General Category > Comic Related Discussion
PD law - 'Manufacturing consent and copyright law'
argosail:
Actually, the government is looking into creating a new class for intellectual properties called, "Orphaned Works." The gist is, if you don't know who (if anyone) rightfully owns a work, and you've made every effort to find out, you place some kind of symbol or something on the work in recognition of the fact that it is an "orphaned work." It means, that you may legally publish the work, until such time as a rightful owner of the work comes forward. It is protection against a lawsuit. I have been very interested in this, because my website (see my sig), is an effort to collect information on usable characters, and I'm thinking about adding characters from a 1980's action figure line (with mini comics) called "Eagle Force" which was produced by a company called MEGO. Mego is now completely disbanded and the rights to Eagle Force, as far as I know, were never sold to anyone. At least, nobody has used the characters in 30 years. They have been orphaned, and I would love to give them a new home. But I admit, I'm a little afraid to tell people they can use these characters, until I have contacted a known artist who was about 80 percent responsible for creating the characters. I imagine the same dilemma exists with fly-by-night comic companies. Many of those were creator owned, so their creations will be owned by them until well after their deaths. However, if there is evidence that a now defunct comic company hired the creators, and legally owned the character copyrights, then those works would be considered PD or at least, orphaned. As far as posting comics online, you can probably get away with posting any comic if it is not making anyone any money, regardless of the law. But, if you plan to make money off of something, you need to do your research.
I am actually in favor of companies like Marvel maintaining the copyright to works like Thor which they actively use. I just wish the corporate giants weren't so stingy about all their long forgotten characters. People say, "well, why not just invent new characters?" The invention of new characters is great, but my problem is that a lot of "new characters" are just rehashes of the old ones. There is something to be said about the familiarity of an old character, and demonstrating some pride in that character's heritage, while creating something new and amazing. You can take Dracula or King Arthur and run with it a million different ways. Let Marvel have their Thor if they use him. There are still plenty of specific characters, including alternate versions of Thor, which us creative types can use. The key is to give them the kind of recognition that Marvel's version has. The difference between Marvel and Kirby, isn't the characters, but the support given to the characters. With sites like mine, and enough people supporting them, we can make PD characters just as recognizable as anything in the Marvel stable. Some of the PD superheroes are even better than some of the ones Marvel has going for it. Let them have their crazy Shakespeare talking Thor, if we can generate a PD version with even more presence.
John C:
--- Quote from: argosail on April 09, 2010, 04:09:37 AM ---Actually, the government is looking into creating a new class for intellectual properties called, "Orphaned Works."
--- End quote ---
You'll forgive my cynicism, but this is a "I'll believe it when I see it" situation. There's no motivation, these days, for the government to make material freely available, and plenty of motivation to give lawyers more opportunities to sue.
With organizations like SPA and RIAA throwing a tantrum any time they don't get what they want, I don't see this going any further than the Supreme Court overturning the DMCA or the "it costs a dollar every twenty-five years to keep copyrights current" bill.
I'd love to see it, but the odds of it happening...?
JVJ (RIP):
--- Quote from: argosail on April 09, 2010, 04:09:37 AM ---Actually, the government is looking into creating a new class for intellectual properties called, "Orphaned Works." The gist is, if you don't know who (if anyone) rightfully owns a work, and you've made every effort to find out, you place some kind of symbol or something on the work in recognition of the fact that it is an "orphaned work." It means, that you may legally publish the work, until such time as a rightful owner of the work comes forward. It is protection against a lawsuit. I have been very interested in this, because my website (see my sig), is an effort to collect information on usable characters, and I'm thinking about adding characters from a 1980's action figure line (with mini comics) called "Eagle Force" which was produced by a company called MEGO. Mego is now completely disbanded and the rights to Eagle Force, as far as I know, were never sold to anyone. At least, nobody has used the characters in 30 years. They have been orphaned, and I would love to give them a new home.
--- End quote ---
And the new law also limits the penalties anyone has to pay for ripping YOU off, so the incentive to really look for you as the copyright holder is pretty much eliminated. So, if Wal=Mart decides to use your superhero in one of their ads, AND YOU CATCH THEM at it, they have to pay you the "reasonable rate" that you normally would charge with perhaps a small "penalty" fee that YOU wouldn't even notice.
Just remember that every time you are happy that other people are giving up their rights, that same law applies to YOUR rights, too. I wouldn't be so quick to lobby for any "orphaned works" bill. It's all dependent on who is defining "orphan" and which people/companies are behind the bill
(|:{>
narfstar:
I agree Jim that the rights of the copyright holder should be protected. Which I think the idea of cheap renewal is good. If the company is not interested enough to renew then let be open to the world. If a company wants to renew they should be able to.
bchat:
--- Quote from: JVJ on April 09, 2010, 05:24:55 PM ---
--- Quote from: argosail on April 09, 2010, 04:09:37 AM ---Actually, the government is looking into creating a new class for intellectual properties called, "Orphaned Works." The gist is, if you don't know who (if anyone) rightfully owns a work, and you've made every effort to find out, you place some kind of symbol or something on the work in recognition of the fact that it is an "orphaned work." It means, that you may legally publish the work, until such time as a rightful owner of the work comes forward. It is protection against a lawsuit. I have been very interested in this, because my website (see my sig), is an effort to collect information on usable characters, and I'm thinking about adding characters from a 1980's action figure line (with mini comics) called "Eagle Force" which was produced by a company called MEGO. Mego is now completely disbanded and the rights to Eagle Force, as far as I know, were never sold to anyone. At least, nobody has used the characters in 30 years. They have been orphaned, and I would love to give them a new home.
--- End quote ---
And the new law also limits the penalties anyone has to pay for ripping YOU off, so the incentive to really look for you as the copyright holder is pretty much eliminated. So, if Wal=Mart decides to use your superhero in one of their ads, AND YOU CATCH THEM at it, they have to pay you the "reasonable rate" that you normally would charge with perhaps a small "penalty" fee that YOU wouldn't even notice.
--- End quote ---
From what I read about "Orphaned Works", the person who is infringing on a Copyright has to prove that they exhausted all avenues of research in determining who the Copyright owner is (EDIT: adding that they have to show they made an attempt to contact the owner as well if they found evidence of one). It wouldn't be enough to say "we couldn't find anyone to contact", they would have to prove that they did everything they could to figure-out WHO owned the work. In short, if Wal-Mart decided to steal something that they claimed falls into the "Orphaned Work" category, and then attempted to convince a court that they "tried" to contact someone when/if they get sued for it, the court will ask "show your work". Again, from what I understand, it's this "show your work" aspect of the "Orphaned Works" idea that is causing it to get hung-up in the law-making process, as some people are worried that it would open the door to "legal Copyright Infringement".
By the way, of what I've read about the subject, the main focus of the "Orphaned Works" idea isn't movies, comics or music, it's photographs. The owner of a picture may not have registered a Copyright, or the photo itself, if reproduced in a magazine, may not have clearly noted who the Copyright owner was.
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