Sen. Josh Hawley introduced a bill on Tuesday that aims to revoke Disney’s copyrights, [redacted potentially partisan content]
Hawley’s bill would dramatically rewrite U.S. copyright law, shortening the total term available to all copyright holders going forward by several decades. It would also seek to retroactively limit Disney’s copyrights, effectively stripping the company of much of its intellectual property, in a move that would face several legal obstacles.
“That is a blatantly unconstitutional taking of property without compensation,” said Prof. Paul Goldstein, an intellectual property expert at Stanford Law School.
I guess we will see if Mickey is the mouse that roared.
“That is a blatantly unconstitutional taking of property without compensation,” said Prof. Paul Goldstein, an intellectual property expert at Stanford Law School.
That’s what he would like to believe. The Constitution says copyright shall exist, yes, but leaves it to Congress to decide what that term should be. There’s more than a small crowd out there who already believe it’s too long (life of the author plus 70 years… WHAT!!!)
It would also seek to retroactively limit Disney’s copyrights, effectively stripping the company of much of its intellectual property, in a move that would face several legal obstacles.
He can try but business would cut off his funding. Then Hawley goes bye-bye…
Neither. Purely pragmatic manipulation to keep “the base” stirred up and votring for him, oblivious to cumbersome legal and inconvenient economic realities. However, if called upon to enhance effectiveness with his base, his speechwriters and the gov could script and then enact either spitefulness or tantrums to carefully edited perfection.
These people are cold not hot. They have paymasters to answer to.
Sen. Josh Hawley introduced a bill on Tuesday that aims to revoke Disney’s copyrights, [redacted potentially partisan content]
Ignoring the current political reasons for this…
Going back at least four decades that I know of, people in the industry have frequently brought up the fact that Congress has been heavily lobbied by Disney as the term of copyrights kept getting extended just as the Mickey Mouse copyrights were set to expire. And the Disney backup plan is that every 10 or 20 (?) years they make minor changes to the Mouse and other characters to attempt to re-establish a new copyright baseline
There’s more than a small crowd out there who already believe it’s too long (life of the author plus 70 years…
Copyright has been extended way beyond the original objective to protect the author, now it protects the author’s estate and anyone who buys a copyrighted property. The author’s life plus five should be enough.
There’s more than a small crowd out there who already believe it’s too long (life of the author plus 70 years…
Some of you are missing some information on this.
Copyright is for the individual. Corporations as individuals can live a lot longer. The life plus 70 years for the heirs is for the individual human artists.
Hawley would effect me more than Disney. He is meddling solely out of spite.
Should corporate’s copyrights be limited in time? That is the more specific proper question. I am on the fence there. It means foreign companies such as Chinese companies will freely compete with Disney using Disney’s property. I guess we can tear down US corporations when there are small people having temper tantrums.
Going back at least four decades that I know of, people in the industry have frequently brought up the fact that Congress has been heavily lobbied by Disney as the term of copyrights kept getting extended just as the Mickey Mouse copyrights were set to expire. And the Disney backup plan is that every 10 or 20 (?) years they make minor changes to the Mouse and other characters to attempt to re-establish a new copyright baseline
I don’t claim to have the expertise, but it seems to me that Disney could trademark the characters of Mickey Mouse, et. al. as representative marks of their business, and thereby prevent others from using them going forward. It wouldn’t stop others from freely sharing Mickey Mouse cartoons from the 1920’s or whatever as they passed into public domain, but it would give them protection from bad actors seeking to co-opt the characters for other uses.
Wouldn’t it? Trademarks live forever, so long as they are being used in a business and still represent that business. Why wouldn’t this work?
As long as Disney defends the trademarks they control the trademarks.
Copyright applies to music, words, film properties that might not be trademarked as well.
The difference is that Disney’s life time is possibly 350 years. An artist’s life time out of college is under 70 more years on average and her or his estate has the inheritance for another 70 years.
The other difference is literally forking over Disney properties to anyone else including corporations in China to use.
You can say the Chinese will steal it anyway but distribution is hard in the west because of the copyrights. I can report copyright infringements to Google or FB etc to shut down their sales channels.
The reality is corporations should be limited to something in the 150 year range. Possibly 200 years.
The more important reality is do we build our corporations or tear them down.
The retroactive part of the proposal is what is most chilling to me.
The Constitution prohibits retroactive laws, but then the Constitution prohibits government establishment of religion too, but the establishment clause is widely ignored.
We live in the land of the “cafeteria Constitutionalist” that ignores the parts he doesn’t like, but declares the parts he does like unlimited and inviolate.
The retroactive part of the proposal is what is most chilling to me.
The retroactive part is the ONLY part that could plausibly be subject to a constitutional challenge. On the basis that if Congress doesn’t have the authority to shorten the term of future copyrights, all the times where they lengthened the term were also invalid - and the term is therefore drastically shortened, to 14 years with the author (assuming still alive) having the option of filing for one extension of an additional 14 years. That being the terms specified in the Copyright Act of 1790.
One could regard a copyright as a contract between the copyright-holder and the world. Congress seems to have little issue with mandating alterations in the terms of contracts it isn’t involved in. For example, if in 1937 you had steady employment at 20 cents an hour, in 1938 Congress mandated that your employment contract be altered so you got 25 cents an hour - or the contract be terminated (you get laid off). There have been legal battles over whether Congress is allowed to do that; the first federal minimum-wage law was tossed out by the courts, but in general I believe Congress has won most of those disputes, and in this specific case there is direct and explicit Constitutional authority for Congress to legislate on the subject (which is not the case for wages paid by employers other than the US government itself).
So I would say the odds are that, after a protracted legal battle, a shortening of the term of existing copyrights would stand up in court.
Assuming, of course, that it’s enacted. I think the odds are against that.
“So I would say the odds are that, after a protracted legal battle, a shortening of the term of existing copyrights would stand up in court.”
I understand retroactively shortening copyright would violate the taking clause of the 5th amendment. In other words, the copyright has value and congress can’t remove that value without paying compensation.