Doctor Who Faces Legal Threat From Son of Tardis Creator

[Sonic Doctor]

Copyright should enter the public domain after the creator's death.

Preferably a lot sooner than that.

Copyright is inherently a limit on the freedom of expression.

It's a useful one, that modern society needs to function, just as our property rights are limited by taxes, but just like taxes, it should be applied as little as it is absolutely necessary, instead of just coddling artists all the way, the priority should be on a practical, balanced economical benefit.

When movies are bringing in most of their rvenues in the first weeks, and the rest of in the first year, it's ridculous to let publishers hold IP for several decades, especially given that the kind of IPs that still stay relevant after decades are the biggest ones that already made their creators rich long ago anyways, and that have the most urgent need to be liberalized for public usage.

The point about money is only valid when the argument is only about money. Copyright isn't only about money.

I've been slowly working on a fantasy novel. If I ever get it published, my wanting full control over my work wouldn't be about money. It would be about people doing stupid stuff and acting like it is a part or associated with my work.

It is one of the reasons why we rarely see a good book get turned into a good movie. Some authors cave when they are given large sums of money from movie houses, and they just want to know that their work made it to movie level. The problem is, at that point very rarely do the movie creators do the book justice, because they don't know what makes the book good or even the point that the little things in the book matter.

From the latest of what I read in the past that was turned into a movie, the best example I can give of movie into book atrocities is Eragon. If it was a stand along fantasy movie, it would have been passable, but since it was based off a book, comparing to the book, the movie was utter shit. Some character and creature looks were wholly changed, and one plot point was changed to the point that it rendered a sequel, based on the second book, unmakeable because it makes it so that half the second book doesn't exist in the terms of making the sequel movie. Now, because the author, poorly used his copyright power, and the shit movie didn't do well, people that love the books and know what makes them good, will most likely never see a proper movie adaption.

Freedom of expression is crap when it comes to what I create, because what I create is mine.
Now after death, yeah, I give fuck all, cause I'm dead.
So after death is the best cutoff time for copyright. It shouldn't pass to family, because whatever money creators have made off their creation, if they didn't squander it away, will go to their family, if they didn't will that money someplace else.

 

[TheNarrator]

Well, on the upside, if this actually turns out in his favor it will probably causa a majestic fuss about the absurdity of copyright law. There isn't nearly enough outrage about that in our society.

 

[Entitled]

I've been slowly working on a fantasy novel. If I ever get it published, my wanting full control over my work wouldn't be about money. It would be about people doing stupid stuff and acting like it is a part or associated with my work.

There is no such thing as "full control" over an intellectual work. By it's very nature of being a limit on something, ccopyright is defined by arbitrary regulations of exactly how far it extends.

The time length before Public Domain is one such extent, even if it has one intuitive-sounding limit, the artist death (although what do you do where there is no single artist, but a developer/publisher studio orchestrating all production?)

But what about the Fair Use doctrine? How far exactly can "full control" go in banning parodies, critical commentaries, smaller quotes, or private re-use (TV show copying as time-shifting, etc.)? How big a cultural unit has to be before it's copyrightable?

To have "full control", would mean that every sound bite, every phrase, and every picture is owned by someone, disallowed from usage by anyone else. That *is* a huge burden on the freedom of expression, just to make certain First Creators feel better about ideas that they consider "owned".

It is one of the reasons why we rarely see a good book get turned into a good movie. Some authors cave when they are given large sums of money from movie houses, and they just want to know that their work made it to movie level. The problem is, at that point very rarely do the movie creators do the book justice, because they don't know what makes the book good or even the point that the little things in the book matter.

That all sounds convincing, as long as you assume that the original author is the insightful one, and the movie producers are the idiots. But what if it is the writer who has no clue about how to transform the work, and the producer whose hands are being tied by intrusive copyright law?

You can't enforce greater artistic value by law, especially not by censorship law, and super-especially not by censorship law that rather than at least directly mandating quality, automatically grants an arbitrary class of people (such as novelists) control over another (such as producers, directors, or actors).

Freedom of expression is crap when it comes to what I create, because what I create is mine.

Yet you aren't talking about control over the novel that you create, but about banning other people from creating their own movies.

If you are worried about audiences misidentifying the movie as your work, an easier solution to that would be to entirely limit copyright to the actual work being produced, instead of vague extensions to control the "franchise" or the "universe", so it would become more traditionally expected that many people publish many different sequels, adaptations, spinoffs, and crossovers based on a famous work, and they are not all related to a single brand, but free reimaginations.

If people have assumed that the Eragon movie is a direct counterpart to the book, that's because they have been conditioned to think of modern works in terms of "IPs".

 

[TallanKhan]

The article suggests that Tony Coburn held a copyright on the TARDIS design personally which has since been passed on to his heirs. The artical also states that the BBC claim to hold a copyright. As i understand it there are a couple of issues here:

First of all you would have to establish whether Mr Coburn ever had the right to copyright the design in his own name. If he was contracted to the BBC and created the TARDIS design under said contract then standard contractual provisions would usually mean that the artist or designer under contract would have no claim on the product. Imagine a supermarket employing an advertising consultant to redesign their logo and then that consultant trying to copyright the new design themself. Now the BBC would have had lawyers reviewing their contracts, even back then so i doubt this would have slipped though.

If both parties do hold copyright of the same design then if challenged the law usually falls on the side of the party who's copyright was issued first. However, the atricle implies that the son knew about the copyright long before inheriting it, which would suggest the previous copyright holders made a decision not the challenge the copyright. This would likely be taken into consideration when making any judgement.

 

[The Lunatic]

The man died in 1977? Interesting enough BBC trademarked the TARDIS in 76.
http://www.ipo.gov.uk/tmcase/Results/1/UK00001068700
If someone with more knowledge of trademarks want to correct me but if what I think is true this guy doesn't have a leg to stand on.

People whom are in the last year or month or their life tend not to be terribly able to go about filing copyright.

I don't know what he died of, but, given his age, likely some cancer or disease.

One could argue, that claiming the copyright when the guy was ill, is in a bit of poor form.

 

[Zombie Izzard]

The man died in 1977? Interesting enough BBC trademarked the TARDIS in 76.
http://www.ipo.gov.uk/tmcase/Results/1/UK00001068700
If someone with more knowledge of trademarks want to correct me but if what I think is true this guy doesn't have a leg to stand on.

People whom are in the last year or month or their life tend not to be terribly able to go about filing copyright.

I don't know what he died of, but, given his age, likely some cancer or disease.

One could argue, that claiming the copyright when the guy was ill, is in a bit of poor form.

If wiki is to believed than he worked on doctor who when it came out in 63 and only came up with the external look which he wouldn't of to be able to claim as his own since police boxes were already a thing. And I'm going to assume he left the show well before his death, which was a heart attack something that usually happens out of nowhere,and had plenty of time to register the trade mark. Should he get some recognition for helping create an icon? Sure but his son has no legal ground to stand on.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Coburn