December 2, 2025 • 39 mins
As Ben, Noel and Max close out another year of Ridiculous History, they return to the patently baffling world of intellectual property. In part three of this series, the guys finally tackle one of the weirdest concepts out there -- a thoroughly confusing thing called a 'copyright'. What is it? Where did this idea come from, how does it work... and what exactly does it protect? Tune in to learn more.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
much for tuning in. Uh, let's hear it for our
super producer, mister Max Copyright Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
I mean it was the only one. It was the
only possible nickname wise for this episode.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
I actually do have a copyright on myself. Yeah, but
I mean granted, we all get copyrights as soon as
we create something.
Speaker 4 (00:49):
But we'll get to that later.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Right, that's old. Yes, of course you put it out there.
Technically it's copywritten, but there's also, like you know, caveats today,
oh so many.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
And it reminds me of our conversation on the Daily
Zeitgeist about stuff like the poor Man's copyright. As we'll see,
having a copyright and defending a copyright can be a
little complicated. Oh, we've got to introduce ourselves. That's mister
Noel Brown. Hi, you're Ben Bolan. That's me, and we
(01:21):
are continuing our series on IP, the short term for
intellectual property.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
I p U P. We all pee for intellectual property.
And as we said off here, I P first, I
poop second. Yes, of course Max.
Speaker 4 (01:40):
Does the too hump camell have a too hump p.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
I don't understand.
Speaker 4 (01:47):
It's a reference to uh, everyone poops.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Yeah yeah, and then the less the much less popular
book Nobody Poops but you. Yeah, that's a family guy.
It's the one family guy joke. I remember.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
I think they called it like a Catholic children's book
or something.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
Oh, well, we're Catholic. He's like, oh, so you're a
horrible child and that is tent of sin protruding from
your body or something like that.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
I gotta tell you this has nothing to do with anything,
but talking about camels reminds me of a weird prejudice
or discriminatory thought that I've I've been trying to fix
it in my own head for years, But I just
think the two hump Bactrian camels are so much cooler
than the one hump camels. Yeah, I mean it's the
classic camel. You want the two hump or else. I mean,
(02:31):
it's like a built in saddle.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
I'm never gonna get over this. I'll have to start
hanging out with some one hump camel.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Remember when we were in the Middle East at that
market and they had camel rides, was that a one
hump or two hump had to have been a two hump.
You can't write a one hump, you'd fall right off.
You could write a one hump, you'd have to fit
it with a special sound. Yeah, that would be a copy.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
And maybe you could try to copyright some of these ideas.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Oooh see, but that would be more of a patent,
wouldn't it. It would do.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Check out our earlier episodes on this subject. So in
our previous episodes we had talked about like you were saying,
Noel Pattens and all other sorts of intellectual property. But
now we're going with something our research associate Max calls
the comic sands of intellectual property copyright.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
I think I get it. So we're gonna pull a
lot today from the very official copyright dot gov. Not
an org, not a commra on that. It's a gov.
It means used to mean something. Sure it, Sure did it,
Sure did. So if we go to this source, copyright
(03:44):
dot gov, which is pretty canonical for our purposes today,
we'll see you. We'll see it.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
Even think of a copyright as a genre or type
of intellectual property. The concept is that as soon as
you fick a creative work or original work in a
tangible form of expression medium, right, yeah, medium, then your
work is protected under copyright law in the This is
(04:12):
by the way, this just applies to the United States.
Things get stickier when you travel around the globe. But no,
what is original work for this?
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Something that's a creative work that an individual produces from
their mind. Place. That could include paintings, photographs, musical compositions,
original recordings, which is its own issue because there's lots
of different stakeholders. And musical recording because you've also got
the writing, you've got the actual property, the masters, all
(04:45):
that stuff. We'll get into that. That's one of my
particular nerddoms. Computer programs, software, video games, books, poems, any
kind of blog posts would technically fall under this. Films,
architectural works and the plans thereof right, plays, sonnets, I
guess that falls under poetry, illustrations, you know, comic books.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
It's pretty much creative acts, right, and a tangible form
of expression is It's a well intentioned it's a well
intentioned distinction, but it can also get a little sticky
when we're talking about the nature of something being tangible,
like dance, Is it choreographed dance, something you could copyright.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
I was gonna ask, and I think, well, that's a
good question, because you do often hear about choreography being
lifted or borrowed or stolen. I actually saw a thing
yesterday on Instagram where it was some digital you know,
kind of independent digital creator showing some sort of animatic
that they had made and published online of a fight scene,
(05:53):
like a lightsaber ish type fight scene, and then the
ab frame of a I believe a Marvel movie that
lifted every aspect including camera angles of that original work,
which that yeah, I don't I have to dig deeper
into that, but I was gonna ask the same thing.
Can you copyright like a funny walk I've seen, I've
(06:14):
seen a video the video you're talking about, or something
very much like it. Okay, it happens. Yeah, it happens frequently.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Yeah, because it's complex to stage a choreographed fight safely,
add in a way that still looks real.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
And carries the story.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
It may be a situation where the stunt coordinator or
the person responsible for choreographing the fight just uses their
own stuff sometimes, but in the video you're referencing, it
did look clearly like a lift.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
This was a person who had made the original thing saying,
hey look at this.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
At these they said, I didn't make the second version
of this, so I took it. I do want to
point out that copyright dot gov does one more, very
unusual thing for dot gov website. They have an exclamation
mark in their definition. They say architectural works, plays, and
so much more.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Gosh, how much more? A copyright duck of enlighten us.
Copyrights can be either original, meaning that they're created independently
by a unique human author. Boy a boy, We're gonna
start getting into some real interesting territory with AI, Like
can someone copyright an AI work they have prompted into existence?
That's all another question for another day. And have a
(07:30):
minimal degree of creativity that definitely describe AI work. Look,
I'm not trying to poo poo all AI work. And
then there's an interesting AI artwork, weird kind of use
of the technology yet there, But boy a boy, is
a lot of it hack or it can be fixed?
And what does that mean exactly?
Speaker 1 (07:46):
Yeah, So before we get to that, let's go to
a minimal degree of creativity. Just please, for an example,
let's say like, I used to have a lot of
technical writing gigs. So let's say you are a technical
writer and you're not crafting some philosophical exploration of the
nature of the soul, but instead you're like, here are
(08:07):
the requirements for this sort of request for funding prosentural writing. Right, Yeah,
that's a good way to put it. And so that
would still qualify as a copyright. But to your question
about something being fixed, that means that it is captured
in some way with the approval of the author the
(08:31):
creator in a quote sufficiently permanent medium such that the
work can be perceived, reproduced, or communicated for more than
a short time, so it's no longer ephemeral.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
And this gets into an interesting place back to the
music nerdom with like tapers, people that follow bands around
in tape concerts. A lot of jam type bands, you know,
the Fish and the Grateful Dead and the Liking Gizzard
and the Lizard Wizard. They are all about tapers, and
they do not pursue any kind of you know, recompence
(09:04):
for people putting these recordings out. King Gizzard in particular
actually releases the masters of their albums, their original creative works,
and allows individuals to press them in unique and creative ways,
and they don't ask for a dime of that. They
just ask for a copy of the work of the
thing so they can add it to their like crazy
(09:27):
archive of like versions of their albums.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
And they also so we're Gizzard fans, folks, they also
have done something really smart there. You could say it's
just creativity welcoming more creativity, but it also is huge
for growing their fandom. It's a great way to good will. Yeah,
it's a great way to pull in new listeners. It's
(09:52):
brilliant move. But this is the thing what makes copyrights
different from say other kinds of IP, like a pat
and it's because you get back to copyright dot gov.
Everyone is a copyright owner, ridiculous historians. You're listening now.
If you ever made anything original, you kind of have
(10:13):
a copyright. It just goes back to you, know how
you defend it, Like if you take a photograph, you
write a nifty little poem, you record a new song,
you're the author of it. And ma's with the comic
Sands analogy. I want to shout out your your allusion
to that excellent McSweeney's article which is all about fonts fighting.
Speaker 4 (10:37):
You're welcome. I wrote that all for I wrote that
specifically for you, Ben.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
For all the font heads out there, for all the fun.
We got our gizzard heads, and we gizz heads and
we got our font heads. So a trademark, right, is
a brand right. It's like a a company name, you know,
or the name of a product for example. There is
a certain similarity to that with regards to copyright. Whereas,
(11:01):
if you're the first one to use a trademark, I
believe you got a little bit of skin in the game.
If you can prove that you used it first in
a certain region, then you do have a little bit
of an argument for shutting somebody else down from using it,
just by virtue of being first to market with that thing. Similarly,
with the creative work, if you can show through timestamps
(11:23):
of original source files, for example, or a digital photograph
for example, that has embedded metadata on it, the shows
you did it before X person that claims it, there's
your argument as well. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
Yeah, So in the world of writing, one thing you
hear a lot about is the poor band's copyright, because
putting it in the post through an official government institution
gets you that stamp right, it proves that you have
done this thing by this point in time. But as
(11:55):
we've said before, oh for a.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
Thing that maybe isn't it so digital? Literally are showing
that you mailed this. There is then a record and
a postmark that dates it in time, and you can
use that as your argument.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
So I'm if I maybe don't trust my publisher entirely,
then I print something out, I mail it somewhere so
I can say, you know, HarperCollins or whatever, I made
this thing, not whatever story you're claiming. Of course, HarperCollins would.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
Not do that, probably not, And that would be particularly
important if you were super old school and maybe you
only did your writing on a typewriter. Right as a
post center, I emphasized writer. It's just fine to emphasize
the wrong word. But if you were doing it electronically,
you would obviously have that timestamp and wouldn't necessarily need
to send it to the post. I believe those two
things accomplish the same task, right, yeah, yeah, And everything.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
We're describing is an attempt to again secure some sort
of confirmation or authentication of the time in which a
thing was created, registering a work, officially getting the copyright
through the system isn't mandatory, but for things made in
(13:11):
the US, registration or refusal of registration is necessary if
you want to enforce the rights of the copyright in
court through litigation. This means like, if you register correctly
on time and don't do the poor man's copyright, folks,
it gets sticky in court. If you register correctly on time,
(13:33):
then you have the right to sue people to get
some compensation, to ask for damages from the court, to
get the offending party to pay your attorney fees in
case of a lawsuit. You're essentially taking out insurance. You're
paying a little bit of protection money just in case someone.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
Comes for you later. Yeah, and you really hit on
an important point there, Ben is. A copyright is not
a blanket protection from litigation. It just is your argument
in court that hopefully you know, will give you the
upper hand. In the same way that we've talked about
things like fair use. You can technically use a copywritten
(14:19):
work legally if it's transformative or if it falls under
these certain educational educational whatever, But that doesn't mean that
the copyright owner isn't going to come after you and
you're gonna have to defend your fair use in court,
which could well be expensive, and you could well lose.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
Without being without being two in the weeds here folks
peak behind the curtain. We have, over the course of
our careers, separately and together, dealt with issues like this firsthand.
One time, writing a show called Stuff of Genius, I
got in trouble with the creators of the Frisbee. They
(14:58):
were surprisingly whimsical about.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
It, you know, for kids, right.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
And then we got you got to call a flying
disc unless you have Frisbee's permission, turns.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
Out so, and that is a that is a trademark.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
Issue, right, And we got into another issue. Well, we
got in front of an issue here on our own
dear ridiculous history when we loved having the law and
Order sound c after we said Casey on the case
referring to our pala casey pegram h. And then we realized, uh,
(15:34):
there could be some litigation involved because they're very protective
of that specific even though it's so short that specific sound.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
Bump, Oh dick Wolf, don't play now, he will come
for you. There's a term that's about to pop up
phono record, which I really dig It sounds as our
glorious President would say, it's an old fashioned word PHONEO record,
it's an old fat it's a but beautiful word, and
(16:04):
it means, of course recording. But a lot of especially
in the last maybe twenty now, this is much longer
than that. There are a lot of copyrights, and it
almost falls under copyright and trademark when you have a
sound like you're talking about ben like, for example, the
McDonald's jingle, or any little tiny audio id for perhaps
(16:25):
for a radio station or for a brand, that's both
a trademark and a copyright.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
Yeah, and what are the craziest versions of this that
I remember hearing about? Oh gosh, earlier this year, I
was on the road when I heard about this. Apparently,
you guys, the dude who goes to wrestling matches and says,
let's get ready to rumble, he's not going to do
the voice. He owns it and he is super plugged
(16:52):
into anybody else using it.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
Well, if that's like your one thing, I mean, I look,
no shade on the guy. Maybe he's an excellent painter
or something in his probably life, but you know that's
his bread and butter, and he's of course going to
defend that if if he was lucky enough and smart
enough to lock that down, he did. Yeah, he super
dups locked it down.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
You also, if you have a copyright registered here in
the United States, you have the right to make what
we call derivative works based on your original work. So
let's say you have a you have a song called
third Man case idea, and then you decide you're going
to make a salsa version or a merengue version, because
(17:34):
why not. You could totally do that because you own
the original thing. You can also distribute copies or as
we said, phono records of the work to the public,
so you can sell it to people. You can also
sell the copyright itself or rent it out or grant
limited permission for people to use your thing.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
Like technically you are not supposed to what's the word
I'm looking for present, Let's say a copy written work,
you know, for money. Like if you're if you own
a cinema, for example, and you're showing films and you
aren't paying the copyright, you're gonna get shut down. Or
even if you're like doing it in a public square
(18:16):
and charging admission, or I think even if you're not
charging in mission MM hm.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
Yeah, people have gotten in trouble before for things like
private gatherings sometimes where you just you know, we all
know the classic fall and summer move. You wait till
the weather's nice, you get a big blank wall or heck,
a bedsheet of work, and then you have a projector
get a movie night in the backyard. People have gotten
(18:41):
in trouble for that, even though it is so unreservedly wholesome, right,
And it's also pretty rare that someone would come after
you for something like that. Just because it's rare, it
doesn't mean it hasn't happened. Yeah, it has happened, for sure.
And the copyright Your copyright rights also include things like
for I mean the work publicly.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
That's what I was That's the word I was looking for, Ben.
This performance Yeah, yes, technically a projecting something is a
is a kind of performance.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
Yeah, if you had a really curmudgeonly copyright owner or
a real go getter lawyer. Right, So that could be
anything for musical performance to a play, to choreography, literary recitation.
And I like how copyright dot Gov even points out pantomime.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
I did not know. I was not aware of the
wide world of mime law. Memory, Oh, mime law. It's
only only second to bird law. And yeah, I mean
I think I've expressed a little bit of confusion about
this at the top. But choreography and pantomime their own
their own category. Individual movements, dance steps themselves are not
(19:53):
copyrightable as in one particular aspect. But when you chain
them together and you make it into a a you know,
a unique combination of them, then it becomes a copyrightable.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
Okay, so you can't own put your left foot in,
but you can own hokey pokey, that's right. And you
can't own the color blue, but you can own a
work that incorporates the color blue and involves unique combinations
of like, you know, other colors, like the IBM logo
(20:27):
sure beating example.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
So you can also display the work publicly. These are
basic things. They make sense. That's the what of the copyright.
Oh and just really quickly, I'm sorry I'm hung up
on this, but I was just I found an article
on Copyright Alliance, which is a dot org. And here's
just a little clarification around the movement aspects. Here are
some things that are not copyrightable. Yoga positions, a celebratory
(20:50):
end zone dance move or athletic victory gesture, ballroom folk line,
square and swing dances or general exercise routines. And here's
the funny one. And I wonder if there's some wiggle
room here skateboarding or snowboarding tricks. But what if you
had one that was like had never been done before,
Like surely there's some way to at the very least
(21:10):
like trademark. Maybe that's more of a trademark thing where
you're calling it the thing and it's associated with a
particular skate or snowboarder.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
Right like you're Tony Hawk. You make some amazing new
trick and somebody you can own for that. But it's
also it's kind of a dick move to stop other
skateboarders from trying that because they're aspiring. It's it's flattery
for them to want to learn from you. It's uh,
it's interesting too because I would pause it, fellow ridiculous
(21:39):
historians that in each of those cases that we heard
read off on that list from the Alliance, we see
a little bit of history. Someone definitely tried to copyright
an end zone dance. Someone definitely tried to copyright aligne dance.
That's why it's that's why there are there's such specificity
(22:01):
of language here. It reminds me of walking into stores
and seeing a really specific warning SIGDN, like you see
no shirt, no shoes, no service, and you're like, who
just walked in here in their underwear? And how often
did it happen? Because it had to happen often enough
for somebody to look at their coworker and say, crap,
(22:24):
we need a sign.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
Max did it? Max did it? Max is an underwear guy, Yeah,
he's for sure. It also reminds me of the scene
in Wayne's World where Wayne starts playing a thing that
sounds nothing like stairway to Heaven, by the way, and
then that gets our shop attendant them down, shut them down,
points to the sign that says no stairway to Heaven.
But I was also thinking it'd be funny to have
a no showboating rule for stores that like don't allow
(22:45):
you to do you know, peacocky end zone dances, you
know while I'm in the store or music stores.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
Yeah, or I want to find the most specific law
or warning sign in his store has an incredibly crazy
story behind it, you know, like no misbehaving horses. No
lama spitting after six pm.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
Well, that reminds me of an episode that I'm certain
we did just about odd laws still in the monks
in certain states. That sounds like, you know, that would qualify.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
The reason I'm harping on the history here is because
what we do. We talked about the what of the
copyright and you can probably already see some of the
some of the sticky wickets, but we also want to
talk about the when. When did this become a thing?
How did we get in this real situation. It might
surprise some of us in the audience tonight to realize
(23:42):
that yet trademarks might date all the way back to
the Medieval Age in Western Europe, but copyright as a
concept is way more recent.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
Yeah. According to the Intellectual Property Rights Office direct quote
from them, the world's first copyright law is the Statute
of and an Act that in England in seventeen ten.
This act introduced for the first time the concept of
the author of a work being the owner of its
copyright and laid out fixed terms of protection. This is
a long one, BM, but I think worth reading. You
(24:13):
want to want to pick it.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
Up, sure, Following this Act, copyrighted works were required to
be deposited at specific copyright libraries and registered at the
Stationer's Hall. So what this means to pause here, is
that your copyright has to go through a very specific system,
(24:34):
and if a version of your thing is not deposited
at these specialized libraries, then it is not copyrighted. Even
if you wrote it, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
But in those days there was no automatic copyright protection
for unpublished works, which we've talked about today doesn't necessarily
have to have been published and just needs to have
been committed to a medium. Continuing from Intellectual Property Rights Office,
legislation based on the Statute of ann gradually appeared in
other countries, such as the Copyright Act of seventeen ninety
in the United States, but copyright legislation remained uncoordinated at
(25:08):
an international level until the nineteenth century.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
And one bully Boy bonus points for the founding fathers
of the US, they talk about this in the Constitution
in Article one, section eight. That's the same part of
the text that we mentioned in previous episodes that establishes
the rules of the legal road for patents and trademarks.
(25:33):
So let's go the Burn Convention of not Bernie Sanders
reference ber Ee. In eighteen eighty six, the Burn Convention
is introduced, and it's kind of coordinating everybody together at
an increasingly connected world. So the Burn Convention is this
(25:54):
just it's an agreement to say, hey, different countries have
some being like a copyright for their domestic population, so
let's all just respect the copyright like a German copyright
should still carry o.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
The credits should transfer to France as well. Yeah, exactly.
Let's simplify this a little bit. It does away with
the need to register those works independently in separate countries.
It also has been the Burned Convention adopted by almost
all the nations of the world. So following the US
as adoption of the treaty in nineteen eighty eight, wow,
(26:33):
the convention now covers almost all major countries, but not
all of them, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1 (26:39):
And being covered on paper is maybe not the same
thing as being covered in practice. Like a shout out
to the Chinese publishing industry where since we were recently
talking about Harry Potter, you might be interested to know, Yeah, definitely,
Alice too is dope, you might be interested to know
(27:00):
that there are a ton of Harry Potter books published
in China, at least from my understanding, that are not
written by JK.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
Rowling. Someone just liked the idea of Harry Potter. Well,
and we're here. We'd call that fanfic, and technically that's prosecutable, right,
but it usually isn't because it is considered sort of
like a niche internet culture thing, and they don't get
too much of a Gizzard concert totally. I suppose that's. Yeah,
that's fair, but it usually doesn't get enough traction or
(27:34):
generate enough revenue that it's worth anybody's time to go
after like all these individual fanfic writers. But over there
in China it's a little separate issue, isn't it.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
Yeah, And look, one of the biggest changes that comes
about with the Burn Convention was to extend copyright protection
to things that hadn't been published two unpublished works and
then remove that long standing requirement for registration. That means
(28:01):
there's good news, folks. That means that as an individual
or is the organization that you're working for, if you,
you say, have a job doing podcasts, you automatically own
the copyright of any work produced as soon as it
is recorded in some way, drawing it, filming it, writing
it down. And this is good overall for the creators
(28:24):
of original works. It's a system that helps people retain
ownership and agency and get compensated for their time. But
it's still kind of fragmented as a system globally, so
(28:47):
the rules in your neck of the global woods may
be very different from those in another place. And one
of the things we have to ask about, of course, is,
all right, let's say we got a copyright, how long
does this bad boy last? The general rule, which is
kind of weird, The general rule is that for things
(29:09):
created after nineteen seventy eight, copyright protection applies for the
life of the creator and then seventy years after that.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
At which point it enters into the public domain, which
we've seen happen for a handful of legacy properties in
the last handful of years, like Winnie the Pooh. I
believe a version of Mickey Mouse, the Steamboat Willie version
of Mickey Mouse, certain songs. I'm trying to think of
some big examples, So those are the two that come
(29:41):
to mind.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
Yeah, you're in my head with the mention of Disney,
because Disney has for a long time used its enormous
power and heft to conduct legal disputes for protecting especially
they're older creations. So the nineteen twenty eight cartoon Steamboat
Willie entered public domain in like twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2 (30:06):
I think that's right.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
Yeah, And so do check out do check out all
of the the kerfuffle there, and you'll see how seriously
companies like Disney take the concept of rights and trademarks
and copyrights.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
Well, in the moment that happened, you started to see
a lot of derivative works coming out featuring some of
those characters. Like there was a really cool retro kind
of shooter video game that came out that I can't
remember the name of, but it was basically a Mickey
Mouse like run and gun kind of a shooter, first
person shooter game. And there was also like a horror
(30:41):
movie version of Winnie the Pooh called like Blood and
Honey or something like that that came out real quick,
like they'd already had it in production waiting for that
to drop, and then they like they rushed it out,
you know, and it made some noise because of the
novelty of it. Yeah, and still when something enters public domain.
It's not the end of the game, especially for a
(31:03):
company as powerful as Disney, because this is more a
trademark thing, but they have a legal leg to stand
on if they go back to court and say, hey,
our buddy, steamboat Will is in the public domain. But
the way it's being used in this instance could lead
people to think Disney has officially approved this or endorsed it,
(31:25):
or it to Disney product. So if you came out
with something called, for example, Steamboat Billy and Steamboat Billy
is slapped on things that look like Disney stuff, then
you can get in trouble. That's exactly right.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
It's not the end of the game. But eventually, after
a certain amount of time, your copyright is gone. It's
in the public domain. And this has led a lot
of companies, especially in the entertainment industry, to continue create
new copyrighted material. Right you create, That's why they create
(32:06):
new distinct versions of Mickey Mouse to sort of section
out or block out the time window of copyright. So
each of those different Mickeys has a different copyright.
Speaker 2 (32:19):
Yeah, exactly, the different iterations, the different eras, etcetera. And
like Disney to your point earlier, ben is the kind
of company that can is so powerful that it can
almost like affect the law. Yeah, for some time they
kept that Steamboat Willie version of Mickey out of the
public domainion, and then they were able to extend that
(32:40):
much longer than any mere moral would be able to do. Yeah,
they were just pushing the time window further and further
and probably putting a lot of lawyers' kids through college,
you know what I mean. So there's a silver lining there,
and now the question becomes, Okay, can you use a
copyright that is not yours? Kind of Yeah, exactly, you
(33:04):
sure can. I'm paraphrasing from copyright dot Gov. It's really
important to know that we are all users of copyrights.
Every time we consume a piece of media, we are
participating in that copyright. We are consuming it, reading books,
watching movies, listening to albums, playing video games, you know,
(33:24):
using creative software tools, enterprise stuff, whatever we were using. Yeah,
we are using copy written works. So even if you're
not the owner of a work, you are still able
to use it. Yeah, that's the point. I mean, that's like, yeah,
we're putting these things out in the world, typically to
be consumed by others. We just want to have protection
(33:48):
so that nobody can profit from it and you know,
take money out of our pockets.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
Yeah, and also howgiarize, how would you write a law
that didn't have that in there? How would you because
essentially you'd be saying, hey, buying a book does not
give you the right to read it, you know, so
it would you have a.
Speaker 2 (34:08):
Good point, Ben, That is a really important distinction, right right. Technically,
if you didn't pay for it, then you're yeah, then
you're a bad kid. But it's also but then there's
also like, I don't know, that's that's very interesting because
is it technically illegal to read magazines at a bookstore? Like,
if you didn't pay for it, are you stealing that
(34:28):
copywritten work when you're not compensating the holder?
Speaker 1 (34:32):
Oh, you would have to be such a busy body
the problem. Yeah, I mean that's a man that's an
assistant manager having a bad day. So we know that
there are exceptions and limitations to the Copyright Act. You
can find this listed on copyright dot gov. There are
(34:53):
things we've talked about already, like fair use and the
first sale doctrine. There are some thankful, some specific rights
for archives and libraries. You know, it gets complicated with
cable and satellite as well. Let's not even get into
televise sports for a moment.
Speaker 2 (35:11):
Max. That was for you.
Speaker 1 (35:13):
And we know that there are things that are never
protected by copyright, like facts and discoveries. You can patent,
you know, a new wonder drug based on scientific research
you've done, but you can't patent the scientific truths that
(35:33):
you discovered in your research, yes, or like you can
patent maybe or I don't know, see what about like
naming an element.
Speaker 2 (35:39):
On the periodic table, or like discovering a new metal
for example, that is a naturally occurring thing and you
maybe can name it after yourself and register that, but
you don't like own the material. Yeah, no, you can't
be like the nickel king. You can try. You could
hoard your nickels like a smile, you know, start hord
(36:02):
Dungeon for pennies too, folks. The last US penny was
just was just stamped. No, the last penny dropped. The
last penny dropped.
Speaker 1 (36:12):
Uh and uh I am as as you know, nol,
I am beyond excited about that. I think it's great,
But uh, I wanted to make space and just send
our condolences to anybody who's a fan of those little
tourist penny stamper machines.
Speaker 2 (36:28):
Anybody wants to do a candlelight vigil for pennies, We're
here for it.
Speaker 3 (36:32):
Now.
Speaker 2 (36:32):
I know, man, you've got, you got, You've got beef
with pennies. I don't they make your fingers smell weird.
I don't care for him either, and they're when's the
last time you spend a penny?
Speaker 4 (36:42):
Second?
Speaker 2 (36:43):
Second?
Speaker 4 (36:45):
Yeah, we should have got rid of them, like decads.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
It does seem like a bit of a waste of material,
So I'm with you guys.
Speaker 1 (36:50):
Canada was in front of us on that one for sure,
so thank you to our northern neighbors. Now, at this point,
we know that current all pre nineteen sixty two US
works are in the public domain because copyright protection has expired.
But again, powerful forces can change the law and push
(37:11):
that conversation, so at some point it won't be a
surprise when copyright law once again evolves, especially with all
the technological breakthroughs we've been talking about in this episode. Nola,
I think it's pretty exciting as we're wrapping up here
to realize that we're all copyright owners.
Speaker 2 (37:32):
All copyright owners and users. And if you want a
little bit of a nugget of current events information at
the end, here the handful of pieces of work that
are entering the public domain in twenty twenty six. Coming
up are some books William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying
and The Incredible Detective Mystery, nor author dashil Hamnet's The
(37:54):
Multese Falcon, the book, not the movie. Excellent movie by
the way, with Humphrey Bogard, I believe yeah.
Speaker 1 (38:01):
Also Pluto the Dog Betty Boop. In the year after that,
in twenty twenty seven, Virginia Wolf's Lighthouse, the movie Seventh Heaven.
I'm excited about this one, the German sci fi film Metropolis,
and then a bunch of music that might be familiar
to people like Duke Ellington and Bubba Miley's collaboration Black
(38:22):
and Tan Fantasy. So we're on the precipice of some
really weird and interesting stuff. I wonder what the first
few Faulkner derivatives are gonna be. As I Lay frying,
as I spray crying, Well.
Speaker 2 (38:36):
You know, with this kind of boom in noir ish
kind of throwbacky stuff like the Knives Out series and
you know a lot of that stuff that Ryan Johnson's doing.
I could see some real fun spins on Maltice Falcon.
Speaker 1 (38:50):
Yes, yes, yes, that's so Falcon, which I've started saying
it's that it is.
Speaker 2 (38:55):
Yeah. We hope you enjoyed this episode. Thank you for
two d in folks here.
Speaker 1 (39:01):
As we're officially in the thick of the holiday season
at the end of the year, we can't wait to
have more ventures with you through November and throughout December
and then on to twenty twenty six.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
I can't believe we're saying it. We're so close to
a new year. Indeed, huge thanks to Alex Williams, who
composed our theme. Oh gosh, that Max Williams, who is
not only our super producer at Shortinaire, but also our
research associate on this episode.
Speaker 1 (39:25):
Big big thanks to aj Bahamas, Jacobs, doctor Rachel big
Spinach Lance and a civil yet cold good day, Sir
to Jonathan Strickland ak the Twister.
Speaker 2 (39:39):
A bit of a boo, biting of the thumb, A
bit of a biting of the thumb. We'll see you
next time, folks. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
much for tuning in. Uh, let's hear it for our
super producer, mister Max Copyright Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
I mean it was the only one. It was the
only possible nickname wise for this episode.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
I actually do have a copyright on myself. Yeah, but
I mean granted, we all get copyrights as soon as
we create something.
Speaker 4 (00:49):
But we'll get to that later.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Right, that's old. Yes, of course you put it out there.
Technically it's copywritten, but there's also, like you know, caveats today,
oh so many.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
And it reminds me of our conversation on the Daily
Zeitgeist about stuff like the poor Man's copyright. As we'll see,
having a copyright and defending a copyright can be a
little complicated. Oh, we've got to introduce ourselves. That's mister
Noel Brown. Hi, you're Ben Bolan. That's me, and we
(01:21):
are continuing our series on IP, the short term for
intellectual property.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
I p U P. We all pee for intellectual property.
And as we said off here, I P first, I
poop second. Yes, of course Max.
Speaker 4 (01:40):
Does the too hump camell have a too hump p.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
I don't understand.
Speaker 4 (01:47):
It's a reference to uh, everyone poops.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Yeah yeah, and then the less the much less popular
book Nobody Poops but you. Yeah, that's a family guy.
It's the one family guy joke. I remember.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
I think they called it like a Catholic children's book
or something.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
Oh, well, we're Catholic. He's like, oh, so you're a
horrible child and that is tent of sin protruding from
your body or something like that.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
I gotta tell you this has nothing to do with anything,
but talking about camels reminds me of a weird prejudice
or discriminatory thought that I've I've been trying to fix
it in my own head for years, But I just
think the two hump Bactrian camels are so much cooler
than the one hump camels. Yeah, I mean it's the
classic camel. You want the two hump or else. I mean,
(02:31):
it's like a built in saddle.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
I'm never gonna get over this. I'll have to start
hanging out with some one hump camel.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Remember when we were in the Middle East at that
market and they had camel rides, was that a one
hump or two hump had to have been a two hump.
You can't write a one hump, you'd fall right off.
You could write a one hump, you'd have to fit
it with a special sound. Yeah, that would be a copy.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
And maybe you could try to copyright some of these ideas.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Oooh see, but that would be more of a patent,
wouldn't it. It would do.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Check out our earlier episodes on this subject. So in
our previous episodes we had talked about like you were saying,
Noel Pattens and all other sorts of intellectual property. But
now we're going with something our research associate Max calls
the comic sands of intellectual property copyright.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
I think I get it. So we're gonna pull a
lot today from the very official copyright dot gov. Not
an org, not a commra on that. It's a gov.
It means used to mean something. Sure it, Sure did it,
Sure did. So if we go to this source, copyright
(03:44):
dot gov, which is pretty canonical for our purposes today,
we'll see you. We'll see it.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
Even think of a copyright as a genre or type
of intellectual property. The concept is that as soon as
you fick a creative work or original work in a
tangible form of expression medium, right, yeah, medium, then your
work is protected under copyright law in the This is
(04:12):
by the way, this just applies to the United States.
Things get stickier when you travel around the globe. But no,
what is original work for this?
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Something that's a creative work that an individual produces from
their mind. Place. That could include paintings, photographs, musical compositions,
original recordings, which is its own issue because there's lots
of different stakeholders. And musical recording because you've also got
the writing, you've got the actual property, the masters, all
(04:45):
that stuff. We'll get into that. That's one of my
particular nerddoms. Computer programs, software, video games, books, poems, any
kind of blog posts would technically fall under this. Films,
architectural works and the plans thereof right, plays, sonnets, I
guess that falls under poetry, illustrations, you know, comic books.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
It's pretty much creative acts, right, and a tangible form
of expression is It's a well intentioned it's a well
intentioned distinction, but it can also get a little sticky
when we're talking about the nature of something being tangible,
like dance, Is it choreographed dance, something you could copyright.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
I was gonna ask, and I think, well, that's a
good question, because you do often hear about choreography being
lifted or borrowed or stolen. I actually saw a thing
yesterday on Instagram where it was some digital you know,
kind of independent digital creator showing some sort of animatic
that they had made and published online of a fight scene,
(05:53):
like a lightsaber ish type fight scene, and then the
ab frame of a I believe a Marvel movie that
lifted every aspect including camera angles of that original work,
which that yeah, I don't I have to dig deeper
into that, but I was gonna ask the same thing.
Can you copyright like a funny walk I've seen, I've
(06:14):
seen a video the video you're talking about, or something
very much like it. Okay, it happens. Yeah, it happens frequently.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Yeah, because it's complex to stage a choreographed fight safely,
add in a way that still looks real.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
And carries the story.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
It may be a situation where the stunt coordinator or
the person responsible for choreographing the fight just uses their
own stuff sometimes, but in the video you're referencing, it
did look clearly like a lift.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
This was a person who had made the original thing saying,
hey look at this.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
At these they said, I didn't make the second version
of this, so I took it. I do want to
point out that copyright dot gov does one more, very
unusual thing for dot gov website. They have an exclamation
mark in their definition. They say architectural works, plays, and
so much more.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Gosh, how much more? A copyright duck of enlighten us.
Copyrights can be either original, meaning that they're created independently
by a unique human author. Boy a boy, We're gonna
start getting into some real interesting territory with AI, Like
can someone copyright an AI work they have prompted into existence?
That's all another question for another day. And have a
(07:30):
minimal degree of creativity that definitely describe AI work. Look,
I'm not trying to poo poo all AI work. And
then there's an interesting AI artwork, weird kind of use
of the technology yet there, But boy a boy, is
a lot of it hack or it can be fixed?
And what does that mean exactly?
Speaker 1 (07:46):
Yeah, So before we get to that, let's go to
a minimal degree of creativity. Just please, for an example,
let's say like, I used to have a lot of
technical writing gigs. So let's say you are a technical
writer and you're not crafting some philosophical exploration of the
nature of the soul, but instead you're like, here are
(08:07):
the requirements for this sort of request for funding prosentural writing. Right, Yeah,
that's a good way to put it. And so that
would still qualify as a copyright. But to your question
about something being fixed, that means that it is captured
in some way with the approval of the author the
(08:31):
creator in a quote sufficiently permanent medium such that the
work can be perceived, reproduced, or communicated for more than
a short time, so it's no longer ephemeral.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
And this gets into an interesting place back to the
music nerdom with like tapers, people that follow bands around
in tape concerts. A lot of jam type bands, you know,
the Fish and the Grateful Dead and the Liking Gizzard
and the Lizard Wizard. They are all about tapers, and
they do not pursue any kind of you know, recompence
(09:04):
for people putting these recordings out. King Gizzard in particular
actually releases the masters of their albums, their original creative works,
and allows individuals to press them in unique and creative ways,
and they don't ask for a dime of that. They
just ask for a copy of the work of the
thing so they can add it to their like crazy
(09:27):
archive of like versions of their albums.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
And they also so we're Gizzard fans, folks, they also
have done something really smart there. You could say it's
just creativity welcoming more creativity, but it also is huge
for growing their fandom. It's a great way to good will. Yeah,
it's a great way to pull in new listeners. It's
(09:52):
brilliant move. But this is the thing what makes copyrights
different from say other kinds of IP, like a pat
and it's because you get back to copyright dot gov.
Everyone is a copyright owner, ridiculous historians. You're listening now.
If you ever made anything original, you kind of have
(10:13):
a copyright. It just goes back to you, know how
you defend it, Like if you take a photograph, you
write a nifty little poem, you record a new song,
you're the author of it. And ma's with the comic
Sands analogy. I want to shout out your your allusion
to that excellent McSweeney's article which is all about fonts fighting.
Speaker 4 (10:37):
You're welcome. I wrote that all for I wrote that
specifically for you, Ben.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
For all the font heads out there, for all the fun.
We got our gizzard heads, and we gizz heads and
we got our font heads. So a trademark, right, is
a brand right. It's like a a company name, you know,
or the name of a product for example. There is
a certain similarity to that with regards to copyright. Whereas,
(11:01):
if you're the first one to use a trademark, I
believe you got a little bit of skin in the game.
If you can prove that you used it first in
a certain region, then you do have a little bit
of an argument for shutting somebody else down from using it,
just by virtue of being first to market with that thing. Similarly,
with the creative work, if you can show through timestamps
(11:23):
of original source files, for example, or a digital photograph
for example, that has embedded metadata on it, the shows
you did it before X person that claims it, there's
your argument as well. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
Yeah, So in the world of writing, one thing you
hear a lot about is the poor band's copyright, because
putting it in the post through an official government institution
gets you that stamp right, it proves that you have
done this thing by this point in time. But as
(11:55):
we've said before, oh for a.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
Thing that maybe isn't it so digital? Literally are showing
that you mailed this. There is then a record and
a postmark that dates it in time, and you can
use that as your argument.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
So I'm if I maybe don't trust my publisher entirely,
then I print something out, I mail it somewhere so
I can say, you know, HarperCollins or whatever, I made
this thing, not whatever story you're claiming. Of course, HarperCollins would.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
Not do that, probably not, And that would be particularly
important if you were super old school and maybe you
only did your writing on a typewriter. Right as a
post center, I emphasized writer. It's just fine to emphasize
the wrong word. But if you were doing it electronically,
you would obviously have that timestamp and wouldn't necessarily need
to send it to the post. I believe those two
things accomplish the same task, right, yeah, yeah, And everything.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
We're describing is an attempt to again secure some sort
of confirmation or authentication of the time in which a
thing was created, registering a work, officially getting the copyright
through the system isn't mandatory, but for things made in
(13:11):
the US, registration or refusal of registration is necessary if
you want to enforce the rights of the copyright in
court through litigation. This means like, if you register correctly
on time and don't do the poor man's copyright, folks,
it gets sticky in court. If you register correctly on time,
(13:33):
then you have the right to sue people to get
some compensation, to ask for damages from the court, to
get the offending party to pay your attorney fees in
case of a lawsuit. You're essentially taking out insurance. You're
paying a little bit of protection money just in case someone.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
Comes for you later. Yeah, and you really hit on
an important point there, Ben is. A copyright is not
a blanket protection from litigation. It just is your argument
in court that hopefully you know, will give you the
upper hand. In the same way that we've talked about
things like fair use. You can technically use a copywritten
(14:19):
work legally if it's transformative or if it falls under
these certain educational educational whatever, But that doesn't mean that
the copyright owner isn't going to come after you and
you're gonna have to defend your fair use in court,
which could well be expensive, and you could well lose.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
Without being without being two in the weeds here folks
peak behind the curtain. We have, over the course of
our careers, separately and together, dealt with issues like this firsthand.
One time, writing a show called Stuff of Genius, I
got in trouble with the creators of the Frisbee. They
(14:58):
were surprisingly whimsical about.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
It, you know, for kids, right.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
And then we got you got to call a flying
disc unless you have Frisbee's permission, turns.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
Out so, and that is a that is a trademark.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
Issue, right, And we got into another issue. Well, we
got in front of an issue here on our own
dear ridiculous history when we loved having the law and
Order sound c after we said Casey on the case
referring to our pala casey pegram h. And then we realized, uh,
(15:34):
there could be some litigation involved because they're very protective
of that specific even though it's so short that specific sound.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
Bump, Oh dick Wolf, don't play now, he will come
for you. There's a term that's about to pop up
phono record, which I really dig It sounds as our
glorious President would say, it's an old fashioned word PHONEO record,
it's an old fat it's a but beautiful word, and
(16:04):
it means, of course recording. But a lot of especially
in the last maybe twenty now, this is much longer
than that. There are a lot of copyrights, and it
almost falls under copyright and trademark when you have a
sound like you're talking about ben like, for example, the
McDonald's jingle, or any little tiny audio id for perhaps
(16:25):
for a radio station or for a brand, that's both
a trademark and a copyright.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
Yeah, and what are the craziest versions of this that
I remember hearing about? Oh gosh, earlier this year, I
was on the road when I heard about this. Apparently,
you guys, the dude who goes to wrestling matches and says,
let's get ready to rumble, he's not going to do
the voice. He owns it and he is super plugged
(16:52):
into anybody else using it.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
Well, if that's like your one thing, I mean, I look,
no shade on the guy. Maybe he's an excellent painter
or something in his probably life, but you know that's
his bread and butter, and he's of course going to
defend that if if he was lucky enough and smart
enough to lock that down, he did. Yeah, he super
dups locked it down.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
You also, if you have a copyright registered here in
the United States, you have the right to make what
we call derivative works based on your original work. So
let's say you have a you have a song called
third Man case idea, and then you decide you're going
to make a salsa version or a merengue version, because
(17:34):
why not. You could totally do that because you own
the original thing. You can also distribute copies or as
we said, phono records of the work to the public,
so you can sell it to people. You can also
sell the copyright itself or rent it out or grant
limited permission for people to use your thing.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
Like technically you are not supposed to what's the word
I'm looking for present, Let's say a copy written work,
you know, for money. Like if you're if you own
a cinema, for example, and you're showing films and you
aren't paying the copyright, you're gonna get shut down. Or
even if you're like doing it in a public square
(18:16):
and charging admission, or I think even if you're not
charging in mission MM hm.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
Yeah, people have gotten in trouble before for things like
private gatherings sometimes where you just you know, we all
know the classic fall and summer move. You wait till
the weather's nice, you get a big blank wall or heck,
a bedsheet of work, and then you have a projector
get a movie night in the backyard. People have gotten
(18:41):
in trouble for that, even though it is so unreservedly wholesome, right,
And it's also pretty rare that someone would come after
you for something like that. Just because it's rare, it
doesn't mean it hasn't happened. Yeah, it has happened, for sure.
And the copyright Your copyright rights also include things like
for I mean the work publicly.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
That's what I was That's the word I was looking for, Ben.
This performance Yeah, yes, technically a projecting something is a
is a kind of performance.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
Yeah, if you had a really curmudgeonly copyright owner or
a real go getter lawyer. Right, So that could be
anything for musical performance to a play, to choreography, literary recitation.
And I like how copyright dot Gov even points out pantomime.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
I did not know. I was not aware of the
wide world of mime law. Memory, Oh, mime law. It's
only only second to bird law. And yeah, I mean
I think I've expressed a little bit of confusion about
this at the top. But choreography and pantomime their own
their own category. Individual movements, dance steps themselves are not
(19:53):
copyrightable as in one particular aspect. But when you chain
them together and you make it into a a you know,
a unique combination of them, then it becomes a copyrightable.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
Okay, so you can't own put your left foot in,
but you can own hokey pokey, that's right. And you
can't own the color blue, but you can own a
work that incorporates the color blue and involves unique combinations
of like, you know, other colors, like the IBM logo
(20:27):
sure beating example.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
So you can also display the work publicly. These are
basic things. They make sense. That's the what of the copyright.
Oh and just really quickly, I'm sorry I'm hung up
on this, but I was just I found an article
on Copyright Alliance, which is a dot org. And here's
just a little clarification around the movement aspects. Here are
some things that are not copyrightable. Yoga positions, a celebratory
(20:50):
end zone dance move or athletic victory gesture, ballroom folk line,
square and swing dances or general exercise routines. And here's
the funny one. And I wonder if there's some wiggle
room here skateboarding or snowboarding tricks. But what if you
had one that was like had never been done before,
Like surely there's some way to at the very least
(21:10):
like trademark. Maybe that's more of a trademark thing where
you're calling it the thing and it's associated with a
particular skate or snowboarder.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
Right like you're Tony Hawk. You make some amazing new
trick and somebody you can own for that. But it's
also it's kind of a dick move to stop other
skateboarders from trying that because they're aspiring. It's it's flattery
for them to want to learn from you. It's uh,
it's interesting too because I would pause it, fellow ridiculous
(21:39):
historians that in each of those cases that we heard
read off on that list from the Alliance, we see
a little bit of history. Someone definitely tried to copyright
an end zone dance. Someone definitely tried to copyright aligne dance.
That's why it's that's why there are there's such specificity
(22:01):
of language here. It reminds me of walking into stores
and seeing a really specific warning SIGDN, like you see
no shirt, no shoes, no service, and you're like, who
just walked in here in their underwear? And how often
did it happen? Because it had to happen often enough
for somebody to look at their coworker and say, crap,
(22:24):
we need a sign.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
Max did it? Max did it? Max is an underwear guy, Yeah,
he's for sure. It also reminds me of the scene
in Wayne's World where Wayne starts playing a thing that
sounds nothing like stairway to Heaven, by the way, and
then that gets our shop attendant them down, shut them down,
points to the sign that says no stairway to Heaven.
But I was also thinking it'd be funny to have
a no showboating rule for stores that like don't allow
(22:45):
you to do you know, peacocky end zone dances, you
know while I'm in the store or music stores.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
Yeah, or I want to find the most specific law
or warning sign in his store has an incredibly crazy
story behind it, you know, like no misbehaving horses. No
lama spitting after six pm.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
Well, that reminds me of an episode that I'm certain
we did just about odd laws still in the monks
in certain states. That sounds like, you know, that would qualify.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
The reason I'm harping on the history here is because
what we do. We talked about the what of the
copyright and you can probably already see some of the
some of the sticky wickets, but we also want to
talk about the when. When did this become a thing?
How did we get in this real situation. It might
surprise some of us in the audience tonight to realize
(23:42):
that yet trademarks might date all the way back to
the Medieval Age in Western Europe, but copyright as a
concept is way more recent.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
Yeah. According to the Intellectual Property Rights Office direct quote
from them, the world's first copyright law is the Statute
of and an Act that in England in seventeen ten.
This act introduced for the first time the concept of
the author of a work being the owner of its
copyright and laid out fixed terms of protection. This is
a long one, BM, but I think worth reading. You
(24:13):
want to want to pick it.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
Up, sure, Following this Act, copyrighted works were required to
be deposited at specific copyright libraries and registered at the
Stationer's Hall. So what this means to pause here, is
that your copyright has to go through a very specific system,
(24:34):
and if a version of your thing is not deposited
at these specialized libraries, then it is not copyrighted. Even
if you wrote it, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
But in those days there was no automatic copyright protection
for unpublished works, which we've talked about today doesn't necessarily
have to have been published and just needs to have
been committed to a medium. Continuing from Intellectual Property Rights Office,
legislation based on the Statute of ann gradually appeared in
other countries, such as the Copyright Act of seventeen ninety
in the United States, but copyright legislation remained uncoordinated at
(25:08):
an international level until the nineteenth century.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
And one bully Boy bonus points for the founding fathers
of the US, they talk about this in the Constitution
in Article one, section eight. That's the same part of
the text that we mentioned in previous episodes that establishes
the rules of the legal road for patents and trademarks.
(25:33):
So let's go the Burn Convention of not Bernie Sanders
reference ber Ee. In eighteen eighty six, the Burn Convention
is introduced, and it's kind of coordinating everybody together at
an increasingly connected world. So the Burn Convention is this
(25:54):
just it's an agreement to say, hey, different countries have
some being like a copyright for their domestic population, so
let's all just respect the copyright like a German copyright
should still carry o.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
The credits should transfer to France as well. Yeah, exactly.
Let's simplify this a little bit. It does away with
the need to register those works independently in separate countries.
It also has been the Burned Convention adopted by almost
all the nations of the world. So following the US
as adoption of the treaty in nineteen eighty eight, wow,
(26:33):
the convention now covers almost all major countries, but not
all of them, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1 (26:39):
And being covered on paper is maybe not the same
thing as being covered in practice. Like a shout out
to the Chinese publishing industry where since we were recently
talking about Harry Potter, you might be interested to know, Yeah, definitely,
Alice too is dope, you might be interested to know
(27:00):
that there are a ton of Harry Potter books published
in China, at least from my understanding, that are not
written by JK.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
Rowling. Someone just liked the idea of Harry Potter. Well,
and we're here. We'd call that fanfic, and technically that's prosecutable, right,
but it usually isn't because it is considered sort of
like a niche internet culture thing, and they don't get
too much of a Gizzard concert totally. I suppose that's. Yeah,
that's fair, but it usually doesn't get enough traction or
(27:34):
generate enough revenue that it's worth anybody's time to go
after like all these individual fanfic writers. But over there
in China it's a little separate issue, isn't it.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
Yeah, And look, one of the biggest changes that comes
about with the Burn Convention was to extend copyright protection
to things that hadn't been published two unpublished works and
then remove that long standing requirement for registration. That means
(28:01):
there's good news, folks. That means that as an individual
or is the organization that you're working for, if you,
you say, have a job doing podcasts, you automatically own
the copyright of any work produced as soon as it
is recorded in some way, drawing it, filming it, writing
it down. And this is good overall for the creators
(28:24):
of original works. It's a system that helps people retain
ownership and agency and get compensated for their time. But
it's still kind of fragmented as a system globally, so
(28:47):
the rules in your neck of the global woods may
be very different from those in another place. And one
of the things we have to ask about, of course, is,
all right, let's say we got a copyright, how long
does this bad boy last? The general rule, which is
kind of weird, The general rule is that for things
(29:09):
created after nineteen seventy eight, copyright protection applies for the
life of the creator and then seventy years after that.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
At which point it enters into the public domain, which
we've seen happen for a handful of legacy properties in
the last handful of years, like Winnie the Pooh. I
believe a version of Mickey Mouse, the Steamboat Willie version
of Mickey Mouse, certain songs. I'm trying to think of
some big examples, So those are the two that come
(29:41):
to mind.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
Yeah, you're in my head with the mention of Disney,
because Disney has for a long time used its enormous
power and heft to conduct legal disputes for protecting especially
they're older creations. So the nineteen twenty eight cartoon Steamboat
Willie entered public domain in like twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2 (30:06):
I think that's right.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
Yeah, And so do check out do check out all
of the the kerfuffle there, and you'll see how seriously
companies like Disney take the concept of rights and trademarks
and copyrights.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
Well, in the moment that happened, you started to see
a lot of derivative works coming out featuring some of
those characters. Like there was a really cool retro kind
of shooter video game that came out that I can't
remember the name of, but it was basically a Mickey
Mouse like run and gun kind of a shooter, first
person shooter game. And there was also like a horror
(30:41):
movie version of Winnie the Pooh called like Blood and
Honey or something like that that came out real quick,
like they'd already had it in production waiting for that
to drop, and then they like they rushed it out,
you know, and it made some noise because of the
novelty of it. Yeah, and still when something enters public domain.
It's not the end of the game, especially for a
(31:03):
company as powerful as Disney, because this is more a
trademark thing, but they have a legal leg to stand
on if they go back to court and say, hey,
our buddy, steamboat Will is in the public domain. But
the way it's being used in this instance could lead
people to think Disney has officially approved this or endorsed it,
(31:25):
or it to Disney product. So if you came out
with something called, for example, Steamboat Billy and Steamboat Billy
is slapped on things that look like Disney stuff, then
you can get in trouble. That's exactly right.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
It's not the end of the game. But eventually, after
a certain amount of time, your copyright is gone. It's
in the public domain. And this has led a lot
of companies, especially in the entertainment industry, to continue create
new copyrighted material. Right you create, That's why they create
(32:06):
new distinct versions of Mickey Mouse to sort of section
out or block out the time window of copyright. So
each of those different Mickeys has a different copyright.
Speaker 2 (32:19):
Yeah, exactly, the different iterations, the different eras, etcetera. And
like Disney to your point earlier, ben is the kind
of company that can is so powerful that it can
almost like affect the law. Yeah, for some time they
kept that Steamboat Willie version of Mickey out of the
public domainion, and then they were able to extend that
(32:40):
much longer than any mere moral would be able to do. Yeah,
they were just pushing the time window further and further
and probably putting a lot of lawyers' kids through college,
you know what I mean. So there's a silver lining there,
and now the question becomes, Okay, can you use a
copyright that is not yours? Kind of Yeah, exactly, you
(33:04):
sure can. I'm paraphrasing from copyright dot Gov. It's really
important to know that we are all users of copyrights.
Every time we consume a piece of media, we are
participating in that copyright. We are consuming it, reading books,
watching movies, listening to albums, playing video games, you know,
(33:24):
using creative software tools, enterprise stuff, whatever we were using. Yeah,
we are using copy written works. So even if you're
not the owner of a work, you are still able
to use it. Yeah, that's the point. I mean, that's like, yeah,
we're putting these things out in the world, typically to
be consumed by others. We just want to have protection
(33:48):
so that nobody can profit from it and you know,
take money out of our pockets.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
Yeah, and also howgiarize, how would you write a law
that didn't have that in there? How would you because
essentially you'd be saying, hey, buying a book does not
give you the right to read it, you know, so
it would you have a.
Speaker 2 (34:08):
Good point, Ben, That is a really important distinction, right right. Technically,
if you didn't pay for it, then you're yeah, then
you're a bad kid. But it's also but then there's
also like, I don't know, that's that's very interesting because
is it technically illegal to read magazines at a bookstore? Like,
if you didn't pay for it, are you stealing that
(34:28):
copywritten work when you're not compensating the holder?
Speaker 1 (34:32):
Oh, you would have to be such a busy body
the problem. Yeah, I mean that's a man that's an
assistant manager having a bad day. So we know that
there are exceptions and limitations to the Copyright Act. You
can find this listed on copyright dot gov. There are
(34:53):
things we've talked about already, like fair use and the
first sale doctrine. There are some thankful, some specific rights
for archives and libraries. You know, it gets complicated with
cable and satellite as well. Let's not even get into
televise sports for a moment.
Speaker 2 (35:11):
Max. That was for you.
Speaker 1 (35:13):
And we know that there are things that are never
protected by copyright, like facts and discoveries. You can patent,
you know, a new wonder drug based on scientific research
you've done, but you can't patent the scientific truths that
(35:33):
you discovered in your research, yes, or like you can
patent maybe or I don't know, see what about like
naming an element.
Speaker 2 (35:39):
On the periodic table, or like discovering a new metal
for example, that is a naturally occurring thing and you
maybe can name it after yourself and register that, but
you don't like own the material. Yeah, no, you can't
be like the nickel king. You can try. You could
hoard your nickels like a smile, you know, start hord
(36:02):
Dungeon for pennies too, folks. The last US penny was
just was just stamped. No, the last penny dropped. The
last penny dropped.
Speaker 1 (36:12):
Uh and uh I am as as you know, nol,
I am beyond excited about that. I think it's great,
But uh, I wanted to make space and just send
our condolences to anybody who's a fan of those little
tourist penny stamper machines.
Speaker 2 (36:28):
Anybody wants to do a candlelight vigil for pennies, We're
here for it.
Speaker 3 (36:32):
Now.
Speaker 2 (36:32):
I know, man, you've got, you got, You've got beef
with pennies. I don't they make your fingers smell weird.
I don't care for him either, and they're when's the
last time you spend a penny?
Speaker 4 (36:42):
Second?
Speaker 2 (36:43):
Second?
Speaker 4 (36:45):
Yeah, we should have got rid of them, like decads.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
It does seem like a bit of a waste of material,
So I'm with you guys.
Speaker 1 (36:50):
Canada was in front of us on that one for sure,
so thank you to our northern neighbors. Now, at this point,
we know that current all pre nineteen sixty two US
works are in the public domain because copyright protection has expired.
But again, powerful forces can change the law and push
(37:11):
that conversation, so at some point it won't be a
surprise when copyright law once again evolves, especially with all
the technological breakthroughs we've been talking about in this episode. Nola,
I think it's pretty exciting as we're wrapping up here
to realize that we're all copyright owners.
Speaker 2 (37:32):
All copyright owners and users. And if you want a
little bit of a nugget of current events information at
the end, here the handful of pieces of work that
are entering the public domain in twenty twenty six. Coming
up are some books William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying
and The Incredible Detective Mystery, nor author dashil Hamnet's The
(37:54):
Multese Falcon, the book, not the movie. Excellent movie by
the way, with Humphrey Bogard, I believe yeah.
Speaker 1 (38:01):
Also Pluto the Dog Betty Boop. In the year after that,
in twenty twenty seven, Virginia Wolf's Lighthouse, the movie Seventh Heaven.
I'm excited about this one, the German sci fi film Metropolis,
and then a bunch of music that might be familiar
to people like Duke Ellington and Bubba Miley's collaboration Black
(38:22):
and Tan Fantasy. So we're on the precipice of some
really weird and interesting stuff. I wonder what the first
few Faulkner derivatives are gonna be. As I Lay frying,
as I spray crying, Well.
Speaker 2 (38:36):
You know, with this kind of boom in noir ish
kind of throwbacky stuff like the Knives Out series and
you know a lot of that stuff that Ryan Johnson's doing.
I could see some real fun spins on Maltice Falcon.
Speaker 1 (38:50):
Yes, yes, yes, that's so Falcon, which I've started saying
it's that it is.
Speaker 2 (38:55):
Yeah. We hope you enjoyed this episode. Thank you for
two d in folks here.
Speaker 1 (39:01):
As we're officially in the thick of the holiday season
at the end of the year, we can't wait to
have more ventures with you through November and throughout December
and then on to twenty twenty six.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
I can't believe we're saying it. We're so close to
a new year. Indeed, huge thanks to Alex Williams, who
composed our theme. Oh gosh, that Max Williams, who is
not only our super producer at Shortinaire, but also our
research associate on this episode.
Speaker 1 (39:25):
Big big thanks to aj Bahamas, Jacobs, doctor Rachel big
Spinach Lance and a civil yet cold good day, Sir
to Jonathan Strickland ak the Twister.
Speaker 2 (39:39):
A bit of a boo, biting of the thumb, A
bit of a biting of the thumb. We'll see you
next time, folks. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
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