With the eminent domain thing, that type of compensation could have been applied to those who were using a PD work before it was snatched away and re-privatized.
Can you please critique this letter to the estate of Tarzan's creator? Long posts before the letter.
Since that hasn’t happened, it’s pretty much a hypothetical.
This is the best excuse for not writing I’ve ever heard. When friends ask me how my novel is coming along, I’m going to explain that I’ll start writing as soon as I convince others that my convoluted and incorrect position on my right to benefit from the work of another author should be the law of the land. Or already is. And when a SCOTUS judge has been impeached… for some reason.
in 1804, Judge Chase was acquitted after being impeached, so he’s the only impeached SCOTUS judge so far.
Well, to be fair, copyright law does have a chilling effect on academia. For example:
There was a flap in the 1940’s over the idea that Batman and Robin were secretly supposed to be representations of a homosexual couple (part of the well-known gay agenda to corrupt our nation’s children), and certain scenes from the comics were presented as evidence for this view. Modern academics writing about these events would like to republish said scenes in journal articles. However, the copyright owner, DC (now owned by Warner Brothers), would prefer not to have their characters associated with this topic, and generally refuses requests to use images from their comics in these articles.
In theory, Fair Use permits the use of extracts from copyrighted works without the copyright holder’s consent; however, in practice, academic publishers have much less money to spend on legal fees than Warner Brothers does, and frequently forbid the use of copyrighted images without consent. So you end up with articles trying to describe verbally a visual image in order to discuss and critique prior interpretations of that image.
I’ve never heard of anyone actually being sued in such a context, but the mere possibility of a lawsuit left open by the fairly vague definitions in the Fair Use provisions is enough to exert a chilling effect.
Or vacates the easement. The eminent domain process is often used to widen roads, slicing, say, 5 or 10 feet off of everyone’s frontage. This is often done by buying, not the property, but an easement.
When it’s done that way, it’s usually because it’s easier to vacate an easement for a 10 foot wide strip than to sell it.
Are you thinking of 1954’s *Seduction of the Innocent *by Fredric Wertham? That’s the one that usually cited by everybody, especially because of the line “It is like a wish dream of two homosexuals living together.”
I hope not, because the book does not contain a single image of Batman or Robin. Or of any panel from a DC publication.
I grew up in Buffalo and probably was taken to the zoo as a kid about then, luckily I have no memory of this but it might explain my lifelong aversion to carrots.
Sorry to keep picking at this. I’m just having trouble associating eminent domain with either copyright or trademark law. I’m pretty sure that no government entity has ever recorded an amended deed for a copyright or a trademark.
Also, once the deed is recorded, the property acquired is not public property in general, it’s the property of whichever government entity acquired it. Sure, if it’s a street or sidewalk easement, the public gets to drive or walk on it. But if a member of the public thinks that they can change that street or sidewalk, they will, if caught, learn otherwise. And if it was acquired for use as a drainage basin, expect there to be a fence around it. Do not enter.
I am sure you are not, thieves think it should be Ok to take other peoples things all the time.
What you are saying is this.
I invent a character, Me, not you or your Grandma or your Uncle but ME
I invent him, i give him a personality i give him life so to speak.
I write great stories and adventures for him.
I offer these in books, for sale, so i can eat and other mundane things that cost money.
My books are COPYRIGHTED, so no one can just run off printing my books and either selling them with out me getting a dime, or dumping them in the market free so that i starve.
But, one day after i am long gone and me and my family do not need the income from them any more, they will become free to all who wish to read them…
They can then be freely copied and distributed, because they are no longer under copyright.
You could even try reprinting them and charging someone for the reprint, but since it’s available free, i don’t think you would make much from it.
You can even use it as inspiration and make a derivative work from it
But my Trademarked character?
He is mine and whom ever holds him/her for me after i am long gone.
I made it, i gave it life, that part is mine.
But you say No, it is not enough that you can have the stories free, it is not enough that you can use them as a base to write other stories, with YOUR OWN character.
No you say that my unique character should now be yours as well.
Perhaps you’d like to just come in the house and freely take any family heirlooms you fancy also?
What i am hearing is since you can not have enough creativity and imagination to create your own compelling character, who you can ALREADY freely write into my universe because it is no longer copyrighted, you should be able to take my unique trademarked character to.
You don’t even want to offer to buy it, you think it should just be yours for the taking.
You may as well just reprint my entire line of books, replace my name with yours and resell them as your own, it would save you the trouble of creating anything.
And you want support and sympathy in this endeavor?
Good Luck on that
Well, as others have defended this protection by noting the facts of constitutional law, you ought to afford the same courtesy.
The constitution “pays for” this eventual making public of material by the government’s efforts to protect the copyright during its period of activity. It’s not “stealing,” it’s part of the deal. You get the active protection against real thieves, and, at a later date, we get the material by rights.
Don’t fall into the primitive trap of “taxation is theft” cant.
The reverse imminent domain idea is this: if the feds can compensate you for snatching your private land and making it into public land, they could do the same thing for copyright restoring a work a person was having fun using.
Weisshund, while admittedly my creativity is somewhat lacking, eventually I want to be at the point where I create my own characters as well my take on public domain characters. With the trademark thing, given how outrageously long copyrights are here (often over 1 century long), I think after that time expires, so do the trademarks. Let’s say you lived to be 95 and you created a popular character at 30. With current copyright laws here, the copyrights can expire when you would have been 165. Like that’s not long enough?
Oh, I also would make it a point to credit the source material on the cover. The standard I would have it as a is “original creators: [names]” above “this version: [writers, illustrators]”.
It’s eminent.
The principle is valid, but there isn’t any actual need for it. Why should the government sue itself? Easier for a court to rule that trademark is not perpetual, or for the legislature to change the law.
Creating characters is actually absurdly easy. What’s hard is creating characters with “viral” popularity, like Tarzan. Anybody can write a “jungle lord” character. The fame, prestige, and market-value of the big winners are what cannot be crafted intentionally. There are plenty of characters that are objectively every bit as good as Tarzan, that are languishing in obscurity.
J.K. Rowling did not “create a world-famous character” in Harry Potter, but, rather, won the lottery. Lots of other people were writing Y.A. fiction about boy wizards. Some of them were of higher literary quality. The arts do not follow rational rules of supply and demand. (I wouldn’t pay $45 to hang the Mona Lisa in my home!)
If this is true of someone who has created a popular work of art, it is true of everyone who has been successful at anything ever, whether it was a political, military, scientific, technological, commercial, or any kind of success.
They happened to have the right skills at the right time and the luck to have an audience that captured it. For every such success there were multitudes of people who were just as skilled or smarter who came up with something just as good or even batter who didn’t win that particular lottery.
If you won’t give a creative artist credit for a success, you can’t give anyone credit for any kind of success.
Sage advice, that even you should examine.
I wasn’t specific. Say McDonald’s glassware is still using their golden arches on it. You can’t open a McDonald’s restaurant complete with arches.
ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY, Plaintiff,
vs.
PHILIP JOSE FARMER, et al.
FINAL ORDER OF CONDEMNATION - The Dark Heart of Time
Pursuant to the Stipulation for Judgment in Condemnation and Acknowledgment of Receipt attached as Exhibits A and B, respectively, and incorporated herein, and it appearing to the court’s satisfaction that defendants Philip Jose Farmer and the estate of Edgar Rice Burroughs (“Defendants”) have been paid just compensation . . .
IT IS HEREBY ORDERED AND ADJUDGED that the Subject Property, . . . is condemned to plaintiff Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), a public entity, and against Defendants . . .
IT IS HEREBY STIPULATED that hereafter chapter 3 of the Subject Property shall include four paragraphs from the Beaches Environmental Assessment and Coastal Health (BEACH) Act, said paragraphs to be chosen by EPA prior to each printing.
IT IS HEREBY FURTHER STIPULATED that this judgment shall not apply to PDF, kindle, eBook, or other electronic productions of the Subject Property. . .
[Notice that when a government entity subjects a literary work to eminent domain, that government entity is not making that work unowned and open for grabs. It is making that work its own property, to be used for that entity’s purposes.]
Here’s about as close as it can get (Deluxe Hamburgers on Regent Street in Sudbury, ON), where more recently a McDonalds open up across the street). https://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/06/4f/ca/73/deluxe-hamburgers.jpg
