Quote:
Originally Posted by leebase
The fact that Disney has made use of public domain is irrelevant. We aren’t arguing about how to change the past.
That none of Disney’s content is public domain, yet is. Nobody has been able to copy Disney stories or characters and yet there is no end to non-Disney characters and stories that have been and are being created.
Anyone can copy and use the original PD sources that Disney used. But “nobody” wants that. There is no market demand for generic Snow White. Nobody wants to write Handsel and Grettle fan fic. People want to use, copy and play in the economicly active properties of Disney, Twilight, Harry Potter, Star Wars and the like.
The only reason these properties have current value is via the ongoing current investment the rights holders are plowing into them. That’s why a Harry Potter book is likely to outsell any generic boy-wizard book.
The value belongs to the creator, not the public. The public receives it's value in having creators creating.
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This is, of course, factually incorrect. Authors still use the old fairy stories as the basis for new works. Mercedes Lackey has a series of books based on old fairy stories as does Jim Hines as do quite a few others. It's not just Disney that does Snow White these days and everyone wants to copy them. That's the problem with your narrative that you are unwilling to acknowledge. Even if we are just looking at movies, there are some 23 Snow White movies according to IMDB.
I do find it interesting that rather than actually address any of the issues people point to with your assertion, you simply keep making the same assertion over and over. The fact that Snow White is based on a PD work is very much to the point. Most creative work is inspired by someone else's work. Most writers acknowledge this.
The idea of wizard's schools have been around for a long while, though in general, the older stories go with the apprentice approach that was used instead of schools for much of history. Mercedes Lackey used various magic schools in her stories well before Harry Potter every came out. For the most part, the value of a creative work comes from how the work is put together.
If we were talking about pure copyright, i.e. the right to copy a specific work, the question likely would not be as contentious. It's the extension of copyright to ideas and characters that is the real issue, at least in my mind.