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- [00:00]
A
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartradio. Welcome back to the show, fellow ridiculous historians. Thank you as always so much for tuning. Tuning in. Let's hear it for Our super producer, Mr. Max Copyright Williams.
- [00:40]
B
I mean it was the only one. It was the only possible one, nickname wise for this episode. I actually do have a copyright on myself.
- [00:46]
A
Whoa. Yeah.
- [00:47]
B
But I mean granted we all get copyrights as soon as we create something, but we'll get to that later. Right? The old. Yes, of course you put it out there. Technically it's copywritten. But there's also like, you know, caveats to that.
- [00:59]
A
Oh so many. And it reminds me of our conversation on the Daily Zeitgeist about stuff like the poor man's copyright. As we'll see, having a copyright and defending a copyright can be a little complicated. Oh, we forgot to introduce ourselves. That's Mr. Noel Brown.
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B
Hi, you're Ben Bolan.
- [01:20]
A
That's me. And we are continuing our series on ip the. The short term for intellectual property.
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B
Ipup. We all pee for intellectual property.
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A
And as we said off here. I pee first, I poop second.
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B
I got a question here. Yes, of course, Max.
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A
Does the two hump camel have a two hump pee?
- [01:45]
B
I don't understand. It's a reference to Everyone poops. Yeah. Yeah. And then the less the much less popular book, Nobody poops but you. Yeah, that's from Family Guy. It's the one Family Guy joke I remember.
- [01:59]
A
I think they called it like a Catholic children's book or something. He's like, oh, well we're Catholic.
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B
He's like, oh, so you're a horrible child and that is tent of sin protruding from your body. Something like that.
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A
I gotta tell you, this has nothing to do with anything. But talking about camels reminds me of a. A weird prejudice or discriminatory thought that I've been trying to fix it in my own head for years. But I just think the two hump Bactrian camels are so much cooler than the one hump camels.
- [02:28]
B
Yeah, I mean it's the classic camel. You want the two hump, where else? It's like a built in saddle.
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A
I'm never going to get over this. I'll have to start hanging out with some one hump camels.
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B
Remember when we were in the Middle east at that market and they had camel rides?
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A
Yes.
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B
Was that a one hump or a two hump? Had to have been a two hump. You can't ride a one hump. You'd fall right off.
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A
You could ride a one hump.
- [02:48]
B
You'd have to fit it with a special satellite, wouldn't you?
- [02:50]
A
Where that would be a top of the hunt. And maybe you could try to copyright some of these ideas.
- [02:57]
B
Ooh, see, but that would be more of a patent, wouldn't it?
- [02:59]
A
It would. And do check out our earlier episodes on this subject. So in our previous episodes we had talked about, like you were saying, null patents and all other sorts of intellectual property. But now we're going with something our research associate Max calls the comic Sans of intellectual property.
- [03:21]
B
I think I get it. This is an iHeart podcast.
- [03:26]
A
Guaranteed Human 250 years ago, a promise was made to connect families and friends near and far.
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B
And during the holidays, that promise is more important than ever.
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B
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- [03:55]
A
Joy to all the United States Postal Service.
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- [04:05]
A
That's what it sounds like when you.
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C
Plant more trees than you harvest.
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B
Work done by thousands of working forest.
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Professionals like Adam, a district forest manager who works to protect our forests from.
- [04:15]
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Fires, keeping the forest fire resistant. Synonymous with keeping a forest healthy. And we do that through planting more than we harvest and mitigate those risks through active management. It's a long term commitment.
- [04:28]
C
Visit workingforestsinitiative.com to learn more.
- [04:32]
A
Hey audiobook lovers, I'm Cal Penn.
- [04:34]
B
I'm Ed Helms.
- [04:35]
A
Ed and I are inviting you to join the best sounding book club you've ever heard with our new podcast, Irsay The Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club.
- [04:45]
B
Each week we sit down with your.
- [04:46]
A
Favorite iHeart PodC hosts and some very.
- [04:49]
B
Special guests to discuss the latest and.
- [04:51]
A
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- [05:04]
D
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- [05:32]
B
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- [05:38]
A
Latte, get festive with an iced gingerbread chai, or share a velvety peppermint mocha together is the best place to be at Starbucks.
- [05:52]
B
So we're going to pull a lot today from the very official copyright.gov. not an org, not a comm or a net, it's a gov, which means. Which used to mean something.
- [06:03]
A
It sure did. It sure did. So if we go to this source, copyright.gov, which is pretty canonical for our purposes today, we'll see you. We'll see that you can think of a copyright as a genre or type of intellectual property. The concept is that as soon as you fix a creative work or original work in a tangible form of expression.
- [06:29]
B
A medium, right?
- [06:30]
A
Yeah, a medium. Then your work is protected under copyright law. In the. This is. By the way, this just applies to the United States. Things get stickier when you travel around the globe. But Noel, what is original work for this?
- [06:47]
B
Something that a creative work that an individual produces from their mind place that could include paintings, photographs, musical compositions, original recordings, which is its own issue because there's lots of different stakeholders in musical recordings because you've also got the writing, you've got the actual property, the masters, all of that stuff. We'll get into that. That's one of my particular nerdoms. Computer programming programs, software, video games, books, poems, any kind of blog post would technically fall under this. Films, architectural works and the plans thereof. Right. Plays, sonnets, I guess that falls under poetry, illustrations, comic books, pretty much creative acts.
- [07:37]
A
Right. And a tangible form of expression is. It's a well intentioned distinction, but it can also get a little sticky when we're talking about the nature of something being tangible. Like dance. Is a choreographed dance something you could copyright?
- [07:56]
B
I was gonna ask, and I think you. Well, that's a good question. Cause you do often hear about choreography being lifted or borrowed or stolen. I actually saw a thing yesterday on Instagram where it was some digital kind of independent digital creator showing some sort of anim that they had made and published online of a fight scene. Like a lightsaber ish type fight scene. And then the ab frame of a, I believe, a Marvel movie that lifted every aspect, including camera angles of that original work. Which. Yeah, I don't. I'd have to dig deeper into that. But I was gonna ask the same thing. Can you copyright like a Funny Walk?
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A
I've seen a video. The video you're talking about or something very much like it.
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B
It happens relatively frequently.
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A
Yeah. Yeah. Because it's complex to stage a choreographed fight safely and in a way that still looks real and carries the story. It may be a situation where the stunt coordinator or the person responsible for choreographing the fight just uses their own stuff sometimes. But in the video you're referencing, it did look clearly like a lift.
- [09:09]
B
This was the person who had made the original thing say, hey, look at this, look at these.
- [09:13]
A
They're saying, I didn't make the second version of this. Someone took it. I do want to point out that copyright.gov does one more very unusual thing for.gov website. They have an exclamation mark in their definition. They say architectural works, plays and so much more.
- [09:32]
B
Gosh, how much more copyright.gov enlighten us. Copyrights can be either original, meaning that they're created independently by a unique human author. Boy, oh boy, we're going to start getting into some real interesting territory with AI. Like, can someone copyright an AI work that they have prompted into existence? That's a whole nother question for another day. And have a minimal degree of creativity. That would definitely describe AI work. Look, I'm not trying to poo poo all AI work. And there's some interesting AI artwork, weird kind of use of the technology out there, but boy, oh boy, is a lot of it hack or it can be fixed. And what is. What does that mean exactly?
- [10:11]
A
Yeah. So before we get to that, let's go to minimal degree of creativity. Just for an example, let's say, like, I used to have a lot of technical writing gigs. So let's say you are a technical writer and you're not crafting some philosophical exploration of the nature of the soul, but instead you're like, here are the requirements for this sort of request for funding.
- [10:36]
B
Procedural writing.
- [10:38]
A
Yeah, that's a good way to put it. And so that would still qualify as a copyright. But to your question about something being fixed, that means that it is captured in some way with the approval of the author, the creator, in a, quote, sufficiently permanent medium such that the work can be perceived, reproduced or communicated for more than a short time, so it's no longer ephemeral.
- [11:06]
B
And this gets into an interesting place. Back to the music nerdom with like tapers, people that follow bands around and tape concerts, a lot of jam type bands, you know, the Fish and the Grateful Dead and the like, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard. They are all about tapers and they do not pursue Any kind of, you know, recompense for people putting these recordings out. King Gizzard in particular, actually releases the masters of their albums, their original creative works, and allows individuals to press them in unique and creative ways. And they don't ask for a dime of that. They just ask for a copy of the work of the thing so they can add it to their, like, crazy archive of, like, versions of their albums.
- [11:54]
A
And they also. So we're Gizzard fans, folks. They also have done something really smart there. You could say it's just creativity, welcoming, more creativity, but. But it also is huge for growing their fandom. It's a great way to goodwill. Yeah. It's a great way to pull in new listeners. It's brilliant move. But this is the thing. What makes copyrights different from, say, other kinds of IP, like a patent. It's because, again, back to copyright.gov, everyone is a copyright owner. Ridiculous historians, you're listening now. If you ever made anything original, you kind of have a copyright. It just goes back to, you know, how you defend it. Like if you take a photograph, you write a nifty little poem, you record a new song, you're the author of it. And Max, with the Comic Sans analogy, I want to shout out your allusion to that excellent McSweeney's article, which is all about fonts fighting.
- [13:01]
B
You're welcome. I wrote that all for. I wrote that specifically for you, but for all the font heads out there, we got our gizzard heads and we giz heads and we got our font heads. So a trademark, right, is a brand, right? It's like a company name or the name of a product, for example. There is a certain similarity to that with regards to copyright. Whereas if you're the first one to use a trademark, I believe you got a little bit of skin in the game. If you can prove that you used it first in a certain region, then you. You do have a little bit of an argument for shutting somebody else down from using it, just by virtue of being first to market with that thing. Similarly, with the creative work, if you can show through timestamps of original source files, for example, or, you know, a digital photograph, for example, that has embedded metadata on it that shows you did it before X person that claims it. There's your argument as well.
- [13:59]
A
Yeah, yeah. So in the world of writing, one thing you hear a lot about is the poor man's copyright. Because putting it in the post through an official government institution gets you that stamp, right? It proves that you have done this thing by this point in time. But as we said before, oh, for.
- [14:22]
B
A thing that maybe isn't so digital, you literally are showing that you mailed this. There is then a record and a postmark that dates it in time, and you can use that as your argument.
- [14:33]
A
So if I maybe don't trust my publisher entirely, then I print something out, I mail it somewhere so I can say, you know, HarperCollins or whatever, I made this thing, not whatever story you are claiming. Of course, HarperCollins would not do that.
- [14:52]
B
Probably not. And that would be particularly important if you were super old school and maybe you only did your writing on a typewriter. Right. As opposed to why I emphasize writer. Just fine to emphasize the wrong word. But if you were doing it electronically, you would obviously have that timestamp and wouldn't necessarily need to send it through the post. I believe those two things accomplish the same task. Right?
- [15:14]
A
Yeah, yeah. And everything we're describing is an attempt to again, secure some sort of confirmation or authentication of the time in which a thing was created and registering a work. Officially, getting the copyright through the system isn't mandatory, but for things made in the U.S. registration or refusal of registration is necessary if you want to enforce the rights of the copyright in court through litigation. This means like if you register correctly on time and don't do the poor man's copyright, folks, it gets sticky in court. If you register correctly on time, then you have the right to sue people, to get some compensation, to ask for damages from the court, to get the offending party to pay your attorney fees in case of a lawsuit. You're essentially taking out insurance. You're paying a little bit of protection money just in case someone comes for you later.
- [16:22]
B
Yeah, and you really hit on an important point there, Ben, is a copyright is not a blanket protection from litigation. It just is your argument in court that hopefully will give you the upper hand. In the same way that we've talked about things like fair use. You can technically use a copywritten work legally if it's transformative, or if it falls under these certain educational whatever. But that doesn't mean that the copyright owner isn't gonna come after you and you're gonna have to defend your fair use in court, which could well be expensive and you could well, and without.
- [17:03]
A
Being too in the weeds here, folks, peek behind the curtain. We have, over the course of our careers, separately and together, dealt with issues like this firsthand. One time, writing a show called Stuff of Genius, I got in trouble with the creators of the Frisbee. They were surprisingly not whimsical about it.
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B
You know, for kids.
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A
Right. And then we got you gotta call it a flying disc unless you have Frisbee's permission, turns out.
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B
And that is a trademark issue.
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A
Right? And we got into another issue. Well, we got in front of an issue here on our own Dear Ridiculous History, when we loved having the Law and Order sound cue after we said Casey on the case, referring to our pal Casey Peckram. And then we realized there could be some litigation involved because they're very protective of that specific even though it's so short that specific sound bump.
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B
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- [22:49]
B
There's a term that's about to pop up, Phono record, which I really dig. It sounds, as our glorious President would say, it's an old fashioned word. Phonorecord. It's an old fashioned but beautiful Word. And it means, of course, recording. But a lot of. Especially in the last maybe 20. No, this is much longer than that. There are a lot of copyrights and it almost falls under copyright and trademark when you have a sound like you're talking about, Ben, like For example, the McDonald's Jingle or any little tiny audio ID for perhaps for a radio station or for a brand that's both a trademark and a copyright.
- [23:26]
A
Yeah. And one of the craziest versions of this that I remember hearing about. Oh, gosh, earlier this year, I was on the road when I heard about this. Apparently you guys, the. The dude who goes to wrestling matches and says, let's get ready to rumble. He's not going to do the voice. He owns it and he is super plugged into anybody else using it.
- [23:50]
B
Well, if that's like your one thing. I mean, look, no shade on the guy. Maybe he's an excellent painter or something in his private life, but, you know, that's his bread and butter. And he's of course gonna defend that if he's. If he was lucky enough and smart enough to lock that down.
- [24:05]
A
He did. Yeah, he super dupes locked it down. You also, if you have a copyright registered here in the United States, you have the right to make what we call derivative works based on your original work. So let's say you have a song called Third Man Quesadilla, and then you decide you're gonna make a salsa version or a merengue version.
- [24:30]
B
Cause why not?
- [24:31]
A
You could totally do that. Cause you own the original thing. You can also distribute copies or as we said, phono records of the work to the public. So you can sell it to people. You can also sell the copyright itself or rent it out or grant limited permission for people to use your thing.
- [24:52]
B
Like technically you are not supposed to. What's the word I'm looking for? Present, let's say a copywritten work for money. If you own a cinema, for example, and you're showing films and you aren't paying the copyright, you're gonna get shut down. Or even if you're doing it in a public square and charging admission, or I think even if you're not charging admission.
- [25:17]
A
Yeah, people have gotten in trouble before for things like private gatherings sometimes where you just, you know, we all know the classic fall and summer move. You wait till the weather's nice, you get a big blank wall or heck, a bed sheet of work, and then you have a projector and you get a movie night in the backyard. People have gotten in trouble for that. Even though it is so unreservedly wholesome.
- [25:43]
B
Right. And it's also pretty rare that someone would come after you for something like that. Just because it's rare doesn't mean it hasn't happened.
- [25:49]
A
Yeah, it has happened for sure. And your copyright rights also include things like performing the work publicly.
- [25:58]
B
That's the word I was looking for, Ben, is performance. Yeah. Because technically projecting something is a kind of performance.
- [26:06]
A
Yeah. If you had a really curmudgeonly copyright owner or a real go getter lawyer. Right. So that could be anything from musical performance to a play to choreography, literary recitation. And I like how Copyright.gov even points out pantomime. I did not know. I was not aware of the wide world of mime law.
- [26:35]
B
Mimery. Oh, mime law. It's only second to bird law. And yeah, I mean, I think I expressed a little bit of confusion about this at the top, but choreography and pantomime, their own category. Individual movements, dance steps themselves are not copyrightable, as in one particular aspect. But when you chain them together and you make it into a unique combination of them, then it becomes copyrightable.
- [27:02]
A
Okay, so you can't own. Put your left foot in, but you can own Hokey Pokey.
- [27:10]
B
That's right. And you can own the color blue. But you can own a work that incorporates the color blue and involves unique combinations of, like, you know, other colors.
- [27:22]
A
Like the IBM logo would be an example. So you can also display the work publicly. These are basic things. They make sense. That's the what of the copyright.
- [27:32]
B
Oh, and just really quickly, I'm sorry, I'm hung up on this, but I was just. I found an article on Copyright alliance, which is a dot org. And here, just a little clarification around the movement aspects. Here are some things that are not copyrightable. Yoga positions, a celebratory end zone dance.
- [27:47]
A
Move or athletic victory gesture.
- [27:50]
B
Ballroom, folk line, square and swing dances or general exercise routines. And here's the funny one. And I wonder if there's some wiggle room here. Skateboarding or snowboarding tricks. But what if you had one that was, like, been done before? Like, surely there's some way to at the very least, like, trademark. Maybe that's more of a trademark thing where you're calling it the thing and it's associated with a particular skate or snowboarder.
- [28:13]
A
Right. Like you're Tony Hawk. You make some amazing new trick and you, Tony, you can become known for that. But it's also. It's kind of a dick move to stop other skateboarders from trying that because they're aspiring. It's flattery for them to want to learn from you. It's. It's interesting too, because I would posit fellow ridiculous historians, that in each of those cases that we heard read off on that list from the alliance, we see a little bit of history. Someone definitely tried to copyright an end zone dance. Someone definitely tried to copyright a line dance. That's why there's such specificity of language here. It reminds me of walking into stores and seeing a really specific warning sign. Like you see no shirt, no shoes, no service, and you're like, who just walked in here in their underwear? And how often did it happen? Because it had to happen often enough for somebody to look at their co worker and say, crap, we need a sign.
- [29:21]
B
Max did it.
- [29:22]
A
Max did it. Max is an underwear guy.
- [29:24]
B
Yeah, he's the guy. Yeah, for sure. It also reminds me of the scene in Wayne's World where Wayne starts playing a thing that sounds nothing like Stairway to Heaven, by the way. And then the guitar shop attendant shuts them down, shuts them down and points to the sign that says no stairway to heaven. But I was also thinking it'd be funny to have a no showboating rule for stores that like, don't allow you to do, you know, peacocky end zone dances, you know, while in the store.
- [29:47]
A
Or music stores. Yeah. Or I want to find the most specific law or warning sign in a store that has an incredibly crazy story behind it. You know, like no misbehaving horses.
- [30:04]
B
No.
- [30:04]
A
Llama spitting after 6pm well, that reminds.
- [30:08]
B
Me of an episode that I'm certain we did just about odd laws still in the books in certain states. That sounds like, you know, that would qualify.
- [30:16]
A
And the reason I'm harping on the history here is because we talked about the what's of the copyright and you can probably already see some of the sticky wickets. But we also want to talk about the when. When did this become a thing? How did we get in this real situation? And it might surprise some of us in the audience tonight to realize that yet trademarks might date all the way back to the medieval age in Western Europe. But copyright as a concept is way more recent.
- [30:49]
B
Yeah. According to the Intellectual Property Rights Office, direct quote from them, the world's first copyright law was the Statute of Anne. Enacted in England in 1710. This act introduced for the first time the concept of the author of a world work being the owner of its copyright and laid out fixed terms of protection. This is a long one, Ben, but I think Worth reading. You want to pick it up?
- [31:11]
A
Sure. Following this act, copyrighted works were required to be deposited at specific copyright libraries and registered at the Stationer's Hall. So what this means to pause here is that your copyright has to go through a very specific system and. And if a version of your thing is not deposited at these specialized libraries, then it is not copyrighted. Even if you wrote it, it doesn't matter.
- [31:41]
B
But in those days, there was no automatic copyright protection for unpublished works, which we've talked about today doesn't necessarily have to have been published, it just needs to have been committed to a medium. Continuing from Intellectual Property Rights Office, legislation based on the Statute of Anne gradually appeared in other countries, such as the Copyright act of 1790 in the United States. But copyright legislation remained uncoordinated at an international level until the 19th century.
- [32:09]
A
And one bully boy bonus point for the founding fathers of the US. They talk about this in the Constitution in Article 1, Section 8. That's the same part of the text that we mentioned in previous episodes that establishes the rules of the legal road for patents and trademarks. So let's go to the Berne Convention of not Bernie Sanders reference B E R N E in 1886, the Berne Convention is introduced and it's kind of coordinating everybody together in an increasingly connected world. So the Berne Convention is this just. It's an agreement to say, hey, different countries have something like a copyright for their domestic population, so let's all just respect the copyright. Like a German copyright should still carry the credit should transfer to France as well.
- [33:10]
B
Yeah, exactly. Let's simplify this a little bit. It does away with the need to register those works independently in separate countries. It also has been the Berne Convention adopted by almost all the nations of the world. So following the US's adoption of the treaty in 1988. Wow. The convention now covers almost all major.
- [33:32]
A
Countries, but not all of them. You know what I mean?
- [33:35]
B
Almost.
- [33:36]
A
And being covered on paper is maybe not the same thing as being covered in practice. Like a shout out to the Chinese publishing industry, where since we were recently talking about Harry Potter, you might be interested to know I finished, by the way. Yeah, Deathly Alice 2 is dope. You might be interested to know that there are a ton of Harry Potter books published in China, at least from my understanding, that are not written by J.K. rowling. Someone just liked the idea of Harry Potter over here.
- [34:11]
B
We'd call that fanfic. And technically that's prosecutable, Right? But it usually isn't because it is considered sort of like a niche Internet culture thing and they usually don't make.
- [34:24]
A
It as much of a gizzard concept.
- [34:25]
B
Totally. I suppose that's. Yeah, that's fair. But it usually doesn't get enough traction or generate enough revenue that it's worth anybody's time to go after like all these individual fanfic writers. But over there in China, it's a little separate issue, isn't it?
- [34:37]
A
Yeah. And look, one of the biggest changes that comes about with the Berne Convention was to extend copyright protection to things that hadn't been published to unpublished works and then remove that long standing requirement for registration. That means this is good news, folks. That means that as an individual or as the organization that you're working for, if you, you know, say, have a job doing podcasts, you automatically own the copyright of any work produced as soon as it is recorded in some way. Drawing it, filming it, writing it down. And this is good overall for the creators of original works. It's a system that helps people retain ownership and agency and get compensated for their time. But it's still kind of fragmented as a system globally.
- [35:39]
B
250 years ago, the United States Postal Service made a promise to bind the nation, connecting families, friends and businesses near and far.
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And during the holidays, that promise is more important than ever because it's about more than just gifts and cards. It's the peace of mind knowing your love will arrive reliably and affordably.
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Trust the United States Postal Service to carry your most precious deliveries.
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Visit USPS.comholidays to find tools and tips to help you ship with confidence.
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The United States Postal Service delivering since.
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D
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- [38:03]
A
This episode of Ridiculous History is brought to you by Britbox.
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B
It's the coziest time of year on Britbox and that means baking piping hot tea on a chilly day, wrapping yourself in something soft on the sofa and getting lost in a brilliant series.
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BritBox.com man, people really love Harry Potter. And you too now can experience Harry Potter stories like you've never heard them before on audible.
- [39:16]
A
Yeah, that's right, Harry Potter. The Full Cast Audio Editions presents J.K. rowling's iconic series as a phenomenal, spellbinding listening event for your entire family.
- [39:27]
B
It is quite the romp. The Full Cast Audio Editions features a spectacular a list cast including Hugh Laurie. I think we all love. We love Hugh Albus. Yeah yeah. Dr. House, MD as Albus Dumbledore and Riz Ahmed as Severus Snape.
- [39:44]
A
Folks, this one is just phenomenal for any fellow longtime Harry Potter fans, this is a delightful new way to introduce the stories to a new generation.
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B
The first story in the series, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, is available now, with new audiobooks in the series releasing every month thereafter.
- [40:02]
A
It's Harry Potter like you've never heard it before. Listen on audible. Go to audible.com HP1 and start listening today. So the rules in your neck of the global woods may be very different from those in another place. And one of the things we have to ask about, of course, is, all right, let's say we got a copyright. How long does this bad boy last? The general rule, which is kind of weird, the general rule is that for things Created after 1978, copyright protection applies for the life of the creator. And then 70 years after that, at.
- [40:48]
B
Which point it enters into the public domain, which we've seen happen for a handful of legacy properties in the last handful of years, like Winnie the Pooh, I believe. A version of Mickey Mouse, the Steamboat Willie version of Mickey Mouse. Certain songs I'm trying to think of some, some. Some big examples, but those are the two that come to mind.
- [41:11]
A
Yeah, you're in my head with the mention of Disney, because Disney has for a long time used its enormous power and heft to conduct legal disputes protecting especially their older creations. So the 1928 cartoon Steamboat Willie entered public domain in, like 2024, I think that's right. Yeah. And so do check out all of the kerfuffle there and you'll see how seriously companies like Disney take the concept of rights and trademarks and copyrights.
- [41:49]
B
Well, in the moment that happened, you started to see a lot of derivative works coming out featuring some of those characters. Like, there was a really cool retro kind of shooter video game that came out that I can't remember the name of, but it was basically a Mickey Mouse run and gun kind of shooter, first person shooter game. And there was also like a horror movie version of Winnie the Pooh called Blood and Honey or something like that that came out real quick, like they'd already had it in production waiting for that to drop, and then they rush, rushed it out, you know, and it made some noise because of the novelty of it.
- [42:25]
A
Yeah. And still, when something enters public domain, it's not the end of the game, especially for a company as powerful as Disney, because this is more trademark thing. But they have a legal leg to stand on if they go back to court and say, hey, our buddy Steamboat Will is in the public domain. But the way it's being used in this instance could lead people to think Disney has officially approved this or endorsed it, or it's a Disney product. So if you came out with something called, for example, Steamboat Billy and Steamboat Billy is slapped on things that look like Disney stuff, then you can get in trouble.
- [43:10]
B
That's exactly right.
- [43:11]
A
It's not the end of the game. But eventually, after a certain amount of time, your copyright is gone, it's in the public domain. And this has led a lot of companies, especially in the entertainment industry, to continually create new copyrighted material. Right. That's why they create new distinct versions of Mickey Mouse to sort of section out or block out the time window of copyright. So each of those different Mickeys has a different copyright.
- [43:47]
B
Yeah, exactly. The different iterations, the different eras, et cetera. And like Disney, to your point earlier, Ben is the kind of company that is so powerful that it can almost affect the law. For some time they kept that Steamboat Willie version of Mickey out of the public domain. Then they were able to extend that much longer than any mere mortal would be able to do.
- [44:12]
A
Yeah, they were just pushing the time window further and further and probably putting a lot of lawyers, kids through college, you know what I mean? So there's a silver lining there. And now the question becomes, okay, can you use a copyright that is not yours? Kind of.
- [44:31]
B
Yeah, exactly. You sure can. I'm paraphrasing from copyright.gov. it's really important to know that we are all users of copyrights. Every time we consume a piece of media, we are participating in that copyright. We are consuming it. Reading books, watching movies, listening to albums, playing video games, you know, using creative software tools, enterprise stuff, whatever, doing the.
- [44:57]
A
Dougie.
- [44:58]
B
Yeah, we are using copy written work. So even if you're not the owner of a work, you are still able to use it.
- [45:08]
A
Yeah, that's the point.
- [45:09]
B
Right. I mean, that's like, yeah, we are putting these things out in the world typically to be consumed by others. We just want to have protection so that nobody can profit from it and, you know, take money out of our pockets.
- [45:21]
A
Yeah. And also. Or plagiarize. How would you write a law that didn't have that in there? How would you. Because essentially you'd be saying, hey, buying a book does not give you the right to read it.
- [45:34]
B
It.
- [45:34]
A
You know, so it would. You have to.
- [45:36]
B
Oh, good point, Ben. That is a really important distinction.
- [45:39]
A
Right, right.
- [45:40]
B
Although technically, if you didn't pay for it, then you're.
- [45:43]
A
Yeah. Then you're a bad kid.
- [45:45]
B
But it's also, but then there's also like I don't know. That's. That's very interesting because is it technically illegal to read magazines at a bookstore? Like, if you didn't pay for it, are you stealing that copywritten work when you're not compensating the.
- [46:00]
A
The.
- [46:00]
B
The holder.
- [46:01]
A
Oh, you would have to be such a busybody.
- [46:03]
B
Wouldn't you, though?
- [46:04]
A
Problem with that. Wouldn't you, though? Yeah, I mean, that's a man. That's an assistant manager having a bad day.
- [46:08]
B
I think you're probably right.
- [46:11]
A
So we know that there are exceptions and limitations to the Copyright Act. You can find this listed on copyright.gov there are things we've talked about already, like fair use and the first sale doctrine. There are some, thankfully, some specific rights for archives and libraries. It gets complicated with cable and satellite as well. Let's not even get into televised sports for a moment. Max, that was for you. And we know that there are things that are never protected by copyright, like facts and discoveries. You can patent a new wonder drug based on scientific research you've done, but you can't patent the scientific truths that you discovered in your research.
- [47:03]
B
Yes. Or like, you can patent maybe, or, I don't know, see. What about like naming an element on the periodic table or like discovering a new metal, for example, that is a naturally occurring thing and you maybe can name it after yourself and register that, but you don't, like, own the material.
- [47:21]
A
Yeah. No, you can't be like the Nickel king.
- [47:26]
B
You could try. You could hoard your nickels like a smaug. You know, Start doing it Dungeon.
- [47:31]
A
Hoard your pennies too, folks. The last US Penny was just. Was just stamped.
- [47:36]
B
Oh, no. The last penny dropped.
- [47:39]
A
The last penny dropped. And I am as. As you know, Noel, I am beyond excited about that. I think it's great. But wanted to make space and just send our condolences to anybody who's a fan of those little tourist penny stamper machines.
- [47:56]
B
If anybody wants to do a candlelight vigil for pennies, we're here for it. No, I know, man. You've got. You've got. You've got beef with pennies.
- [48:04]
A
I just. I don't.
- [48:05]
B
They make your fingers smell weird. I don't care for them either. And they're. When's the last time you spent a penny second. Seconded. Hate them.
- [48:13]
A
Yeah, they.
- [48:14]
B
We should have gotten rid of them, like decades ago. It does seem like a bit of a waste of material. So I'm with you guys.
- [48:19]
A
Canada was in front of us on that one for sure. So thank you to our northern neighbors. Now, at this point, we know that currently all pre1962 US works are in the public domain because copyright protection has expired. But again, powerful forces can change the law and push that conversation. So at some point, it won't be a surprise when copyright law once again evolves, especially with all the technological breakthroughs we've been talking about about in this episode. Noel I think it's pretty exciting as we're wrapping up here to realize that.
- [48:58]
B
We'Re all copyright owners, all copyright owners and users. And if you want a little bit of a nugget of current events information at the end here, the handful of pieces of work that are entering the public domain in 2026 coming up are some books. William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying and the Incredible Detective mystery noir author Dashiell Hamnet's the Maltese Falcon. The book, not the movie. Excellent movie, by the way, with Humphrey Bogart, I believe.
- [49:29]
A
Yeah. Also Pluto the Dog, Betty Boop in the year after that, in 2027, Virginia Woolf's Lighthouse, the movie 7th Heaven. I'm excited about this one. The German sci fi film Metropolis, and then a bunch of music that might be familiar to people like Duke Ellington and Bubber Miley's collaboration Black and Tan Fantasy. So we're on the precipice of some really weird and interesting stuff. I wonder what the first few Faulkner derivatives are going to be. As I lay frying As I spray crying.
- [50:04]
B
Well, you know, with this kind of boom in noir ish, kind of throwbacky stuff like the Knives out series and a lot of that stuff that Ryan Jones Johnson's doing, I could see some real fun spins on Maltese Falcon.
- [50:18]
A
Yes, yes, yes. That's so Falcon. Which I've started saying instead of yeah. We hope you enjoyed this episode. Thank you for tuning in, folks, here. As we're officially in the thick of the holiday season at the end of the year, we can't wait to have more adventures with you through November and throughout December and then on to 2026. Can't believe we're saying it. We're so close to a new year.
- [50:45]
B
Indeed. Huge thanks to Alex Williams, who composed our theme. Oh gosh, Max Williams, who is not only our super producer extraordinaire, but also our research associate on this episode.
- [50:54]
A
Big, big thanks to AJ Bahamas Jacobs, Dr. Rachel, Big Spinach Lance and a civil yet cold Good day, sir. To Jonathan Strickland, AKA the Quister.
- [51:08]
B
A bit of a biting of the thumb.
- [51:11]
A
A bit of a biting of the thumb.
- [51:13]
B
We'll see you next time, folks. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
- [51:28]
A
This episode of Ridiculous History is brought to you in part by American Public University.
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B
You're juggling a lot. Full time job, side hustle, maybe a family.
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And now you're thinking about grad school.
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At American Public University. They respect the hustle and they're built for it.
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Ed and I are inviting you to join the best sounding book club you've ever heard with our new podcast, Irsay The Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club.
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Each week we sit down with your.
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But first, There the last one. Enjoy a Coca Cola for a pause that refreshes.
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Uh, Limu is that guy with the binoculars watching us.
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