#public domain

[opencharacters]

Slenderman Copyright

As I said previously the rights to slenderman are like vague, theyve always been vague but after Knudsen sold the rights to James Vanderbilt's company Mythology Entertainment in 2016 its even vaguer as that company no longer exists. I suppose Vanderbilt owns Slenderman? it's unclear.

However, let's be totally real here. The concept of a tall man kidnapping children and being all eldritch is hardly copyrightable due to its vagueness. The name Slenderman may be?

But some of the most popular creations didn't even call him that. Marble Hornets called him the Operator for instance. So idk, like the copyright of Slenderman feels sort of like this.

[ID: Scene from the simpsons. a yellow skinned cartoon girl in a red dress stands in front of a stone wall with an entrance, in front of her is a pole with two signs, the first one reads "Keep Out" and the second one underneath reads "Or enter. I'm a sign, not a cop" End ID]

Also even if it was super enforcable, the SCP, SCP-582 is basically slenderman in all but name.

SCP's are under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license, which means you can remix and adapt them, even commercially as long as you give proper credit. More info here.

I know I made a point to mark Slenderman as copyrightable in the past and he is, but like the workarounds are oh so simple that it frankly I feel like he might as well not be.

#slenderman #public domain #copyright #scp fouindation

[huntthemouse]

Slime Mickey

114/365 #hunt the mouse

it's been a rough couple days so i felt like doing a silly slimy design. i have to write posts on my tablet or phone which takes about three times as long as usual. it's exhausting and stressful but i'm managing.

I am making 365 new versions of Mickey Mouse for the public domain and releasing them under public domain all year long.

You can join the initiative to #hunt the mouse or suggest a theme yourself via my ask box.

#mickey mouse #public domain #hunt the mouse #art #character design #artwork #mickey #slime

[pjdraws]

Happy Mickey Mouse is mine day

#mickey mouse #winnie the pooh #pjdraws #comics #art #web comics #public domain #steamboat willie #pooh bear #alt text #alt text comics #Winnie & Willie #Willie & Winnie

[hell0mega]

people are drawing Steamboat Willie Mickey doing all this crazy shit and whatnot, but you could always do that. you can do that now, with current Mickey, just fine. it's fanart and it's legally protected. hell you could take Disney-drawn Mickey and put a caption about unions or whatever on it and it would still be protected under free speech and sometimes even parody law.

what is special about public domain is that you can SELL him. you could take a screenshot and sell it on a tshirt. you can use him to advertise your plumbing business. people have already uploaded and monetized the original film.

you could always have Mickey say what you want, but now you can profit off it.

#steamboat willie #Mickey mouse #Disney #public domain #you can't trademark him as like a logo or mascot of your plumbing business i just mean like #you can slap him in your commercial or side of the van #i just have seen soooo many people make ORIGINAL art of him and I'm like #no that's not the point!! you can already do that!!! #(obvs if it's a comic or something talking about him being free or whatever then yeah like i get it) #(but those people who put him as a fighter in their game?? Quinton reviews uploading the original video?? boss shit) #(THAT'S what it's about)

[skiplo-wave]

Fyi

( x )

Happy creating folks

#mickey mouse #minnie mouse #public domain

[spectralid]

Steamboat Willie has been in public domain for the last three days, and yet I've seen no one post this Pop Team Epic strip...

#mickey mouse #public domain #bkub #pop team epic #μzings

[prokopetz]

Mickey Mouse's entry into the public domain comes with significant caveats. While the Mickey Mouse who appears in Steamboat Willie (and other media published in 1928 or earlier) is free to use, there's established precedent that specific elements of a character which appear exclusively in later works which still fall under copyright may be protected, if sufficiently distinctive.

(This is the basis of, e.g., the infamous "Sherlock Holmes can't respect women" lawsuit: the Doyle estate, which at the time owned only a tiny handful of the latest-written stories, the others having already fallen into the public domain, argued that specific personality traits which Holmes exhibits only in those later stories are sufficiently distinctive as to be the valid subject of an infringement claim.)

With respect to various elements of Mickey's visual design, such as his red shorts and signature gloves, the matter is clear: just don't use those for another few years. However, there's another thing Mickey's public domain iterations don't exhibit: speech.

The present consensus among copyright scholars seems to be that "a character speaking" is not sufficiently distinctive as to qualify for protection, but the vocal characterisation with which Mickey Mouse is famously associated may so qualify. So, if you want to be scrupulously safe, you can have him talk, but not in that exact specific voice.

Which raises a fun question: what voice would you give him? Wrong answers only.

#media #cartoons #animation #mickey mouse #intellectual property #copyright #public domain #voice acting

[mattpresents]

#mickey mouse #steamboat willie #disney #copyright #please holy shit that act was so bad why is no one trying to repeal this #public domain

[dd-the-man-without-fear]

My entire timeline atm:

#Mickey Mouse #Steamboat Willie #public domain

[negativepeanuthoarder]

#mickey mouse #steamboat willie #public domain #defunctland

[bagelsforall]

Public Domain Expansion

#mickey mouse #mickey mouse clubhouse #domain expansion #public domain #jjk #jjk memes #jjk fanart #sukuna #ryomen sukuna #jujutsu kaisen #jujutsu sukuna

[opencharacters]

It looks like Mickey has something to say

#mickey mouse #public domain #copyright

[artofdiana]

"Now let's go get Tigger", said Pooh.

#my art #fanart #steamboat willie #mickey mouse #public domain #winnie the pooh #rough art

[deebrisbyfish]

I hadn't been PLANNING on doing anything in regards to the early Mickey Mouse cartoon "STEAMBOAT WILLIE" entering the public domain this past Monday until I went on Facebook. lol

#mickey mouse #mickey #public domain #steamboat willie #mouse #copyright

[batboyblog]

Copy Right and Public Domain in 2024

Happy 2024 all! its also Public Domain Day! a magical holiday here in America where things enter the public domain. Works published in the year 1928 (or 95 years ago!) have entered the public domain, which means they belong to us, all of us, the public!

Mickey's Back!

Yes! I'm sure you've heard, but Mickey Mouse (and Minnie Mouse too) is entering the Public Domain today. This has been news for a few years and indeed Disney's lobbying in the late 1990s is why our copy right term is SO long. So what exactly is now public domain?

Most people know about Mickey's first appearance Steamboat Willie, but a second short film, Plane Crazy was also released in 1928 so will also be public domain. So what's public? well these two films first of all, you're allowed to play them, upload them to YouTube or whatever without paying Disney. In theory you'll be allowed to cut and sample them, have them playing in the background of your movie etc. Likewise in theory the image of Mickey and Minnie as they appear (thats important) in these films will be free to use as well as Mickey's character as he appears in these works will be free to use. Now Mickey's later and more famous appearance

will still be protected. Famously the Conan Doyle Estate claimed that Sherlock Holmes couldn't be nice, smile, or not hate women in works because they still held the copyright on the short stories where he first did those things even though 90% of Sherlock Holmes stories were public domain. It's very likely Disney will assert similar claims over Mickey, claiming much of his personality first appeared in works still copyrighted.

Finally there's copyright vs trademark. Copyright is total ownership of a piece of media and all the ideas that appear in it, copyright has a limited set term and expires. Trademark is more limited and only applies to things used to market and sell a product. You can have a Coke branded vending machine in your movie if you want, but it couldn't appear anywhere in the trailer for your movie as thats you marketing your movie.

Where trademark ends and copyright begins and how trademarked something in the public domain is allowed to be are all unsettled areas of law and clearly Disney in the last few years as been aggressively pushing its trademark not just to Mickey in general but Steamboat Willie Mickey in particular

Ultimately the legal rights and wrongs of this might not matter so much since few people have the money and legal resources of the Walt Disney corporation so they might manage to maintain a de facto copyright on Mickey through legal intimidation, but maybe not?

And Tigger Too!

All the talk about Mickey Mouse and Steamboat Willie has sadly overshadowed other MAJOR things entering the public domain today. Most people are aware Winnie the Pooh entered the public domain in 2022, but they might not realize his beloved friend Tigger didn't. Thats because Tigger didn't appear till A. A. Milne's second (and last) book of Pooh short stories, The House at Pooh Corner in 1928.

Much like Mickey Mouse only what appears in The House at Pooh Corner is public domain so the orange bouncy boy from the 1960s Disney cartoon is still on lock down. But the A. A. Milne original as illustrated by E. H. Shepard is free for you to use in fiction or art. His friend Winnie the Pooh has made a number of appearances since being freed, most notably in a horror movie, but also a Mint Mobile commercial so maybe Tigger too will have a lot of luck in the public domain.

Other works:

Peter Pan; or the Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up

Peter Pan is a strange case, even though the play was first mounted in 1904, and the novelization (Peter and Wendy) was published in 1911, The script for the play was not published till 1928 (confusing!) meaning while the novel as been public domain for years the play (which came first) hasn't been, but now it is and people are welcome to mount productions of it.

Millions of Cats

The oldest picture book still in print, did you own a copy growing up? (I did)

Lady Chatterley's Lover

The iconic porn novel that was at the center of a number of groundbreaking obscenity cases in the 1960s and helped establish your right to free speech.

All Quiet on the Western Front and The Threepenny Opera in their original German (but you can translate them if you want), The Mystery of the Blue Train by Agatha Christie, and Orlando by Virginia Woolf will also be joining us in the public domain along with any and all plays, novels, and books published in 1928

for Films we have The Man Who Laughs who's iconic image inspired the Joker

Charlie Chaplin's The Circus, Buster Keaton's The Cameraman, Should Married Men Go Home? the first Laurel and Hardy movie, Lights of New York the first "all talking" movie, The Passion of Joan of Arc, The Wind, as well as The Last Command and Street Angel the first films to win Oscars for Best Actor and Best Actress respectively will all be entering public domain

For Musical Compositions (more on that in a moment) we've got

Mack the Knife by Bertolt Brecht, Let’s Do It (Let’s Fall in Love) by Cole Porter, Sonny Boy by George Gard DeSylva, Lew Brown & Ray Henderson, Empty Bed Blues by J. C. Johnson, and Makin’ Whoopee! by Gus Khan are some of the notables but any piece of music published in 1928 is covered

Any art work published in 1928, which might include works by Frida Kahlo, Georgia O'Keeffe, Alexej von Jawlensky, Edward Hopper, and André Kertész will enter the public domain, we are sure those that M. C. Escher's Tower of Babel will be in the public domain

Swan Song, Public Domain and recorded music

While most things are covered by the Copyright Act of 1976 as amended by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, none of the copyright acts covered recordings you see when American copyright law was first written recordings did not exist and so through its many amendings no one fixed this problem, movies were treated like plays and artwork, but recorded sound wasn't covered by any federal law. So all sound recordings from before 1972 were governed by a confusing mess of state level laws making it basically impossible to say what was public and what was under copyright. In 2017 Congress managed to do something right and passed the Music Modernization Act. Under the act all recordings from 1922 and before would enter the public domain in 2022. After taking a break for 2023, all sound recordings made in 1923 have entered the public domain today on January 1st 2024, these include.

Charleston by James P. Johnson

Yes! We Have No Bananas (recorded by a lot artists that year)

Who’s Sorry Now by Lewis James

Down Hearted Blues by Bessie Smith

Lawdy, Lawdy Blues by Ida Cox

Southern Blues and Moonshine Blues by Ma Rainey

That American Boy of Mine and Parade of the Wooden Soldiers by Paul Whiteman and his Orchestra

Dipper Mouth Blues and Froggie More by King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band, featuring Louis Armstrong

Bambalina by Ray Miller Orchestra

Swingin’ Down the Lane by Isham Jones Orchestra

Enjoy your public domain works!

#Copyright #public domain #public domain day #2024 #happy new year #Disney #mickey mouse #minnie mouse #Tigger #Winnie the Pooh #Peter Pan #Charlie Chaplin #buster keaton #cole porter #louis armstrong #M. C. Escher

[skiplo-wave]

See THIS is what I want dude!

I’m glad everyone just going hog wild with ideas of using Mickey in both good and the bad

#public domain #mickey mouse #felix the cat