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on Gopher (inofficial)
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COMMENT PAGE FOR:
URI Disney Lost Roger Rabbit
mayoff wrote 35 min ago:
I donât know if Cory Doctorow has read the âfantastic 1981
novelâ, but I have (decades ago) and as I recall the plot of the book
and the plot of the movie are very different from each other. The
author of the book didnât write the screenplay and I doubt he had
much (if anything) to do the character designs in the movie. So even if
he has the rights to his novel back, itâs not at all clear to me that
he could just make (or sell a license to make) a straight, recognizable
sequel to Disneyâs movie without getting back into bed with Disney,
and clearly Disney isnât interested or theyâd have done something
by now.
nebula8804 wrote 1 hour 16 min ago:
This is so freakin awesome!
Roger Rabbit was actually played in 35mm just last Thursday in Central
NJ. What a treat it would have been to known that the original author
got his characters back. I was lamenting on all the time that had
passed since release. This cheered me right up! Will we see a whole
Roger Rabbit universe now?
bitwize wrote 34 min ago:
He's got a book out with a Jessica Rabbit origin story, that he's
trying to shop a film adaptation of. The RRCU may be go.
parineum wrote 1 hour 50 min ago:
> This is a nightmare scenario for a creator: you make a piece of work
that turns out to be incredibly popular, but you've licensed it to a
kind of absentee landlord who owns the rights but refuses to exercise
them.
This nightmare scenario involves selling the rights to your character
to a company that has the ability to produce, advertise and cast a
movie with talented actors.
I'm certain I never would have heard of Roger rabbit had it not been
sold.
noelwelsh wrote 1 hour 14 min ago:
You quoted one of the key sentences from the piece, and yet missed
the point. It's the "you've licensed it to a kind of absentee
landlord who owns the rights but refuses to exercise them." part that
is important. In the case of Roger Rabbit, the problem is the Disney
has not made any new Roger Rabbit movies or other media in 35 years,
despite the first movie being very successful. No doubt other
concept, that could be successful, never even get to that point. See
stories of "stuck in develompent hell".
dmurray wrote 10 min ago:
This seems like one of those scenarios where you find out Disney
did make a Roger Rabbit sequel, but they never marketed it, or it
had a limited release in 12 California cinemas, and it only existed
as a pro forma device to show they still controlled the character
and would have the option to make sequels for another 35 years.
Bonus if it randomly starred or was directed by someone who later
became famous, or if there are blog posts calling it an unknown
masterpiece.
Nice to hear that didn't happen in this case and the author gets a
second chance!
eastbound wrote 1 hour 36 min ago:
> that has the ability to produce, advertise and cast a movie with
talented actors.
Isnât that most of the work?
You get: A lumpsum for your initial research that ended up as a
character that people like,
They get: The idea of a character, but then they have to invest
billions, build projects that work, tie relationships with cinemas
and actors, advertise worldwide and maybe they make billions if they
worked properly, but sometimes they make losses. Sounds like they
worked for it, and building the initial character is like 0.0â¦1% of
the talent involved.
Unionist gets: A nice story about how itâs always multibillion
dollars companies that have all the money.
Maybe ideas are free and implementation is everything?
littlestymaar wrote 2 hours 3 min ago:
> copyright only gives us something to bargain with, without giving us
any bargaining power, which means that copyright becomes something we
bargain away.
This quote sums up a lot of the issues with current copyright laws in a
very elegant way.
joecool1029 wrote 2 hours 14 min ago:
Sorta related since Disney held a share in it previously but Dick Tracy
exclusive rights are still held by Warren Beatty who produced and
starred in the role back in 1990. He had to fight off a challenge from
Tribune Media in court decades ago but stipulation was he had to
produce new Dick Tracy stuff every few years. Itâs lead to a series
of increasingly surreal late night specials on TCM where he appears in
character and talks about random stuff and the 1990 movie, last time
was in 2023:
URI [1]: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MwKncYwtec4
HeinzStuckeIt wrote 59 min ago:
Wow, TIL. I had assumed that Warren Beatty was suffering from
dementia due to his great age and his retirement from cinema. I had
no idea he was still making media appearances.
bsimpson wrote 2 hours 20 min ago:
I admittedly haven't read that rambling post, but...
My understanding of copyright is that the rights to a character are
layered: Steamboat Willie is in the public domain, but Mickey's red
pants aren't. The book Alice in Wonderland is in the public domain, but
the 50s Disney character isn't. You can have the rights to one
iteration of a character, but the canon that happened in a franchise
afterwards can still be copyrighted by others.
I presume the Who Framed Roger Rabbit character design was done by Bob
Zemeckis and Richard Williams' team for the film, and that those are
the characters that an audience would want to see. A different rabbit
and a different pinup girl using the same names aren't nearly as
appealing.
EdwardDiego wrote 1 hour 3 min ago:
> I admittedly haven't read that rambling post, but...
...you probably should.
october8140 wrote 2 hours 39 min ago:
This should work for video game developers right? Can they reclaim
ownership of the games they created in the 80s/90s that have been
abandoned?
crooked-v wrote 1 hour 19 min ago:
Video game copyrights were rarely ever held by a single person, even
in the early days of the industry.
monkeywork wrote 2 hours 33 min ago:
If the developer was a work for hire and never owned the copyright
then no.
If the developer licensed the game to a publisher then maybe.
Exoristos wrote 2 hours 42 min ago:
Direct link to the article: [1] It's a long-winded article, even for a
lawyer, but the payload seems to be a crack at the head of the RIAA,
which is suing Midjouney.
"In other words, Glazier doesn't want these lawsuits to get rid of
Midjourney and protect creative workers from the threat of AI â he
just wants the AI companies to pay the media companies to make the
products that his clients will use to destroy creators' livelihoods."
URI [1]: https://pluralistic.net/2025/11/18/im-not-bad/#im-just-drawn-t...
jonplackett wrote 1 hour 16 min ago:
I donât find it long winded. It just gives background and makes a
bunch of valid points.
Mainly that creatives are being screwed because every time they get
given extra rights theyâre bullied into selling them for nothing.
So this right that they get the copyright back after 35y is different
- because you canât be forced to sell it for nothing.
We need more laws like this to help creative people make the money
they deserve. Most creative people make a pitiful amount of money
while studios / publishers / labels do better and better. Itâs not
sustainable.
charcircuit wrote 2 hours 44 min ago:
This isn't fair to Disney. What's the point of buying something if the
other person is allowed to steal it back.
If I made a video game, it would be a annoying for it for it to be
illegal for me to sell because something I licensed for it got revoked.
I don't want the extra headaches of needing to do extra work down the
line. I want to have a video game that I am allowed to sell and do
stuff with for the rest of time.
axiolite wrote 2 hours 4 min ago:
> What's the point of buying something if the other person is allowed
to steal it back.
If you can't make a profit off of a licensed property after 35 years
of exclusive control, you've done something horribly wrong. If you
sit on a licensed property and do nothing with it for decades, it
should be allowed to revert to someone else, or better yet go into
public domain.
charcircuit wrote 1 hour 30 min ago:
Termination of Transfer has nothing to do with how much profit a
work is making.
kennywinker wrote 2 hours 19 min ago:
They didnât buy it. They licensed it, and these are the terms of
copyright - which is what they used to license it.
If you rent a house, and your lease expires, thatâs not the
landlord stealing the house back from you.
KPGv2 wrote 2 hours 25 min ago:
> What's the point of buying something if the other person is allowed
to steal it back.
Well in the case of the very thing we're talking about, the point was
apparently to make $330 million in a single year in the 1980s
water-data-dude wrote 2 hours 26 min ago:
The power dynamic is very asymmetrical. Disney is ABSOLUTELY free to
negotiate with him to continue distributing the movie, running the
ride, etc.
It has been 35 YEARS and Disney's failed to do anything else with the
IP. The original creator wants to make a sequel, and now he's able
to.
Also: you mentioned a scenario where you might make a video game and
wanted to be able to distribute it in perpetuity. Unless you based
the video game on some pre-existing creative work that someone else
came up with (Roger Rabbit's Raucous Riot or something), you WILL
retain the rights. Termination of copyright doesn't apply to works
made for hire [0] (i.e., if you pay your employees to create the IP,
it doesn't apply).
TLDR; fuck the mouse.
[0]
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Act_of_1976#Terminat...
charcircuit wrote 1 hour 37 min ago:
>Unless you based the video game on some pre-existing creative work
that someone else came up with
Licensing assets like rocks, foliage, random textures or sounds is
extremely common in the game industry, even among big games.
wpm wrote 2 hours 32 min ago:
Oh noooo it isn't fair to Disney!
Oh, wait, I actually don't care about that at all.
invl wrote 2 hours 35 min ago:
this happens with eg licensed music or product tie-ins or whatever,
and the game just stops being sold
charcircuit wrote 1 hour 35 min ago:
And I think it would be best if they could license the content in
perpetuity so it doesn't come to that. But that's impossible as
even if the studio gets a perpetual license, it can still be
terminated.
monkeywork wrote 2 hours 35 min ago:
Is that what is happening? My understanding of Termination of
Transfer is that it keeps you from being able to make a sequel to
your video game using the characters you licensed from me, but that
the game you have already created you can continue to sell.
What the termination allows me to do as the creator of that character
in this analogy is say - charcircuit isn't doing anything with my
character for 35 years - I'm going to take back control and maybe do
something myself with it or license it to someone else to do
something with...
charcircuit wrote 1 hour 28 min ago:
I can't keep selling it if you terminate the distribution right to
some texture you made that I used in my game.
consp wrote 2 hours 37 min ago:
I honestly can't tell if this is meant sarcastic or not. The power
offset is so huge you need clauses like this to keep the power at
some form of equilibrium.
mathgeek wrote 2 hours 45 min ago:
Lots of fun ranting (the good kind) about the ills of the industries
built to take advantage of creators, but for those who just want to
know more about the state of Roger Rabbit:
URI [1]: https://www.imnotbad.com/2025/11/roger-rabbit-copyright-revert...
TitaRusell wrote 1 hour 26 min ago:
Creators are often dumb enough to trade away their rights. They have
dollar signs in their eyes too.
So many popstars selling their music because the label paid for their
coke habit for a few years.
Besides as much as we all hate Disney they are a machine that can
make global hits.
Would we still talk about Bambi without the movie?
BLKNSLVR wrote 2 hours 49 min ago:
A great article on how awfully twisted copyright has become away from
its intended goal, or at least the publicly stated intended goal.
Much reform is needed, seems to apply to everything...
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