That’s already the case. There would be two copyrights for a cartoon for Donald duck, and possibly, in fact likely, many others.
A copyright is essentially a right of enforcement. You don’t have to register anything or file anything in order to gain that right. It’s a right to sue someone to enjoin further use and potentially to recoup money damages if you can prove loss.
The standard for whether something is copyrightable at the outset is whether it is the product of a modicum of creativity, and reduced to a tangible medium of expression.
So far one cartoon of Donald duck, each drawn frame of the show would have its own copyright. Also, the character would have a copyright. The dialogue of the script would have another copyright. And the test for whether a particular character is something that can be copyrighted is to ask whether the character is separable from the overall work and whether the character is “well delineated.”
Donald duck is certainly the product of creativity, it is reduced to a tangible medium of expression when it is drawn on paper, and it is the main character of the show and has its own personality and behavior. So it is pretty clearly of deserving protection. Although at this point in time, I believe some of Disney’s earliest characters are now in the public domain, Even Mickey mouse, which people like my IP professor in law school said was never going to happen. This is because I believe in 1984 there was a law called the copyright act of 1984 but was colloquial referred to as the Mickey mouse copyright act. It was championed by Sonny Bono, who I believe was friends with Walt Disney personally, and which many said had the sole purpose of extending Mickey mouse’s copyright for another 25 years or whatever it was. My memory is a little fuzzy on this. My professor figured that Disney was such a powerful institution that anytime Mickey mouse was about to fall into the public domain, Congress would stop it.
A doctrine sort of related to your question is called scen a faire. It is a French phrase which I have no doubt spelled wrong because I am on mobile. It means that elements essential to a scene of the kind which would be common to all scenes of that type, are not copyrightable. So this would include some background characters such as those that, despite being drawn in a creative way, are more so the product of the scene itself rather than any creativity. For example, if there is a scene in a cartoon where the character gets onto a train and hands the ticket to a ticket taker, the ticker taker character is probably not copyrightable.
Thanks for that explainer. I thought the verbiage in the article was a little over the top.
However there is a point at which the “style” of the art is the thing that is copyrightable, sort of by implication.
The standard for proving a copyright violation where a defendant claims a transformative use or a derivative work is “substantial similar.”
For as long as I can remember that includes the overall presentation of the work, and it’s hard to describe that as anything other than a “style.”
The article draws a comparison that allowing copyright protection for styles would be like allowing copyrights for entire genres. I don’t think that’s right. Nobody could copyright all “landscape paintings” as a genre, but look at landscape works by Katsushika Hokusai, and that style, to me, is creative enough to warrant protection, if it were made originally in America today and not already in the public domain. And he didn’t invent woodblock prints or even woodblock prints of landscapes, but the way he did it is so unique as to be insperable from the copyrighted work itself and arguably deserving of protection simply for its advancement of the art.
If you made a woodblock print in the same style but used it to portray a scene typical in anime, rather than a landscape, that’s clearly transformative and derivative, but not substantially similar. If you use the style to make prints of waves breaking around Mt. Fuji, that’s substantially similar. So like, as to dude’s anime style, if you use the same style to make landscapes, certainly that’s not infringing, as it’s not substantially similar.
I also don’t see the threatening outcome the author suggests as worrisome. There are still exceptions for blatant copying that apply, mainly parody and fair use.
It’s not any of those five things. It’s any of those five things with intent to destroy a peoples.
South Africa is going to have a hard time proving intent at the ICJ when Hamas uses human shields to inflate civilian casualties and 99/100 Palestinians are alive.
Make your delete every post that takes a view of a highly disputed issue that you personally disagree with. The ICJ didn’t grant the preliminary injunction. Going to pretend everyone agrees with you? Going to also delete the intelligence and diplomatic corps and most of the heads of state of the western world, as well?
You seem very aware of the situation so I’m sure you know more than I but from what I’ve read multiple times the aids towards Gaza was stopped in its track by the IDF including at the ports.
That’s because you’re getting your media from actually full of shit sources. Everything that goes into Gaza is because Israel lets it in. They built two or three new desalinization plants since the war started. “Oh but isn’t Israel purposely destroying water infrastructure to make people die of thirst?” No. That would be genocidal. What they have done is blow up tunnel shafts where Hamas hides out, and it’s Hamas that tied those systems into anything resembling a public water supply.
Israel, aside from a few weeks recently, has been letting in between hundreds and thousands of trucks of food and medicine per week.
The US floods in money to Israel for two reasons, one of which is not legitimate. The main reason, and the one that’s legit, is because contrary to what absolute donkeys on the internet say, Israel is a democracy surrounded by hostile religious dictatships. The west cannot allow it to fall for ideological reasons, for reasons of global hedgemony. It’s like how French General Lafayette dropped everything to come help America fight the British. He said “The happiness of America is intimately connected with the happiness of all mankind.” He recognized what democracy could mean for the world; democracy is a radical idea. It needs to be protected from hostile dictatorships who think liberal ideas such as voting are blasphemous to the word of God and a capital offense. They are insane.
The illegitimate reason is some mystical Bible nonsense about the return of Christ only taking place once Jews inhabit the holy land. Also insane.
Hostage takers and suicide bombers aren’t entitled to guarantees. Criminals who plunder the welfare and futures of their own people to wage a futile war aren’t entitled to guarantees. Gotta be bona fide, gotta have clean hands, if they want equity.
In short, Iran floods in money and weapons to fight Israel. They also flood in a deranged panislamist ideology. They pay so families of suicide bombers and human shields can get martyrdom pensions.
Israel is attacked usually daily, at least weekly, with unguided rockets fired from Gaza and the West Bank, and Lebanon. The last time they were attacked was today.
The rockets are usually either allowed to land because their trajectory is calculated and they are going to hit a field or something, or they are destroyed by Iron Dome, at an annual cost of billions of dollars.
Part of the corruption is the cost of the attacks: the wealth and health of Palestine, pissed away to try and kill Jews. They aren’t starving and sick because of a blockade. They are starving and sick because terrorists have coopted every institution and turned them into instruments of terrorism. Why can’t Gaza import as much food and medicine as it wants through its air or water ports? Well, it’s because their air and water ports were destroyed and blockaded after being used as a launching point for terror attacks, used to import weapons, and weapons and weapons, instead of something anyone could eat.
And where do they launch their rockets from, not military installations or empty fields. They launch them from cul de sacs and schoolyards. And then when attacks come from the same place week after week, and Israel blasts out text messages and leaflets saying to evacuate because we’re going to do an airstrike, Hamas makes sure there will be a bunch of kids and women standing there when the counterstrike happens. It’s sick. Hamas is cancer, and its Iran that keeps it alive. The UN and charity, too. If the people of Gaza actually had to endure the effects of Hamas’s leadership, they’d rise up.
2·2 days ago
Removed by mod