Sorta related since Disney held a share in it previously but Dick Tracy exclusive rights are still held by Warren Beatty who produced and starred in the role back in 1990. He had to fight off a challenge from Tribune Media in court decades ago but stipulation was he had to produce new Dick Tracy stuff every few years. It’s lead to a series of increasingly surreal late night specials on TCM where he appears in character and talks about random stuff and the 1990 movie, last time was in 2023: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MwKncYwtec4
It's a long-winded article, even for a lawyer, but the payload seems to be a crack at the head of the RIAA, which is suing Midjouney.
"In other words, Glazier doesn't want these lawsuits to get rid of Midjourney and protect creative workers from the threat of AI – he just wants the AI companies to pay the media companies to make the products that his clients will use to destroy creators' livelihoods."
I don’t find it long winded. It just gives background and makes a bunch of valid points.
Mainly that creatives are being screwed because every time they get given extra rights they’re bullied into selling them for nothing.
So this right that they get the copyright back after 35y is different - because you can’t be forced to sell it for nothing.
We need more laws like this to help creative people make the money they deserve. Most creative people make a pitiful amount of money while studios / publishers / labels do better and better. It’s not sustainable.
Roger Rabbit was actually played in 35mm just last Thursday in Central NJ. What a treat it would have been to known that the original author got his characters back. I was lamenting on all the time that had passed since release. This cheered me right up! Will we see a whole Roger Rabbit universe now?
Creators are often dumb enough to trade away their rights. They have dollar signs in their eyes too.
So many popstars selling their music because the label paid for their coke habit for a few years.
Besides as much as we all hate Disney they are a machine that can make global hits.
Would we still talk about Bambi without the movie?
I admittedly haven't read that rambling post, but...
My understanding of copyright is that the rights to a character are layered: Steamboat Willie is in the public domain, but Mickey's red pants aren't. The book Alice in Wonderland is in the public domain, but the 50s Disney character isn't. You can have the rights to one iteration of a character, but the canon that happened in a franchise afterwards can still be copyrighted by others.
I presume the Who Framed Roger Rabbit character design was done by Bob Zemeckis and Richard Williams' team for the film, and that those are the characters that an audience would want to see. A different rabbit and a different pinup girl using the same names aren't nearly as appealing.
> copyright only gives us something to bargain with, without giving us any bargaining power, which means that copyright becomes something we bargain away.
This quote sums up a lot of the issues with current copyright laws in a very elegant way.
> This is a nightmare scenario for a creator: you make a piece of work that turns out to be incredibly popular, but you've licensed it to a kind of absentee landlord who owns the rights but refuses to exercise them.
This nightmare scenario involves selling the rights to your character to a company that has the ability to produce, advertise and cast a movie with talented actors.
I'm certain I never would have heard of Roger rabbit had it not been sold.
You quoted one of the key sentences from the piece, and yet missed the point. It's the "you've licensed it to a kind of absentee landlord who owns the rights but refuses to exercise them." part that is important. In the case of Roger Rabbit, the problem is the Disney has not made any new Roger Rabbit movies or other media in 35 years, despite the first movie being very successful. No doubt other concept, that could be successful, never even get to that point. See stories of "stuck in develompent hell".
> that has the ability to produce, advertise and cast a movie with talented actors.
Isn’t that most of the work?
You get: A lumpsum for your initial research that ended up as a character that people like,
They get: The idea of a character, but then they have to invest billions, build projects that work, tie relationships with cinemas and actors, advertise worldwide and maybe they make billions if they worked properly, but sometimes they make losses. Sounds like they worked for it, and building the initial character is like 0.0…1% of the talent involved.
Unionist gets: A nice story about how it’s always multibillion dollars companies that have all the money.
Maybe ideas are free and implementation is everything?
This isn't fair to Disney. What's the point of buying something if the other person is allowed to steal it back.
If I made a video game, it would be a annoying for it for it to be illegal for me to sell because something I licensed for it got revoked. I don't want the extra headaches of needing to do extra work down the line. I want to have a video game that I am allowed to sell and do stuff with for the rest of time.
> What's the point of buying something if the other person is allowed to steal it back.
If you can't make a profit off of a licensed property after 35 years of exclusive control, you've done something horribly wrong. If you sit on a licensed property and do nothing with it for decades, it should be allowed to revert to someone else, or better yet go into public domain.
Is that what is happening? My understanding of Termination of Transfer is that it keeps you from being able to make a sequel to your video game using the characters you licensed from me, but that the game you have already created you can continue to sell.
What the termination allows me to do as the creator of that character in this analogy is say - charcircuit isn't doing anything with my character for 35 years - I'm going to take back control and maybe do something myself with it or license it to someone else to do something with...
And I think it would be best if they could license the content in perpetuity so it doesn't come to that. But that's impossible as even if the studio gets a perpetual license, it can still be terminated.
The power dynamic is very asymmetrical. Disney is ABSOLUTELY free to negotiate with him to continue distributing the movie, running the ride, etc.
It has been 35 YEARS and Disney's failed to do anything else with the IP. The original creator wants to make a sequel, and now he's able to.
Also: you mentioned a scenario where you might make a video game and wanted to be able to distribute it in perpetuity. Unless you based the video game on some pre-existing creative work that someone else came up with (Roger Rabbit's Raucous Riot or something), you WILL retain the rights. Termination of copyright doesn't apply to works made for hire [0] (i.e., if you pay your employees to create the IP, it doesn't apply).
I honestly can't tell if this is meant sarcastic or not. The power offset is so huge you need clauses like this to keep the power at some form of equilibrium.
It's a long-winded article, even for a lawyer, but the payload seems to be a crack at the head of the RIAA, which is suing Midjouney.
"In other words, Glazier doesn't want these lawsuits to get rid of Midjourney and protect creative workers from the threat of AI – he just wants the AI companies to pay the media companies to make the products that his clients will use to destroy creators' livelihoods."
Mainly that creatives are being screwed because every time they get given extra rights they’re bullied into selling them for nothing.
So this right that they get the copyright back after 35y is different - because you can’t be forced to sell it for nothing.
We need more laws like this to help creative people make the money they deserve. Most creative people make a pitiful amount of money while studios / publishers / labels do better and better. It’s not sustainable.
Roger Rabbit was actually played in 35mm just last Thursday in Central NJ. What a treat it would have been to known that the original author got his characters back. I was lamenting on all the time that had passed since release. This cheered me right up! Will we see a whole Roger Rabbit universe now?
Much reform is needed, seems to apply to everything...
Besides as much as we all hate Disney they are a machine that can make global hits. Would we still talk about Bambi without the movie?
If the developer licensed the game to a publisher then maybe.
My understanding of copyright is that the rights to a character are layered: Steamboat Willie is in the public domain, but Mickey's red pants aren't. The book Alice in Wonderland is in the public domain, but the 50s Disney character isn't. You can have the rights to one iteration of a character, but the canon that happened in a franchise afterwards can still be copyrighted by others.
I presume the Who Framed Roger Rabbit character design was done by Bob Zemeckis and Richard Williams' team for the film, and that those are the characters that an audience would want to see. A different rabbit and a different pinup girl using the same names aren't nearly as appealing.
This quote sums up a lot of the issues with current copyright laws in a very elegant way.
This nightmare scenario involves selling the rights to your character to a company that has the ability to produce, advertise and cast a movie with talented actors.
I'm certain I never would have heard of Roger rabbit had it not been sold.
Isn’t that most of the work?
You get: A lumpsum for your initial research that ended up as a character that people like,
They get: The idea of a character, but then they have to invest billions, build projects that work, tie relationships with cinemas and actors, advertise worldwide and maybe they make billions if they worked properly, but sometimes they make losses. Sounds like they worked for it, and building the initial character is like 0.0…1% of the talent involved.
Unionist gets: A nice story about how it’s always multibillion dollars companies that have all the money.
Maybe ideas are free and implementation is everything?
If I made a video game, it would be a annoying for it for it to be illegal for me to sell because something I licensed for it got revoked. I don't want the extra headaches of needing to do extra work down the line. I want to have a video game that I am allowed to sell and do stuff with for the rest of time.
If you can't make a profit off of a licensed property after 35 years of exclusive control, you've done something horribly wrong. If you sit on a licensed property and do nothing with it for decades, it should be allowed to revert to someone else, or better yet go into public domain.
If you rent a house, and your lease expires, that’s not the landlord stealing the house back from you.
What the termination allows me to do as the creator of that character in this analogy is say - charcircuit isn't doing anything with my character for 35 years - I'm going to take back control and maybe do something myself with it or license it to someone else to do something with...
Well in the case of the very thing we're talking about, the point was apparently to make $330 million in a single year in the 1980s
It has been 35 YEARS and Disney's failed to do anything else with the IP. The original creator wants to make a sequel, and now he's able to.
Also: you mentioned a scenario where you might make a video game and wanted to be able to distribute it in perpetuity. Unless you based the video game on some pre-existing creative work that someone else came up with (Roger Rabbit's Raucous Riot or something), you WILL retain the rights. Termination of copyright doesn't apply to works made for hire [0] (i.e., if you pay your employees to create the IP, it doesn't apply).
TLDR; fuck the mouse.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Act_of_1976#Terminat...
Licensing assets like rocks, foliage, random textures or sounds is extremely common in the game industry, even among big games.
Oh, wait, I actually don't care about that at all.