> What's the point of buying something if the other person is allowed to steal it back.
If you can't make a profit off of a licensed property after 35 years of exclusive control, you've done something horribly wrong. If you sit on a licensed property and do nothing with it for decades, it should be allowed to revert to someone else, or better yet go into public domain.
The issue is, what happens if you have a work where e.g. the music and the script were written by different people? If one of them can terminate the license then you create a situation where nobody can distribute it because nobody has the rights to all of it anymore.
Of course, what they should do is have the copyright expire after 35 years. Then if the original creators want to make sequel at that point they're entitled to -- just like everybody else.
> what happens if you have a work where e.g. the music and the script were written by different people?
This happens ALL THE TIME. 2001 A Space Odyssey, Heavy Metal (1981-Blue Oyster Cult), Rocky (1976) airing on TV without Eye of the Tiger, It's a Wonderful Life was public domain but distributors needed to pay for the soundtrack. TV shows like Married with Children and Dave airing in syndication with different opening theme songs. etc.
All over archive.org you'll find tons of classic films but with the soundtracks stripped out.
Interesting. The article certainly gave that impression. It's strange that the process isn't automatic when the main requirement is simply submitting a notice.
Is that what is happening? My understanding of Termination of Transfer is that it keeps you from being able to make a sequel to your video game using the characters you licensed from me, but that the game you have already created you can continue to sell.
What the termination allows me to do as the creator of that character in this analogy is say - charcircuit isn't doing anything with my character for 35 years - I'm going to take back control and maybe do something myself with it or license it to someone else to do something with...
I don't think you are correct here. From the FAQ [0] on the website linked by the post:
“Derivative works” exception – although a successful termination causes all of the rights to revert, this will not affect exploitation of derivative works created during the lifetime of the agreement, even after that agreement has been terminated. Once the agreement has been terminated, the grantee (see the glossary) may continue after termination to utilize “derivative works prepared under authority of the grant before its termination…[consistent with] the term of the grant” (to quote from the U.S. Copyright Act). This means that if, for example, an author granted a company a 50-year exclusive license to create a movie based on the author’s novel, that company can continue to use and exploit the movie even after the author successfully terminates the exclusive license. The company may not prepare a new movie based on the novel; it may only continue to use the existing movie that it created when the exclusive license was still current.
Thank you, I was wrong. This does seem more reasonable. But it would be nice if minor changes were still allowed. For example patching security issues of a video game should be allowed.
I wish this were further up in the comments. Most people seem to be assuming that you get all the marbles back.
Imagine the chaos if someone were able to say ‘whoops, all those books you bought are no longer sellable!’.
Imagine if Alan Cox took back all the bits of Linux he wrote and decided they were no longer to be licensed under the GPL!
…although maybe it’s only a matter of time before that second thing happens somewhere? “The company may not prepare a new movie based on the novel; it may only continue to use the existing movie that it created when the exclusive license was still current” seems problematic for open source software (or commercial software! What if the original authors of the FAT file system decided to try to start getting royalties from new derivative works?…)
Under the U.S. Copyright Act, copyrighted works that qualify as “works made for hire” are subject to special rules that govern who becomes the first owner of copyright in a work. For regular works, the person who creates the work becomes the first owner of copyright. However, for “works made for hire” either the employer or person who commissioned the work becomes the first owner of copyright. Neither of these transfers of rights from the author to the employer or commissioning party, which occur by operation of the Copyright Act, nor any subsequent agreements entered into by the employer or commissioning party in relation to the work, may be challenged by the author or their family members.
There’s a whole lot more nuance there, but notably “A contribution to a collective work” is allowed to be a work for hire.
Yeah, if you license something to use in your game then that item comes with a license term. You did not buy it and you do not own it. If you did buy it instead of license it, you would be free to do whatever you wanted with it forever. But you didnt buy it, you licensed its use.
And I think it would be best if they could license the content in perpetuity so it doesn't come to that. But that's impossible as even if the studio gets a perpetual license, it can still be terminated.
Copyright was originally intended to last 14 years, after which the work is transferred to public domain. That was back in the 1700s, when the pace of life moved much faster than it does now.
If it weren't for Disney's success at regulatory capture, the copyright would be expired and anybody would be able to produce a fictional work featuring Roger Rabbit, including Disney.
I honestly can't tell if this is meant sarcastic or not. The power offset is so huge you need clauses like this to keep the power at some form of equilibrium.
The power dynamic is very asymmetrical. Disney is ABSOLUTELY free to negotiate with him to continue distributing the movie, running the ride, etc.
It has been 35 YEARS and Disney's failed to do anything else with the IP. The original creator wants to make a sequel, and now he's able to.
Also: you mentioned a scenario where you might make a video game and wanted to be able to distribute it in perpetuity. Unless you based the video game on some pre-existing creative work that someone else came up with (Roger Rabbit's Raucous Riot or something), you WILL retain the rights. Termination of copyright doesn't apply to works made for hire [0] (i.e., if you pay your employees to create the IP, it doesn't apply).
