Naked Batman! 5 facts we'd have to live with if Batman where public domain...

This happened.

The maximum duration of a copyright used to be 56 years.  As we've discussed, this means that everything made before 58 should have reasonably lapsed into the public domain. In Batman's case this means most of his most well known characters and concepts would be available for all to use, free of charge and free of litigation.

I have brought this matter up to fans, and many of them are concerned. They can't even picture a world where you can  go ahead and make your own Batman. As much grief as fans can give companies like DC, many think Batman is rather safe in DC/Warner's hands.

Here's 5 realities of a world where Batman is public Domain.

5) DC still owns real Batman.

Let's face it, guys. We're not talking about a riot where we go into DC's office and rob them of Batman. As the day the first Batman comic goes public domain, this is what you'll have to work with.

He just threw a man by the neck! "Regular Exercise" my ass.

It's gonna take you a couple of years to get to "Batman as we know him" today, and by then the character will already be far, far from that. You get no Batmobile. You get no Batgirl, or Batmite or  Bane. Not for a while.

Nobody still like Jason Todd.

This is Batman and his nu 52 era buddies, some of them with Wikia pages longer than the Bible. By the 2030s all Batman related Wikia pages will have more words than the Bible. You don't get that, not initially. You get the starter Batman: an orphan richboy who wants to punches criminal while dressed vaguely like a bat.

Under previous, you'd already get to adapt this.

DC needn't fear your Batman. Unless...



4)Your Batman might be better than  their Batman.

He's Nicholas Cage. He's awesomer than most things by default.

A lot of people I saw were afraid of "any old fanboys" having their  terrible ideas on Batman.  Can you imagine what that would look like?

I don't have to. Fans all over the world are currently engaged in writting stories about Batman meeting Fluttershy or something. Fanfiction is already a thing, a thing widespead enough that WB hasn't put any major efforts to stopping it. Maybe some of this stories might be good, or great. Maybe all of them stink. At least some of them involve Robocop and Batman having sex. Frankly I opt not to read them.  I can safely ignore them and so can you.

But consider Sandy Corolla. A skilled filmaker who once made a couple of fanfilms starring DC characters, and sometimes Predator and Alien. Everybody loved those fan films. Most of us would have given Corolla our money to see the full films. But WB owns Batman, and he couldn't have secured any financing for a full film except from WB, which already had plans for Batman. Under previous law, Corolla could have taken his skills towards actually making such films. He could have asked another studio to finance them. He could have taken it to kickstarter.

Where's my "realistic" body armor?

Instead he didn't. Let's face it, guys, not all the people who could make great Batman stories work for WB and DC. Some of them might work at Marvel. Some of them might work at Image. Some of them might even work at Fox. The only difference between DCs writters and, fanboys, other writters is that  they are legally allowed to work on Batman. That's all.

However, they wouldn't all be anything close to "real" Batman because...

3) We would have a lot of weird takes on Batman

Well...he's more like a bat, isn't he?

In 1998 I saw The Mask of Zorro, a movie that followed a former bandit played by Antonio Banderas adopting the mantle of Zorro from perrenial pseudo-Hispanic Anthony Hopkins. It was a fun movie. But I kept wondering where it had left the original Zorro's mute butler. You know, from the TV series. Then there was the animated, future set series. I didn't see it much. Zorro's in the public domain, currently, so anyone can work on him and many do.

Naturally, once people get to working on Batman, they're not all going to want to have the same take. After all, that is the fun of public domain. Does Batman really have to be an only child? What if he had siblings? What if  Batman is  really Alfred? What if Batman is really a bat that, through training, became a human? Maybe we get Arronofsky's Batman where he's a bum helped by a big black mechanic named Big Al? Maybe one is just naked all the time.

This is especially true before some elements are public domain. After all, if WB still own the concept of Batman living in a cave, where will yours live? Your version should already be trying to distance itself from other Batmans, maybe yours sleeps in a casket, like Dracula. Maybe he goes back to the planet Bat or something.

It only  sounds stupid because they haven't done it yet. Eventually any and all this versions could find a place in people's hearts. We'll have many Batmans, and don't be surprised when not all of them are "Bruce Wayne, playboy billionaire orphan who becomes Batman at night

2) DC would not use Batman as much.

Jesus Christ!

DC likes Batman. He makes them a lot of money, and money's where it's at. Batman's in movies. Batman's on television. Batman's on cartoons. Batman's on videogames. Batman's on lunchboxes and sweaters and sweatshirts.

However, if someone else can make Batman, that's no fun anymore. WB, overwhelmed by greed, would probably begin promoting "their" characters a lot more, if Batman was usable by anyone. They'd probably promote some silver age character to Batman's spot of importance, if they could at all.

This would not be all bad. If Batman's as overexposed in the 2030s as he is now, a little winding down might not be as bad as it sounds. The character's never not been popular, but maybe it's best to not have 50 Batman products a month in your face.

1) You'd get Batman everywhere

SAFE!

If Batman was public domain today, do you think they'd put him in Street Fighter? In Final Fantasy? In Johnny Test? WWE? GTA?

Off course they would. More than a deluge of new Batman movies every year, it would result in 1000s of "appearances" in stuff. Think of it like this: imagine every cartoon version of Dracula you've seen. Imagine all his appearances in franchises that aren't adaptations of Bram Stoker's books. That's what we're looking at.

Even when the over-saturation reaches critical levels, you'll still see Batman show up every once in a while to help or hinder the characters in question. It wouldn't be rare. And maybe that's gonna be just fine.

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Talking Points: The Starving Artist

You should have had your ears to the ground, buddy.

I get into plenty of comments sections discussing the topic of copyright.  You might be surprised, that some arguments start to form a pattern, and then I feel that, instead of replying to each and every one of those, I´d rather do a column adressing them.

For example, I´ve already seen at least two people bring this kind of talk :

"This is a bad era for artists! I spent so and so effort making an art, and then e'rebody stole it. You guys don't know what it's like to create something because you all want something for free!"

No, this wern't comments in videos and articles about "END COPYRIGHT FOREVER, FREE SHIT FOR EVERYBODY". These were comments in videos explaining in great detail how copyright was manipulated to do the entertainment industry's bidding.

I'd like to say all those guys are just People from the RIAA and MPAA sockpuppets  trying to change public opinion in their favor, but I have no evidence of that. In truth, piracy does affect a huge number of upstarts, which is most of the reason it exists. There may be people that legitimately feel those things, and I don't want to be patronizing to those people. But I have to disagree.
So this one's for you, Starving Artists. I'm gonna run you through a gamut of answers to your concerns.

A) It's not a battle of "All the copyright vs No copyright".

There are certainly those who feel copyright is an unnecessary element of law.  But people like Lawrence Lessig aren't those people. People like me aren't those people. We don't want copyright to  go away, we want it to do it's friggin' job. no more no less. It's job is giving artists a fighting chance in a world where duplication could ruin them.

Oh, look, a nice urinal

When we're discussing HOW copyright should be, it is wasteful to say "B-b-b-b-but copyright should exist." We know, baby, we know. Besides we already have some strong copyright and...

B)What happened to you  did not happen because not enough copyright.

 It's understandable to want the kinds of protections copyright promises (but can't actually enforce). But let's get serious here: Copyright lasts  more than the average human lives, and covers so many things it's not even funny.  In this world. This is the world where copyright reigns. There's not much more copyright out there to give.

I'm almost as old as copyright lasts!

If in THIS WORLD, your entire enterprise was taken down solely by pirates, then it is irrelevant to our discussion. In fact, yours is exactly the kind of work that should go public domain in a short time,  so that people could freely reuse it as they see fit. If you can't really make it in 10 years, you aren't likely gonna make it in 95 years. If you find that disheartening, maybe this will cheer you up.

C) Your project might have been doomed to failiure from the start.

If at first you don't succeed...you still got until 2082.

The world of art isn't a sure thing, buddy. For every artist that makes it and becomes well known and quoted, there are 30000 that nobody will ever know.

Perhaps your work wasn't good, perhaps it was not something that people would like, perhaps you didn't market yourself properly, or maybe you're just trying to make an outdated model work. Maybe it was too niche, or maybe too broad. Either way, your project just failed, as so many do.

But what's that got to do with stretching the copyright of works already made? The point of copyright is to inspire creativity, not hug every cat.

While anecdotally you may claim it was pirates, all loving your shit and not buying it, there's other people out there making money off of works. It might just be a personal failiure.

D)Many Other Starving Artists would like to use works under copyright, at some point, eventually.

See, Warner? You're the problem, not the solution.

Sure, from your stance I assume your works are entirely original, based solely on your own creative genius and gumption. And that's respectable. But it's not the only way to create art.

And that's part of it. Art building on other art. For example, next Summers Batman v Superman draw plenty of inspiration from Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns, which itself drew inspiration from decades of Batman comics. Is Zack Snyder NOT a lazy sack of shit for not coming up with his own thing instead just because the company he's working under owns the property? Coolio took Stevie Wonder Wonder Song and made it about Gangsters. Is he a lazy sack of shit for not coming up with his own thing? Smash Bros was going to not star known Nintendo characters. And I dare say we love it all the more BECAUSE they didn't come up with something new!

Well, there's someone out there who'd make a killer Batman/Superman comic. He doesn't have the money to pay for Warner's license(if they'd even let him), and he can't work there. Is he different from Zack Snyder?

Maybe someone out there is just starting in music, and has a great idea for a cover of Stevie Wonder's Superstitious. What's the difference between him and Coolio?

And maybe there's a breakaway game designer waiting to make a game reuniting the unsung heroes of defunct games from the 80s for a final game. Is he different from Nintendo, who knew that using popular characters instead of new ones would result in a more appealing (and profitable game)?


We've made existing works profitable enough to dominate the box offices and music charts for years, now. But that comes with an agreement that, you know, those works eventually  should become public domain. Hopefully  before 2019.




E) This companies don't care about you

I get royalties, they get the REAL Money.

Disney made Mulan. We say that, like Disney is a person, and Mulan is a chicken dinner. People made Mulan. Animators put effort into making the characters the Character Designers made move fluidly and with grace. Colorists gave it a beautiful pastel palette. A director whose name is not atop the movie's billboard guided the voice actors to express the emotions the scriptwriter wanted. And guess what? Most of those where only payed once.

Once the artists have built the centerpiece, Disney begins to build commercialism around it. Mulan toys which the character designer won't see any money from. Mulan Backpacks, which exploit the palette the colorists put into it, without liking it. And a live action remake, which the director, scriptwriters and actors who made the original likeable won't be getting paid for. And all this built around an old chinese poem from the public domain.

These laws aren't about you, guy who's trying to be an upstart. You're about as well covered as you're gonna get.  It's about THEM, enormous corporations who rule certain mediums and want to continue ruling them. They've been working together so long, they don't even understand the concept of  actually competing, and it fucking scares them.

So I hope this answered your questions. If you're gonna take away anything from this is that we need to seriosly look at our copyright, how works, what is it purpose, change the parts that aren't working. Is that so wrong?

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Talking points: Return the Stolen

YOU WOULDN'T STEAL A CAR. I mean, I assume. For all I know you might be a car thief of some sort. I wouldn't have any way of knowing, and frankly if the car does not belong to me and mine, I can't muster up any significant rage.

But we all remember that campaign, right? Where stealing  a handbag is exactly like having a movie's copy without paying for it? We had a good laugh  while we waited for these unskippable ads to get the hell out of our way and let us see our legal copy of District 9. After all, even if you don't know that the Supreme Court doesn't consider copyright infringment "theft" the differences between helping yourself to someone's only car and you having a movie which operates outside of the allowances of the owner is sufficiently large to give it some thought.

But what about the opposite? When early in the Year Boingboing reported on yet another sad Public Domain day, many objected to the title's assertion that these works had been "stolen" by the copyright extention.  After all, these works weren't YOURS or MINE to begin with.  What has been stolen.

Now, obviously  I don't know the true intent of the author. But hear me out.

You might yet have some older living relatives. If that is the case, you might be in for an inheritance. Effective following the death of said relative, you might be legally entitled to receive a benefit from that person.

Now, let's say that the inheritance is a sizable amount of money, held in a bank. This bank is earning interest from this money, and it is on it's best interest to keep the money where it is. So, after the reading of the will is done, you expect  the money to exchange hands. But the bank begins using trickery to delay you from getting your money. and they manage to keep the inheritance from actually ocurring for 40 years.

But it's not really YOUR money. It's just a money you where going to have, and well, the bank liked it, and had the means to keep it. Who are you to say the bank STOLE your inheritance? They might have robbed you of having what you legally(if not morally) deserve, but is that really stealing something from you?

Yes. Yes it it. It is immoral and unethical to undermine a legal transfer of goods. The entertainment industry might have "legally" convinced congress that copyrights on works then older than a generation needed  to remain under copyright more time, but that doesn't make it not stealing. They stole our inheritance, one that was going to benefit everyone.

 There are many rationalizations out there for the 76 extension and the Sonny Bono Act.  And if you want to believe them, go ahead and say that it's just a happy coincidence that the major beneficiaries from these laws are the people who spent millions of  dollars trying to get them passed. But all I see is a constitution disregarded, and a world where the prosumer remains bound by laws designed by consumer.

But maybe you disagree? If it's not stealing, what is it?

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Joe vs the Nintendo

It seems weird to say, but we're still adjusting to the existence of the World Wide Web. Some of you where born to a world where connecting with everyone else via the internet is normal, but many, many more weren't, including the one who writes this piece. Even those working on the technology business just don't understand fully what is happening.

There's Let's Plays. You watch someone ELSE play a videogame. You know how I used to call that before the Internet? "Is it my turn yet?" However, I'm not surprised it's become somewhat popular and lucrative.

To make this a bit more grand than it probably is, you're not just playing a videogame with no interactivity, or watching cousin Joel hog all the  Super Mario World to himself, but rather  opening up a window to another person's mind, at the cost of nothing but  a bit of time.

Nintendo, and other companies with similar minds, don't think that's something you should be able to do, without paying them.  In concordance with Youtube, and under the ever widening umbrella of our copyright, Nintendo totally expects those who monetize videos of themselves playing Nintendo games to cut them a bit of the share, or kiss those videos goodbye.

A Let's Play is not a "Performance" or a "Reproduction". It's a documentation of an event. Nintendo should not be the ones  earning money from that. That's fair use!

Other companies, such as Capcom , have taken a different approach: taking down negative  discussions of their videogames by flagging videos for copyright. Youtube has a pretty strict "Better safe than sorry" policy regarding copyright, and that makes it an ordeal to finally prove that, yes, their video is a Fair Use video.

And people get angry with Youtube's way of handling copyright, which includes automatic scanning of videos for copyrighted content. But can you blame them? They're the world's most used video hosting site. According to current law, if they where to be sued for enabling the distribution of copyrighted content, they'd be facing  a loss of thousands of dollars FOR EACH COUNT, without mention of the court costs.  Now multiply that by all the videos being put on Youtube that contain copyrighted content NOT made by the poster, and you can see how it could bring the whole thing down. They MAY or may not want to side with the Angry Joes of the world, but they certainly can't afford it.

The law was not made for this. The law was not made thinking that one day a recording of yourself playing a videogame might be something  people would be able to monetize.  That I understand. What I don't understand is how companies who live and breath digital technology fail to embrace this new  cultural dynamics as a feature, and not as a bug.  Will "cutting a check to Nintendo" catch on? Time will tell.

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