they were try to make it tho? It would look too much like theirs?

    • marilynia@discuss.tchncs.de
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      5 months ago

      The stories are, but not the characters as drawn by Disney, it’s like classic music, you can use the Music commercially (given that you Perform I), but you can’t use a performance from someone else.

      Same with classic stories, you can make your own snow white story, but you can’t use snow white as performed by Disney (yet)

      • AEsheron@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Yeah, they had shifted for a Trademark strategy a few years before it happened. It was pretty clear they weren’t interested in making it happen again, or had finally got pushback from the folks they donated to about it, or something. And if Disney decided to drop it, I don’t think WB, with less than half the cash, will decide to try it.

  • SorteKanin@feddit.dk
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    5 months ago

    I wonder if this will herald an era of more original content and less of all this reusing of stuff all the time.

    • AProfessional@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      It won’t change anything. Old stories and characters are boring. Studios do it from time to time but like Robinhood movies aren’t great investments and since they don’t own the IP don’t lead to anything else.

      Community made content is just for fun, so who cares if people make repetitive fan films, art, games.

  • FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today
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    5 months ago

    Donald Duck is gonna be fire, I just know it.

    Also, Disney has no rights to Snow White, they merely own the 7 very specificly named dwarves.

  • glimse@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    I appreciate you posting here often but this is not a data visualization. This is just a graphic with dates on it