If you restrict reuse of the characters in new work, the original would not be in the public domain. Something is either one’s property or it isn’t, and something in the public domain is everyone’s property. You can’t have the original as part of the collective repository of freely-available information and culture while still trying to make bits of it (such as its characters) not part of that.
The public domain period is when the law has agreed that the original authors no longer have exclusive rights to the material they put into the world. Trying to still, after that period has elapsed, declare the characters are still that author’s property but only if they turn up in other people’s work is a truly bizarre suggestion and I fail to see what would be gained by society in that scenario.
I really don’t think this is a difficult concept to grasp, to be honest.
The original work becomes public domain, and can be freely reproduced.
The characters therein are, and remain, the property of the author’s estate, and cannot be used in new work without their permission.
We are already seeing this in the real world, where Disney cartoons are public domain, but the characters, having been used in consecutive works, cannot be used by anyone other than them.
This allows a published work to be used for generations to come, but doesn’t allow an author’s legacy to be tarnished by less than quality adaptations.
We are already seeing this in the real world, where Disney cartoons are public domain, but the characters, having been used in consecutive works, cannot be used by anyone other than them.
Nobody’s legacy is “tarnished” or otherwise damaged by things other people create. The original is still there, while new things get to express their take on the characters and/or the rest of the material. Derivative works add to the sum total of culture, they don’t subtract from it, and the Public Domain denotes the part of culture we all own together and can develop new works about freely. The freedom to do so is a good thing for everyone including cultural creators (who get to enrich their own work using our shared property) and consumers (who get more stuff they might enjoy, and if they don’t the original is still there regardless) and everyone wins. Your scenario would make nothing better for anyone.
If you restrict reuse of the characters in new work, the original would not be in the public domain. Something is either one’s property or it isn’t, and something in the public domain is everyone’s property. You can’t have the original as part of the collective repository of freely-available information and culture while still trying to make bits of it (such as its characters) not part of that.
The public domain period is when the law has agreed that the original authors no longer have exclusive rights to the material they put into the world. Trying to still, after that period has elapsed, declare the characters are still that author’s property but only if they turn up in other people’s work is a truly bizarre suggestion and I fail to see what would be gained by society in that scenario.
I really don’t think this is a difficult concept to grasp, to be honest.
The original work becomes public domain, and can be freely reproduced.
The characters therein are, and remain, the property of the author’s estate, and cannot be used in new work without their permission.
We are already seeing this in the real world, where Disney cartoons are public domain, but the characters, having been used in consecutive works, cannot be used by anyone other than them.
This allows a published work to be used for generations to come, but doesn’t allow an author’s legacy to be tarnished by less than quality adaptations.
This is incorrect. When a Disney cartoon becomes public domain everything in it is also public domain, including the characters as used in that cartoon. The most famous example of this will happen on January 1 when the first Mickey Mouse cartoons go into the public domain, and so will that version of Mickey Mouse. You can read more about what that means for Mickey, and for Disney, in this post by the Center for the Study of the Public Domain at Duke Law.
Nobody’s legacy is “tarnished” or otherwise damaged by things other people create. The original is still there, while new things get to express their take on the characters and/or the rest of the material. Derivative works add to the sum total of culture, they don’t subtract from it, and the Public Domain denotes the part of culture we all own together and can develop new works about freely. The freedom to do so is a good thing for everyone including cultural creators (who get to enrich their own work using our shared property) and consumers (who get more stuff they might enjoy, and if they don’t the original is still there regardless) and everyone wins. Your scenario would make nothing better for anyone.
Removed by mod