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How do I make my comics and characters Public Domain?
JimShelley:
Without going into a lot of detail, Pierre and I have decided to make all of my Flashback Universe characters and comics public domain.
(Hopefully with the comics residing on this site as a resource for people to download in perpetuity.)
I know some people have created new characters for public domain, like Jay Piscopo's The Terrific Trio
http://pdsh.wikia.com/wiki/Terrific_Trio
Is there any disclaimer text someone can point me to for adding to the comics to do this?
John C:
I think the "state of the art" is Creative Commons Zero, Jim. I don't think anybody has tested the "I waive all copyright" disclaimers in court, whereas public licenses have and the Creative Commons team have been tweaking things for about ten years.
Very exciting news, by the way. You might want to consider something more like their Attribution license, though, given the work that you and Pierre put into the world, but that's just my own inclination.
JimShelley:
Thank you John!
Roygbiv666:
John
Any idea how it works with a "character" that isn't protected by the copyright inherent in a story? That is, if you don't have an actual story copyright that protects a character featured in it, what 'right' would one be 'waiving' with just a character?
--- Quote from: John C on December 28, 2014, 02:07:55 PM ---I think the "state of the art" is Creative Commons Zero, Jim. I don't think anybody has tested the "I waive all copyright" disclaimers in court, whereas public licenses have and the Creative Commons team have been tweaking things for about ten years.
Very exciting news, by the way. You might want to consider something more like their Attribution license, though, given the work that you and Pierre put into the world, but that's just my own inclination.
--- End quote ---
John C:
I haven't found any evidence that there's a copyright on "characters" outside of a work. People have pointed to a lawsuit where someone was denied the use of Rocky Balboa, but since he was obviously a significant part of his own movie at the time, I'm not sure that's different. Using him would obviously be a derived work of the movie.
Any picture or (non-factual) text would be covered by copyright, of course, but if you only have a picture of and few words around a character, it wouldn't be hard to get around those copyrights with a few changes, since you can't protect the underlying ideas. If you change the costumes, backgrounds, and what you call the powers a little, I'm not sure there's anything the author could do, just like DC doesn't have a leg to stand on when someone creates a Superman-like character as long as they don't appear in Superman-like stories.
Obviously, that's just a best guess, but the only times I've seen fights over characters as characters have been that Freedom Force video game and (decades ago) strippers. Usually, it's about whether the costume is identical and whether the characterization is identical to what's been established. I remember an article that tried to summarize what was known about those cases, but can't track it down.
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