internet revolution

[john garvin]

I agree with almost everything Mr. Markstein said.  Disney does have a lot of
lawyers.  But you know what? It doesn't have enough lawyers to go after
everybody who violates their copyright on the internet, not by a longshot..

Copyright law, in my opinion, will become obsolete in the next ten years.  Years
ago there was a guy who published an x-rated paradoy of Mickey Mouse (I'm sure
someone on this list has the name...Dan something-or-other).  Disney sued him
and the guy had to stop.  But he was pretty easy to find and it was pretty easy
to shut him down.  He had to go through established printing, distribution, and
retail channels.  If I scan that same story now and post it to usenet, there
isn't a thing Disney can do.

The internet represents instant access, with full color and sound, to millions
and millions of people.  As more people go online and begin to share
information, much of it copyrighted I'm sure, there will be an initial attempt
to stop the flood, but it's not going to work.  All laws, and I mean ALL laws,
rely on one simple tenant: enforceability.  Sure Disney has a lot of lawyers,
but do they have time to after hundreds, even thousands, of internet copyright
viloations here in the States?  To complicate matters, the internet is truly
global and almost all copyright law is enforced on a country by country basis,
depending on which countries subscribe to international copyright law.  US
Disney lawyers can't do anything to internet pages created and maintained
outside this country.  Imagine the jurisdictional mess they would have if they
tried to shut down pages originating in Brazil, Latvia, or North Korea.

Do I think this is a good thing?  Frankly, yes.  I too am an owner of
intelectual property.  (And, by the way, know first hand what it is like to lose
money because of the internet.  I make video games (Syphonfilter 1 and 2 were my
last hits) and one of the first things the internet was used for was pirating
software!)  I think that creators should be able to profit from their work, up
to a point.  US copyright law sets that point to be around 60 years, give or
take.  Disney, and other major copyright holders, are trying to change current
copyright law so that they hold the copyright forever.  Here's my question:
what if Bram Stoker's family had been able to form a corporation and copyright
Dracula and all the familiar things in the formulaic vampire story?  And what if
they enforced their copyright so that no other vampire story had ever been
written?  No Dracula films, comics, books.  Would horror literature be richer or
poorer without Anne Rice's take on the material?  Stephen King's?

This is actually an ironic question, because the Disney machine spent most of
its creative life (at least in the feature films) plundering the public domain.
Whether or not you agree with Disney's take on Lewis Carrol, I think the world
would be the poorer if Disney had been prohibited by copyright to make its
version of Alice In Wonderland.  Imagine a world where these characters and
fictional worlds belong to everyone and if Disney want's to make money on Uncle
Scrooge it has to compete in a free marketplace with anyone who wants to write
an Uncle Scrooge story.  Don Rosa may be willing to sell his work to Egmont,
giving it to the Disney Corporation for use all over the world for free, but I
can tell that not many other creators are as generous.  Imagine a world where
you go online, seek out your favorite writer and artist, go to their site, and
pay to download a new story directly from them.  A Don Rosa story unhampered by
editors who tell him that readers "don't want this kind of story."  Imagine if
Steve Gerber could write Howard the Duck stories?  The possiblities are
endless.  So is the internet.  An information  revolution is coming, don't let
anyone tell you otherwise.