I did it! I did it! I did it! I did it! I did it! It's finally legal and I did it! No more extensions! No more infringement! No more lawyers! Hee, hee, hee! I did it! Ooh boy, was it fun! Was it liberating! Was it cathartic! Oh, what a rush! What a high! Yes! Yes! GOOD GOD, YES!!! Ohhhhhh...
As it is, I can hardly wait for Donald Duck to go into the public domain. Then Goofy, Pluto, Dumbo, Bambi, the hippo in Fantasia...
Oh, and in case you're wondering, I drew the above picture digitally...with a mouse.
I am impressed by your computer art work but I can't see much resemblance. Mickey coming out of copywrite was reported here. I want to be Scrooge.
ReplyDeleteI can't see much resemblance either, Andrew. By the way, Scrooge has been in the public domain for quite some time now, so it's yours for the taking.
DeleteHello Kirk, I couldn't draw a figure that well even with a pencil and paper. Using a mouse with that kind of accuracy seems impossible. Also, wasn't it relatively recently that the Happy Birthday lyrics were ruled public domain or non-copyrightable?
ReplyDelete--Jim
Jim, this from Wikipedia:
Delete"Patty Hill was a kindergarten principal in Louisville, Kentucky, developing teaching methods at the Little Loomhouse; her sister Mildred was a pianist and composer. The sisters used 'Good Morning to All' as a song that young children would find easy to sing. The combination of melody and lyrics in "Happy Birthday to You" first appeared in print in 1912. None of the early appearances of the 'Happy Birthday to You' lyrics included credits or copyright notices. The Summy Company registered a copyright in 1935, crediting authors Preston Ware Orem and Mrs. R. R. Forman. In 1988, Warner/Chappell Music purchased the company owning the copyright for US$25 million, with the value of 'Happy Birthday' estimated at US$5 million. Warner claimed that the United States copyright would not expire until 2030 and that unauthorized public performances of the song are illegal unless royalties are paid. In February 2010, the royalty for a single use was US$700. By one estimate, the song is the highest-earning single song in history. In the European Union, the copyright for the song expired on January 1, 2017.
"The American copyright status of 'Happy Birthday to You' began to draw more attention with the passage of the Copyright Term Extension Act in 1998. The Supreme Court upheld the Act in Eldred v. Ashcroft in 2003, and Associate Justice Stephen Breyer specifically mentioned 'Happy Birthday to You' in his dissenting opinion. American law professor Robert Brauneis extensively researched the song and concluded in 2010 'it is almost certainly no longer under copyright.' Good Morning to You Productions sued Warner/Chappell for falsely claiming copyright to the song in 2013. In September 2015, a federal judge declared that the Warner/Chappell copyright claim was invalid, ruling that the copyright registration applied only to a specific piano arrangement of the song and not to its lyrics and melody. In 2016, Warner/Chappell settled for $14 million, and the court declared that 'Happy Birthday to You' was in the public domain."
Regardless of whether the song was under copyright protection or not under copyright protection, any time you've heard it sung at a birthday party it was probably perfectly legal to do so as long as it was a private affair and not a public performance.
Drawing it with a mouse is so fitting, LOL! I guess we can expect to see a Slasher Steamboat Willie/Mickey Mouse movie next. That's what happened when the copyright expired on the original character of Winnie the Pooh. I believe it was called "Blood and Honey."
ReplyDeleteDebra, as I understand it, A.A. Milne's 1926 Winnie-the-Pooh (which I loved as a kid) is what's in the public domain, while the Disney version only dates to the 1966 and it will still be their "intellectual property" for decades to come. That's why in the slasher movie you mentioned, Pooh couldn't wear a red shirt because the Pooh in Milne's book, which was illustrated by E.H. Shepard, was shirtless. The red shirt is a Disney trademark.
DeleteSince Pooh, unlike Mickey Mouse, was based on non-Disney material, there's no reason why someone can't do a decidedly non-horror version that is perhaps true to Milne's version in ways that Disney's isn't, for instance, giving the animals English accents, since the original stories were published in England.
A moused mouse!
ReplyDeleteNot easy to do, Mitchell. At least not for me. Basically, I had a "crayon" where the cursor would be, and you know how awkward maneuvering a cursor can be. It would have been a lot easier with pen and paper, though it probably STILL wouldn't have looked much like Walt Disney's or (his top animator in the 1920s) Ub Iwerks' version.
DeleteOh that's a cute little Doodle. But it's free Mickey anything like Free Willy. And I'm not referring to the whale.
ReplyDeleteSteamboat Willy, Maddie. All puffed up.
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