law

What can you do with Steamboat Willie?

This entry was posted in Writing Writing as business and tagged copyright law writing on by

What can you do with Steamboat Willie, early in the next year?

I won’t try to write a filk about it just now; answering the question is complicated enough in prose. You may have heard that “Mickey Mouse is going into the public domain,” but that’s true only in a limited sense. The first two released Mickey Mouse cartoons, Steamboat Willie and Plane Crazy, will enter the public domain on January 1, 2024, after 95 years. If you’re thinking of creating your own cartoons, drawings, fan fiction, or professional fiction based on them, you can do that legally, but you need to be careful. Mickey Mouse changed significantly over the years, and later versions of him, along with the vast majority of his cartoons, are still under copyright protection. In addition, Mickey Mouse™ remains a Disney trademark. If your work steps over certain bounds, you could hear from Disney’s lawyers.

Duke University’s website has a detailed article on what you can and can’t do. It’s not a substitute for a lawyer’s advice, but it’s a good place to start, and it could be enough if you aren’t creating stuff for profit.
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Who will check the fact checkers?

This entry was posted in Commentary and tagged law technology writing on by

Does US federal law mandate a “kill switch” for alcohol-impaired drivers in cars made in the future? According to several fact checkers, no. However, an article by Jon Miltimore for FEE shows that it does.

The issue isn’t one of what the law contains, but of terminology. In claiming there is no kill-switch mandate, USA Today refers to the very text that mandates it:
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Hachette v. Internet Archive

This entry was posted in Commentary Publishing and tagged books copyright law libraries preservation on by

The legal battle over the Internet Archive’s Open Library has drawn passionate responses from people involved in the creation, publication, and distribution of books. As I’m writing this, the court of the Southern District of New York has ruled that putting unauthorized digitized versions of copyrighted books on the open Internet is a violation of copyright, and the Internet Archive is appealing the decision.

Publishers Hachette, Penguin Random House, Wiley, and HarperCollins argued that distributing books through the Open Library violated their copyrights. The Internet Archive has declared its appeal is “a necessary fight if we want library collections to survive in the digital age.” SFWA has stated that the Open Library “is not library lending, but direct infringement of authors’ copyrights.” The debate pits the rights of authors and publishers against the aims of preservation.
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Outrageous raid in Marion, Kansas

This entry was posted in Censorship News and tagged Kansas law liberty on by

I wish I had the time to write a proper article about the outrageous police raid on the offices of the Marion County Record and the home of its owner, Eric Meyer. Currently, though, I’m putting all my efforts into getting the revised edition of Tomorrow’s Songs Today ready for final review. Just as I thought it was ready to go, I discovered some omissions that had me sending out emails yesterday, and I got the first reply this morning.

So I’ll settle for links and short comments.

AP News. The official justification for the raid has not been made public. The Kansas Bureau of Investigation has said it was asked to assist in “allegations of illegal access and dissemination of confidential criminal justice information.” This could be justification for such a raid in some cases, such as breaking into law enforcement databases, but at present there’s no indication any such thing was involved. Most of the news articles I’ve seen follow the theory that the motivation was the Record‘s reporting on a local restaurant owner.

New York Post. The Post reports that Meyer’s mother, aged 98, died shortly after the raid on his home, and Meyer attributes her death to the stress of the raid. It says that the search warrant (which has not been publicly disclosed) “seems to violate federal law” and that normal procedure under the law is to subpoena materials.

Washington Post. The other Post mentions that “the Record had been actively investigating Police Chief Gideon Cody at the time of the raid after receiving tips that he had left his previous job in Kansas City, Mo., to avoid repercussions for alleged sexual misconduct charges.”

Read the articles. Find additional information for yourself. Comment if you think I’m missing something important.

The EU Media Freedom Act and a two-tiered Internet

This entry was posted in Commentary and tagged EU Europe Internet law liberty on by

A language gripe which I haven’t mentioned lately is the treatment of “media” as a singular. I’ve given it up as a lost cause, but it damages discourse. People often think of “the media” as one thing. Obviously there are many media. This blog is a medium for information, no less than CNN is. But in common use, you don’t qualify as a medium unless either you’re a big corporation or a fortune-teller. Similarly, there’s a tendency to count people as “journalists” only if they work for a “medium” (or is it “a media”)? This leads to the idea that freedom of the press applies only to properly credentialed and accredited journalists and media.

This trend appears in Article 17 of the EU’s proposed Media Freedom Act, which the Electronic Frontier Foundation has strongly criticized.
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