“Though a deeply divided Congress is currently considering Internet website censorship legislation, the US has no such official policy – not even for child porn, which is voluntarily blocked by some ISPs. Nor does the US have a government-backed ‘three strikes’ or ‘graduated response’ system of escalating warnings to particular users accused of downloading music and movies from file-sharing networks. Yet here was the ultimatum that the US Embassy in Madrid gave the Spanish government in February 2008: adopt such measures or we will punish you. Thanks to WikiLeaks, we have the text of the diplomatic cable announcing the pressure tactics.” Isn’t it funny that one of the main driving forces behind the push for more stringent copyright laws, Disney, has built its empire almost entirely on appropriating European public domain stories? As a European, that’s just insulting.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35TbGjt-weA
You know sh*t’s getting real when Ron Paul and Noam Chomsky are converging.
it’s pretty instulting to us, too. There’s no logical reason for anything made before 1972, if not 1992, to still be eligible for copyright. They keep shoving this on the rest of the world, and then using the “harmonization” pressure tactic to convince Congress to go along with it. Why don’t you guys just stand up for yourselves once in a while? It’d save us copyright-reformers here a lot of work if we didn’t have to worry about the next ACTA showing up every five years.
Forget 1972, all works before 1923 are under copyright protection until at least 2047, barring yet another copyright extension…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act
The term is about 100 years according to the graph, which makes assumptions about the author’s lifespan. It shows very nicely how the term has been continuously extended to keep modern works perpetually out of the public domain.
What gets me is retro-active extensions, since it is obviously true that the prior copyright terms were already sufficient motivation for those works to be created. If extensions are needed for future work, then so be it (although I haven’t seen anyone make a case for this either), but the whole motivation to extend copyright appears to be greed rather than public interests.
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getpage.cgi?dbname=1998_rec…
Mary Bono, speaking of the late Sonny Bono’s copyright act at the house of representatives.
“Actually, Sonny wanted the term of copy-right protection to last forever. I am informed by staff that such a change would violate the Constitution. I invite all of you to work with me to strengthen our copyright laws in all of the ways available to us. As you know, there is also Jack Valenti’s proposal for term to last forever less one day. Perhaps the Committee may look at that next Congress”
Well, historically (relatively recent history at that), countries which tend to stand up better be under “protection” of some other bully (and there’s not really any “better” around ATM, and for some time now) – or risk some coup, stuff like Operation Condor, and so on.
(granted, that seems to be much less of a risk if your population is mostly, well, white… still, something could be sneaked in, in the guise of another colour revolution or some such, I guess)
Pushing foreign countries to adopt IP laws that wouldn’t pass the muster in the US could be a tactic to bring them in to the US under the guise of “normalizing” international IP laws.
*ahem* SOPA *ahem*
Dude, Thom, that side comment about Disney is quite a jewel.
Surely, SURELY, Mary Bono’s own words should be taken into a court somewhere and be used to strike down the legislation as unconstitutional? What the hell ever happenned to the spirit of the original document? It’s quite clear that big companies, and government are acting against the original intent of the constitution on these matters.
To get back to the “original intent” of the US constitution, you are gonna have to strip women, minorities, and non-land owning white males of their rights. Which is going to be awkwaaaaaaaaard…
Especially when “minorities” are now white people in certain parts of the country.
Bah, copyright law has LONG since stopped being what it was intended for… now it more-or-less provides the exact situation that it was originally designed to prevent.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_copyright
Going further – how much, really, those rights were there mostly to shield big owners? (essentially corporations of the past; we do have historical record of XIX century, times of massive corruption and profiteering (pretty much everywhere, of course) – and you know, I believe our times will be remembered similarly “glorious” & more in the sphere of myths; it’s happening before our eyes, for example the “~50s were awesome” myth while http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/ratrace.html …inaccurate memories of the past, seeing it as much better than it really was, is probably at the core of populist ~conservatism)
To be fair to Disney, it’s not just European folktales. Disney appropriates folktales from all over the world with reckless abandon.
Then again, it’s a fine old tradition going way back to Thomas Edison and many others making heaps of money from pirating George Melies films (A trip to the moon, for example).
I cannot prove this, but I think Tove Jansson, the finish author of Mumintrollet refused to open the door to Disney when she was alive, but she also wrote it in her will. Haha!
Quoting Wikipedia article ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moomin ):
Mumintrollet? Those are trolls?! O_o
As if Buka (or, apparently, Groke) wasn’t childhood-destroying-scary enough…
Yes, Wiki art linked by bitwelder has a snippet which would agree with you – and glancing over it, another curious (mostly unrelated to the issue) thing popped out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moomins_(TV_series) …my place has its own (in coop with Austria & DE) series, even supposedly more “pro” & faithful * not washed out than the NL-FI-JP one visible in the 90s?
Damn, TV lies; children TV outright builds distorted world views ;/
It will be really “funny” when (if? ;/ ) Muminki (take that @your trollet! ;p ) will enter public domain – and Disney will promptly release their version, after decades of sabotaging PD.
And I bet that version would be ultimately most remembered and so on.