Lazy Sunday Post: Copied Right

So somewhat recently, I've been learning a lot about copyright law and the public domain, and also fireplaces, but that's a completely unrelated story. On a further unrelated note, in one of the episodes of the Flash, a Central City Police officer is name checked as Officer Buchavich (I'm guessing that's how you spell its. It's pronounced Boo-kuh-vich). That's a hilarious sounding name, right? I can't be the only one who thinks that. What kind of TV writer puts that name in a throwaway line? That's gotta be a reference to someone they know. Or something. Right?

Anyway, that's not what I'm actually here to talk about. Back to the copyright thing. Specifically, I'm going to very briefly and generally go over some extremely complicated legal wackanonsense and then offer my two cents on the subject. Bear in mind my sources for this article are YouTube videos who put much more effort into research than I do, so... take that with a grain of the seasoning of your choice.

Copyright laws, at least as best I can figure and overly generalize here, originally existed as a way to protect creators and let them profit off of their own ideas basically for their entire life, and after this generously long period of copyright, their work would enter the public domain.

Now, the public domain, at least in my opinion, is an amazing and beautiful thing. The concept of characters, songs, books, and movies being around so long that they belong to everyone and have become a part of everyone's shared culture is... kind of an amazing. It says something about a work or a character if people other than the original creator want to do something with it. Characters like Dracula, Sherlock Holmes, and Robin Hood... so many people have used this characters, in so many different ways. They're almost like a common mythology we all share.

Public domain characters and works inspire people, and as a creator, the idea of someone taking something I made and using it to make something new is... indescribably beautiful. And now I'm thinking of Emmet's speech from the end of The Lego Movie again.

I recently learned that if Disney weren't a company founded by a anti-Semite, currently being controlled by greedy, soulless monsters in nice suits, copyrights wouldn't have been extended to 95 years, and Batman, Superman, and dozens of other characters would be in the public domain right now. And it makes me sad that they're not. Not just because it means my direct to DVD film Batman For Now, I Guess will be delayed from hitting store shelves for another few decades at least either.

It could have been.

Batman and Superman (and a bunch of other characters I don't really care about) have been around for over 75 years, and they are still recognizable, household names. I know for a fact (no I don't) that I would have to switch continents before had even a hope of finding someone who didn't know who these characters were.

They deserve to be in the public domain.

And in case I'm a worse writer than I think and my tone and stance weren't clear, I mean that as a good thing.

Batman and Superman are, really at this point, part of our shared culture. Our shared identity. They've transcended being just cool characters and they've become aspects of who we all are and what we all know. They are just as culturally ubiquitous as names like Sherlock Holmes or Robin Hood, if not more. I just think they've earned the status of public domain.

The status of characters, modern myths, that belong to the people, free for anyone to take, remix, reimagine, or reinterpret as they see fit.

But that's just my wishy washy, Lego Movie inspired take on the idea of public domain. Someone reading this will probably find it repetitive, naive, or overly sappy, but whatever. It's just two cents. No point in picking it up.

I will say though this is way more serious than I usually do for a Lazy Sunday Post, so here's a picture of Wings roasting weenies over my spontaneously combusting body.

I'm told this is covered under for better or worse.

If you're interested in finding out what YouTube videos I pulled from, it was this one and this one. Speaking of YouTube, I've got my own channel, which you should totally check out.