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March 31, 2024 38 mins
Taken from a talk given by Joe to the Southeast District Bar Association in Los Angeles in March of 2024. See the pictures Joe is referring to on the Joe Escalante Live from Hollywood Facebook Page. 
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Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:07):
Joe Escalante live from Hollywood. ByHollywood, you mean Burbank, across the
street from a Wienerschnitzel. It sellsbeer. True story. People still don't
believe it. But that's what goeson here. This is two hours of
the business, end of show business. We do this every Sunday from five
pm to seven pm right here onk EIB. And we've been doing it

(00:30):
for I don't know, since twothousand and six or so. There's a
lot of shows like this now,but there was none forever. I mean,
there's no shows like this on liveradio, I'll tell you that.
But there are podcasts. Some ofthem good, some of them just very
cringey. You're like Joe, You'repretty cringey. Okay, here's what we're

(00:54):
gonna do today. We're gonna dosomething special. I spoke this week at
the Southeast District Bar Association here insouthern California on the topic of the public
domain. As Mickey Mouse falls intothe public domain, what does that mean?
And all the people there got anhour of MCL credit, and now

(01:17):
you're going to get an hour ofMCAL credit if you listen to this whole
thing. Actually, I don't knowif that's true. I guess you could
fill out a form and it wouldqualify. But what is MCL credit.
That's for lawyers when they have todo their continuing education as lawyers to keep
up, keep their legal chops up. So they had a dinner and I

(01:38):
made a little talk and there's somepictures. Also. I'll put these pictures
on my Facebook page so you cansee the pictures I'm talking about. This
is the Joe Ascolante Live from HollywoodFacebook page and this is from March twenty
seventh, twenty twenty four. ButI'm doing it live right now because you

(02:00):
deserve it and it's going to bebetter. All right. We're going to
start this with the purpose of copyright. This is something I call the piece
You've got to eat your pis beforewe get to the fun stuff. You're
going to get a primer on copyrightlaw, a little bit of trademark,
and some public domain stuff. Now, the primary purpose behind copyright law is

(02:24):
to quote foster the creation and disseminationof works for the benefit of the public.
That's from the Copyright Office. It'strying to encourage creativity and people to
create stuff by granting authors the exclusiveright to authorize certain uses of their works.
Copyrights provide the economic incentive to createnew works and to make them available

(02:47):
in the marketplace. So, inother words, if we let people make
money on their copyrights, they'll makemore copyrights. Now, if you're one
of those people that says we shouldn'thave copyright laws, there are many.
They're kind of like the people thatsays we shouldn't have borders on our countries.
That's a fine theory, and everybody'sentitled to have their theories. But

(03:09):
we have decided as a society thatwe should have copyright laws that protect the
creators and allow them to make somemoney when they create something, and then
they might create more things, andthen people will create really good things,
and then pretty soon you have,you know, Sergeant Peppers. Pretty soon

(03:36):
you have the movie High Noon,because people were allowed to make money from
their copyrights. If you don't letpeople make money, you're gonna have garbage.
So also, works are protected internationally, but they are done by treaties.
Can have a treaty with another countrysays if you protect our copyrights in

(04:00):
your country, will protect yours inthis country. And those are good things
to have, like the Burn Conventionis one the World Intellectual Property Organization Copyright
Treaty otherwise known as WIPO. Theseare necessary. Now there's a lot of
weird stuff that goes in a lotin a lot of other countries, like

(04:24):
China. You know, they don'tprotect our copyrights. They just like to
steal. They send over spies hereto collect information on corporate espionage, intellectual
property theft. That's just the waythey operate there. That's the kind of
society they've decided because they're run bya state, and the state has decided,
hey, we got to own everything, and why should we leave it

(04:47):
up to chance. Let's send spiesaround the world and steal stuff and we'll
make our own and we'll be aheadbecause we want to be ahead for whatever
reason, I don't know. Thenthere's Mexico. Mexico has some weird copyright
thing. Well, they protect itfor a while and instead of falling into
the public domain like it does hereand so everybody can use it. And
we'll talk about that in a littlebit, the government takes it. So

(05:10):
at a certain point, the governmentgets it and they get all the income
and fill their coffers. That's onething I guess theoretically they spread it around.
I know people very happy with theMexican government. The people I work
with at my church, you know, they're just like, I love this
president, go Bernadoora I think hisname is. They love them. He's
great, did this, he didthat, fights cartels, takes care of

(05:34):
the poor. So here we justthink it's all corrupt down there. But
for some people they disagree. Theymight say this place is corrupt. Okay.
So so basically what you want toget out of this part is that
the copyright laws are there to encouragemore copyrights. There's an actual Supreme Court

(06:00):
case that put it this way innineteen seventy five. The immediate effect of
our copyright law is to secure afair return for an author's creative labor.
But the ultimate name by this incentiveis to stimulate artistic creativity for the general
public good. Now, that cameout of the Supreme Court of the United
States in nineteen seventy five. Mostlawyers, and I was speaking to lawyers

(06:30):
when I'm doing that when I'm rightnow kind of, but most lawyers don't
really know much about copyright, andthey only hear about it when they're like
kid starts a band, or theirkid writes a script, or their kid
or they decide to write their memoirsor write a novel or something like that,
and then they think immediately they gotto copyright their novel. Who's going
to steal your novel? That's myfirst question. Who is going to steal

(06:51):
your novel? But I got peoplecalling my show and saying, I just
wrote my novel. How do Icopyright it? How I protect it from
someone stealing it? Who is goingto steal your stinking off? This is
nobody. Who's going to publish inyour novel? Nobody. If someone stole
your novel, you'd be very luckybecause then you'd get some attention. If
you wrote a song, who's gonnasteal that song? The answer is nobody.

(07:13):
So if someone stole your song,it'd be the greatest thing to happen
to your career, it would bemy guess. But yes, you should
copyright your songs. And when Isay copyright, I mean register the copyright.
You register a copyright, you getsome protection. But the way that

(07:35):
the laws are now, you getprotection when you create something. As soon
as you create it, you getyou get federal protection you're going to federal
copyright. You're a government I meanyeah, I mean your your work is

(07:55):
protected by the latest copyright actor.We'll get into that a little bit as
we talk about the history of thecopyright laws. Yeah, you didn't think
it was gonna it could get drier, but it can. Let's another thing
that people where they learn about copyrightsis from just rumors. They hear about

(08:16):
about Disney, and we're going totalk more about Disney. Disney's very big.
They've played a big part in shapingthe copyright laws in this country.
And one of the things they dois they send out letters if anybody's doing
the slightest infringement on one of theircopyrights because they have heard from their lawyers

(08:37):
that only a vigorous, a vigorouspolicing of their copyright will give them the
protection they need. And if theydon't vigorously protect their marks and their works,
that they could fall into the theycould lose their trademarks. That's like
where usually that is talked about inthe trademark area. And that's coming up

(09:00):
a little bit more. But rightnow we're gonna take a break. We're
gonna check the traffic and they're gonnahave more on Joe'scalante Live from Hollywood.
Joe'scalante Live from Hollywood. We areback with the copyright Legal Lecture special.
Okay, let's continue on here withthe copyright basics. Let's talk about Disney.

(09:30):
Now we talked about Disney. Disney. I wanted to make clear in
the last segment, Disney so vigorousin their defense of their marks and stuff
like that that they they kind ofmade like a chilling effect on the rest
of the world of whether people shouldmess with their copyrights. You're gonna if
you got a tattoo, you're goingto get a letter in the mail.
That is, people like get thisletter, they frame it. I don't

(09:52):
know how they find out you gota tattoo with Mickey Mouse, but that's
what goes on. And of coursewe're getting to the point where Mickey Mouse
and the Steamboat Willy cartoon and anothercartoon fall into the public domain. It
happened on January first of this year. So right now we're just kind of
given the history and to see howwe got to this point and what it

(10:13):
means. But first the basics continue. Now, who is eligible for a
copyright, what kind of works areeligible for a copyright. Generally, it's
anything that's minimally creative and can befixed to a tangible medium. Now,
minimally creative it means exactly what itsounds like. If it's just a word
that's not minimally creative, you can'tgo co op copyright a word you can

(10:37):
copy, you can't. And here'sthe things you can't copyright. You can
copyright what mostly people are copyright aregetting copyright protection for drawings and recordings and
sheet music and movies, even dancesteps. But you have to copyright those
footprints, not a video of someonedancing the footsteps or dress patterns. Now,

(11:03):
remember the Pharrell case, Farrell andRobin Thick versus the Marvin Gay estate
a few years back. What MarvinGay had a copyright in was some sheet
music, and Farrell and Robin Thickor just ruined for supposedly stealing the sound

(11:26):
and feel of a sound recording thatwasn't really the copyright. That wasn't the
copyright. The copyright was the sheetmusic. That's what they registered. So
in that case they should have justplayed had someone come into court and play
the sheet music and see if theystole that they didn't steal, that they

(11:46):
would have won the case, butit was bad jury instructions. We've spoken
about that before, and this isprobably what the worst thing that happens to
copyright holders or people who are justtrying to, you know, record music
that is influenced by other people isthat jury instructions are bad. So the
juries don't know what to go by. So the law, the legal cases

(12:09):
are sometimes just all over the mapand stupid. So here's the things you
can here's some things you cannot copyright. Ideas and facts. If you have
an idea. If let's say yousome grandpa in the garage tinkering with an
idea, and you're like, Igot an idea for a better adult diaper,
I'm going to register that. Youknow what that would be. That

(12:30):
would be a patent. If youhave an idea for a novel new adult
diaper, register patent. That's nota copyright, that's not a trademark.
So no ideas, no facts.What's a fact. If you have a
fact that says I have now discovereda new element in the elemental chart it's

(12:54):
this balloonium or something, well,okay, well that's a fact. There's
a new element. There's an elementfact. You can't copyright that fact.
Can't copyright the discovery of that fact. If you used it for something,
you could get a patent. Okay, back to what You cannot copyright work
with an expired copyright like the MickeyMouse one. You cannot recopyright it.

(13:16):
It expired. It's done. Workswith no original authorship like some old you
know, traditional melody, or abunch of people came up with it at
the same time and no one registeredit. No one really knows. It's
in the zeitgeist. You can't registerthat our paintings are photographs by monkeys.

(13:37):
There's if you look in my thepictures on the Facebook page, the monkeys.
This monkey took a selfie of himselfand it went to court and the
court said monkey can't own a copyright. So PETO wanted him to own the
copyright because then they could say,if the monkey can own a copyright,

(13:58):
then the monkey can have the kindsof rights and that kind of rights,
and they can take rights away fromyou. That's how peda is. You
can leave a message on my Facebookpage if you disagree us government works cannot
be copyright cannot get copyright protection.Is there a word copyrighted? Is it
a verb? People use it asa verb. I try to avoid that.

(14:20):
You cannot register for copyright protection.You cannot receive copyright protection. If
it's a federal government work like youcan go ahead and make a FBI shirt.
They can't do anything about it.However, state and local governments can
copyright their stuff, so be careful. Scientific principles, mathematical formulae, laws
of nature, as I talked aboutbefore, research methodologies, statistical techniques,

(14:43):
and theorems, whatever those are,cannot be copyright cannot receive copyright protection.
Laws and regulations, you don't getcopyright protection like legislative reports. These are
just facts, really, So thesekinds of a lot of this stuff all
comes to out of facts, words, names, numbers. A name you
cannot copyright a name, name ofyour business, the name of your band,

(15:07):
the name of anything cannot receive acopyright. What do you get for
your band or your business? Youget a trademark, Rules of grammar,
recipes cannot be received copyright protection.Okay, and then I've talked a little
bit about trademark. Let's switch overto the trademark laws. A trademark is

(15:33):
any word, phrase, or symbol, or a design that identifies your goods
or services. It is how productsor services are recognized and distinguished from each
other. So if you have aband, it's your band's called the Vandals,

(15:54):
you can get a trademark in thatband name because that distinguishes your band
from other marks, other people's bands. And a big thing that it does
is it it'll give you legal protectionfor your brand, but it also helps
the public. It might help youfrom counterfeiting and fraud. But it helps

(16:17):
the public from counterfeiting and fraud.And how does the public get harmed from
counterfeiting and fraud? They get harmedby something called the false designation of origin.
If you are looking at some kindof dog food for your dog,
and this one says it's called Hill'sbrand, super healthy dog food, and
then someone else comes up with superhealthy dog food calls it Hills brand,

(16:41):
but it's not healthy dog brood andit's made out of a kangaroo byproducts or
something. You wouldn't know that thatwas not where you usually get your healthy
dog food, and you might getyour dog killed. So it doesn't only
protect humans, it protects dogs,so Peter wants to get behind them,
you know, go ahead. Sothink about this. Copyright law protects the

(17:07):
author, the creator. Trademark lawprotects the customer. The public primarily got
that that is a good way tothink about it. Now, Trademark laws
expire after five years when you registerthem. It's pretty short, right,
We've got like ninety five years inthe copyright area. Trademarks can expire in

(17:32):
five years, but you can registerit again, and then after that you're
going to register it for ten yearsand then every ten years. You got
to do it. You got tobe vigilant. You can't trademark things that
you're just sitting on. You haveto be using them. In interstate commerce,
you can't trademark an idea and justsay oh, I might use it
someday, or trademark a name forit's for a product associated with the product.

(17:55):
You know, maybe you have abeer where you want to call it
pp beer or something. I'm justmaking up bad things right now, and
you got that would be a goodname for a beer, peepe beer.
Everybody loves peepee beer. But youdon't make the beer. Well, you
can. You could register an intentto make peepee beer, and you might
go through, but six months laterit's gonna expire, and someone else could

(18:17):
say come in and say I wantto make peepe beer, but I'm actually
gonna make it, and I'm goingto register this and that other one is
abandoned. It's an abandoned mark.Trademark got to renew them. But it
will never expire. You can keepdoing it forever. It's the copyright.
You don't have to keep registering itevery year, every ten year or whatever,
butter eventually it will disappear. NowI'm going to take a break and

(18:40):
come back more with Joe's Galantid Livefrom Hollywood, Special Copyright Lecture Edition Joe
Scalante Live from Hollywood. If byHollywood you mean Burbank, and we are
talking to Hollywood people right now,and you creators, authors, composers,
filmmakers, and we're going with aextendo copyright lecture to give you a primer

(19:04):
on copyright, trademark and public domainbecause everybody's talking about it because Mickey Mouse,
certain elements of Mickey Mouse fell intothe public domain recently, and it's
the number one thing on people's lipswhen they talk to me about intellectual property.
What's going to happen. Well,we're going to get there, but
for now we're just kind of movingkind of methodically. And if you miss

(19:29):
part of this, you could getit on the podcast version of the show,
which comes out every Sunday night.It gets put together and this radio
show becomes a podcast. Okay,this radio show has been going on longer
than there was a word of apodcast, So now it's just it's kind
of like both. Now let's goto the fair use doctrine. This is

(19:55):
an exception to the copyright law.With the fair use doctrine, it is
possible for you to use somebody's copy, somebody's material that has copyright protection and
is registered without asking permission and withoutpaying them. This would be the fair
use doctrine. There are four elementsof a fair use doctrine case if you

(20:22):
want to use it. This comesup a lot in documentaries because people,
you know, there's a lot ofprotected marks and copyrights and stuff in documentaries,
and how do they get to bein there. Well, some of
it is the fair use doctrine,or most of it maybe. Now the
fair use doctrine is now in thecopyright law. It's not just a theory

(20:44):
that you could argue. Now,let's say you want to use something like
a picture and you want to useit in your movie. Okay, there's
an author of that picture. Thepicture has an author olds the copyright.
Don't you need to get this permission? Maybe? Maybe not? Maybe don't
you need to pay him? Maybe? Maybe not? If you're just showing
it because you like the way itlooks and it's helping your documentary or worse,

(21:10):
helping your fictional movie, which wouldbe even harder to get in a
fair use argument, you would haveto ask that person for permission, get
their permission, get a license touse that. But if you're commenting on
the picture itself, you would nothave to get a permission or pay any
money because you have a rite offree speech to comment on that picture,

(21:33):
and you cannot comment on the pictureeffectively without showing the picture you have.
Okay, so here's the four I'llgo there over the four elements. Now
that you've had like a case studyhere in your mind. Okay, So
the court would look when they're tryingto figure out whether you use something in
the in the fair use under afair use doctrine, and as you can
see it would be probably very expensiveto even get to this point in court.

(21:55):
So you want to just make sureyou know what you're doing, and
sometimes you might just forget about it. Okay, So the court is going
to analyze the purpose and character ofyour use. Was it transformative. Let's
say you took a here's the examplethat two examples. There's a maybe an
article about logging. Someone wants toexpress the dangers of logging, and they

(22:22):
are tree huggers or whatever. Soin this case, someone took a bunch
of photographs of they took their ownphotographs, let's say, of some horrible
things happening to the forest as theresult of logging. Then they spliced in
a speech that had copyright protection froma guy in the logging industry, and

(22:48):
they wanted to show that everything hesaid was maybe false, or it has
another side to it, or they'regoing to dramatize it by showing a picture.
So this guy who wrote the speechsays, well, I'm going to
get him for reprinting my speech withoutpermission. But the court in that case
would say, well, that wasa speech, guy. But now because
of the use that the defendants madeof it, it was transformative. It

(23:15):
was transformed from your speech to acompelling statement about logging practices. It was
like a political statement. So nowit's like political speech. It has more
protection than regular speech. So youcannot stop people from creating this message by
juxtaposing these pictures with your words,because they transformed it into something else,

(23:37):
So you lose the court's look atthe nature of the copyrighted work itself.
Was it a factual story or afictional story? Because it would be harder
to take somebody's stuff and put itin your fictional story than it you know,
because how are you analyzing something ifit's in a fictional story. It
just be harder. If it's adocumentary a factual story, of course,

(24:00):
analyze that photo or that poem orsomething. And then you would need to
show the photo and at least anexcerpt from the phone to make your First
Amendment rights complete. Is it apublished work or an unpublished work, Believe
it or not. Unpublished work,they get a lot of protection because those
are like more private. Once youpublish something, there's a lot of you.
You lose a little bit of yourcontrol over it. Number three,

(24:23):
the amount and substantiality of the portiontaking. Let's say you take the whole
song and you analyze a song,but you recorded the song, and now
nobody has to buy the song becausehe can get it from you for free.
A photo, you reprint the wholephoto and make a comment on it
now, or you make a posterof the photo. Look at this,
I'm commenting on this photo, andhere's my poster of it. Now you

(24:44):
took away the poster market. There'sa movie called Expelled by Ben Stein where
he was trying to get the messageacross that religion has been trivialized in our
nation today. So he used theexample of the song Imagine by John Lennon.

(25:07):
In that song, there are lyricsthat say imagine no religion. So
he said, look, this isthe most popular songwriter in the world,
and he said imagine no religion.Like that's supposed to be a great thing.
Do you see how a public themodern artists don't. Not only do
they not like religion, they sayit would be a better place in general

(25:32):
without it. So that's his message. So to demonstrate that that is a
powerful message in the pop culture,he plays the song, but he doesn't
play all the song. He onlyplays as much as he needs to make
that point across Yoko Ono Susan.They go to court. Ben Stein wins
because his movie made a message,and the court said, you know what,

(25:53):
he had to play some of thatsong to make his point, and
he didn't take too much of it. He only took a little bit of
it. And then the fourth prongis what would the effect of this use
in the fair use have on theoriginal product. Nobody's gonna not buy or
download the Imagine song just because benStein put a little bit of it in

(26:17):
his movie, So that's what.Then the other prongs of the fair use
doctrine. Fairy doctrine is very handy, and we really need that for people
to be able to make documentaries andto make parodies and stuff like that.
All right, so now we're goingto go into the public domain. What
is the public domain? The publicdomain is where stuff goes when the copyrights

(26:37):
expire or if they never had acopyright. So work is generally considered to
be within the public domain if itis ineligible for a copyright protection or its
copyright has expired. Public Domain workscan serve the foundation for new creative works.
So you can take a copyrighted workand you can monkey with it and
make a new work. And societyhas decided, here's society again that after

(27:03):
a certain amount of time, protectionisn't really needed, and it's time to
let other people have a crack.Examples of stuff that people have had a
crack on and improved upon, oryou know, made, was movies like
movies about Anne of Green Gables thatis from nineteen oh eight, that's in
the public domain, Movies about BlackBeauty eighteen seventy seven, Christmas Carol eighteen
forty three. What would the worldbe like if we didn't have any Christmas

(27:25):
Carol stories or movies when Charles Dickenswrote this in eighteen forty three. We
don't need to give the descendants ofCharles Dickens's control over this forever. It's
better to let people take a crackat it, and we have plays and
musicals and all kinds of stuff likethat. Count Dracula eighteen ninety seven,
same thing, Journey to the Centerof the Earth eighteen sixty four, Wizard

(27:49):
of Oz nineteen hundred, although theWizard of Oz movie it wasn't in the
public domain when they made that.The big movie, but it is now
and people can do weird stuff withit if they want. So let's let's
just let that continue. Okay.So we're going to take another break,
and when we come back, we'regoing to show you how the history of

(28:11):
the Mickey Mouse character mirrors US copyrightlaw. And this is how ultimately Mickey
Mouse, as of January first,ends up in the public domain. Joe
Scalante Live from Hollywood, back afterthis, Joe ask Alanti, here's my

(28:48):
lawyer. You don't want money.Joe Scalante Live from Hollywood by Hollywood,
Mean Burbank or continuing the copyright mclE lecture did I gave last week for
the Southeast District Bar Association. Okay, So the history of Mickey Mouse mirrors
the history of US copyright right law. Steamboat Willie debuts in nineteen twenty eight,

(29:14):
and it is operating under the protectionof the Copyright Act of nineteen oh
nine. And before nineteen oh nine, the last major revision of the copyright
laws was the Copyright Act of eighteenseventy. Methods of reproducing and duplicating work
subject to copyright had significantly increased inthat time, you know, as the
modern world's coming up since the FirstCopyright Act in seventeen ninety. So you

(29:37):
see that the Copyright Act has beenaround. They've been having them since seventeen
ninety. And actually, if youlooked in the US Constitution, this will
blow your mind. Article one,Section eight, Clause eight. The Congress
shall have power to promote the progressof science and use arts by securing,

(30:00):
for limited times to authors and inventorsthe exclusive right to their respective writings and
discoveries. That's in the US Constitution. Okay, that's at the very beginning
of this country. Now, it'sthat important seventeen ninety First Copyright Act,

(30:25):
and now we're still operating off thesemodifications of nineteen oh nine. And then
in nineteen oh eight there was acase where the Supreme Court said that manufacturers
of panola music roles you know inthose player pianos, were not required to
pay the royalties to the composers becausethat wasn't it didn't fit the definition in
which at that time was definition wasa written or printed record of intelligible notation.

(30:49):
You know, they have no recordingsat that time. They haven't invented
these weird little cylinders that play onmake pianos play so it was just written
a printed record. So they hadto change the lot to night the law,
and in nineteen oh nine they changethat so that the piano player piano
composers could get their royalties. Thenwe have to go fast forward to the

(31:12):
Copyright Act of nineteen seventy six.Disney's getting a little nervous things might be
falling into the public domain that theymade, and so their lobbying to get
tougher laws, and you know,laws that will protect authors. And they
always say this protects authors and creatorsand writers, but what they're really saying

(31:32):
is it corrects. It protects theirgiant, multi million dollar, billion dollar
in multinational corporation. But that's okaybecause they make Disneyland when you let them
have their things, and you know, good movies like Blackbeard's Ghost. If
you haven't seen it, you shouldsee it. Foremost among the changes introduced
in nineteen seventy six was the creationof a federal copyright protection for every work
as soon as it is created,that is, when it is first fixed

(31:56):
in a tangible medium of expression,which could be that little wax role for
the player, piano, could bea movie, could be a digital file.
So Now you get protection as soonas you make something. You don't
have to register it and put anR on it in a date and all
that complicated stuff that you used tohave to do that caused a lot of
things to fall into the public domainbefore their time. Now all you have

(32:19):
to do is create it. Onceyou create it, it has protection.
Now why would you register it.You would register it to get two things.
Number one, attorney's fees if youhave an infringement case and you win.
And number two, you can suefor statutory damages, which are huge.
Now you can get a lawyer totake it on a contingency basis because
the lawyer is looking at all thismoney they're going to get and so they're

(32:40):
going to pay the upfront costs.That really helps the small guy. And
otherwise you'll never get a lawyer totake your case because they'll be charging you
five hundred dollars an hour one thousanddollars an hour. I heard about a
lawyer the other day that makes thirtyfive hundred dollars an hour. So you
need to have that contingency so thatthey will hey the upfront costs and they'll
split it with you if they win. Now later, we have this Sunny

(33:05):
Bono Copyright Term Extension Act that cameabout in nineteen ninety eight, and that
is, you know, was whenSunny Bono, the singer of you two
well as a congressman, right,you know, I'm right. So they
also called that the Mickey Mouse ProtectionAct, and that extended the copyright laws

(33:30):
a little more. In the nineteenseventy six Act, a copyright would last
for the life of the author plusfifty years for the last surviving offer,
or seventy to five years from publicationor one hundred years after creation, whichever
is shorter. Okay. The nineteenseventy six Acts also increased the renewal terms
for copyrights that were done before nineteenseventy eight. It's a little technical,

(33:53):
don't worry about it. Nineteen ninetyeight Act extended this to seventy years for
works of corp authorship, for seventyyears for people that regular authors, in
ninety five years for corporate authorship,or one hundred and twenty years after creation.

(34:15):
This law effectively froze the advancement dateof the public domain in the United
States for works covered under the olderfixed term copyrights. Under this Act,
works made in nineteen twenty three orafter. This is where Steamboat Willy comes
in, would not enter to thepublic domain until twenty nineteen or later.

(34:36):
Mickey Mouse specifically having first appeared innineteen twenty eight, and Steamboat Willy entered
the public domain in twenty twenty fourJanuary. First, you remember that it
just happened. Maybe you saw thevandals shirts on vandals dot com. We
have a whole line of Vandal's SteamboatWilly style Mickey Mouse shirts and they're selling
like hotcakes. I'm not here tosell you t shirts, but they are

(34:57):
selling like hotcakes. So this iscrazy. And people thought where they were
panicking, and Disney was especially panickingbecause they had such a history of enforcing
their copyrights and going after people,that what's going to happen Now They're going
to lose some of their Mickey Mousestuff they had already lost. We need
the Pooh, and we need thePooh. Someone made a movie last year

(35:20):
a couple of years ago called Bloodand Honey, and where we need the
Pooh is a murderer. You caneven make we Need the Pooh look like
a murderer. It's in the publicdomain. You can do whatever you want
once in the public domain, evenif it seems to hurt the present day.
We need the Pooh. There's asteamboat Willy horror film, same thing.
Mickey Mouse is a murderer. Doesn'tthat harm? Isn't that defamation?

(35:43):
Or isn't that, you know,unfair? I don't know. Courts are
allowing it. They got a FirstAmendment right to take an old thing and
make it new again and do whateveryou want with it. You can make
it, you know, like Isay, these are derivative works, these
are adaptations. You can and makea theme park ride. You can do
whatever you want with these things.Now as long as you're not you got

(36:05):
to use the steamboat Willie Mickey Mouse. Okay, remember that. If you
want to make a Mickey Mouse thing, you got to use that one.
Or there's one called plane Crazy.You can actually distribute these cartoons yourself if
you want too, now that they'rein their public domain. If you get
a copy of it, you canmake a copy yourself and sell DVDs of
it. It's in the public domain. Go ahead. So why do they
allow this? You know? Theyallow this so new cool things can be

(36:30):
created. Now, do new coolthings get created. Yeah, they do,
and we know that because we've seenWalt Disney himself do it. He
went out and got snow White Alicein Wonderland that's at eighteen sixty five product.
Hunchback of Notre Dame that's an eighteenthirty one product. Where would we
be without Walt Disney's The Jungle Book, one of my favorite movies of all
time, that was made in eighteenninety four. When he got it,

(36:52):
it was in the public domain.So this is what most people are asking
about. Peter Pan. Peter Pan'sa special case because of the government.
The UK government extended that copyright likein perpetuity because all the royalties were left
to a like a something called theGreat Ormond Street Hospital, you know,
for children, and so the governmentsaid, all right, we're going to

(37:13):
keep that when going so all thatmoney goes to that charity. But in
general, you know, things runout and you get to go do whatever
you want to do to them withthem. To them, just stay away
from the modern versions of these products. Don't put Mickey Mouse in a wizard
suit like from Fantasia, and juststick with the old Mickey Mouse and you're

(37:35):
going to be fine. And sincethis happened January first, you know,
I haven't seen a lot other thanthe horror film. And the horror film's
probably going to be terrible, andit's going to fade away in history.
It's not going to hurt Mickey Mousetoo much. The vandal shirts selling great,
but where ours are just cute andwe appreciate it. And Walt Disney
appreciated the public domain, so Idon't think he's turning in his grave or

(37:59):
anything. And this is just thenatural evolution of intellectual property. Box,
and that's it for me. Ihope you liked your copyright intellectual property lecture
and I will see you next timeon Joe'scalante Live from Hollywood. You can

(38:19):
look at a lot of these pictureson my Facebook page and it'll make a
little more sense. Ab
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