corrected, thanks

But, my favorite ever, has to be "The Man Who Stole the Sun" by Jerry Siegel and Curt Swan.

http://superman.nu/tales4/stolethesun/

Name a Superhero of today that is a role model...

By the way, has anyone else heard about the new version of Peanuts by Lynn Johnston?

FIRST LOOK HAWKMAN (him they do right!)

Plans for the fourth film of the Mad Max series, tentatively known as Mad Max 4: Fury Road, or simply Mad Max 4, hit financial difficulties early on, and was in development hell for around 25 years. George Miller announced in 2003 that a script had been written for a fourth film, Mad Max 4: Fury Road, and that pre-production was in the early stages. Although the project was given the green light for a $100 million USD budget to begin shooting in Australia in May 2003, Fury Road almost immediately entered hiatus due to security concerns related to trying to film in Namibia Africa, because the United States and many other countries have tightened travel and shipping restrictions. With the outbreak of the Second Gulf War, Fury Road was (at that time) abandoned as what was a potentially politically sensitive film.

The lost the copyright a long time ago but brought it back about a few years ago. It was a big deal at the time. Something to do with Al Michaels?!?

seriously: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oswald_the_Lu..._Michaels_trade

I'm a big Disney fan, but I also believe in the rule of law and this has bothered me ever since the media giddily reported that Disney had regained the rights to Oswald the Rabbit in a "swamp" for ABC's Al Michaels contract.

The copyright to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit was not traded for sportscaster Al Michaels in 2006 BECAUSE there was no copyright. The whole thing was a strange and disturbing scam perpetrated on a media and public that does not (and should not be expected to) understand the complicated nuances of the history of intellectual property law, all to cover up one inconvenient fact: Oswald has not been protected by copyright since January 1, 1956.

I'm glad Disney wants to release Oswald toons again, though the latest news of Oswald as a villain in the Epic video game leaves me nonplussed. That aside. I do not think powerful media corporations, Disney or any others, should be able to “will” a copyright into existence simply because the issue is confusing in order to diminish the already anemic public domain, which is why I wanted to explain the issue a bit here. With so much done to destroy the public domain, this is the last thing we need as a precedent. I am happy to have honest arguments about whether copyright protection should continually be extended or not, but I am very distressed to see conscious trickery about what is under copyright or not.

The history will no doubt be familiar to some of you, but the legal details will not. The first Oswald film produced by Disney and Ub Iwerks was made in spring of 1927 and titled “Poor Papa.” Charles Mintz, their distributor in New York, screened it and found the rabbit fat and sloppy and decided to shelve it. The film was not released at that point and not yet copyrighted. So Disney and Iwerks redesigned Oswald and put him into another film called “Trolley Troubles.” We know the film shipped out of the Disney-Iwerks studio on May 1, 1927 to Mintz who liked it better. “Trolley Troubles” officially debuted on July 4 at the Criterion Theatre in Los Angeles, then appeared in New York City at the Roxy Theatre on July 15, then released widely on September 5, 1927.

“Trolley Troubles” was appropriately copyrighted at the point of this initial release (copyright #L24088). At the time (before changes in the 1960s and 1970s to the copyright law) copyright lasted 28 years and then had to be renewed or would expire. Since “Trolley Troubles” first debuted in 1927, Universal had a brief window of opportunity circa 1955 in which to renew the copyright. Specifically, they had one year leading up to June 9, 1955 to do it, or the film would fall into the public domain on January 1 of the following year. "Poor Papa" was not copyrighted until May 22, 1928 and not released until June 11, 1928, almost a year after "Trolley Troubles" (in the interval many other Oswald films were made and released). Important to remember that all of this is under the 1909 copyright law, which has nothing to do with the date of production or creation (which do matter under our modern copyright law), but instead have to do with time of release/publication to the public.

The copyright of characters is not an explicit part of the copyright law, but through case law it is well established that copyright obtains upon the character’s first copyrighted appearance—in this case, Oswald’s first film to be released and copyrighted, both of which are “Trolley Troubles.” If the first appearance of a character is not under copyright, no later copyrighted appearance can put the genie back in the bottle. This is undisputed in copyright law. The alternative would be nonsensical, one could perpetually point to a character's later appearance that is under copyright, whether a month after a first appearance or a century later, to claim copyright on a public domain character (otherwise I could make, say, a Yellow Kid or Gertie the Dinosaur cartoon or a new Sherlock Holmes novel today, copyright it, and then claim the character as being removed from the public domain and under copyright again). One of the things copyright law has been consistent about through many other changes is that once a property is in the public domain, it cannot be recovered as a protected property.

The records show that all of the 1928 Oswald films had been appropriately renewed for copyright in the mid-1950s. But, according to the original and consolidated government copyright records, none of the 1927 films were submitted by Universal for copyright renewal. Here is the most important part: there is seemingly no record of “Trolley Troubles” ever having been renewed. That means Oswald officially and permanently entered the public domain on January 1, 1956. That means this showboating about getting the rights to Oswald back fifty years later was silly and, worse, disingenuous. Or, at best, it was ignorant and misinformed.

The only possible counterargument from a Disney perspective, a seemingly weak one at that, would be to point to the valid copyright on “Poor Papa,” which some will recall was the first attempt at an Oswald cartoon by the Disney folks that was nixed by their distributor before being released. The copyright to “Poor Papa” was properly renewed in 1956. But the film was not originally released until long after “Trolley Troubles.” We don't have to dig into that. We need only look at their original copyright dates – “Trolley Troubles” was registered June 9, 1927, and “Poor Papa” on May 22, 1928. It simply does not matter under the relevant copyright regime that “Poor Papa” was produced earlier (whereas this would matter very much under our modern copyright laws, where copyright protection accrues upon creation of a work). Even if Disney could argue that “Poor Papa” was “released” first because it was screened for one person—Mintz—this wouldn't matter since it was not yet copyrighted at the time. And there is no argument that “Poor Papa” was released to the public first. (Look even at the “official” Disney histories WALT DISNEY - AN AMERICAN ORIGINAL by Bob Thomas, 1994, and DISNEY A TO Z - THE OFFICIAL ENCYCLOPEDIA, by Dave Smith, 1996. Dave Smith is the current head of Disney archives. Both confirm that "Trolley Troubles" was the "first of the [Oswald] cartoons to be released" (Thomas) and "the first released" (Smith), widely distributed September 5, 1927).

Universal in the 1950s likely had little concept of the value of character ownership in an era before television and other secondary markets. Indeed, it was not only “Trolley Troubles” and “Oh, Teacher” (originally copyrighted July 20, 1927) that were ignored for renewal, but these other Oswald cartoons were never renewed (original copyright dates listed in parentheses): “Great Guns” ( September 15, 1927) “The Mechanical Cow” ( September 10, 1927), “The Ocean Hop” ( Sept 8, 1927), “The Banker’s Daughter” ( September 15, 1927), “Rickey Gin” ( October 19, 1927), and “Empty Socks” ( November 23, 1927). Note that five of these films were part of the “deal” so excitedly reported in the press to transfer Oswald's rights from Universal to Disney in 2006, except (minor point!) that since they were never renewed and they are firmly in the public domain since the fifties those five film cannot be the subject of anyrights deal except for physical possession of the footage. The bottom line is this: today by law anyone is allowed to use Oswald the Rabbit's image, to market toys and games, to make new films, cartoons, parodies (even outside of fair use). I wish Disney would admit this, and for a change throw a bone out to the public domain. They would still own the rare, physical and fragile films they got back from Universal (and presumably invested in restoring, which is good for everyone). On a related note, I find Disney's rush to plant their flag back into Oswald and to merchandise Oswald interesting because they may be hoping to strengthen his trademark, knowing full well there is zero claim to a copyright.

(By the way, all copyright dates and renewal dates above were checked in the Catalog of Copyright Entries from those years. The only argument I could conceive of by Disney that would make this information wrong is that Universal renewed it and the renewal was left out of the CCE. I've never heard of an example of that.)

What would Disney's official response to this information be? I don't know. I know I'm not the only one, by any means, to have noticed this problem in the Oswald narrative. I know of people in the animation and law communities who are aware of this and, as far as I know, have remained silent.

None of the above regarding Universal's failure to renew are surprising, by the way. As some of you may know, anything first released before Jan 1, 1923 is automatically public domain, no further questions asked. (Interestingly, the fact has not led to much public use of a character even as well known as Felix the Cat, in part because people get so easily confused about what's in the public domain... certainly the "official" Felix site doesn't mention we're all free to use him as a character). Now, a film released between 1923 and 1963 was given a copyright term of 28 years. This meant one had to renew the copyright in the 28th year after its release—you could not do it sooner and you could not do it later than the 28th year after its release. If “Trolley Troubles” had been properly renewed, then it would absolutely still be under copyright today. But the estimate is that only about 15% of material was properly renewed in that time period roughly in the early to mid fifties. Some major films were not renewed and for the simple reason that film companies were not on top of this, not having consciousness of burgeoning recycled markets or foresight that those markets would develop. Films now in the public domain for the simple reason of non-renewal include some as prominent as the 1960 Roger Corman version of Little Shop of Horrors, which was supposed to be renewed in 1988 and was not (if it had been, it would be protected until 2055!), and Chaplin's Gold Rush. Many broad categories of films tended to be blindly overlooked for renewal, including early westerns and B-movies. Also cartoon shorts. Especially if, by the years in which a film required renewal, a character was completely defunct, as was the case with Oswald, who by 1955 was more or less a nonentity.

By contrast, Walt Disney made sure to renew “Steamboat Willie” and “Plane Crazy” around the same time. He knew that if he neglected this Mickey would join the public domain. So why has no one in the media that cheerily covered the Oswald story (“Oswald comes home!”) noticed any of this?

I contacted two different animation historians, one involved with the Oswald re-released DVD. Their response? They blatantly said they don't care about the legitimacy of the copyright, and that Disney could take care of Oswald better than the public. One pointed out the misuse of cartoon characters whenever the public gets a chance, like the Calvin and Hobbes obscene black market merchandise. Maybe that's true. But that's not the point. Corporations and animation historians do not get to decide that the public should not have the ability to use the public domain. Not in my opinion, not by law.

I tried contacting the media when they had their silly articles about the Al Michaels-Oswald "swap" but each said they weren't lawyers and weren't able to evaluate it. Good journalism.

I will anticipate one response: is it that important? No, it's not the end of the world. But the public domain has been crucial to artistic development over the years... including for the many public domain properties used by Disney like, say, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.

Cannot access website.