Comment by tombert
15 hours ago
It sucks that the copyright period in the US is so ridiculously long, but it still makes me happy to see stuff finally entering the public domain again.
I don't care much about Betty Boop and I don't really care about Pluto and Mickey all that much, but I'm very excited for The Maltese Falcon's novel being available, since I think that that one could actually be adapted into something pretty modern.
Also, All Quiet on the Western Front is very arguably one of the very best movies ever made, and certainly one of the very best of the 30's if nothing else, so I am very much looking forward to fan restorations.
> It sucks that the copyright period in the US is so ridiculously long
Do you mean for humans? We have this weird asymmetry where copyright law applies to humans but a large company training an LLM is not subject to copyright law at all.
The copyright period is long? If you are Disney, you can get it even longer because the U.S. Congress will do it for you:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act
Yup, any time a friend gets all misty-eyed about Disney, remind them that Disney is the main driver behind absurdly, abusively long copyright.
No they aren't.
This is an internet myth pushed by certain sci-fi writers doing incompetent research.
Disney were certainly in favour of the US's most recent copyright extension, but the main driver of it was the need for the US to move to a similar period to the EU for international treaty reasons.
The EU had moved to Life+70 years as a model because it unified to the longest period in the block when it unified the copyright period across the entire EU, under the logic that no copyright owner should have their term reduced as a result.
The longest period in Europe was Germany, and Germany's long copyright period was the result of lobbying from local German publishers, nothing to do with American companies.
It's really a bit of US exceptionalism to think Disney had much to do with it.
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Yet they didn’t get copyright extended again in the 27ish years after, and Mickey is in the public domain (well steamboat willy).
I don't care much about Betty Boop either, and I do care, like you, about The Maltese Falcon - but mostly I think that a version of The Maltese Falcon starring Betty Boop is definitely something I'd like to see!
I've been bad... but I'm not all bad, boop boop de boop!