[HN Gopher] Sherlock Holmes will finally escape copyright this w... ___________________________________________________________________ Sherlock Holmes will finally escape copyright this weekend Author : mfiguiere Score : 209 points Date : 2022-12-28 19:07 UTC (3 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.theverge.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.theverge.com) | kmeisthax wrote: | I can finally retire the "Sherlock Holmes' emotions are still | copyrighted" legal argument that I used to use for explaining the | penumbra of the public domain. | EGreg wrote: | Tell us !! | bena wrote: | Eh. The Conan Doyle estate argues that the characterization | of Holmes was materially different in some of the final | stories. So any story that materially changes Holmes to be | less of an ass was using _that_ characterization. | | Netflix was about to take them to court over Enola Holmes, | but all parties eventually settled and the suit was dropped. | | Likely the Conan Doyle estate realized their final copyrights | were about to be up and it wasn't worth the legal battle they | would likely lose because "having emotions" is incredibly | vague. | anothernewdude wrote: | When does the estate become less of an ass? | JohnTHaller wrote: | It already did. Unfortunately, it being less of an ass is | still under copyright. | bryanrasmussen wrote: | Assness of an estate, as most human organizations, | directly correlates to potential power. | PicassoCTs wrote: | Emotions about the character of persons, that are deducted | by the length of the nose and the span of the eyebrows? | Seriously, reading the books with a detectives eyes, one | can see all the nonsense they believed aeons ago.. | bena wrote: | I mean, Holmes can only really be as smart and capable as | Arthur Conan Doyle was. Any blind-spots or nonsense | Holmes engaged in was because Conan Doyle believed it. | | Which means Holmes believed in some really batshit ideas. | But since the world of Holmes is defined by Conan Doyle, | shit like phrenology was real in that world. | anothernewdude wrote: | Which is bad news for that Sherlock show. | PicassoCTs wrote: | Or that ridiculous quak-science with the monkey stem | cells transfusion. The deduction stories were excellent, | but some of the outlier-stories or the "nationalism" race | characteristics are the insanity that gave us WW1 and | WW2. | bena wrote: | Even the deduction stuff is only because Conan Doyle says | so. | | Like he could determine cultivars of tobacco from looking | at and feeling the ash. And other people never pick up on | things that even the reader could. But Holmes does. And | then you feel smart, because you even beat Holmes to the | punch. | | My wife has been watching Bones (again) and I've noticed | this a lot there too. It was an episode where the victim | was a nine-year-old child. They "digitally reconstructed" | the child's appearance and couldn't find a match, but | then noticed the hair was dyed, the teeth were veneered, | etc. And it's obvious, the child was on the pageant | circuit. But they didn't put it together until the answer | was given to them. Later on, same thing with a murder | weapon. They assumed it was a steel-toe boot, but it's | pageant contestants, tap shoes are also available. Etc. | etc. And yes, tap shoes were used in the murder. | | And there's two reasons for this. This is how smart the | writers _are_. They honestly think this takes significant | deductive ability. And making the characters figure it | out faster would be implausible. Or. They want the | viewers /readers to feel smart. And one way to do that is | to make them able to figure out the pieces _before_ the | characters. Characters who are the smartest because we | 're told they're the smartest. | akuchling wrote: | Editor, Sherlockian scholar, and lawyer Leslie Klinger took | the Doyle estate to court about this idea, and got a | judgement that it didn't hold. His blog about the case is | at https://free-sherlock.com/ . | irrational wrote: | When Peter Pan escaped copyright, there was a flood of new Peter | Pan books. I wonder if we will see the same thing with Sherlock | Holmes. | samwillis wrote: | The copyright around Peter Pan is super interesting with an | amendment in UK law to extend it to provide income to the very | good cause of Great Ormond Street Hospital: | https://www.gosh.org/about-us/peter-pan/copyright/ | | > J M Barrie's gift of the rights to Peter Pan has provided a | significant source of income to Great Ormond Street Hospital | | > The copyright first expired in the UK (and the rest of | Europe) in 1987, 50 years after Barrie's death. | | > However, former Prime Minister Lord Callaghan successfully | proposed an amendment to the Copyright Designs and Patents Act | (CDPA) of 1988, giving Great Ormond Street Hospital the unique | right to royalties from stage performances of Peter Pan (and | any adaptation of the play) as well as from publications, audio | books, ebooks,radio broadcasts and films of the story of Peter | Pan, in perpetuity. | | I think this means that the adaptions you are referring to | haven't been published in the UK. | | For those outside the UK and unaware GOSH if the most famous | and most highly regarded children hospital in the UK. The NHS | here get much criticism at times but the prevision for children | is world class with a network of incredible children's | hospitals. Having been in the situation where my child has been | under the care of one of the children's hospitals, they are | incredible. | chris_wot wrote: | Anyone wonder why Mickey Mouse is no longer the signature Disney | character any more? I think we know why now. No more control over | the character. | MisterBastahrd wrote: | Mickey Mouse is still the signature mascot of Disney. There's a | massive difference between copyright and trademark. | bediger4000 wrote: | Legally, yes, but even there the PR flacks confuse the issue | by lumping trademark, copyright, patent and sometimes even | trade secrets under "intellectual property". | BerislavLopac wrote: | I believe he is still trademarked though, isn't he? | dvngnt_ wrote: | who is the central mascot then | cultofmetatron wrote: | spiderman | d-us-vb wrote: | I hope you're joking. Spider-man is owned entirely by Sony. | It is only by a tenuous contract that Disney was able to | get Spider-Man into the MCU. | CharlesW wrote: | Sony has film rights only, for as long as they produce a | new Spider-Man movie every five years. | citizenkeen wrote: | Wow. No. | | Spider-Man is owned by Marvel, which is owned by Disney. | | Sony has an exclusive license to the film rights which | they will eventually lose and cede back to Disney. | MisterBastahrd wrote: | Spider-Man is almost entirely owned by Marvel. Spider- | Man's live action movie rights are owned by Sony as long | as they produce at least one film with the character | every 5 years and 9 months. This includes co-producing | them with Marvel. Universal owns the film rights to both | solo Hulk and Namor films. Finally, Fox owned the right | to make 13 X-Men films, Fantastic Four, and Deadpool | films over 20 years, but Disney bought those rights back. | nvrspyx wrote: | The _film_ rights are owned by Sony. As part of the deal | in relinquishing some creative control to Disney for the | MCU, Sony also has exclusivity to Spider-Man centric | video games (e.g., other games, like Midnight Suns, can | use Spider-Man as a supporting character, but not the | primary character). | manojlds wrote: | Funnily, Nintendo got Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 which | had Spiderman. | TillE wrote: | Mickey Mouse is a terrible, boring character that nobody cares | about. | | Disney can keep using him as a trademarked corporate logo, | that's all they really need. | omnibrain wrote: | > Mickey Mouse is a terrible, boring character that nobody | cares about. | | That is funny, because I think most Germans born in the 80ies | to mid 90ies would disagree. We got a daring adventurer and a | hard-boiled detective. I don't think it was content | specifically produced by the German publisher for the German | market, but it is possible, that there was more focus on that | content opposed to "classic mickey". | | Edit: I looked it up: It looks like the detective stories | were English, but first compiled for Denmark, whereas the | adventurer stories were from the Italian publication | "Topolino". | [deleted] | bombolo wrote: | In Sweden most of the donald duck/mikey mouse comics are | translated from Italy, occasionally from Brazil. | bediger4000 wrote: | Disney+ uses a little clip of "Steamboat Willie" in the leaders | to streamed Disney movies. Making out-of-copyright Steamboat | Willie into a trademark thing muddies the waters at least a | little, and I'd guess that's why Disney+ uses it. | kevin_thibedeau wrote: | They've been using rubber hose Mickey for marketing a lot | more in the last 10 years for this reason. | manojlds wrote: | How does this work? It feels silly that someone can use Mickey | Mouse and create cartoons and stories? | | What about something like Mario? Will it eventually go in | public domain as well? | HWR_14 wrote: | How is it sillier that any someone can use Mickey Mouse for | whatever than that someone can use Mickey Mouse to create | cartoons, but only some random people who happen to be hired | by a specific giant corporation? | thelopa wrote: | Yes. That's how the public domain works. | mahkeiro wrote: | In the US. it's in public domain in Europe for the last 20 years. | [deleted] | kmeisthax wrote: | Uh... doesn't the EU have the same life+70 terms the US has? In | fact, weren't they _the_ reason that Disney was able to get | their term extension in the US? | Vespasian wrote: | Now they do, but at the time of publishing they had different | rules so those apply. | input_sh wrote: | Arthur Connan Doyle died in 1930, therefore life+70 is 2000. | | In general, yes, both use life+70, but different rules apply | to works before that was settled. | mlboss wrote: | Time to create some new adventures using chatgpt | [deleted] | kristopolous wrote: | Thank goodness Honky Tonk Train Blues by Meade Lux Lewis will | finally be public domain. | | But you'll have to wait another year for Pinetop's Boogie Woogie | by Clarence Smith (who died before the 1929 stock market crash). | | In all seriousness, the first one is considered the first Rock n | Roll song by some scholars. (you'll have to go archive.org to get | the 1927 recording - youtube only has later ones - | https://archive.org/details/78_honky-tonk-train-blues_meade-... ) | bilsbie wrote: | How come the owners don't just trademark these characters to get | around the expired copyright? | | Wouldn't that let them block all new material made with those | characters? | | (Asking for a friend) | Mountain_Skies wrote: | My guess is that there is a window of time from creation of a | mark during which it must be registered to be valid. | alazsengul wrote: | This is from an article on Mickey Mouse that was linked to in | the original Sherlock Holmes article: | | Here is where it gets tricky: Disney also holds trademarks on | its characters, including the "Steamboat Willie" version of | Mickey Mouse, and trademarks never expire as long as companies | keep submitting the proper paperwork. A copyright covers a | specific creation (unauthorized copying), but trademarks are | designed to protect against consumer confusion -- to provide | consumers assurance about the source and quality of a creation. | | Boiled down, any public domain use of the original Mickey | cannot be perceived as coming from Disney, Ms. Ginsburg | explained. | | Source: | https://web.archive.org/web/20221227170631/https://www.nytim... | Sunspark wrote: | Out of curiosity, how clear does it need to be presented to | the viewer that this is not a Disney production? Does it need | to be written out at the beginning "The characters depicted | here are entirely fictional and are not from the Disney | corporation"? Or can it be at the end credits? Is it | sufficient to expect that a viewer seeing the Warner Brothers | animation and music at the beginning would know it's not | Disney, or does it require more? | IshKebab wrote: | As far as I know you can't get out of it by saying "this | definitely isn't a Disney product", no matter how clearly. | sithlord wrote: | They try and defend that thing crazy too, I believe deamau5 | got in quite the legal battle with his mouse helmet. | rhino369 wrote: | Trademarks are supposed to designate the source of a product or | good--not the good itself--and you have to actually use it in | practice. The estate could have probably created Sherlock brand | corncob pipes and maintained a trademark. But that wouldn't | allow them to block someone from making a Sherlock Holmes movie | or reprinting the books. | | It might work for Disney because they have real products and | can use Mickey to brand them. Even that won't stop someone from | making Steamboat Willy 2. But it might block someone from | making MickeyLand Amusement park. | zeroonetwothree wrote: | Trademarks don't stop new creative works. They can only stop | misleading use (like using the name to refer to something | else). | | So if Holmes is trademarked I can't make "Evil Sherlock Holmes | Supervillian Movie" but I could write a story wherein he is his | usual self. | gameshot911 wrote: | I'm not sure that's correct. I think your 'Evil Sherlock' is | a perfect example of what is _now allowed_ without copyright | protections. | | I believe a trademark just prevents you from releasing a new | Sherlock narrative that misleads the public that it's a | legitimate story from the original collection. | AndrewStephens wrote: | Finally! I can start shopping around my spec script for "Sherlock | Holmes : The Adventure of the Body in the Honey Jar" Winnie the | Pooh crossover. | [deleted] ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-12-28 23:00 UTC)