creators rights, last post

[john garvin]

I was going to let this subject drop since all but one or two were not
responding to the central ideas in my posting.  But Kari did, and since he is
so wrong on most points, I can't help it.

"You absolytely must be able to protect your property and get the
money yourself from your work."

 I agree.  If you recall, I said that I personally believe that all living
creators should be respected.

"Companies (even big ones) must be treated equally to humans."

Wow.  No offence, but I could not possibly disagree with this statement more
strongly.  Corporations are NOT people, and though they are attempting to, and
in the US have succeeding in, gaining multiple human rights, they are NOT
people!  The Disney corporation exists for one reason and one reason ONLY: to
make money.  If you believe otherwise, you are kidding yourself.  Like most
other corporations, it has a history of exploiting the labor and talents of
others to improve the bottom line.  It does not care about creating, it does
not care about people, it does not have any loyalty to any country, it does not
think of the people who work for it as family, it cares about profit.  I hope
I'm right when I say that this does not describe most human beings that I
know.  If you buy shares in these inhuman moneymaking machines, you get what
you pay for.

"Somebody gave the idea that Disney shouldn't have MORAL right to
its stories, because they dont' print them in the US or pay
artists only once etc. What has that to do with this? Would
there be different rights according to how nice and good you were and
how many people liked you or not? Law in the end really isn't about
moral it is about facts, why?"

Again, wow.  I can tell I'm not talking to someone in the USA here.  See, we
have a jury system.  What that means is that the Jury not only has the power to
decide the facts of a case, but also the justness of the law itself.  The
famous OJ Simpson trial became, in part, not so much a murder trial, as a trial
of a very corrupt police system.
Don't forget that I keep calling this an information revolution.  Revolution is
all about moral outrage against unjust laws.  Of course we will break the law.
If enough laws are broken by moral people fighting for a just cause, change is
made.  That is how we Americans enacted civil rights in the south.  Again,
don't kid yourself: there are many many bad laws on the books.  In my mind,
laws which protect the rights of living creators are good.  Laws which allow
corporations to steal from creators in perpetuity, are bad.  It is a human
right to break a bad law.  If enough people do it, the laws get swept away.

"About public domain. When Bram Stoker wrote his story, he used the old
stories, and legend and the idea of vampires, He didn't create vampires,
he didnt' even create Dracula, but used the story of Vlad Tepes (I'm
not sure how is should be spelled) the monarc who actually lived."

Uh huh.  And what about Lewis Carrol?  I see that you ignored this example.
Alice in Wonderland was written in the 1865, Through the Looking Glass in 1871,
a little over a hundred years ago.  These works contained characters and
locations straight from the imagination of a single author.  Again I ask you,
would the world of ideas be a better place or worse, if Carrol had been able to
start a Carrol Corporation, and lock down the use of that intellectual property
for the next thousand years?  No Disney Alice In Wonderland animated feature,
no Disney Theme park: Wild Teacup ride, Alice ride, Mad Hatter shop; no Disney
Alice series of books, cups, hats, dolls, shirts, lollypops, and videos.

I think that Lewis Carrol had the right to make money from his characters and
books as long as he was alive.  I would even go so far as to say that his
family could profit from them for another 20 years after his death (this is
current copyright law, give or take.)  I don't think, had Carrol been writing
under a "work for hire" contract, as Barks had to do his entire life, for a
greedy corporation, that that corporation would be entitled to profit from his
work forever.  THAT, is what Disney is fighting for even now.  You're darn
right I want a revolution.