>Popeye is a public domain character in Europe

>Still copyrighted in America


How do that work?

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I would gladly pay you Tuesday for a public domain today.

Same way some parts of the star wars movies are public domain and others aren't, I suppose.

A fair amount of Fleischer stuff is in public domain, is it not? I dunno how the law works 2bh.

The law works however Disney wants it to work.

Because international copyright law depends on the treaties between countries. In order to hold the rights to something internationally you have to individually get a copyright in every country you want to market it in unless your country of origin has a treaty with other countries to respect each other's properties. Its why, for example, all of those Chinese knockoff's get away with operating in the open in China. Chinese law does not recognize the patents or copyrights of other countries.

So now with the case of Popeye, the copyright owners still have the rights in the US because of US copyright laws but they already ran out in Europe. European countries have shorter periods one can hold a copyright.

because bribery is legal in america

US copyright law is essentially the bitch of Mickey Mouse, a big part of the reason this country is experiencing such creative stagnation right now.

The copyrights probably already would have expired in the US, but every time Mickey is about to go into the public domain, Disney lobbies Congress to retroactively extend copyright terms.

youtube.com/watch?v=SiEXgpp37No
There's a fair amount of cringe here but it at least explains the issue pretty concisely.

You laugh now but when they unfreeze Walt you'll be happy he can still make Mickey Mouse cartoons without competition.

Disney keeps paying congres to extend copyright length

Who are some other characters that deserve to be fully brought into the public domain?

Some of Captain Marvel's earlier appearances are public domain. Plastic Man's too, I think.

Walt won't need to be without compition to make good micky stuff

Blue Beetle is public domain I think

There wil no such thing as public domain anymore. Feels bad man.

Why tho?

Only good public domain works are the horror ones. No one uses any other work

Corporate greed and government weakness.

As the time frame gets expanded for Disney, material made within it won't enter public domain.

Different copyright laws.

In the United States, a work is copyrighted for ninety-five years from the date of its creation. In Europe, it's life of the creator plus seventy years.

Segar died in 1938 so the seventy year period was up at the beginning of 2009. In the U.S., it'll last until 2024 since Popeye was introduced in 1929. Wimpy and Bluto will be a bit later on though Olive Oyl is already three years past the ninety-five year mark.

Some Popeye cartoons have already lapsed into the public domain in the United States though because of filing errors.

It seems like that there will be an extension of copyright protections before 2024 though since the ninety-five year protection for Mickey Mouse expires before then.

>I want them to make out
Who the fuck let this through?

first post best post

Because America has shitty copyright laws, partly thanks to Disney.

The actual cartoons themselves are public domain. Anyone can burn a bunch of Fleischer cartoons to a DVD and sell it totally legally.
The characters themselves are trademarked and cannot be used in original works by anyone but the rights holder.

Tarzan isn't PD. The first few books are but the Burroughs estate still owns John Carter and Tarzan

if I recall properly almost the entirety of Fawcett's output is in the Public Domain

his Golden Age version is, however the later version of Dan Garret(that had the magic scarab), as well as Ted Kord aren't

Copyright really doesn't need to be more than Author's Life plus maybe 20 years tops, and even that is probably too much, ideally Copyright would only be like 20 years period

>that image
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

>however the later version of Dan Garret(that had the magic scarab), as well as Ted Kord aren't

Actually that one's being debated now since their 1960's comics were found out to have improper copyright notices, and that there was no record found of those same comics being registered at the Library of Congress.

Wizard of Oz is public domain.

I'd say that all of Fawcett's Captain Marvel-related stuff should be public domain, on account that Marvel has a stranglehold on the "Captain Marvel" trademark and DC is mostly forced to make their character "Shazam". And it's definitely arguable that DC's New 52 Shazam and the original Captain Marvel have enough differences to them to be distinct in the way that Medival Spawn is distinct from Spawn in the way that allowed Neil Gaiman to win the lawsuit against McFarlane.

>if I recall properly almost the entirety of Fawcett's output is in the Public Domain

Sort of. Chunks of it are (especially Captain Marvel and Mary Marvel and Captain Marvel Jr's first appearances), but others may not be yet.

>though Olive Oyl is already three years past the ninety-five year mark.

That's true.

pdsh.wikia.com/wiki/Olive_Oyl

>Copyright really doesn't need to be more than Author's Life plus maybe 20 years tops, and even that is probably too much, ideally Copyright would only be like 20 years period
Agreed. Lengthy copywrites stagnant new creations

>Tarzan isn't PD. The first few books are but the Burroughs estate still owns John Carter and Tarzan

No, Tarzan and John Carter partially PD because like you said their first few books are, which includes their first appearance. The thing is that it's complicated because like you also said, Burroughs' estate also owns the rights to the later work (and it's a lot).

Dynamite Comics did try to challenge Burroughs' hold on the rights by producing their own Tarzan and John Carter comics (titled Lord of the Jungle and Lord of Mars, respectively, and stuck to only the PD books as an inspiration). ERB estate sued, and Dynamite was willing to take them on. But what ended up happening was a settlement where Dynamite got the rights to the ERB characters (it probably might've helped Dynamite that Disney fucked up John Carter). We don't know how far that lawsuit would've really gone.

Jews

>No one uses any other work

You're not looking hard enough. O Brother Where Art Thou is loosely based on Homer's Odyssey. Disney fucking uses the public domain a lot. Usagi Yojimbo: Senso uses H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds as an influence. And there's a whole lot of other stuff.

Since the tongue is out, looks more like it's drinking the liquid from his eyes

How, doesn't this force people to come up with new stuff instead of using someone else's? Not that i approve of disney increasing its strangehold on congress

All of Baum's works are now; most of Ruth Plumly Thompson's continuation series is still under copyright.

ARE's a good show buried under self-obligated normie pandering

The fact that people can just keep milking old properties makes them a lot less likely to take chances on new ones.

Plus the other problem is that allowing material to remain under copyright actually makes some of it less likely to be available rather than the other way around.

A ton of material is out-of-print and completely unavailable because the rights-holders have zero interest in making them available or releasing them to the public domain. Not because they perceive a commercial value in those properties but because they feel that doing so would make it harder for them to hang onto the things they do want to exploit.

>The fact that people can just keep milking old properties makes them a lot less likely to take chances on new ones.

Fucking this. I can't believe people try to defend copyright extension when all we've been seeing is endless reboots and remakes with copyrighted properties anyway.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act

There's too much money at stake.

Short answer: Lobbying
Long answer: Money-grubbing

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Mighty Mouse and the Terrytoons, they haven't been used for anything since the Bakshi New Adventures show.

>How do that work?

Foreign laws do not operate in other countries. Europe has tended to be less favourite to corporate dominance over intellectual property than the U.S where powerful media cartels have lobbyists embedded in the highest circles of government power in Washington D.C.

Only when it comes to public domain, though. The US is significantly more lenient in terms of artistic expression when it comes to parody and commentary on an existing work than, for instance, the UK.

There would be no problem with creators or their appointed successors having control over the property. It's when large corporations who have no artistic inclinations hoard copyrights and stop any development being made. THink about how many cool new Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck stuff could have been invented and marketed, especially in the digital age. Not that everything Disney does is crap, far from it and public domain doesn't mean future works will be quality.

But I guess properties like SUperman have only limited marketability within the confines of marketability to the core target demographics and those limits have been reached about 20 years ago. This is why Rebirth is the standard panic move of falling back on intertextuality and meta-narratives (which has also been milked dry already ~20 years ago, mind you).

If free agents could work with those properties for money (because why would you without; you haven't got unlimited time, have you?) there would be much more ingenious Superman stuff around (alongside seas of crap). There are Superman stories worth reading, but DC will never put them out, because they would not profit them enough. Free creators however do not necessarily need large profit margins.

>hating on Sherlock Holmes
Fuck you, buddy.

Unless there's another copyright extension, Mickey will enter the public domain in six years. If Trump is still in office, then liberals are going to protest Disney's new bill by virtue of it being a Trumpian piece of legislation, right? Because this would be the first time I actually join them for a protest.

Why not simply amend copywrite law so that characters still in use can have their copywrites extended indefinently?

My guess would be that liberals would not be too thrilled about that piece of legislation in general, not just because Trump will be in favor of it.

Because "in use" would have to be described in very narrow legal terms. This is already common in the movie industry and usually it doesn't work too well: The 90s Fantastic Four movie is a result of that (although its also kind of awesome) as well as AFAIK the Amazing Spider-Man movies (though I'm not sure on that one).

If you had that for comics, if not defined properly, you would have rightholders cranking out some piece of shit every few years so that they can live of merchandise for the years in-between.

If John Oliver tells them that copyright law is good, I'm sure they won't bother protesting.

Come now, user, don't try to derail this discussion about copyright law relating to comics / cartoons properties with company wars level stuff that has no business on this board.

From wiki:
>In most countries of Africa and Asia, as well as Canada, Belarus, Bolivia, New Zealand and Uruguay, a work enters the public domain 50 years after the creator's death.
>Walt Disney died in 1966
If you are from Canada, New Zealand, Uruguay, etc. can you use Walt Disney creations?

I really have no idea
you don't see much stuff with mickey mouse on it here (NZ) unless it's either obviously a licensed product, or is in a shop window next to other products that are almost definitely breaching copyright laws (eg frozen's elsa)

I'd have to talk to a lawyer, but I get the feeling it's a short answer yes long answer no sort of situation

Here's hoping the USA fails to extend copyright any further and we can avoid having this conversation in future

Since here in Uruguay we do not give a fuck about anything, possibly yes.
But the Mouse is strong.
And The photocopiers next to UdelaR´s law school got shut down once in a massive publicity stunt (to re open shortly after).

it's almost like different countries can have different laws!
Uncanny!

>mfw Canadians start to make cartoons with mickey, minnie, donald, pluto, etc.

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>Mickey Mouse will expire soon, so we'll get another retroactive copyright extension
I'd say it's unlikely Congress could agree to do anything in the state they're in now, but I've frequently been surprised by how much of a bipartisan issue protecting Mickey Mouse is. I think most voters just don't give a shit about copyright because they don't make any kind of art, so there's zero resistance to crippling the public domain. They'll probably push through the next extension with a snap of the fingers.

It's unconstitutional. Disney has been trying to get copyright extended to flat out "forever", but they'd have to amend the constitution to do it, and that's way more challenging than passing a law. The constitution actually says the copyright on creative works has to be limited somehow. In fact, they were able to attempt a court case against Mickey Mouse by pointing out retroactive copyrights could be applied forever without limits and therefore violate the constitution, but the courts rules that everyone should be dead before they can use a creative property they enjoyed as a child.

Which is what they do for the name Captain Marvel

Sooner or later Disney will lose that fight.

What people forget however, is that TRADEMARKS last forever, and Disney will always have that up their sleeve as a B card.

I always assumed that's why we're seeing a clip from Steamboat Willy at the start of every Disney film. Maybe it won't provide very good grounds for a lawsuit, but most companies will be afraid to fight them since civil suits are so expensive, and they can bully people into not using Mickey.

It also guarantees a creator a steady income without creating anything new. Who knows what Jim Davis would be up to if he couldn't have milked Garfield for 30+ years.
Not that I think that's a decisive argument, just saying.