You can. Weird Al Yankovic makes a living modifying other peoples songs, he's hardly the only parody specialist.

The Grimm's are dead, they've been that way for a fair bit of time. Disney can't steal their ideas anymore than a car company steals the idea of the wheel from whoever invented it. Even if they take works from living people and modify them, a story loosely based off another and written from scratch is an impossible standard for intellectual property theft.

First of all Disney is not making a parody.  Copyright has a specific clause for paroday and parody only. In fact Disney is not even changing or reinterpriting the source material in most cases.  Plus parody is not the same as using the content for your own profit, and it is definitely not seen the same by the law which is what we are talking about. 

Second did I even specifically state the Gimm brother fairy tales, as those are not even the the worst of their infringments, take for instance Tarzan, Peter Pan, there are others but that should be sufficient if you care to even look.  Plus the point being discussed was the length of copyright and when is long enough?  It was being said that if it is still profitable then the authors family should still have the copyright.  That specifically is what I am not agreeing with cause if that is how we are going to judge then the Grimm Brothers descendents should be making a hell of a lot of money.

Third you are flat out wrong, you can not take a part of someones idea when it comes to copyright and make it your own.  That is called a derivative work and is specifically dealt with in copyright law, and yes it is against the law.

So again explain to me why it is ok for Disney and not others?  Just goes to show how broken copyright is and if you are big enough you can stomp on the little guy.

 

Really so you are saying that if no one challenges you then you are doing nothing wrong?  I thought we all just got done saying its wrong whether anyone catches you are not.  Interesting.  Also you are wrong in regard to the US copyright in the US copyright is granted to anyone the minute they record their idea in anyway.  You do not have to register it!  Plus I am glad you think that it is that easy to take a large corporation to court over copyright, I take it you have done that before?  Maybe you should ask the creators of Winnie the Pooh how taking Disney to court faired?

Not to go off topic but as good as the US legal system is, more often than not the guy with the most money wins.  I that is ok with you then why isn't the guy that can steal without getting caught any worse?

Wrong! Please read: http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/.  You are correct in regard to patents however a patent is not the same as copyright never has been.  The patent system is the way it should work and is what I have been saying all along.  If you want protection you register and then you have it for a finite amount of time.

Allegations mean nothing, people are making allegations all over this forum, I can make all the allegations I want but unless I have the money to take it to court or am lucky enough to get a lawyer willing to help for little or no pay it is just about as affective as doing nothing when going up against a large corp like Disney.  If you think otherwise you need to pay more attention to what happens in the states.

As for getting laws changed in the states uhm if things worked like they were designed then you might be correct but that isn't how the real world works, even with our "reative" ease it still takes years and truckloads of money to get a law changed.

Ballot box that is another subject in and of itself, I didn't vote for any of the Jackasses that run my country, as such i have endorsed nothing.  If I could find a way to easily make my point heard while still being able to live my life and take care of my family I would however time is not on my side.

Well, first of all, Weird Al lives under the Fair Use clause of the Copyright Act.

Second - Disney can't steal their ideas anymore? Really?

The Bothers Grimm, Jacob Grimm died in 1863 - under modern copyright, their copyright would have extended through the first ten years of Disney, 1923 to 1933. But that's merely indicative.

Because Fantasia was released in 1940, featuring:
The Nutcracker Suite, by Tchaikovsky - who died in 1893.
The Sorcerer's Apprentice, by Dukas - who died in 1935.
The Rite of Spring by Igor Stravinsky. 1971
Dance of the hours, by Amilcare Ponchielli, died 1886
Night on Bald Mountain, by Modest Mussorgsky, died 1881

Five, count'em *five* separate pieces of music - in the public domain at that tome, none of which would have been available under modern copyright law.

And yet Fantasia itself is going to be protected by copyright until - 2035.

So sorry - 5/8ths of Fantasia would have been illegal under today's law. And let's be blunt - Fantasia is *exactly* what would be impossible to make today - seven suites, all of them drawn from a previously existing work, each with different set of heirs to deal with, only one actual living artist (Stravinsky) to work with. If the 18 year old compnay formed by Walt Disney had tried to create it today, it would have been sued into non-existence.

We will never see another Fantasia, because we have made it impossible for a small, creative company to *ever* produce another Fantasia.

And that's a damn shame.

Jonnan

The reduction of fair use is one of the big things I find wrong with the copyright system.

The literal 'Mickey Mouse' legislation (Disney were the big movers in the 'Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act') extending copyright to essentially forever (and I'll bet my bottom dollar they'll be at it again when it comes up again.) is another.

Corporations conducting searches and initiating lawsuits without a shred of evidence for thousands of dollars is a third.

The entire DMCA is a fourth. Not one shred of that legislation is anything more than a rotten sack of garbage oozing foulness.

Bottom line. Copyright all the way back to when copyright was invented until about 40 years ago had a lifespan of 40-50 years... Copyright now has a lifespan of 200 years, things made in the 1950's will still be copyrighted when we are all dead. This destroys the idea of public domain and holds hostage 90%+ of the work that is out there. Most of it rotting away since it has no commercial value. All those wonderful games we remember are going to stay dead because the companies that hold the copyrights won't do anything with them.

And heck for the really valuable stuff there is trademark. Mickey Mouse will NEVER become public domain because it is both copyrighted and qalso under an entirely different set of laws which are trademark.

IMO copyright should be 50 years from the time something is published. Drug/Software/Engineering patents can cost millions/billions of dollars to develop and yet they only last 10-20 years. What gives an artist or megacorp a special right with copyright over patent?

We need to revive and enforce the ideal of public domain.

Opppps   

Regards
Zy

Here's an interesting problem I've always thought about. Purely from a moral/ethical standpoint, what is your opinions on the following scenarios? Not a legal standpoint, as this will vary from country to country.

1) I ask a architect to draw me plans for a house. I then proceed to build not one, but two houses on different properties from the same plans.

2) Same as 1 above, but I bought the plans mass-market, instead of having them made for me specifically

3) I fancy a certain genre of art, e.g. anime and ask a well-known artist to draw me a picture and pay the artist for it. I receive the paper copy, proceed to scan it in and use part of it as an avatar on the Sins forum

4) Same as 3, but bought a collection of artwork from the artist, instead of having it made for me only

5) Same as 3, but I the artist delivers it digitally to me

6) Same as 4, except for being digital

7) I take my CD of songs I bought and rip it to MP3 to install on my portable player.

8) Install a game on my laptop and my home PC so I can play while travelling.

Legally these are mostly different. And I rarely understand why. 7 is punishable by a jail term in the US if I am not mistaken, or at least getting your pants sued off you, and gets you branded a pirate, and 8 mostly too, I think.

Okie Doke - Ta


Second in the queue behind you

As I understand it (in UK) the differences are:
Copyright - Creative or Artistic expression of an idea. Software was added into this one by default as more applicable than the other two below.
Patent - Original Invention or Creation of a unique basic concept or theory
TradeMark - An indicator of Origin (not ownership) in relation to products or Services

As there are more definitions than Countries on Planet Earth, I'll body swerve round the Pandora's Box those three just opened up   

Regards
Zy

The price of games is totally unrelated to how much piracy does or does not exist. If by some supernatural force or magic we were to make all the pirates in the world go away the price of games would remain unchanged.

Either way i see no way they can enforce this. First of all for them to know you are pirating something they would have to be able to monitor your net traffic and what it is you are doing and downloading. That is a MAJOR invasion of privacy.

At best they can monitor the amount you download and say well he is using a lot of bandwidth he might be doing something illegal downloading 20gig files every day. That is so random and inaccurate though its ridiculous.

This taps into far larger issues than piracy because the fact is piracy isn't that big of an issue. If companies make good games they will sell regardless and there will be no visible impact on the bottomline. This game is a the perfect example. No protection and just a simple online activation and they have sold hundreds of thousands of copies.

The bigger issues that pop up are net neutrality which is a very highly debated issue right now and internet privacy. For them to monitor what you are downloading they would have to look at every single thing you download. The torrent websites work in a way that directly contradicts them knowing what you are downloading and who you are downloading it from because it all comes in tiny pieces from multiple people. The whole neutrality issue has to do with the internet companies monitoring and dictating where you can and can not go which is just total bull.

So like i said this is a pipe dream that directly infringes in some of the basic rights all people have like privacy to combat a problem that isn't even that widespread. It will never happen short of the new nazi world order forming and taking control of everything we see and do.

The problem in the U.S. is that the 'finite amount of time' listed in the constitution has been growing longer, retroactively, since the Fifties. Copyrights that were created under a 14 years + 14 years regimen have been updated, retroactively, three times now so we have a copyright in excess of a century on these same items.

So, is it 'finite' if the time copyright expires is always "Someday Soon" but never "Today"?

"Tomorrow, Tomorrow, this copyright expires . . . Tomorrow, it's always a DAY A WAYYYYYYYYYY!"

Jonnan

Drawings are done for a specific project...and your paying for them is 'for the rights to use them as necessary to complete that project'.

If you use them in ANY WAY what-so-ever outside of that process you violate their copyright.

Example....If it is deemed totally unnecessary for you to show those drawings to your brother [he has nothing to do with the building project/further documentation/quantity surveying/etc] then you are making use of those drawings outside their ststed purpose.

"This drawing is the property of Paul Martin and shall not be used or communicated in any form without his prior written consent".

I've used that line for 35 years.

1. The Architect can rightly sue for a second fee.

2. Much the same as 1., but there may be dispensation/release for multiple usage.

Joe Sixpack building two houses in rural nowhereville would just laugh to himself and say "OK, whatever." and do it anyway. I know because I'm Joe Sixpack and I've done it.

Just like Joe Pirate will say "OK, whatever." and share files over the sneaker-net if the media companies get even half of their bought-and-paid-for legislation passed into law. At least until the public outcry from Little Johnny getting sent to prison for ripping songs to his ipod results in said laws being overturned.

Seriously, Stardock has the right approach to combating piracy, nothing else will work EVER. In contrast, laws such as this will probably create more pirates than anything,
(much the same as draconian DRM does) as the easiest way to ensure that someone WILL do something, is to tell them they CAN'T.