Tom The Dancing Bug Takes On Insanity Of Copyright Extension And Disproportionate Punishment
from the awesome dept
One of the more interesting things over the past few months is just how mainstream copyright issues have suddenly become. This point has been driven home with the news that Ruben Bolling’s famous Tom the Dancing Bug comic has taken on the excessiveness of both copyright extension and enforcement with his God-man character doing tremendous damage just to enforce the copyright on a work that should be in the public domain:
Either way, very cool to see Bolling take on this issue, and see the issue getting more and more mainstream attention.
Filed Under: copyright, mainstream, ruben bolling, tom the dancing bug
Comments on “Tom The Dancing Bug Takes On Insanity Of Copyright Extension And Disproportionate Punishment”
He should get together with copyright man.
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Everyone should get together with copyright man … hey look a lost nickle. .. bend over and pick it up, copyright will help you.
Copyright man is here to help you, and get you a contract.
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Ow that contract hurt!
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“Everyone should get together with copyright man …”
They can form an alliance!
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It can’t be called the Copyright Alliance, that’s already copyrighted and trademarked. Which means you’ll be in jail for life+70 years, or 95, whichever is the longer.
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I can’t believe you guys remember Copyright Man 🙂
Re: Re: Re:3 Re:
I wonder why you haven’t created a patent woman.
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I have fond memories of that piece of crap.
Was hilarious.
Please don’t take the “crap” as an insult is meant as a good thing.
He said “Lady and the Tramp”. That is clearly infringement of the copyright of the name of the movie. That is stealing. Now God-Man stole the name of the movie to feed his own need for wrecking buildings. Oh the humanity.
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Wrecking buildings = who cares, as long as they aren’t big corporate buildings or the buildings of wealthy people.
Infringement against big corporations = criminal offense.
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Indeed, and infringement against ‘ordinary’ citizens (such as using photos or youtube videos without asking for permission first) = business as usual.
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Why do you think Obama hired GE’s CEO Jeffery Immelt to be the Economic adviser to Job Creation?
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I think you’re confusing Copyright with Trademark. Also, Names of works can’t be copyrighted.
Berne Convention
The next cause: Renegotiation of the Berne Convention.
Pirates
But but pirates thieves and Masnic is their leader. Sorry just thought it should be said.
Re: Pirates
I am a Masnick butt pirate and proud! Pass the Kool-Aid!
Re: Re: Pirates
You forgot lying, two-faced shit and chubby. Haven’t you heard? They’re the new buzzwords handed down from the guy that’s magically unanonymous.
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and whiny little children.
Re: Re: Re:2 Pirates
and, if you’re nina paley, “queen of bullshit”
Re: Re: Re:3 Pirates
I am merely princess of bullshit. Someday I’ll marry my prince of bullshit, and then I shall be queen.
Re: Re: Re:4 Pirates
You’re also Ms. “Anyone-who-doesn’t-use-my-creative-commons-license-hates-free-culture”.
Re: Re: Re:4 Pirates
well a prince is still only a prince, you need a king of bullshit to become a queen.
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You mean the pirated Kool-Aid?
Stealing
Damn, he stole Lady and the Tramp, now I can’t watch it. GIVE IT BACK!
People feel strongly about things they know nothing about
Here’s a typical IP maximalist comment from the comments at GO comics:
What is funny is that this self-righteous IP maximalist doesn’t realize that under US IP laws if he creates something all on his own somebody else might all ready own it. That is the way the patent system works. It doesn’t matter if you think of something own your own, not even if you put your life’s work into it–if somebody thought of it first and patented it, or if they patented some thing vague enough that can later be be claimed to cover it–then DroptmaStyx *doesn’t* own his ideas.
People don’t think things through before getting very full of themselves about it. And the MPAA, RIAA and right wingers in general, are very good at getting ordinary folks to lobby against and vote against their actual interests.
Re: People feel strongly about things they know nothing about
Rightwingers? These guys are paying off the democrats, you forget.
Re: Re: People feel strongly about things they know nothing about
And the democrats are right wing, just ‘cos the republicans are even further to the right does not make democrats left wing.
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Nor does it change that Democrats and Republicans are being paid equally for this silliness.
There is no left or right here…there’s just HOLLYWOOD and that is all that counts. Well, that and their billions.
They do seem to have a lot of money to throw around for companies that are in such trouble, don’t you think?
Re: Re: Re:2 People feel strongly about things they know nothing about
In the US the less of the 2 evils right now is the Republicans, if there are no others and there is one simple reason for it, republicans got bashed by the Tea Party and are very aware that if they don’t pay attention at least a little they will get all replaced by crazier people, so they are more susceptible to the public opinion unlike the Democrats that got shellacked and still press on because their support base is the unions that are in favor of those kind of rules.
Which is odd since monopolies harms workers more than anything else.
Re: Re: Re:3 People feel strongly about things they know nothing about
“In the US the less of the 2 evils right now is …. “
Do you feel strongly about things you know nothing about?
Re: Re: Re:4 People feel strongly about things they know nothing about
Well I guess the same as you.
Republicans got spanked in the elections by the Tea Party they are sensitive to public opinion, Democrats receive most of their support from the entertainment industry and unions so they side on the side of stronger monopolies where is the error in that logic?
Republicans would go against the entertainment industry since their biggest support is elsewhere in the Telecom, Oil, Drugs and other stuff.
So what do you know that I don’t please enlighten me.
Re: Re: Re:5 People feel strongly about things they know nothing about
Did you read the title of the post to which you responded?
Re: Re: Re:6 People feel strongly about things they know nothing about
I get confused easily so again please enlighten me.
Re: Re: Re:5 People feel strongly about things they know nothing about
That doesn’t explain SOPA though.
Re: Re: Re:6 People feel strongly about things they know nothing about
SOPA can be explained by the perspective of Republicans by the presence of patents, by merging copyrights and patents in the same pool you can get the majority on both sides.
Democrats rely on the entertainment industry, Republicans depend on Pharma companies that donate “big money”(paraphrasing bobroll).
I could be wrong though but I do believe the republican support was there mostly because of the patents issues, try to do a bill that separate both and bipartisan support would be more difficult to achieve.
As proved recently republicans have no problems throwing the entertainment industry under the bus if they need to, that is not what happens with democrats.
Not that I like a duopoly in politics, I am just acknowledging the fact that they have separated into two distinct camps that share most of their values but disagree in some key points, they most of the time work in unison but can and will squabble over little things.
So if the intent is to change copyrights the best bet today is the republicans that don’t feel that strongly about it and have shown that they have no problems leaving the entertainment industry to hang dry, democrats on the other hand just proved that they will exert tremendous pressure to expand monopolistic controls for whatever reason and that can’t be good.
Now show me your thinking.
Re: People feel strongly about things they know nothing about
“If I create something, I own it, and I alone have the right to decide who gets to use it for money,””
Sounds like a musician who does not like certain politicians using his/her song(s) in their campaigns.
Heh, deja vous
“DroptmaStyx said, about 11 hours ago
@drklassen ? spoken like someone who isn?t trying to make a living as a creative person. If I create something, I own it, and I alone have the right to decide who gets to use it for money,”
They so want everything every which way.
If I create a vacuum cleaner, other people can buy it and use it in their cleaning business to make money.
If I make some cakes, other people can buy them and sell them on by the slice for a profit.
Only with imaginary property am I able to control what they do with it once they’ve paid for it.
Surely at some point they will realise how ludicrous their stance is and of course it is all pointless, this would not be an issue right now if copyright was enforceable in the digital era, it simply isn’t and instead of coming to terms with it they stand in denial making up imaginary rules for imaginary property and declaring those imagined and useless rules to be their god given rights.
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I really should have mentioned that if I create a cake or a vacuum cleaner, real things, I only get to sell each one once.
But I do love the idea of Paint Manufacturers, Wallpaper Manufacturers, painters, plasterers, electricians and garden centres all deciding that IP rules should apply to property as well and popping along to people like the RIAA and MPAA, to force them to pay for licences to have paint/wallpaper on the walls and potted plants in their offices.
After all, they clearly use them to enhance their businesses and studies have shown that they all help to increase efficiency and many other spurious and ridiculous reasons for thinking that you can charge people multiple times for the same “property”
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HA! Not a chance… and don’t call me Shirley!
The comments under that comic is both making my blood boil and making my head hurt.
Instead of addressing any of the balls of stupid, I’ll instead generalize all of them to the big ball of stupid that they each keep trying to roll out.
This is one of the most misleading, baseless, ignorant arguments I have ever heard for copyright. You can’t “own” an idea, you can “own” the information behind an idea, but for it to be of any use to anyone or anything you have to share that information with someone for it to be of any value to anyone, even yourself. If I make a cartoon and then don’t share that cartoon with anyone, then it’s not much of a creative work as it is a lump of frames and drawings that only I and the people I staffed know about.
So now we get into Copyright, the idea that, while I can’t own the idea and I can’t own the information, I can at least own the enforcement of my will and intentions over that information.
Which just makes the ignorant fools going “WAAH WAAH I SHOULD BE ABLE TO DICTATE EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENS TO IT UNTIL YEARS AND YEARS AFTER I HAVE DIED WHEN MY WILL AND INTENTIONS ARE MEANINGLESS” look even more like crying, spoiled brats. Leading to the same diatribe “Copyright enforcement is important because Intellectual property rights are important because Copyright enforcement is important-…” argument that we see here on Techdirt almost every single day from Anonymous keyboard ninjas who likely only think this way because of the misinformation society has ingrained into people that someone can “own” an idea.
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yep, “crying spoiled brats” about sums it up, that’s all they are really
and the only reason they have any sort of power is because enough people pander/pandered to their apeshit tantrum tactics
if more people where like “FUCK YOU” when these people cry about permission this permission that ownership blabla they’d get the message real quick
what these people need is someone to put them in their place, they’ve gotten way out of whack
everyday i find myself being less and less rare of this opinion, and that alone gives me the strength to push on
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If someone creates an artistic work, (s)he should be able to reap the benefits of that work for some time. No one is, or should be challenging that.
But what happens when that time is extended into oblivion? We have seen it stifle innovation before, the best and simple example would be the eighties ‘The holiday rap’, where an old tune was the base of a new work (and the creator of the new work has never seen one cent of it).
The derived work was new, brave and ‘super cool’ for its time, but the rightsholder was not interested in new music, only his own pocket, and he rather let someone else work than work himself..
When time passes perception, techniques and idea’s change so that old 1951 version of ‘The day the earth stood still’ could be redone in a much better way. No one complains about that.. Some stories are old and get retold in different forms many times, like Ever after: A Cinderella story. It would be a shame if we were told not to redo that movie or that song in Techno-style (Blackbox’s Right on time).
What I like about the comments of the copyright defenders is that they think copyright is a right.
Lets ask people how long should anybody be given a monopoly and exclusionary powers and see after people understand what copyright means they still would think life + 95 years of a monopoly is a good thing.
The sense of entitlement of people who love monopolies knows no bounds.
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quote fail
I’m a music teacher in PA. We just got a notice from our state association (PMEA) that students auditioning for the state festival will have to play an etude for their audition. However, PMEA is not allowed to photocopy the etude. So you have to play it, but you can’t have the music.
You are obviously supposed to go purchase it on your own, but it still seems quite ridiculous.
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What if the ?tude is in the public domain? You obviously have the right to photocopy it. Sounds like Copyfraud to me.
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Kinda surprised they didn’t try and stick in ‘from an authorized source’ in there. I mean, if you’re going to try and shaft the students like that, might as well make as much money as you can yes?
Following up on what the other commenter says, I’d look for any public options, and just use those.