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Yes, but only after a significant amount of time.

Yes, within a few decades.

Yes, within a decade.

Only in certain cases.

I am undecided.

No, never.

Other (Please post)

Don't care. / View poll.

[Soadreqm]

What do you mean it never existed in europe? It applied to all works created in the USA before 1978.

Meanwhile, works created in Europe were protected by copyright for fifty years after the author's death, minimum, as per the Berne Convention. In most European countries, this has been so since the early 20th century. Tolkien, for instance, died in 1973, meaning that his works would not be public domain in his home country until 2023, even if the US was still using the system they had before 1978.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

I think the authors should have a damn good say in what goes on. If I write a book series, inside a mythos I make, I damn well want it to stay that way. I don't care if 99% of the population wants to add the same thing to it, because then it is not the mythos I made, or wanted to make. As such, there should be clauses in place that, once an author is finished with their works, decides they are done publishing, and doesn't want it changed, they can kill the ability to change it. It would have prevented Lucas and the authors he leases to from raping Star Wars so thoroughly if it had been invoked on them.

This is bad.

By putting an idea down, you shouldn't have perpetual control over everyone else. And that's what your protection of the author's mythos amounts to.

If H.P. Lovecraft writes a book, and I like the story, I might end up writing a pretty awesome book based on it. Maybe even better than Lovecraft's.  But I can't because Lovecraft holds the rights to the specific creatures he talks about. He could sue me, and maybe he could win. So my book doesn't get written and society is slightly impoverished for it.

If that happens all the time, when does it get serious enough to admit that it's starving our culture?

And calling it fan fiction is just a meaningless put-down to make the problem seem silly. I'm talking about, for example, the first fully 3D FPS game capturing the patent for the genre and that company being the only one that can make them. The idea is perfectly simple to explain when you're talking about designs for physical inventions as intellectual property, less well for video games, and even less well for books and paintings. But the ideas are the same.

[Virex]

.... If you can write a perfectly good book based upon the Cthulu mythos then you can write a perfectly good book inspired by the Cthulu mythos without actualy refering to it^*. If you absolutely need to actualy base it upon a well-known work of art, instead of being inspired by it, then that just means you only expect people to buy it because it's based upon that work of art, which is piggy back riding upon someone elses fame.

*Being inspired by something is far from forbiden and generaly even aplauded.

[sonerohi]

In my instance, I wouldn't mind someone saying, "oh wow hey this creature is cool", and borrowing it for a story. If they make it an integral part of their story, I expect them to ask and might want to give the book a read-over to make sure they don't break it. If they want to borrow my whole mythos, I want to have a massive say in, and what I personally say would be "no".

[Soadreqm]

If H.P. Lovecraft writes a book, and I like the story, I might end up writing a pretty awesome book based on it. Maybe even better than Lovecraft's.  But I can't because Lovecraft holds the rights to the specific creatures he talks about. He could sue me, and maybe he could win. So my book doesn't get written and society is slightly impoverished for it.

Or, if you have the capacity to write awesome books, you could create your own characters instead of stealing them from someone else. Or, after getting a note from your publisher that you don't have Mr. Lovecraft's permission to use his stuff, change all the names. Or, having already rejected the notion of the author having say in what his characters are used for, release it illegally, without telling anyone your real name. It will be nearly impossible to trace back to you. Of course, this way you don't get the recognition and money that usually comes with writing great books. And if someone decided to take your book, change all the names and sell it for money, the irony would probably destroy the ozone layer. But since we are striving for public good here, you might be willing to accept that.

And calling it fan fiction is just a meaningless put-down to make the problem seem silly. I'm talking about, for example, the first fully 3D FPS game capturing the patent for the genre and that company being the only one that can make them. The idea is perfectly simple to explain when you're talking about designs for physical inventions as intellectual property, less well for video games, and even less well for books and paintings. But the ideas are the same.

No, I don't think the ideas are the same at all. Copyright only applies to creative works. You cannot copyright concepts. For example: while they are some detective stories from before it, "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" by Edgar Allan Poe essentially started the genre in the English-speaking world. While the short story itself, and all the characters belonged to E.A. Poe, there was nothing stopping anyone from writing other detective stories. The story was published in the 19th century, before international copyright existed, but I don't think the situation would be any different today.

[Bohandas]

I checked "Yes, within a decade.", but really I believe it should be even shorter than that; two or three years, no more.

[Tawa]

Holy crap, look at the thread creator.

[Frumple]

Pathos rises! We freud now~

[penguinofhonor]

Man, this thread should be in public domain by now.

[mainiac]

Who is pathos?

[Jopax]

Everyone.

[RedKing]

I think Pathos' identity is open source now. We can ALL be Pathos, as long as we don't charge for it.

[Tawa]

Who is pathos?

The only dank meme ever produced by the lowerboards.

((To my understanding, he was a guy who had a bunch of duplicate accounts and used them to post constantly. He eventually went on to try to maintain the illusion that there were multiple people by having conversations between his accounts. The meme is that everybody on the forum is just one of Pathos's duplicates and putting on an elaborate show of being a community.))

[RedKing]

Wasn't there also something about a non-existent girlfriend?

[mainiac]

Well now I feel like a chump.  Why do I make all these sockpuppets when other people could just be my sockpuppets?