Sherlock Holmes Finally In the Public Domain In the US 207
ferrisoxide.com writes "As reported on the Australian ABC news website, film-makers in the US are finally free to work on Sherlock Holmes stories without paying a licencing free to the estate of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle after a ruling by Judge Ruben Castillo. A quirk of U.S. copyright law kept 10 stories out of the public domain, on the basis that these stories were continuously developed. In his ruling Judge Castillo opined that only the "story elements" in the short stories published after 1923 were protected and that everything else in the Holmes canon was "free for public use" — including the characters of Holmes and Watson.
Holmes scholar Leslie Klinger, who challenged the estate, celebrated the ruling.
'Sherlock Holmes belongs to the world,' Mr Klinger said in a statement posted on his Free Sherlock website.
IANAL, but the ruling of Judge Castillo that "adopting Conan Doyle's position would be to extend impermissibly the copyright of certain character elements of Holmes and Watson beyond their statutory period," is surely going to have implications across U.S. copyright law. Mark Twain must be twisting and writhing in his grave."
A bad remake is a foot! (Score:5, Funny)
I smell a lot of vile and unsavory SyFy productions ramping up with this ruling.
"SyFy, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained."
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They already ruined Star Trek for me by casting Sherlock in the role of Khan, who looks nothing like the previous Punjabi-Mexican...
Re:A bad remake is a leg! (Score:2, Insightful)
Hey now, Buckaroo Banzai is all kinds of cool.
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And the reason he failed?
No high stress watermelon apparatus!
As such, Rawhide loses a lung!
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Re:A bad remake is a foot! (Score:5, Insightful)
Er, the "the blood sucking scum called Hollywood" has already pissed all over Sherlock Holmes. I don't see how this changes anything.
Re:A bad remake is a foot! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:A bad remake is a foot! (Score:4, Funny)
I believe Congress now has a first order of business when they next convene, to add another 20 years to copyright, retroactively applied of course. Because Doyle would never have written a word knowing his heirs would not be able to continue mooching off his work 3 generations later.
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Doyle would never have written a word knowing his heirs would not be able to continue mooching off his work 3 generations later.
Doyle was only making about £500 an installment.
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If the purchasers had known the work would eventually leave copyright protection, they would have paid less. Much less.
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Doyle would never have written a word knowing his heirs would not be able to continue mooching off his work 3 generations later.
Doyle was only making about £500 an installment.
Back then, a £ was worth $2.65 American or so. And in the 1890's, 1325 bucks was REAL MONEY
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Re:A bad remake is a foot! (Score:5, Insightful)
And? I never understood why this so called "IP" deserves to be treated differently than regular property. Does Ford get a cut of every used Ford ever sold? Does Joe the carpenter get a cut every time a house he built changes hands for decades?
Let me explain. If you write for example a book, there are in theory two ways to get paid for your work: A. Find someone who is willing to buy the book, copyright and everything, and pay you a fair value for the work. You are not going to see a penny after that. Or you get a little bit of money from everyone who buys it, forever. It's a different business model. Not one sale for big money, but many sales each giving you a tiny amount.
But look at it in a different way: Either you want a book, or a video, or a music performance, or you don't. If you don't want it, you shouldn't care whether it's for sale or free. And if you want it, then surely you should agree that it is _worth_ paying for. You can't seriously argue that you want it but it's not worth money.
Re:A bad remake is a foot! (Score:5, Informative)
Copyright law was never about to offer a business model to authors. Copyright law was always about to ensure that works are produced and published, to enrich society. If it turns out that copyright laws actually reduce the amount of works produced and published, then copyright law should be abolished. Normally, copyright law should be at balance to offer authors enough protection that they can make a dime of their works, but also short so that society (the public domain) can be enriched.
That is why the original copyright term in the USA was just 14 years with the option to extend for another 14 years, and also only for registered works. With the Internet the copyright term should been shortened because the Internet offers a faster way for authors to make a dime of their work. You obviously bought into the Hollywood propaganda that copyright is a natural right of authors to have a business model. No it's not. It's an monopoly right that is granted to benefit at the end the public domain.
So price is not an issue? (Score:4, Interesting)
And if you want it, then surely you should agree that it is _worth_ paying for. You can't seriously argue that you want it but it's not worth money.
The problem is, that logic runs into pricing issues. Take this book [amzn.com] for example. At the time I wrote this post, the new price was $218, the Kindle edition was $180, and used copies also sold for $180. I would be happy to pay for that book, but not $180, and certainly not $218. I might pay $30.
In reality, I'll pay nothing, since it's so expensive that I'll just have to rely on the library's copy.
Now you can argue that this is a special case since it's a limited run academic book, but the point is that when there is a gap between what someone is willing to pay, and the actual price of the item, you have a lost sale. With respect to physical goods, maybe that's a sale you don't want, since you'd have to take a loss. But with respect to copyrighted goods, in many cases any price is going to net you a profit.
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> But with respect to copyrighted goods, in many cases any price is going to net you a profit.
Quite right. But the goal is to *maximize* profit. And that changes things, even for digital works with no incremental cost. For example, there's a lot of games that I'd gladly pay $5 for, but they're only offered for $50, and so they lose a sale to me. They could lower the price to $5 to get my sale, but then nobody would pay $50 so they'd have to sell 10x as many copies to make the same profit, a dubious p
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Don't worry, the RIAA will be happy to collect the royalties and distribute them to the proper parties, if they can be found. (Hey, come one, looking in the phonebook is HARD, and it's only a few hundred thousand dollars. What do you expect of us?)
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Does Ford get a cut of every used Ford ever sold?
Try building a pickup truck that looks just like an F150, put a Ford logo and nameplate that says F150 on it, and see what happens when you try to market it.
You can buy a used book (at least a real printed one) without paying a copyright fee, but you can't make a movie based on a book that's still under copyright any more than you can make that F150 truck.
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Re:A bad remake is a foot! (Score:4, Insightful)
Several problems with your argument.
Although copyright can be used against plagiarists, counterfeiters, and other sorts of fraudsters, that's not it's purpose. We have other laws to deal with those problems, we don't need copyright for that. Shouldn't keep copyright alive for such purposes either. If someone tries to pass that homemade F150 off as the real thing, if it's such a good copy that it fools prospective buyers, and someone buys it under the impression that they are buying a real Ford F150, then the seller has committed fraud. That's counterfeiting. Also trademark infringement. Very common for the copyright extremists to conflate these separate issues in their attempts to justify their positions.
You can make a homemade F150 truck, and you don't need Ford's permission. It can be a cardboard cutout, or a toy sized miniature that you can hold in your hand, or a full sized replica with a working engine and all. People have made replicas of cars that while antique, are not old enough for copyright to have expired on them. No one is going to sue you for making a replica of a Studebaker automobile! Just don't pass it off as the real thing.
There's also the Ship of Theseus problem. If you use some parts from a real antique car, and fabricate the ones you can't find, does the whole qualify as genuine? Can a T-bucket be a genuine Ford Model T?
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I wasn't talking about a single replica or committing fraud. I meant building an assembly line and manufacturing trucks that have "Made By bzipitidoo Motor Co." on the title, but everything else is exactly the same as a Ford.
That's legal, in both the vehicle industry and the fashion industry, and for the same reasons. "Trade dress" protections do not apply to shapes which are largely functional, and there's case law declaring that the shape of sheet metal in a car or the cut of cloth in an item of apparel are more functional than not, so it doesn't qualify for protection.
This state of affairs persists because the brand has sufficient value all on its own. Knock-offs of designer clothing is legal, but always sell for far less
Re:A bad remake is a foot! (Score:4, Informative)
That's because "Ford" is trademarked, and "F150" is also trademarked (in the context of vehicles at least). That has nothing to do with copyright.
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£500 then or now? Because that would be about £215k now.
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IMHO Sherlock Holmes is not Science Fiction
and NOT_Science_Fiction is whats on the SyFy channel
(It should be called The PsyPhi channel)
Arthur Conan Doyle was Scottish (Score:2, Insightful)
But of course US Law is World Law because the US rules the world by bombing the shit out of anyone who disagrees.
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Re: Arthur Conan Doyle was Scottish (Score:5, Funny)
Re: Arthur Conan Doyle was Scottish (Score:5, Insightful)
Is there any other way?
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Is there any other way?
Simple answer, yes.
Good place to start might be Fred Morrison, for example.
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The best definition for perfect pitch is being able to chuck a piano accordion down a well without it touching the sides.
Re: Arthur Conan Doyle was Scottish (Score:5, Insightful)
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They paint them black and call them Reapers for a reason.
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"Droning the shit out of the terrorists" just sounds wrong.
Don't watch CSpan much, do you?
Re:Arthur Conan Doyle was Scottish (Score:5, Informative)
No the US law applies because a Georgian Princess bought out the other English heirs of the Scottish author who then assigned it to Swiss to manage it.Later when the swiss started skimming off the top, she then sold the whole thing off.The person who purchased it was American but the estate was managed by another Swiss man. Due to a quirk in the US law, the british (dis)inherited tried to reclaim the property, but were conned by a texas lawyer who sent the notices to a non existent address in Switzerland instead of the correct address in US or Switzerland. So the ownership of the estate remains in the US. Hence US law applies.
I did not make any of this up [sherlockholmesonline.org].
Re:You did make it up (Score:5, Informative)
US law governs a copyright's enforceability in the US. How could it be any different?
Because of international treaties; the Berne convention, among others.
Re:You did make it up (Score:5, Informative)
No, according to US copyright law (17 USC 104(c)), the Berne Convention has no effect in the US.
And this isn't odd; copyright treaties are typically not self-executing. They obligate the various treaty states to enact domestic legislation that brings them into compliance with the treaty, but do not serve as copyright laws themselves. In addition, in the US, all treaties stand at an equal level with ordinary federal legislation, and a last-in-time rule dictates which trumps in the event of an irreconcilable conflict. This means that Congress is not bound to adhere to treaties, and can refuse to pass laws that treaties require, and can even pass laws that directly contradict the treaty. This may embarrass the executive branch, and may cause problems for the US in its foreign relations, but sometimes that's the way the cookie crumbles.
A fun example is WTO Dispute 160, the gist of which is that certain copyright exceptions in US copyright law violate our treaty obligations, a complaint was brought against the US by the Irish, the US lost the case, and we've never bothered to comply by changing our laws in the decade-plus since we lost.
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I disagree. Each country should enact whatever copyright laws are best for its own people. There's no need for treaties at all, or uniformity. The only constant rule should be unilateral national treatment: that copyright laws won't discriminate between domestic and foreign authors, copyright holders, etc. And there should be informal international cooperation to try to avoid mutually exclusive copyright laws (eg country A only grants copyrights to works first published only in country A and nowhere else, a
Re:You did make it up (Score:4, Insightful)
I disagree. Each country should enact whatever copyright laws are best for its own people.
So get rid of copyright law, then?
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Some places might. If that's honestly what they think will best serve their interests, I can't fault them for it. Other places will no doubt still have some sort of copyright laws on the books. Perhaps they will differ from the usual sort we have now, what with the lack of minimum standards allowing for experimentation; perhaps they'll be better. If they're worse, well, at least there are fewer obstacles to changing them for the better.
I for one would like to see the US continue to have copyright for as lon
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It was my understanding that international treaties ratified by the USA ranked higher than any law other than the US Constitution and it's amendments. ... would seem to be ambiguous as to whether treaties rank equal with the US Constitution or equal with federal law.
Although amendment six
Article VI simply says that the federal constitution, federal law, and treaties are all superior to state constitutions and state law. It doesn't otherwise set priorities. But Article V provides the only possible methods for amending the federal constitution: 1) 2/3ds votes of both the US House and Senate to propose an amendment, followed by ratification by 3/4ths of the state legislatures. Or 2) ratification conventions are called by 2/3ds of the state legislatures, followed by ratification by 3/4ths of th
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US law governs a copyright's enforceability in the US. How could it be any different?
Because of international treaties; the Berne convention, among others.
The Berne convention requires that signatories' copyright statutes meet some requirements for duration and scope of copyright, but it doesn't say that people in one country must apply the law from another country.
US copyright laws apply in the US, regardless of whether the copyright owner is US-based. Same for other countries; they each get to apply their own laws.
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The Berne convention requires that signatories' copyright statutes meet some requirements for duration and scope of copyright, but it doesn't say that people in one country must apply the law from another country.
Look up the "rule of the shorter term."
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Face the facts - Hollywood bribed people and you ended up with this shit.
My favorite Sherlock Holmes quote (Score:5, Funny)
"Watson, come here, I want you!".
You're surprised by the gay undertones? (Score:4, Funny)
I thought that the subtle homosexual undertones throughout the entire series were well known. In fact, they play prominently at the start of the The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes [imdb.com], a feature film from 1970. No, it's not a pornographic flic, but a comedic mystery directed by Billy Wilder that even features Christopher Lee.
In my personal view, however, there's nothing homosexual about Sherlock Holmes. Just because a man dislikes women, and prefers the company of another man, treating him as a life-long companion in work and play, even when at the Turkish baths, it does not mean that he's a homosexual. He might like to smoke a pole as much as he likes to smoke a pipe, but again, that does not make him a homosexual. It's perfectly normal and straight for two completely heterosexual males to touch one another's genitals. Just because two men love each other and form a bond stronger than steel it does not mean that they are gay.
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They attempted to resolve the orientation question for conservative US audiences by casting Lucy Liu as Holmes in Elementary.
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They attempted to resolve the orientation question for conservative US audiences by casting Lucy Liu as Holmes in Elementary.
So what? Holmes still isn't banging Watson, even with the switchup.
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Finally... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Finally... (Score:4, Informative)
What you can't use is any recent (re)translation or re-imagining or edition from [publisher].
That's the reason that "American Classics" keep getting new editions cranked out, even though the story hasn't changed in a century.
So while Disney doesn't own Snow White (or any of the other stories), they own their version.
The Disney version strays enough from the Brothers Grimm that Disney has claimed and received copyright and trademarks.
Of the two legal claims, Disney is vastly more likely to slaughter you with trademarks than copyrights.
Re:Finally... (Score:4, Insightful)
They also own their version of Nadia: Secret of the Blue Water [thesecretofbluewater.com] and Kimba, the White Lion [kimbawlion.com].
Just a reminder that Disney doesn't just shamelessly steal from American folklore and then try to lock it up forever; they are quite happy to steal from other cultures too.
Keep this in mind in a few years when Disney tries to find a way to loophole their way into retaining ownership of the original Steamboat Willie -- which, if I'm understanding this ruling, Disney can no longer keep perpetually copyrighted through bribing congress.
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is Peter Pan next? (Score:2)
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Peter Pan is a different story...
From the copyright page on the official website:
Copyright in the USA is governed by the Universal Copyright Convention, by which a publication enters the public domain 25 years after the author’s death – in Barrie’s case, 1962. However, it was agreed in 1971 that the Berne Convention should take priority over the UCC in countries signatory to both conventions, and therefore Barrie’s extended copyright [was] guaranteed until 2007 in the USA as well. In the UK, the situation is a little more complex with regard to the Peter Pan Gift in that the House [of] Lords passed a special resolution in 1988 via the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act, effectively granting the Great Ormond Street Hospital a perpetual extension to its right to royalties in the UK “in respect of the public performance, commercial publication or any other use of Peter Pan.”
Yes, in the UK they can do that. At least it's for a good cause (Pan royalties fund the hospital).
Re: is Peter Pan next? (Score:2)
But now he won't write anymore books! (Score:4, Funny)
How can Sir Arthur Conan Doyle be incentivised to write more Sherlock Holmes books, if he can't enjoy exclusive rights to his works?!
Nooooooooooooooooo!
Better late than never, I guess (Score:4, Insightful)
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"Reasonable" has no place when the unreasonable have the more expensive l*wy*rs.
Fixed that for ya...
A correction: (Score:2, Funny)
Holmes scholar Leslie Klinger, who challenged the SCUM SUCKING PARASITE LAWYERS AND WORTHLESS TWATWAFFLE DESCENDENTS OF DOYLE, celebrated the ruling.
TFTFY
Trademark as ersatz copyright (Score:3)
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Today's myths and legends and fairy tales and
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Exactly, the Tamarians [memory-alpha.org] aren't so alien after all.
Decision text (Score:4, Informative)
On Twain... (Score:4, Insightful)
Reports of Mark Twain twisting and writhing in his grave have been greatly exaggerated. In fact, the late Mr. Twain has been quite immobile since the most recent reports of his death.
Guy's probably dead anyway. (Score:2)
The Mark Twain article reproduces a 100 year old NTY microfiche where somebody corrected a spelling incorrectly.
Don't call me a spelling Nazi because it was 25 years before that.
sigh (Score:4, Funny)
Great, now he'll never write any more.
Hitler must be pissed (Score:5, Interesting)
Hitler, Albert Einstein and Elvis make frequent cameos in media and often star in YouTube videos, having no rights because they are *REAL* people.
But Mickey Mouse and Sherlock Holmes and Barbie have more rights as imaginary characters.
Curious legal system we have. Feel free to use Ronald Reagan or Jimmy Carter or Richard Nixon (hello Futurama!) in a story
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So where would you fit the typical psuedo celebrity whose public image is an imaginary work created by public relations (PR=B$) specialist who crafted it to market and promote crappy products. Are they a person or an imaginary caricature of a person.
Oddly enough to in order to gain copyright protections in court for those fake caricature of psuedo celebrities, the public relations types would have to prove what kind of narcissistic arse holes the typical pseudo celebrity really is versus the crafted publ
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There's a thing called portrait rights although according to Wiki it's officially called personality rights in the English speaking world (or at least where the editor lives).
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In many cases you are not free to do this, as celebrities and their likenesses are trademarked and highly regulated. I imagine if you tried to use Ronald Reagan in any significant way in a novel or artwork you'd hear from his estate. Unless it was fair use or parody, and then you have a lot more flexibility.
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In many cases you are not free to do this, as celebrities and their likenesses are trademarked and highly regulated. I imagine if you tried to use Ronald Reagan in any significant way in a novel or artwork you'd hear from his estate. Unless it was fair use or parody, and then you have a lot more flexibility.
I'm thinking that's unfair. After all, when Ronnie Raygun did his last acting job, that of El Presidente, he sure used us unfairly. We're still paying down the debt he saddled us with, and we haven't seen a cent of teh 1.5 TRILLION he looted from Social Security to pay for Star Wars.
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Actually if Congress hadn't passed new spending increases, the budget would have been balanced. From my recollection, tax revenues did in fact increase under Reagan, as predicted. But Congress passed (and in fairness RR signed into law) spending increases almost double the increased revenues.
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Sherlock Holmes --- an imaginary character --- has more rights than real people.
Not really. Though imaginary characters' rights most likely last for longer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_rights [wikipedia.org]
Hitler, Albert Einstein and Elvis make frequent cameos in media and often star in YouTube videos, having no rights because they are *REAL* people.
I know Einstein & Elvis' estates are litigious, but I couldn't say for sure about Hitler's estate.
They almost exclusively go after people who don't get a license to use the image for *commercial* purposes.
I'm confused... (Score:5, Interesting)
Clemens and Copyright (Score:3)
There's no grave gymnastics to be had here. Clemens had planned to add to his stories over time, so that people would want to preferentially purchase his editions over the free-culture versions. He didn't want to sit on his laurels while jackbooted thugs ensured him a rent-seeking income - he was, after all, a writer.
Today, those against the Copyright regime frequently propose similar strategies.
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copyright has been a problem for a least 400 years since an unauthorised sequel to Cervantes.
70 years sounds about right but I do wish Hollywood would stop remaking films from 30 years ago and create some new material.
Re:Clemens and Copyright (Score:4, Interesting)
You got an extra zero in there, right? As in 7 years sounds about right?
I know some authors protest that seven years is too long, and the majority of income is made in the first three years and after five it would be advantageous to have the works available in the public domain (but the publishers don't want the competition from previously released works), but I think that varies from author to author, so doing a compromise of seven seems reasonable - we can experiment with shortening it further after having seen what happen when we cut it to seven.
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Then you can register your work and extend for another 7 years. That would be my proposal and would be just like the original copyright term of the USA, which was 14 years, plus 14 years per extension.
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Artists profiting from their works? Are you some sort of Socialist? Only corporations have a right to profit. Everyone else has a right to be wage slaves.
Gotta love the US legal system (Score:2)
I guess this means a US court will bravely stand up to bring Mickey Mouse into the public domain somewhere around 3500 AD.
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I guess this means a US court will bravely stand up to bring Mickey Mouse into the public domain somewhere around 3500 AD.
Wouldn't count on it that soon. When the Sun explodes, the only thing that will survive are the roaches and Disney copyrights.
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Brilliant! Thanks for starting my day off with a good laugh.
Donald Duck, here we come - a few more years (Score:2)
Hmmm. A Donald Duck pr0n version?
Wait, a pr0n version of Sherlock and Wa..., err, John Holmes? A century worth of speculations is over?
It's nice for some... (Score:2)
Mickey also belongs to the world, yet we'll never see it hit public domain. Not until Walt's defrosted.
Wait, let me get this straight (Score:3)
A judge in the United States of America ruled against an unreasonable extension of copyright law?
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Definitely not a Republican. They believe in in rights and freedoms only if you are a corporation or law enforcement.
Lousy summary (Score:2)
1) This conflates two things: the normal 1923 limit which kept 10 stories out of the public domain, and the "continuously developed" idea which was used to keep the characters (not the stories) out of the public domain based on the fact that the stories are not in the public domain.
2) Neither one of those two conflated ideas is a "quirk of copyright law". The 1923 limit is
Enough to make lawyers’ eyes roll up in thei (Score:2)
The convoluted story of Sherlock Holmes ownership was covered in a New Your Times piece [nytimes.com] a while back when the recent crop of movies came out
Let's see how the U.S reacts (Score:2)
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We have copyright laws here, but they are not the same as in the US as ours are not as strict. On multiple occassions the US has attempted to have Canada modify the laws to "bring them in line" with US laws (longer with much harsher punishments).
Thanks to wikileaks you can read the "top secret" cables where Canada was put on the "piracy watch list" as an attempt to force changes.
Conan-Doyle's position? (Score:2)
adopting Conan Doyle's position
Lying flat on your back with your eyes closed six feet under ground?
would be to extend impermissibly the copyright of certain character elements of Holmes and Watson beyond their statutory period
That sounds more like the position of Conan-Doyle's ancestors. Conan-Doyle himself famously replied to someone who wanted to stage a play in which Holmes got married with:
"You may marry him, murder him, or do anything you like to him."
Character Depth (Score:2)
I'm not sure this really matters. (Caveat: I'm not a fan and haven't read the books since I was very young.)
The BBC Benedict Cumberbatch/Martin Freeman incarnation is closer kin to the show Monk than to the Robert Downey Jr/Jude Law incarnation. Using the name Sherlock Holmes is more of a marketing decision than a creative one. Basically, the original stories donate two things: the pairing of a genius with a more ordinary sidekick and the names.
Meanwhile, there have been decades of stories with Holmes
Copyrights MUST expire (Score:2)
It says so right there in the US Constitution. It is in fact one of the first things the Constitution says, so those who wrote it must have decided it was important. I think it was a reaction to Royal copyrights and patents which stifled creativity. And from the loos of it I think Jefferson and Franklin were two driving personalities behind it.
On another note, as far as Mark Twain twirling in his grave, I think he would have been very angry if he had know how abusive copyrights have become of late. Persecut