
Love Zombies? Thank the Public Domain - betamaxthetape
https://blog.archive.org/2020/02/24/love-zombies-thank-the-public-domain/
======
Polylactic_acid
imo copyright should last 30 years from creation. Thats plenty of time to make
a profit and it also allows things to fall in to public domain while they are
still culturally relevant. Currently anything made within your lifetime will
not be public until well after you have died which is a shame. It would be
great if all of the past content which is now slipping in to irrelevancy could
be revived by the public domain.

~~~
DrPhish
I think its fair that renewals would be allowed beyond that, but that the cost
of doing so should increase on an exponential scale. That way the value of
keeping a thing copyrighted would eventually be eclipsed by its value as a
public property, fulfilling the social contract of limited protection in
exchange for eventual public ownership.

~~~
ghaff
That probably makes copyright renewals cost-effective for corporations making
millions but not so for an author getting a nice $5k/yr annuity. (Or pick your
numbers. But making cost a decision point for renewal definitely favors the
big guys.)

~~~
grawprog
Have the fee be based time but scale with profits. So that author making
5k/year's fees may only would only have the fee increase by a few hundred per
renewal whereas a company making 500k/year would see their fees go up by a few
thousand per renewal etc. As an example.

~~~
koboll
Then you kick off an arms race where regulators are constantly fighting to
keep up with increasingly sophisticated money laundering techniques to obscure
how valuable an IP actually is. A lot of money would be siphoned off by
lawyers just so they can fight back to a stalemate.

Why make it complicated? Just let works fall into the public domain after a
couple decades.

~~~
newsgremlin
Indeed, the one thing that can't be manipulated by dubious actors is time.

------
betamaxthetape
I find it fascinating that prior to the Copyright Act of 1976, any work
without the correct copyright notice would automatically enter the public
domain.

In this case, it's interesting to see how the incentives for preventing such a
mistake are skewed. It was the responsibility of the distributor to ensure the
correct copyright notice, but they stood to gain when they didn't (and
reportedly[1] kept all of the profits).

[1] [https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2011/10/10/how-a-
copyright-m...](https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2011/10/10/how-a-copyright-
mistake-created-the-modern-zombie/)

~~~
ghaff
What you're describing is the basic argument against orphan works legislature
of various types. Disney won't forget to renew. But lots of individual authors
and their estates will and the big corporations will sweep in and profit.

Not saying I endorse that view--especially with reasonably long protections
prior to renewal--but that's the argument.

------
giorgioz
I did an exam in European and International Copyright Law in college even
though I studied Computer Science. Based on my knowledge this whole story
about forgetting the copyright logo and entering the publich domain sounds
like a myth/fictional.

Copyright of movies covers the video frames but it does not cover the concept
of the story. The only part that could be protected are maybe fictional names
of characters, cities and maybe special breeds. But the movie does not even
mention the word zombie. So anyone would have been able to use the word zombie
freely. The general concept of someone dead coming back alive is not protected
by copyright simply because general concepts are not protected.

Even if somehow the movie was called ZOMBIE and they copyrighted and patent
it, others would have been able to do movies/comics/books WITHOUT using the
word zombie.

In the Walking Dead, zombies are called walkers so they would have got around
the zombie patent by calling zombies something else.

~~~
giorgioz
Also Shawn of the dead is a parody and copyright has a special section to
allow parody/satire of other works if it's clear they are not the original
work but are a parody of it.

~~~
giorgioz
To sum up I think more than a failure on copyright notice it was a failure in
BRANDING. Branding requires special names. Terminator can be easily protected
but if the movie was called Rising of the robots it would have not been
possible to protect it. BRANDING is an important way to create a moat of
defence around the product. Others can copy the product but not the branding

~~~
dpwm
I'm not even sure that Terminator can be so easily protected. [0]

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Terminators_(film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Terminators_\(film\))

~~~
giorgioz
Yes indeed is very difficult to protect names without trademark them. That's
why many startups/companies invent completely new names (ex Google). Once you
trademark them it's easier to protecte them than a word that was already
existing in the English language like terminator.

------
ZoomZoomZoom
I know a lot of artists and musicians (I work with them every day) and for
considerable amount of them Copyright is absolutely NOT about money, it's
about values. The work of art is a part of a creator which is at the same part
separated but lacks its own will, so it's natural for the creator to wish some
control over said part's faith.

They don't want their work to be used in ads, printed on cheap paper with
atrocious covers, being used in a political context, heard in hold music or in
elevators, and the list goes on and on.

I'm conmpletely split up on the issue. I'm pro-pirating when it comes to
academia papers and textbooks, pro-copyleft, anti-streaming, wholeheartedly
support freedom of information, and all of that, but I deeply respect the
notions mentioned in the first part of my post and I don't know what would be
a sound combination of these views.

~~~
buckminster
Most of the arguments for long copyright terms apply to creative work by one
or a few named individuals.

Perhaps a start would be to slash copyright terms on works created by
businesses. Companies would try to game this but the problems don't seem
insurmountable.

------
ackshually
The mouse has caused a creative dark age with it's aggressive legal pursual of
the extension of copyright. Every time the original mickey mouse cartoon
approaches public domain copyright gets more mutated and unwieldy. Shameful.

------
baby
I love zombies and I don’t really want to watch old movies.

What are you guys list of best zombie movies? I’ve watched a ton in the emule
days but unfortunately don’t know the name of most of these.

My favorite weirdly is not a true zombie movie but a parody called shaun of
the dead.

Anyway I hope I’m starting a thread of good zombie movies :)

~~~
stronglikedan
_Juan of the Dead_ , if you can stand subtitles.

EDIT: While looking up the trailer, I noticed another one that looks,
well...unique. It's named _Fido_ from 2006.

~~~
baby
Fido is interesting! It was novel enough to watch it if you like zombie
movies, not the movie of the year though :)

------
JollyKennedy
Funny

