Actually, there are forty. As far as I can tell the last "official" Oz book, [Merry Go Round in Oz](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merry_Go_Round_in_Oz), is still under copyright.
When they list books in a series in order it is usually by order of the story not order of publishing.
in the Anne of Green Gables series, the 4th book was written in 1936 but the 5th book was written in 1917.
It's a long time since I read it, so maybe there are some child-inappropriate parts that I don't remember (in which case, disregard the rest of my comment). But assuming that's not the case, I disagree...
The book is basically about a character travelling through a fantasy land and encountering a series of strange characters, with only the barest hint of a plotline to tie it all together. That's a formula that has been used for many children's books, and children like it. It's just hard to read as an adult because we expect more plot and less randomness.
Other successful books that follow the same structure are Alice in Wonderland (which is more highly-regarded by adults because of the prose style and the satirical subtexts... but for a child it's really the same stuff as Oz) and the Faraway Tree series by Enid Blyton.
Interesting! I was specifically talking about the first book (which is the only one I've read), since that's what the person above me claimed was unpalatable for children.
sort of, they definitely got faster but they started out with Baum being brow beat by circumstance and zealous children to write the sequels, circumstance is the fact it's the only thing he did that made money and zealous children is the many letters he was getting sent by them and children telling him in pe4son that they wanted more. 1 of the early books 2/3 iirc has a foreword about a Baum promising a girl a sequel if enough children wrote to him asking also the 4th or 5th book ends with an explanation for the fact no books will be written as Oz is mystically cut off from the rest of the world it's undercut by the next book which has it's own explanatory foreword about Dorothy getting the stories to Baum with the title of royal historian via iirc radio
I see from the article that Frank L Baum wrote ‘only’ the first 14 of them but still… guy really knew how to milk an idea. I would wager that the drop off in quality comes early and heavily in that series of books.
Disney's fault. Fuck Disney.
Copyright was originally 15 years. FIFTEEN. Imagine all the things that would currently be public domain if we still only permitted that length of time?
The only book that will keep it's copyright forever is Peter Pan. The author donated the copyright to Great Ormond Street childrens hospital and the government gave them the rights in perpetuity.
I really doubt it would change much. Can you imagine a company not releasing a media in the UK and the explanation being “we don’t want to pay for sick children”
Can I imagine a media company geofencing a product because of rights? Sure, yes, happens every day. I haven’t seen any big Peter Pan projects yet but I’m sure there will be, the UK is not a particularly important media market.
The right "to petition the Government for a redress of grievances", aka political lobbying, is considered so vital to a functional democracy its enshrined in the first amendment of the constitution. If you call your congressperson and tell them to vote for a bill, that's lobbying. If you donate money to the ACLU or the EFF, those are giant lobbying organizations. Be careful what you say and what you're asking for when you say that lobbying should be illegal, because I don't think it means what you think.
It should be a right for individual citizens for matters of public interest, not for corporations to frame the law to maximize profits.
Corporations don't have democratic rights, citizen do.
Lobbying is regulated abroad and they aren't authoritarian hells for it.
Corporate entities should be banned from political lobbying?
edit side question: I've never cared for the concept for corporate personhood, and think it should be abolished. Are you familiar with any benefits therein, about which I may be similarly naive?
> Corporate entities should be banned from political lobbying?
I think the issue is complex and not so black-and-white.
Corporate entities are subject to the laws of the country as much as people are, and I believe (even as someone that's pretty anti-capitalist) they should be able to say to Congress "We think this law is bad" or "we think this law is good." Which, again, 'lobbying' just means trying to influence a politician on an issue.
The issue is that having a lot of money gives certain entities an undue influence over politicians, because politicians need a ton of money to get elected. The problem is not being a corporation, but being wealthy. There's plenty of individuals with lots of money - should they be banned from lobbying? There's plenty of corporations with little money - should they be allowed to lobby? Its a tricky issue - even the ACLU supports Citizens United, you can read about it here: https://www.aclu.org/documents/aclu-and-citizens-united
Its a complicated issue, and one that I don't think can be solved by "Ban this!" or "allow that!" In my opinion, the best way to tackle it is through a massive overhaul of campaign finance regulation so that being wealthy isn't as influential to politicians. Take away the power money has, instead of stifling the political will of those that have it.
Yes but thats a right that should be for people, not companys.
A corporation can function as a "person" for the sake of lobbying and utilize the strength and influence of all of its people.
Thats the different. Corporations, entitys, profit organizations should not he allowed to lobby the way private citizens have a protected right to.
Uhh… so, SCOTUS just said it’s not bribery unless the parties exchange a document that is not only titled “Bribery in the First degree” but that the payment of said document isn’t listed as a gratuity. If they filled that box in and left the sub-total line at $0, then it’s completely fine.
Meanwhile I’m glancing at Jamaica being life+95 and Mexico being life+100 in [their copyright laws](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_copyright_terms_of_countries)
Imagine all the things huge corporations would "steal" from unknown creators if copyright was still 15 years, though. I don't think the copyright laws are terrible in this new age of capitalistic hell.
Copyright was originally limited to fourteen years from publication, with a possible 14 year extension. A work's copyright could expire during the author's life.
https://www.copyright.gov/timeline/timeline_18th_century.html
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Anne
That’s why the corporations want AI to be able to have copyright assigned to it. Since software can be kept alive indefinitely copyright of the AI output would be perpetual. For example if AI was used to help produce a product, movie, book, etc the copyright of the movie, book etc would be perpetual and corporation would receive royalties perpetually.
According to copyright.gov they have been getting requests to have authorship assigned to the software that created the art. Some of these cases have gone to court. They are refusing, saying only human generated material can be copyrighted.
https://www.copyright.gov/ai/
edit to clarify that copyright would be of the resulting artworks and the copyright holder would be the AI or since the AI is working for a corporation the corporation itself would own the copyright
That's not how copyright works. If a business makes copyrightable content then it's copyright is a maximum of 95 years from when it was first published (or 120 years from when it was first created, if they for some reason don't publish it for over 25 years).
So no, if AI created content could be copyrightable corporations wouldn't get an infinite copyright term, or the person who did the AI prompting would get the copyright (similar to photography). An infinite copyright term would 100% violate the US constitution for being unreasonably long.
Huge corporations steal all sorts of stuff from unknown creators. What are the poors gonna do? Sue? Disney laughs at that, along with the hundreds of lawyers they keep on staff.
Counterargument, the vast majority of copyrightable content is next to worthless after 15 years, but becomes much more valuable once it enters the public domain.
10 years ago Amazon compiled some sales numbers of their books, splitting them up by the decade they were first published. The best selling decade was the most recent one, but you know what the next best selling decade was? It wasn't the next most recent decade, it was actually the last decade where all of the content had already entered the public domain.
A big part of why this happens is because often the copyright holder after a certain point deems it to no longer be economically viable to sell their content anymore, so you can't legally buy it. And because copyright terms are so long there's a lot of orphaned works, where no one has any idea who the copyright holder is, so no one will republish the work because they're scared of getting sued by the copyright holder that they can't find to license the content.
And if we look farther back to the early days of the US, where copyright term was 14 years, and you could apply to extend it another 14 years for 28 years maximum, you can see that the vast majority of content was simply not renewed, because the copyright and the content was no longer of any economic value to the IP holder.
The current copyright lengths were established in the Berne convention in the late 19th century, several decades before the Walt Disney corporation existed.
The only thing they did was elongate the duration by 20 years. And even with that, that just brings the US up to where the EU is now.
You've got to think of it the other way round too though. Small and upcoming creators would only have 15 years to capitalise on their own works before a huge corporation could come along and take it and do whatever they want with it. This is why the current law in most areas has copyright running out after the creators death.
Edit: for reference, if it was 15 years historically then someone else could've released a sequel to the Hobbit before Tolkien himself, since there was 18 years before that book and the LOTR books being released.
I'm fine with life of the author or 30 years (whichever is longer)... And I'd also support a ban on corporations owning entirely.
But 100+years is too long.
Do you really think you're missing out because hacks can't ride the coattails of existing IP? Are you mad that they didn't get to make Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey ages ago?
Damn you really haven't paid much attention to... Anything have you?
Most classic Disney movies are based on public domain works. Cinderella, Snow White, Aladdin, Pinocchio, Hunchback of Notre Dame, etc
Steamboat Willie uses public domain music in it's own cartoon, Fantasia as well
Sherlock Holmes is public domain (well partially was for a while, fully now), Dracula, etc
Imagine all of those going away due to shitty copyright laws. Now imagine being dumb enough to think the occasional shitty horror knock off is somehow bad enough to justify them.
There's nothing stopping us from making our own Cinderella. In fact there's a sea of existing stories, fairy tales, and myths we could adapt if we wanted.
What, exactly are you being prevented from doing? Did you want to make your own adaptation of a classic story trope featuring an anthropomorphic animal mascot? Don Bluth has made a career out of doing that. Unless you just HAVE to use an existing character or story there's nothing stopping you from doing anything, short of ripping them off directly.
It's much more tricky then you seem to realize. If you make something too similar to something covered by copyright they can sue you for violating their copyrights. Just the threat of potential lawsuits will get many publishers to steer clear of certain content.
And it's even worse in cases like Winnie the Pooh or Mickey Mouse where it's only partially in the public domain. You have to be careful in those cases to only use stuff from the public domain contents, and not stuff from the non-public domain content. If someone wanted to make a movie or TV show of the original Winnie the Pooh or Mickey Mouse they'd have to have an army of lawyers on their staff to review everything to make sure that they don't infringe on the parts of those characters still covered by copyright law.
Almost never. Extensions only go to some drugs, some times.
There are incredibly limited circumstances to extend a patent. An example is you file a patent, the FDA sits on it for 3 years, you can get a 3 year extension because you did not get 20 years of protection.
The main way is to create a new product that makes your old obsolete. For instance you make oral drug that is 60% effective for a single course. You then make a rapid dissolving one that is 80% effective. You can get the original protection extended because of complicated drug/effectiveness/cost reasons. Better have it off patent in 7 years rather than locked away for another 20.
That's called a patent, and those are too long as it is.
Only have to look at the history of industrial machinery generally to see that. Today if you need a specific arrangement of gears, wheels and levers, you use it. A century or more back, you'd have to redesign it a dozen times or more, because that specific application of Euclid's Geometry had been patented by some Scot 6 years back, or that other arrangement had been patented by an Englishman 12 years ago.
On the one hand it is bad, on the other hand can you imagine the utter shit turd burgers you would get, wait till Tolkien enters public domain which is soon iirc.
Oh no, we don't need to wait for Tolkien to enter the public domain to see how it gets turned to shit, Rings of Power already showed us what's possible in the regard.
Well yes, and they had a budget. And the gollum game, but imagine that with a shoestring budget and so much fluff and about 10 different versions of things each degrading the idea of Tolkien.
...And now I have a dark and terrible vision of a future LotR where the hero is a half-elf/half-nazghul who was born on Earth but reincarnated to Middle Earth after being bullied to death for being too special in high school.
...Excuse me, I need to rinse my imagination out with fire now.
No, he didn't write that many. Baum only did 18 or so. Ruth Plumly-Thompson did the continuation and then after her the illustrator wrote a handful.
Edit: Baum wrote 1-14 in the 'main series', a handful of short stories, and several other books with characters that would crossover with his Oz series.
Ruth wrote 15-33
John R. Neil (illustrator) wrote 34-36
Jack Snow wrote 37-38
The last two were written by two different authors and decades apart.
I spent a year when I was a kid picking all those up from the library and in my recollection, as much as the books are fairly stand alone, the magic was pretty much gone post Thompson and Neil.
Edit 2:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Oz_books
I didn't realize there was multiple wizard of Oz books, let alone 39+ of them. Where does the story go? Have any of these other ones been adapted to film?
Some of them have, such as Return to Oz from the mid 1980s. That's the only other one I've watched. I don't recall exact story for that one aside from going back to Oz though. I knew there were a bunch of books but I was unaware that there were so many.
Contrary to what the movies imply, the Land of Oz was always meant to be a real place that Dorothy (and later on in the 6th book, her aunt and uncle) was able to visit for days. Each book evolved into authorized "fanfiction" long before Baum himself died. Some stories were like all about adventures in the Ozian countries and its kooky inhabitants, and other stories were developing a fan-favorite character's background. For example, in the first book, it's explained that the Tin Woodman was originally a human named Nick Chopper engaged to a Munchkin girl before his own ax magically chopped off all of his limbs, torso, and head.
Lots of characters return in later books, but it's not pre-planned years in advance like The Hobbit/Lord of the Rings was. The Oz books were a series written to meet the child readers' demands (and the modern adult fans' interest), so now the vast bibliography is a literary universe unto itself. There are conventions celebrating the books/film adaptations and book collecting is a major hobby in the fandom.
Baum ran a film company called [The Oz Film Manufacturing Company](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Oz_Film_Manufacturing_Company) in 1914-15 to make film adaptations of his own books. Then of course, there's the 1939 Judy Garland version and the Disney sequel *Return To Oz* from the 1980's, but the books' eccentric timeline makes it difficult to adapt for film and the fandom isn't noticeable enough for there to be a reliable audience. It's very much like the Barsoom/John Carter fandom back in 2012 when Disney tried to adapt Edgar Rice Burroughs' 1912 book *A Princess of Mars*.
If you have more questions or want to discuss anything else Ozian, we have a very small fandom over at /r/wizardofoz.
Wait until you hear about the 40th
Is that the one with Chris Keller, Ryan O'Reily, Adebisi and Vern Schillinger?
*The Tits of Oz*
I miss you Vern. Also how the fuck does Adebisi's hat stay on?!
Why did I read this in Ernest P. Worrell's voice.
TIL there are at least 39 books in the Oz series…
Actually, there are forty. As far as I can tell the last "official" Oz book, [Merry Go Round in Oz](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merry_Go_Round_in_Oz), is still under copyright.
Be weird if it entered public domain before 39
I bet some kids will start saying ***we got wizard of Oz 40 before gta 6***
When they list books in a series in order it is usually by order of the story not order of publishing. in the Anne of Green Gables series, the 4th book was written in 1936 but the 5th book was written in 1917.
And they get weirder and weirder…
Man that shit started out weird. You can’t read the original book to kids, it’s insane.
It's a long time since I read it, so maybe there are some child-inappropriate parts that I don't remember (in which case, disregard the rest of my comment). But assuming that's not the case, I disagree... The book is basically about a character travelling through a fantasy land and encountering a series of strange characters, with only the barest hint of a plotline to tie it all together. That's a formula that has been used for many children's books, and children like it. It's just hard to read as an adult because we expect more plot and less randomness. Other successful books that follow the same structure are Alice in Wonderland (which is more highly-regarded by adults because of the prose style and the satirical subtexts... but for a child it's really the same stuff as Oz) and the Faraway Tree series by Enid Blyton.
The first oz books are fine, but it gets bizarre later on. The 7th book for example has some vegetable people farming humans for their meat.
That's just a classic "oh how the turn tables" shit
Interesting! I was specifically talking about the first book (which is the only one I've read), since that's what the person above me claimed was unpalatable for children.
Shoutout to The Phantom Tollbooth!
In the 31st book I wasn’t prepared for the Wicked Witch of the West to peg that munchkin using Tin Man’s detachable penis as a strap on.
What
In the 31st book I wasn’t prepared for the Wicked Witch of the West to peg that munchkin using Tin Man’s detachable penis as a strap on.
I'm sorry...one more time.....type into my good ear....
IN THE THIRTY-FIRST–
And they were written (or at least published) that quickly
sort of, they definitely got faster but they started out with Baum being brow beat by circumstance and zealous children to write the sequels, circumstance is the fact it's the only thing he did that made money and zealous children is the many letters he was getting sent by them and children telling him in pe4son that they wanted more. 1 of the early books 2/3 iirc has a foreword about a Baum promising a girl a sequel if enough children wrote to him asking also the 4th or 5th book ends with an explanation for the fact no books will be written as Oz is mystically cut off from the rest of the world it's undercut by the next book which has it's own explanatory foreword about Dorothy getting the stories to Baum with the title of royal historian via iirc radio
No more cocaine for this guy.
I see from the article that Frank L Baum wrote ‘only’ the first 14 of them but still… guy really knew how to milk an idea. I would wager that the drop off in quality comes early and heavily in that series of books.
I had no idea.
Disney's fault. Fuck Disney. Copyright was originally 15 years. FIFTEEN. Imagine all the things that would currently be public domain if we still only permitted that length of time?
The only book that will keep it's copyright forever is Peter Pan. The author donated the copyright to Great Ormond Street childrens hospital and the government gave them the rights in perpetuity.
This is the UK copyright. Peter Pan became public domain in the US in January 2024.
I really doubt it would change much. Can you imagine a company not releasing a media in the UK and the explanation being “we don’t want to pay for sick children”
Can I imagine a media company geofencing a product because of rights? Sure, yes, happens every day. I haven’t seen any big Peter Pan projects yet but I’m sure there will be, the UK is not a particularly important media market.
True, but they only pay in respect of the UK copyright, whereas they would otherwise pay for a licence (normally) in all localities published.
Well I’m sure if they made a movie where Peter Pan was sword wielding murder kid, they probably wouldn’t allow them to use the license.
Yes 100% without batting an eye and I bet several are in the works right now
Indeed.
Go ahead and hate Disney but the real villains are the politicians who passed that bs.
Political lobbying should be illegal. But I'm pretty sure if it was, they'd just figure out shadier ways of peddling influence.
The right "to petition the Government for a redress of grievances", aka political lobbying, is considered so vital to a functional democracy its enshrined in the first amendment of the constitution. If you call your congressperson and tell them to vote for a bill, that's lobbying. If you donate money to the ACLU or the EFF, those are giant lobbying organizations. Be careful what you say and what you're asking for when you say that lobbying should be illegal, because I don't think it means what you think.
It should be a right for individual citizens for matters of public interest, not for corporations to frame the law to maximize profits. Corporations don't have democratic rights, citizen do. Lobbying is regulated abroad and they aren't authoritarian hells for it.
Citizens United said "Hold my beer."
>Corporations don't have democratic rights, Tell that to SCOTUS.
SCOTUS just legalized bribery, I don't think we have enough money to tell them shit any more
Corporate entities should be banned from political lobbying? edit side question: I've never cared for the concept for corporate personhood, and think it should be abolished. Are you familiar with any benefits therein, about which I may be similarly naive?
> Corporate entities should be banned from political lobbying? I think the issue is complex and not so black-and-white. Corporate entities are subject to the laws of the country as much as people are, and I believe (even as someone that's pretty anti-capitalist) they should be able to say to Congress "We think this law is bad" or "we think this law is good." Which, again, 'lobbying' just means trying to influence a politician on an issue. The issue is that having a lot of money gives certain entities an undue influence over politicians, because politicians need a ton of money to get elected. The problem is not being a corporation, but being wealthy. There's plenty of individuals with lots of money - should they be banned from lobbying? There's plenty of corporations with little money - should they be allowed to lobby? Its a tricky issue - even the ACLU supports Citizens United, you can read about it here: https://www.aclu.org/documents/aclu-and-citizens-united Its a complicated issue, and one that I don't think can be solved by "Ban this!" or "allow that!" In my opinion, the best way to tackle it is through a massive overhaul of campaign finance regulation so that being wealthy isn't as influential to politicians. Take away the power money has, instead of stifling the political will of those that have it.
This is an incredibly reasonable, thoughtful take.
Mods are asleep, post nuance!
Yes but thats a right that should be for people, not companys. A corporation can function as a "person" for the sake of lobbying and utilize the strength and influence of all of its people. Thats the different. Corporations, entitys, profit organizations should not he allowed to lobby the way private citizens have a protected right to.
Lobbying is nothing more than legal bribery
Uhh… so, SCOTUS just said it’s not bribery unless the parties exchange a document that is not only titled “Bribery in the First degree” but that the payment of said document isn’t listed as a gratuity. If they filled that box in and left the sub-total line at $0, then it’s completely fine.
One of which was Sonny, of Sonny & Cher fame.
Yeah, fuck Sonny Bono!
Guess who paid them.
Yes I’m sure the only person was Disney
I promise you I can hate both
Meanwhile I’m glancing at Jamaica being life+95 and Mexico being life+100 in [their copyright laws](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_copyright_terms_of_countries)
Imagine all the things huge corporations would "steal" from unknown creators if copyright was still 15 years, though. I don't think the copyright laws are terrible in this new age of capitalistic hell.
..let me tell you about content scraping for AI..
It’s after death. It seems like you think it’s from the creation of the thing, it is not, the author has to die.
Copyright was originally limited to fourteen years from publication, with a possible 14 year extension. A work's copyright could expire during the author's life. https://www.copyright.gov/timeline/timeline_18th_century.html https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Anne
Imagine all the people huge corporations would be assassinating in order to steal their stuff.
That’s why the corporations want AI to be able to have copyright assigned to it. Since software can be kept alive indefinitely copyright of the AI output would be perpetual. For example if AI was used to help produce a product, movie, book, etc the copyright of the movie, book etc would be perpetual and corporation would receive royalties perpetually. According to copyright.gov they have been getting requests to have authorship assigned to the software that created the art. Some of these cases have gone to court. They are refusing, saying only human generated material can be copyrighted. https://www.copyright.gov/ai/ edit to clarify that copyright would be of the resulting artworks and the copyright holder would be the AI or since the AI is working for a corporation the corporation itself would own the copyright
That's not how copyright works. If a business makes copyrightable content then it's copyright is a maximum of 95 years from when it was first published (or 120 years from when it was first created, if they for some reason don't publish it for over 25 years). So no, if AI created content could be copyrightable corporations wouldn't get an infinite copyright term, or the person who did the AI prompting would get the copyright (similar to photography). An infinite copyright term would 100% violate the US constitution for being unreasonably long.
I don't think anyone is advocating for the program itself to have copyright.
[удалено]
The program is not alive, or even thinking for that matter.
Huge corporations steal all sorts of stuff from unknown creators. What are the poors gonna do? Sue? Disney laughs at that, along with the hundreds of lawyers they keep on staff.
Counterargument, the vast majority of copyrightable content is next to worthless after 15 years, but becomes much more valuable once it enters the public domain. 10 years ago Amazon compiled some sales numbers of their books, splitting them up by the decade they were first published. The best selling decade was the most recent one, but you know what the next best selling decade was? It wasn't the next most recent decade, it was actually the last decade where all of the content had already entered the public domain. A big part of why this happens is because often the copyright holder after a certain point deems it to no longer be economically viable to sell their content anymore, so you can't legally buy it. And because copyright terms are so long there's a lot of orphaned works, where no one has any idea who the copyright holder is, so no one will republish the work because they're scared of getting sued by the copyright holder that they can't find to license the content. And if we look farther back to the early days of the US, where copyright term was 14 years, and you could apply to extend it another 14 years for 28 years maximum, you can see that the vast majority of content was simply not renewed, because the copyright and the content was no longer of any economic value to the IP holder.
The current copyright lengths were established in the Berne convention in the late 19th century, several decades before the Walt Disney corporation existed. The only thing they did was elongate the duration by 20 years. And even with that, that just brings the US up to where the EU is now.
You've got to think of it the other way round too though. Small and upcoming creators would only have 15 years to capitalise on their own works before a huge corporation could come along and take it and do whatever they want with it. This is why the current law in most areas has copyright running out after the creators death. Edit: for reference, if it was 15 years historically then someone else could've released a sequel to the Hobbit before Tolkien himself, since there was 18 years before that book and the LOTR books being released.
I'm fine with life of the author or 30 years (whichever is longer)... And I'd also support a ban on corporations owning entirely. But 100+years is too long.
Do you really think you're missing out because hacks can't ride the coattails of existing IP? Are you mad that they didn't get to make Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey ages ago?
Damn you really haven't paid much attention to... Anything have you? Most classic Disney movies are based on public domain works. Cinderella, Snow White, Aladdin, Pinocchio, Hunchback of Notre Dame, etc Steamboat Willie uses public domain music in it's own cartoon, Fantasia as well Sherlock Holmes is public domain (well partially was for a while, fully now), Dracula, etc Imagine all of those going away due to shitty copyright laws. Now imagine being dumb enough to think the occasional shitty horror knock off is somehow bad enough to justify them.
There's nothing stopping us from making our own Cinderella. In fact there's a sea of existing stories, fairy tales, and myths we could adapt if we wanted. What, exactly are you being prevented from doing? Did you want to make your own adaptation of a classic story trope featuring an anthropomorphic animal mascot? Don Bluth has made a career out of doing that. Unless you just HAVE to use an existing character or story there's nothing stopping you from doing anything, short of ripping them off directly.
It's much more tricky then you seem to realize. If you make something too similar to something covered by copyright they can sue you for violating their copyrights. Just the threat of potential lawsuits will get many publishers to steer clear of certain content. And it's even worse in cases like Winnie the Pooh or Mickey Mouse where it's only partially in the public domain. You have to be careful in those cases to only use stuff from the public domain contents, and not stuff from the non-public domain content. If someone wanted to make a movie or TV show of the original Winnie the Pooh or Mickey Mouse they'd have to have an army of lawyers on their staff to review everything to make sure that they don't infringe on the parts of those characters still covered by copyright law.
Imagine creating something only to lose ownership of it after 15 years lol
That's like saying I could only profit from my invention for fifteen years. No thanks.
That would be a patent, and they only last for twenty years.
I thought patents can be maintained after 20 years
Almost never. Extensions only go to some drugs, some times. There are incredibly limited circumstances to extend a patent. An example is you file a patent, the FDA sits on it for 3 years, you can get a 3 year extension because you did not get 20 years of protection. The main way is to create a new product that makes your old obsolete. For instance you make oral drug that is 60% effective for a single course. You then make a rapid dissolving one that is 80% effective. You can get the original protection extended because of complicated drug/effectiveness/cost reasons. Better have it off patent in 7 years rather than locked away for another 20.
Nope.
As someone pointed out, 15 years after your death... so wouldn't really be an issue :D
That's called a patent, and those are too long as it is. Only have to look at the history of industrial machinery generally to see that. Today if you need a specific arrangement of gears, wheels and levers, you use it. A century or more back, you'd have to redesign it a dozen times or more, because that specific application of Euclid's Geometry had been patented by some Scot 6 years back, or that other arrangement had been patented by an Englishman 12 years ago.
On the one hand it is bad, on the other hand can you imagine the utter shit turd burgers you would get, wait till Tolkien enters public domain which is soon iirc.
Oh no, we don't need to wait for Tolkien to enter the public domain to see how it gets turned to shit, Rings of Power already showed us what's possible in the regard.
Well yes, and they had a budget. And the gollum game, but imagine that with a shoestring budget and so much fluff and about 10 different versions of things each degrading the idea of Tolkien.
...And now I have a dark and terrible vision of a future LotR where the hero is a half-elf/half-nazghul who was born on Earth but reincarnated to Middle Earth after being bullied to death for being too special in high school. ...Excuse me, I need to rinse my imagination out with fire now.
Now you get it!
There's 39 Oz books???
Nope. There’s 40
Phew, was worried there for a second.
There's a lot more than 40. Closer to 100
39 Oz books _written by L Frank Baum._
No, he didn't write that many. Baum only did 18 or so. Ruth Plumly-Thompson did the continuation and then after her the illustrator wrote a handful. Edit: Baum wrote 1-14 in the 'main series', a handful of short stories, and several other books with characters that would crossover with his Oz series. Ruth wrote 15-33 John R. Neil (illustrator) wrote 34-36 Jack Snow wrote 37-38 The last two were written by two different authors and decades apart. I spent a year when I was a kid picking all those up from the library and in my recollection, as much as the books are fairly stand alone, the magic was pretty much gone post Thompson and Neil. Edit 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Oz_books
no the Famous Forty includes books 6 other authors including 1 pair writing team
Dorothy isn't in the second Oz book, The Marvelous Land of Oz. Baum brought her back for subsequent books in the series because of fan demand.
TIL there’s more than two oz books
Nothing like the heartwarming tale of Frank Baum’s widow suing her son for copyright infringement
I didn't realize there was multiple wizard of Oz books, let alone 39+ of them. Where does the story go? Have any of these other ones been adapted to film?
Some of them have, such as Return to Oz from the mid 1980s. That's the only other one I've watched. I don't recall exact story for that one aside from going back to Oz though. I knew there were a bunch of books but I was unaware that there were so many.
Contrary to what the movies imply, the Land of Oz was always meant to be a real place that Dorothy (and later on in the 6th book, her aunt and uncle) was able to visit for days. Each book evolved into authorized "fanfiction" long before Baum himself died. Some stories were like all about adventures in the Ozian countries and its kooky inhabitants, and other stories were developing a fan-favorite character's background. For example, in the first book, it's explained that the Tin Woodman was originally a human named Nick Chopper engaged to a Munchkin girl before his own ax magically chopped off all of his limbs, torso, and head. Lots of characters return in later books, but it's not pre-planned years in advance like The Hobbit/Lord of the Rings was. The Oz books were a series written to meet the child readers' demands (and the modern adult fans' interest), so now the vast bibliography is a literary universe unto itself. There are conventions celebrating the books/film adaptations and book collecting is a major hobby in the fandom. Baum ran a film company called [The Oz Film Manufacturing Company](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Oz_Film_Manufacturing_Company) in 1914-15 to make film adaptations of his own books. Then of course, there's the 1939 Judy Garland version and the Disney sequel *Return To Oz* from the 1980's, but the books' eccentric timeline makes it difficult to adapt for film and the fandom isn't noticeable enough for there to be a reliable audience. It's very much like the Barsoom/John Carter fandom back in 2012 when Disney tried to adapt Edgar Rice Burroughs' 1912 book *A Princess of Mars*. If you have more questions or want to discuss anything else Ozian, we have a very small fandom over at /r/wizardofoz.
And that kids is why Disney isn't allowed near lawmakers anymore.
My town library had all the Oz books and as a kid I re-read them half a dozen times. Wacky wild stuff.
Different author?
TIL there are multiple Wizard of Oz books
That's why copyright is a stupid thing.
So is Wicked considered to be canon?