Public Domain Game Jam '26 entry: Ultra Crush Siblings at 4:14 PM

He's holding a dooog!

 

So last year I tried making a fighting game for the Public Domain Game Jam. But sadly I got sick for a lot of it and  had a lot of computer  trouble...not that it was gonna turn out to be Tekken 8 or anything but I  didn't put out the performance I was hoping. 

 This year I wanted to make  something different. Out of my wheelhouse.

But five days into brainstorming I was like "fuck it, I'm running out of time" and just made a  fighting game again. And though I was also sick for a lot of it and also had some computer trouble, it was a lot less than before, and I turned out something that while not Tekken 9 or anything, I'm kinda proud of.

 

Ultra Crush Siblings. Get it.

 

 Now, this game's title is not to be confused with my long years go planned party fighter parody starring Xbox characters. I just spent too much time thinking what this one would be called and I wanted to name it another variation parody on Smash, but in the end I decided not to dwell on it and just call it that.

 In my brains I was thinking of making a beatemup first but then decided to basically make a Smash like game in a side scrolling beat em up format.  See I always struggled with making 2D platformers. I look at the foot sprite one pixel off of the platform and I go "THIS IS BULLSHIT AND YOU KNOW IT" and give up.  But  a side scroller, I think the physics of it are simpler. 

 

The theme I came up with for the game is, it's  one of those shirts with cartoon characters as "gangstas" made into a game. That would be the planned aesthetic. 

You know what I mean.

 

 I started coding and planning for the cast. One thing about it was I knew this needed music, and I know it would help with the theme of the jam (1930's media). I had made a playlist of music from  1930 taken from Wikipedia last year. I mean, I could have just put any of those songs  in here in whole. Or I could use a bunch of Creative Commons  music. I decided to try something. I went to Rave.DJ and made a mix of one public domain 1930's song and one creative commons tune. You can see the result here, unless too much time has passed.

I was like this is good...but could it be gooder? I took it to one of those websites that separate voice and instruments, and then I took the vocals to  a voice changer website. , then I put them back together.  The final result was good proof of concept.

 (incidentally that creative commons lounge was under a sharealike term of CC, which means I relinquish all control  over it.)

 And so I developed   at a steady clip, coding when I was at home,   frankensteining music together when I wasn't. One thing I wasn't doing was sprites. I knew sprites where going to take some time but I had a plan: Draw up every basic frame and then scan it,  repaint it in  Ibispaint  and  animate what I painted in Flipaclip. Then I  would render the entire thing in Shooshubi. I just made up that last thing  to make sure you're paying attention.

The point is it would be easy. I'd just be animating whenever not at home. But there was a problem. My tracing pad ( that I was gonna use to make more than one frame of the same animation happen)  got lost. I lost it. It's around here somewhere but time keeps moving. I decided to just  do the  hand drawings and...

soon I was 1 day down with literally not  a sprite. I was on day zero talking to my dad on the phone while scanning pages. I quickly (but not as quickly as I wanted to)  created a code that just replaces the default object sprite with a sprite named after the object  and the name of the characters, so all I'd have to do is make the sprites put them in the game and the game would take care of the rest.

 

I made sprites for 4 whole characters within the scaled back scope of the game. like 6 hours left. I made 2, then I was gonna take a break, but I was like "I'm just gonna start this one then take the break. "But I didn't. I just kept doing it.

 I sent all my files to the computer and started implementing them to the game and doing what I do with my placeholder sprites to get them to move: just kinda chunkilly grabbing parts of the sprite and moving them. 

Miyazaki has been real quiet since this dropped

 

 I got up to 3 characters, the game still had a bunch of  debug options on that I wanted to turn off  before shipping and only 18 minutes left. I made the choice not to implement the sprites for Freckles Marvel and instead focus on getting this thing out the door. I felt something  stupid could happen  that would delay me uploading the game.

 So I went to upload and Itch.io was like "You can't upload this without confirming your Email" and didn't even show me how to do that or where. I had to look  it up myself.  I was like here it is, the bullshit I was waiting for.

 But somehow against all odds I made it  just before deadline, at 2:50 in the morning. 

 

 And it's not exactly getting no Nintendo  Seals of Approval, even after I went back an hour ago and worked Freckles back in and got the Hitboxes outta the way.  But it's a videogame. You can play it front to back and there's no soft locking going on, I think.

 

But what is the game? Well here let me show you the first recording I did after wrestling with OBS and then giving up and getting a diffrent screen recorder. 

 The game is a 4 way brawler. The more you attack your opponent the farther they  will fly, but also  after 100% damage they will die anyway

 You have your choice of  Popeye The Sailor Man, Betty, Pooh and Freckles You can choose between a handful of keyboard configs and also  2 joysticks if you happen to have them. 4 players battle to decide who gets to stay alive. I have made it so if Joysticks are present it defaults to them because.

 

So far it's multiplayer only. I didn't even consider adding CPU. Are ya nuts? You saw I wrote here? was making the game until I didn't have half an hour left! I knew I couldn't cook  so I didn't even try.

  

 

 

The game is free but you can donate. And why wouldn't you? Don't you love me?  

 

Now I will keep working on the game if all goes well.  I planned and started sketching for  the following characters:

Mickey Mouse

Turok ( who has recently been found to be public domain)

Jenny Everywhere

The Wicked Witch of the West 

Blue Bolt

Golden Bat 

Mimi from Metal and Lace: Battle of the Robobabes, which is NOT public domain but on more of an Orphan Work.

I also began considering Debbie Benton but I was already done sketching at that point and there obviously wasn't time for that at all.

  I never got real far planning stages. Like at all. But I also never intended for the battles to only take place in the one room. I'll have to mock up some. 

The controller hints at the existence of a block button. Sorry I never got around to implementing that. I wanted at least that, and air attack and a divekick . The idea was you could block but if the other player got on the other side they could knock you out of it so a divekick  would get you there. And there would be some pick ups, maybe some weapons. 

Some of these features might make it to the final game.  I will certainly try to .

 See you on the other side.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

New Video! About Copyright at 8:19 AM

That's right, I am mostly recovered from the  marasm of the Trump era and ready to get back at you on. I even made a thumbnail and stuff can you believe it?

Let's save Interplay! at 7:07 AM

Intersell

As soon as I heard that Interplay was selling off it's IPs, I got to wondering one thing: What's gonna happen to Wild 9?

Sure, I could see Earthworm Jim being sold for cashmoney to a middle or big sized publisher. Earth Worm Jim isn't gonna be lost forever But what about Wild 9? What about MDK? What about all those other games that didn't have multiple sequels and a cartoon show?

I assume just for his cameo in the PC version of Toshinden is worth half a million.

I don't WANT to wonder. I WONDER when WB is gonna do something with the Ready 2 RumbleThe Grid and  Mace The Dark Age franchises it owns every day. I wonder when Valis is gonna get a new game every night, for the last 9 years.

To be fair, I do can see how the owners of DC, Looney Tunes, Hanna Barbera, Filmation and holders of the license to Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings...would feel a bit incomplete without also owning Dr Muto.

The owners to these IPs bought them, but they don't really HAVE to do anything with them anyway.  And so it could be with the soon to be owners of these games Interplay is selling.

Games like Heart of Darkness.(But I am told this one in particular isn't for sale)

 

Games like like Boogerman.

Games  like Clayfighter.


Games like Carmageddon.

And yes, even friggin' Redneck Rampage.

So I say, instead of speculating about which  company is gonna own and MAAAAYBE use these games, I propose we use crowdfunding to MAKE SURE somebody gets to use this franchise. And that that somebody happens to be EVERYONE IN THE WORLD.

This is the plan: we pool together the money, buy one or more  of these  IP and then release it under a Creative Commons license.  That way, anyone can create a game based on said IP,in any way or shape or form.

But not only a game. You can make a Boogerman Comic, or a Carmageddon Film, should we acquire the rights for the franchise. You can use a song from Clayfighter in your thing. Make an anime from Redneck Rampage: I don't care.

"Shucks , ah shawr dew hope Sempai Itoko will neuteece meh!"

But that would take some money. I mean, I don't know how much some of these is going for, but I can't imagine anything going for less than 10000. So that's the goal I have in my Patreon: Ten thousand dollars to try and buy the rights to any Interplay IP possible.

And remember that it's a bid. Maybe someone REALLY wants to have the rights to Messiah more than us, and is willing to outbid us. So, maybe we'd need amounts of money closer to the millions. I've already got a Patreon set up, so if you wanna help with this, send it there. If you have no money, but want to help, you can always share the link and tell others. I'm gonna be frank: I haven't ever bid on anything and I don't know if you gotta go someplace or something, so any information on that front would be welcome.

If you like the idea, but don't trust me, you are free to get your own Crowdfunding going, maybe towards a specific franchise? I didn't do that, but you could, and I would openly support you. I'm only doing it myself cuz I seem to be the only one who's though of it.

We have to act now, because there may not be another chance. Whoever owns this stuff could very well own it for the rest of your life.

So let's stand together, let's make it happen, let's save Interplay! #SaveInterplay

WTFU Watch: Cyber Zombie Apocalypse at 12:22 PM

Fear the  Walking Copyright Reformists.

It looks like WTFU is  going places. Specifically to discuss copyright and what changes it needs to the copyright office itself. For the first time in basically 40 years, it looks like there are other voices in the copyright discussion table besides the copyright maximalists and entertainment industry lobbyists that  haven't made copyright last forever because they can't.

So obviously you expect some backlash. The backlash is that we're cheating, thieving cyber terrorist zombies.

According to an article on the Huffington Post, the last minute submission of thousands of requests to the copyright office to amend the DMCA cannot be described as anything but cyberterrorism.  After all, the amount of petitions going on at once DID crash the servers.  Probably because of how many people suddenly entered because we did not know about this until literally that day.

"There’s really no other way to describe these kind of actions than coordinated cyber bullying campaigns built on distorted information to incite an angry online mob. A mob that mobilizes and then disappears quickly back into the shadows." said William Buckley Jr, like a jackass.

Now, this is a romantic image. Mobs going in there and dissapearing , Fuente Ovejuna Style, so no individual can be identified.

But there are no secret mobs. This mob is quite public. It is what the entertainment industry has always really been afraid of: people, willingly becoming involved with a copyright that is supposed to, by design, supposed to benefit said people. Loss of control thrives fear.

 "Section 512 is where the battle line is being drawn between online businesses that use a loophole in the law to reap enormous profits from using copyrighted material without permission and the copyright holders who have seen their careers crater and their earnings evaporate. It is nothing less than a life and death struggle for the future of art in America. A battle whose outcome is yet undecided."

Oh, yeah? Which copyright holders have seen their careers crater and their earnings evaporate? Who are you talking about? Do you have any examples?

You see, for big entertainment it's important to draw that starving artist card every time their humongous earnings and complete control over all elements of production and distribution are threatened. Because if they said  that the same guys who don't want to pay their performing artists  for using their music in ads, and the same ones who tell David Prowse that Return of the Jedi didn't make any money so they can't pay him any, are the ones advocating for copyright laws with even more teeth, then well, that's not as appealing as saying "poor Jim Artist,  how's he supposed to make a living if he can't take down copies of his work forever and then nuke the site from orbit? {8(..."

It's like looking at this guy and saying he needs bodyguards

This is a fight for FAIR USE.  And as much as they'll tell you they  love themselves some fair use, the actual real life says other wise.

Lives ARE on the balance. That much is true. Freedom of Speech is being trampled. Up and coming businesses, the same ones copyright was supposed to protect, are being put in danger. Nobody loses their job because I uploaded an anime music video of Batman v Supermen, but whenever The Nostalgia Critic can't upload a video because there's no godamn  nuance in the system, it means Tamara Chambers, Malcolm Ray and Jim Jarosz might have to go hungry that day.


Fittingly, then, second article described the entire situation as a "Zombie Apocalypse".  You see, Keith Kupferschmi, of the Copyright Alliance, says that even though ove 900000 people expressed that, "yeah, the DMCA is broken", and that's certainly valuable insight..."These 90,000 comments are all identical submissions generated merely by clicking on the “I’m in” button at takedownabuse.org"

First of all, no it wasn't. It certainly had a prewritten  post and function, but individual people could edit it to their heart's content. Secondly, it was almost 100,000 individual responses FROM people. That they weren't all original, "from the heart" responses is unimportant, because these thousands of people agreed that the DMCA is broken.That's what the Copyright office was asking, and that's what we answered.

 It's funny, though, that the  article  does it's preface by drawing heavilly from The Walking Dead.

"My family knows not to bother me from 9 to 10 pm every Sunday night. That’s my The Walking Dead time.  While the show is about zombies and what happens after the zombie apocalypse, those who watch the show know the real danger to our protagonists, Rick, Michonne, Daryl and the rest of the crew, is not the zombies all all.  The real threats come from the living -- terrifying villains like the Governor, Gareth and now the charismatic Negan."

Funny. The Walking Dead only exists because the copyright on "Night of the Living Dead" fell through, thus allowing TV stations to run it for cheap, thus  lots of people seeing it and being inspired by it, thus creating the Zombie Horror genre that allowed Robert Kirkman to create a comic about it without having to pay George Romero for it. In turn this allowed the TV show to exist.


That a copyright maximalist, the kind that would unironically argue the "Forever less One Day"  mentality that caused 2 retroactive extensions to copyright and the complete lack of any works entering the public domain until 2019, to use The Walking Dead to argue FOR the continual enlenghtening, engirthening, and enwidening of copyright is perhaps delicious irony.

One more thing.


"If there are problems with the DMCA the best way to understand what those problems are, and to attempt to address them, is for those with concerns to voice them in detail and not file yet another zombie comment.  As we’ve learned from The Walking Dead, those zombies are rather easily disposed of."


A single zombie is no threat, just like a single Lawrence Lessig was no threat to the selfrighteous Sonny Bono act of 1998. But that's the thing about zombies. There rarely is just one of them. And their infectious. They don't just destroy those that oppose them. They make them join their ranks.


Things aren't ever going to go back to the way they were. You won't just be able to launch a sneak law attack and get away with screwing everyone  anymore.  You can't just tell everyone you know what's best for them. You're not the only game in town.

The infection is only begun.

Not an April Fools Joke: Fight against the DMCA #WTFU at 7:22 AM

Because we're all in this together

So apparently the copyright office has opened a 24 hour window to ask people what they thought about the DMCA.  That was yesterday.

 You know I'm very passionate about copyright issues and I'm   in favor of Where's the Fair Use. And the DMCA is bad, and a great part of the reason why  sites on Youtube have to be so hard on Copyright, because basically this law makes Youtube as guilty of copyright infringement as the uploader of full episodes of a show.


So, what, I have a blog that at least some folks watch, and besides participating on my own, I also invite you to.


Please,watch Doug Walker's video about the subject, and tell these bastards Best Geek Ever sent you.

#WTFU Watch: In the defense of Youtube at 7:55 AM

There is a saying in my country that goes: The rope always snaps at it's thinnest. It is meant to say that, those that are least empowered are always the most likely to feel the negative effects in any situation. I'll come back to that.

Doug "Nostalgia Critic" Walker has apparently set the online world on fire with his simple request that Youtube handle reinvent the system by which it judges copyrighted content  and fair use, which is to say it doesn't, and it's rife with abuse and completely lacking a human component.

And I agree with it. All of it. Youtube needs to reform it's system. They've got the money for it. But let's be fair to Youtube.

Copyright laws as they are, thanks to the Digital Millenium  Copyright Act, make Youtube responsible for it's user submitted content. It was designed to prod hosting websites to police copyrighted content on their sites, or face steep, steep fines.


Copyright is supposed to produce innovation, but lot's of elements of  current copyright are doing the opposite, trampling the innovations and formats of the internet to serve old models and those with a stake on them. That's not just ME saying that.

The American government commissioned a Task Force to investigate how to make copyright do more what it's supposed to. It took them 3 years and millions of dollars to make a series of recommendations that I could have told you for the meager ad revenue it would bring me: that steep fines encourage copyright trolling and chill innovation. That Remix culture need to be let breath.

However, that's not the recommendations they are planning to act on. They know their copyright system is broken, and the only way to fix it is FORCE EVERY NATION ON THE EARTH TO ADOPT THE SAME BROKEN SYSTEM. So we can all be even in our wrongness.

Youtube needs to revise the ways it handles  copyrighted material on it's site, yes. I completely agree with that. For one, the algorithm that detects the content should  take into consideration amount, and there should be penalties for fake and malicious claims, and Youtube should request that only the owner of the content, verified, can make a claim. It should definitively not be telling me a public domain movie belongs to someone else. But it is not a coincidence that Youtube's system is broken, when they are also under a very broken copyright law system.

I mean, let's face it, Youtube isn't the only  website with user submitted content out there. Practically all social networks work like that, and while it is entirely possible someone could upload illegal content, or just content they wouldn't have on their site at all, you don't see THEM going to this level.

Somebody once flagged me for pornography on Facebook. It was a drawing of Lady Deathstrike fighting Tiffany Lords.

It got looked at pretty fast, it was determined it was NOT pornography, and we all moved on.  Is it any harder for YT? I would think the user base of Facebook is even larger (1.19 billion) and much more likely to put unwanted content than in Youtube (1 billion ), were many users aren't even uploading anything, just watching.  But they don't sweat it. You don't see takedowns like in Youtube. There's people in there.



I'm not trying to let Youtube off the hook. But this bigger than  Doug Walker not getting payed, or me not being able to show my stupid video in Germany. This is bigger than that. This is the very reason we need to reform our copyright system in a way that makes sense for everyone in the now, not just  big entertainment companies in the mid 70's. I made Limited Times , this very blog, precisely to address this kind of issue and to bring it to light.

The rope always does break at the thinnest. Big Entertainment wants laws that make other people (I.E. Government and  Web Hosting sites)carry out a defense of IT'S copyrighted work, when that's clearly their own responsibility. Youtube isn't gonna take the exaggerated cost of carrying out a copyright defense of Doug Walker's video's on court. Rope's gotta break somewhere.

So yes, I support #WTFU . But I also support #Copyrightreform, which is something we desperately need, and we've needed for a long time. It's something I've been championing on a blog for a while.


I look forward to how this turns out. But regardless, remember that this didn't start now. This didn't start when Google bought Youtube. This is the results of years of wrongheaded  mishandling of the very idea of copyright. It needs to be dealt with at it's core, as a nation.

Adam Ruins Everything says it better than me at 6:22 AM

Sometimes you can't say it better than it's already been said. So in an effort to educate my readers regarding copyright, I'm delegating the task to Adam, of Ruining Everything fame, to put into voice what I've been trying to say in text for a while. Please, check him out at TruTv's channel, and  tell him BGE sent you.

6 Things we're missing out on thanks to Copyright at 11:42 AM



If you hate the idea of public domain, you hatin' on Cthulu

A new year! A chance to think about the future. Specifically, what might have been. You see, I'm a fan of alternate worlds in which things went different. But not just ones where, like, I'm a jerk wearing black. Or, well...MORE of a jerk wearing black a lot more often. But the ones that could have easily been ours. The one where Mr Freeze was played by Patrick Stewart and where Ryu had that fiery kick.

I think of copyright.  Of the  Game Jam I'm currently hosting and part of my impetus is I thought of the things that could have been, should copyright had not been extended to last longer than Stan Lee's actual lifespan. A lot of people where worried about their favorite characters and how they'd be besmirched if copyright  wasn't there to protect them (but I've been to Paheal, and Fanfiction.net and know that nothing is safe or sacred.). But I can only lament the possibilities that never occurred. This lost opportunities include...

6) Some more celebrity comebacks

You see, some celebrities have the one character or two they're good at. There's only one Charly Chaplin, only one Larry, Curly and Mo, only one Ace Ventura.

But what happens sometimes is, MGM owns Ace Ventura, the character. Jim Carrey totally has a great idea for a sequel. It's awesome. But the studio don't agree with it. They have a full schedule and a head full of farts


Who the hell is this for?

  If Ace could become public domain while Jim Carrey lived, He'd be able to work with another studio, or no studio, and bring back the character.  If the Ghost Busters had become public domain, Dan Akroid would just be able to do his own Ghost Busters spin off or whatever, without having to fight the studio or wait for Bill Murray.



5) Saving movie theaters



Well, I suppose now I'll have to laser pointer my big screen TV while people I know yell obscenities.

When I was a kid, going to the movie Theater to experience a movie was an epic thing that had few substitutes. Indeed, televisions had yet to catch on to theater quality,  bootlegs where not something you could grab off the street and put it in your pocket, or download, and cellphones that record had yet to be invented.

But we can't live in the past anymore. Theater attendance is apparently at an all time low, even though Hollywood has made sure no movies made this year weren't based on a comic, TV Show, cartoon, other movies, or toys. Cinemas  can't afford to fight these other mediums, and they especially can't fight the fact people know the movie will be legally available in a few months.

Really, theaters rent these movies hoping people will buy enough popcorn and candy bars to  offset the cost of the rental, employees, maintenance, and so on and so forth.

However, if   movies that weren't re-registered into the copyright office after 36 years went public domain, then we'd have movies that could be shown with no cost to the audience, we'd have films that could be shown to the audience, free of charge, from as early as the 70s and even the 80's! You could set up your own little theater and show them!


"I've got The Hobbit movie for 7 bucks and...Invasion of the Bee Women for 50 cents."

Mind you, most of the classics wouldn't be available. Mostly the rare movies that  didn't  get registered, usually because they weren't  profitable enough.  But since there is no cost to rent them, you could run low ass prices and get bored people, or retrophiles into it.

And further, the bigger chains could have some movies to run in the lower seasons. They could organize special viewing of this movies.

But as long as copyright owners have their copyright, huh?

4) It would discourage large companies from buying all the cool stuff

The Disneys, Viacoms, and WBs of the world have been busy. In a  few couple of years they've gobbled up most of the popular brands that they already didn't own. Disney bought Star Wars and Marvel. WB(that already owns DC, all the filmation cartoons, all the Hanna Barbera characters, and possibly your firstborn.) bought Mortal Kombat(along with other stuff you don't care about, and they don't, either) while Viacom locked down Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Power Rangers.



You find the weirdest things when buying  a game company.

Clearly there is good money in owning a perennial hit, and where there is monies, giant corporations  will be. I don't resent them for it, but I don't like the implications of it.

I mean, clearly  WB has more characters than it can use or need. But who cares? The older ones probably still have a lifetime of copyright left.

Back in the day, though, you had to pay every 30 years to keep your work under protected status. Not a lot of money, mind you. But perhaps enough money that maybe they get to thinking if they REALLY need to hold on to the rights of Shmoo and Batfink.


You'd have to be a real dick to think otherwise.

Marvel has 7000+ characters*. I ran some costs and it would cost them 210000 to maintain the copyrights each of those, based on a 30 dollar fee. Some of these characters are simply not worth holding on to, and would go public domain.  Because, seriously, if you can't spend 30 bucks every 30 years in your ploy to put your dick in DC's face, maybe you shouldn't get to do it for free.



Would Disney see things differently about buying Marvel if they knew such copyright exclusivity had a limit? Well, don't make me bring up the Disney filmography again. Those guys love the Public Domain. Of course they'd rather get Spider-Man in the 2030s for free than pay  millions of dollars for him NOW.

3) Hundreds of books, movies, and songs

I join Duke in bringing up all the stuff we could  ALL use, now ( Now, Duke, I've made some assumptions about what you're gonna post several months into the future. Don't give me a dead link, now). A few highlights:


songs

I Put a Spell on You.

books

The Cat in the Hat Comes Back. Free Cat in the Motherfucking Hat for Everybody!

movies

The Blob, The Fly, and Attack of the 50 Foot woman. The Hidden Fortress, a movie that directly inspired Star Wars, is also from this year.

3)Saving a bunch of your taxpayer money


Nobody likes it the way it is, anyway

"But Batzarro, how is my tax money being spent on copyright?" You may ask. It's simple. For a work to be fully protected, it needs to be registered at the Copyright office. Most of the mainstream shows, movies and songs that got made,  scores of ones that didn't, and even  those sketches of Ninja Turtle clones people registered so no one would steal their "ideas" are all literally, physically registered in actual buildings. How else are we supposed to know whether our sexy, steampunk remake of Narnia will get us a Cease and Desist?


I know. I have a problem.

More recently, of course. You can look up part of these records yourself online. But for certain hard to find ones you'll have to have employees look it up for you. For 200 dollars.

You see, it  used to be copyright did not last as much, and payments where made to ensure those works remain protected. The copyright office had a little more cash to operate, and works actually lapsed into the public domain.

But  now, your initial payment of 40 something dollars gets you twice as many years of protection. It costs money to keep all those bad ideas protected, so it gotta come out of YOUR pockets.

It costs the government as of 2002  13 million a year to maintain a copyright record. Or rather, it costs YOU that much. The Copyright Office is not a private entity. It's a subsidiary of the United States Government. This why permanent copyright is impossible: We don't have enough money to keep those kinds of records in, say 1000 years. Even with user fees, no way the cost of keeping those unmade Batman movies protected won't keep adding up.

2) Adam Strange's appearance in Smash Bros

That's right. Adam Strange, the Superhero who lives on another planet until a thunder forces him back on Earth(or does he live on earth until a thunder forces him back to another planet), could have been in Smash Bros in 2015 as DLC. Sure,in that scenario Batman and Superman are both long into the Public Domain, But Adam's practically made for it!


Sure, why not.

Nintendo wouldn't put Sherlock Holmes in Smash Bros. Really, most of the characters on public domain now are from  before color movies.  Back then we didn' have concepts like "Superheroes" or "Other Planets" or "Time Travel". That means that, most time travelers, extraterrestrials, and Superheroes are copyrighted.

You might think it's cheesy to want to use the characters made by  someone else. After all, why can't I come up with own character? What  am I, a hack?

Haha, you wouldn't tell Alan Moore, that. Really, when he's not using public domain characters to do artsy perversion he's nudge-winkingly trying to use James Bond and Harry Potter in his stories. Why, if he could use the genuine article, I bet you it'd be mother buggering fantastic, and none of you at the peanut gallery peasants would be calling him lazy.


But seriously, this is borderline fan ficky, Alan.

Why can't Chris Sims, self declared Batmanologist, have a stab at Batman? Bob Kane and Bill Finger is dead, and WB is in no risk of going chapter 11, over a webcomic. Why must we wait so many years for a Wonder Woman movie? Because the creative possibilities are chained  to profit margins.


1) Not as many remakes



"Whooooot? How can making very popular works public domain make there be less remakes?" That's a good question. I mean, it SOUNDS counter intuitive. If Batman where public domain, if feels like he'd be in every movie this year.

But actually, no. You see, studios like this thing where they are the sole owners of a franchise that's worth millions of dollars. They get to make exactly as many Superman movies as they want, and you get to do exactly as many Superman movies as they'll allow(zero). And then they get to do it again next decade.

But if they only had 30 years, it's put pressure on them to create/buy/own a NEW thing for 30 years.  Once anyone can make their own Superman movie,  WB will probably move on to buying the next thing they feel will last those 30 years, and not "whatever, it's forever"

What's more, new, obscure stuff is essentially new works to you if you don't know them. Have you seen Star Oddyssey? No? Then maybe my book based on it will be new to you! I mean, the problem is not that it's a remake. Didn't you like The Fly? Well maybe my book is Cronenberg's Fly to the original movie's The Fly.



Brundelfly would approve of my book.

My point is why won't you fuckers buy my fucking book obviously there's a lot more stories to tell out there than how Peter Parker got his powers. If more studios had more legal access to a wider variety of popular stories, those studios would be less likely to keep pumping the same stories they already pumped. I mean, let's look at the 1958 box office: and compare it to the 2013 box office. Which has more remakes, reboots or adaptations? So really, we should be fighting for more stuff to lapse into the public domain, not less.



Ignore the fact all but one of 1958's movies are based on books. Books don't count.

We're undercutting the creativity of the entire country because what? Because "I might just make a great work, and I don't want to eventually have people enjoy it without their joy profiting me directly?" Let's fight for shorter copyright durations today, before we have to fight for less long copyright durations tomorrow.

*In my zealousness, though, I completely forgot that you don't exactly register A CHARACTER in  copyright, but a work. A character's first appearance being PD makes THAT first appearance of the character Public Domain(because you can't make derivatives of a public domain second issue, which would be based on the first issue). Which means, that Marvel would probably have to copyright and re-register EACH COMIC IT MAKES to make sure no elements in it ever lapse. Now, being that Marvel has made approximately (we're not gonna discount licensed material, variant covers and crossover shit. Math is bad enough, and I won't be surprised when I turn out to have completely bungled up this, anyway.)32,000 comics, we're talking roughly  $960000 every 30 years.  The original math still works if Marvel was  just  registering first appearances to keep the first appearance from lapsing, discounting joint first appearances, obviously. It's still a lot of money to keep the rights to The Hypno-Hustler and Venom's Ex-Wife, though.

CPG talks copyright at 6:17 AM

Sometimes you can't say it better than it's already been said. That's Why I'm putting up this video from the wonderful CPGgrey talking about copyright. His channel has a lot of information on a lot of topics and he's way smarter than me, so go check it out. People really, REALLY need to know about this topic, and well, they don't.

Son of a Pitch: Mechanical Fan Licenses at 8:21 AM

I don't know. I wanted a robot clerk. C'est la vie.

I just got done reading this fantastical book called "Freedom of Expression (R): Overzealous Copyright Bozos and Other Enemies of Creativity" by Kembrew McLeod.

And it's a wonderful read on the world of copyright, albeit, focusing a little too much on music stuff for my tastes.

However, the book did have some enlightening information on the nature of copyright. For example, I learnt, I could cover any song I like and pay basically a penny. Legally.

How so? Well, what happens is there exists something called a "compulsory mechanical license."

While it sounds like something those Squids from the Matrix would hand you, it's something much better. There is a system in place where you check with the government if a song's songwriter registered it to the copyright office. If it IS registered, you pay a laughable fee, and get to making those covers.

Awwww...

The government rounds up all that money and in the end pays the songwriter, should he or she be alive and findable.

You see, when you ask the record company that probably bought a second record company that owns the SONG( the actual recording) copyright to make a cover of that song, they can pretty much set their price. Their Price can get pretty high.  It seems that there is a system to reward the song writer and keep more songs pumping through. Everybody can win.

That cent can really make this guy's grandchildren's lives better.

Now, I know for a fact people want to remake, remix and re-edit more than just songs. I've been to Deviatnart, Fanfiction.net, and Paheal/Rule34xxx/Booru. We want to work with movies, games, and cartoons. Sadly, it doesn't seem likely DIC entertainment will let me  take on  Dinosaucers, that Sunsoft will let me make a sequel to Valis, and I'll be able to do much with my gritty origin to Mona Lisa. Working with the companies that own this IPs is unfeasable for mere mortals, and especially for profit(which is how you'd get any damn funding to begin with. Lucasarts likes Star Wars Uncut, but there are no ads in that stuff.)

So perhaps we should institute a mechanical license for fanworks. You pay a fee, (and it doesn't even have to be pathetic like the song license one. Paying a 1000 dollars to make your own legal, sellable Star wars movie seems like a reasonable amount compared to the actual "No, DON'T" perspective most companies have.)

Now, things might be going that way. Amazon is starting to allow fanmade derivative works under some kind of deal. Eidos, home of the Tomb Raider, is also making a new deal to allow fan takes on some of it's less used Franchises.

Now THIS is what the fanbase REALLY wants.

However, this are A) under the particular control of the company that owns the IP, and B) franchises that don't exactly arouse a lot of imagination. Sure, I guess somebody really wants Gex, and Fear Effect to return, and some people probably like Valiant Comics and Pretty Little Liars. But that's not what it is.

And besides, the worry of these programs, is that, by tying the profits of the work to the owner, it incentivizes the squashing of the native for love fanworks we all love. I mean, If Disney has a racket charging every chump who wants to film himself and his goons pretending to use lightsabers, that won't make MORE Star Wars movies, but LESS, because unlicenced Star Wars fan films now ARE competition.

But if Mechanical licenses where in place, derivative but unofficial works  would flourish.

You see, I think, for example, that it would be a mighty fine thing if there was a Wonder Woman open world game, where you explore, beat bad guys, talk to people and fly in an invisible jet. And I think I´m not the only one.I think it could be great and a lot of people would buy something like that. But WB owns WOnder Woman, and they don´t agree. They don´t think that people are willing to pay money to play as the world's most popular superheroine. For them "Wonder Woman: The Game" is an unnecessary risk." Just like Wonder Woman, the movie was, for over 30 years.

But they can't let YOU do it either, under a legal doctrine that basically says they MIGHT do it, so doing it yourself kind of robs them of the chance. It's the same reason Hasbro took down MLP: Fighting is Magic. Sure, they weren't gonna do a Pony fighting game themselves anyway. But if they do, it could lead to Mane 6 suing  Hasbro for ripping THEM of.

With a mechanical license, you could do it, and both works would become recognized as being related to each other, and nobody has to sue anyone. In the term of videogames, it would probably work out best, since  the mechanics of a game are legally safe to duplicate. Capcom couldn't sue Midway for emulating their gameplay mechanics, and Blizzard can't sue  Netherrealm Studios for doing a fighting game set within the DC Universe.

You see, I would GLADLY pay 1000 dollars to make my own version of Wonder Woman, and we'd be both supporting the company that bought  the company that owns the character after pressuring congress not to let it lapse into the public domain the artists, and I get to show off on Youtube or whatever. But guess what? I can't. It's not like with piracy, where the object of your affection usually can be acquired legally.

There is no way I can go to WB and convince them that I should have the license to Wonder Woman at all, even with money. If there was a mechanical license system, we could have had more than 1 Wonder Woman movie, more than zero Wonder Woman videogames,  while WB was twiddling it's thumbs and "trying to get it right".

We could have had good, passionate developers making quality remakes and upgrades to classic games and then SELLING them. Imagine  someone taking Sonic 2, and then upgrading it with  fully remade visuals, online competitive and cooperative, gameplay new characters, new modes voice acting...and then just putting all that into XBLA and Steam and PSN.

Now, there are downsides to my idea, and I don't want to look like a wide eyed idiot, so I will be addressing them.

Technically this sort of totally undermines copyrights original  intent, to protect the initial years of a work so that a creator or owner can recoup his or her invention and not have to compete with literal xeroxed copies. Besides the fact our current CR laws already do that pretty well on it's own (If I make a book, it doesn't really hurt my book sales if someone makes a fanfiction where my books characters are all m-preg nagas.) I do have a solution.

A non competition clause can kindly request that the work is actually canibalizing an the existing work. For example, If Sega already has a Sonic 2 in PSN, and Batzarro Presents: Sonic 2 is in danger of eating into Sega's shares they can put a stop to me in that particular system. However, if Sega doesn't have Sonic 2 in PSN, it wouldn't be able to stop someone else on the grounds that it MIGHT do it. It might incentivize them to actually do it. And if they  do do it, then that gives them the right to supercede the derivative work.

This is for derivative works. You can't  just dub over Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. You have to get your own actors, and film your own movie. You have to code your own Sonic 2. You have to draw and ink your own panels. You can use the John Williams Score, if you happen to make the music yourself.

You aquire a licence to adapt from individual works, not collected works. For example, Sonic 2 gives you Sonic 2. You want to add something from Sonic 3? Pay more. You want to add something from Sonic SAM?  Pay more. You want to add Mario, too? Pay more.

Law can insist that these type of works must have a clear lable or something, that indicates that they are NOT directly related to the makers of the original. Like "Based on the works of Alan Moore". Something like that.

And finally, maybe give it 5 years from the original's creation till you can do it. Most works don't make money beyond the 5.

But of course, if we could wrap our head around that kind of research, our copyright wouldn't last over 100 years, and cover a doodle a baby just made in his own poop.

Public Domain '16 Damage Report includes Supergirl, Ironman, Groot. at 11:00 PM

Happy Public Domain Day! I join Duke University in celebrating all the works that our current copyright has stolen out of the public domain.
But no offense, Dukey, nobody  gets angry they can't remake Gone with the Wind and shit. I don't know about you, but they didn't show that on TV when I was growing up. People need to know which pop culture artifacts of the today would have been everyone's soon.

This first year's list includes some of the more popular sidekicks and villains in the world, including some who are just now getting on TV and Movies!

I'm dividing this list into two parts.

After the first extension:



Copyright has been lengthened  for 40 years. First they gave it 20 in the 70s, then 20 more the 90s. The following are what would have happened if the second extension had not come to pass.

Lex Luthor

Luthor and Superman go together like nail and flesh.  While there's not a lot about him that's trademarkable (bald, mad scientist, villain) it'd be pretty neat to just up and use him without going all Superman 3 on him.

Cat Woman

Cat puns ahoy! While we're not short on cat themed femme fatales, this would be a total boon on those presumably working on Batman since last year.Catwoman is one of those characters who's just a part of modern Batman. She won't be alone, though since we'd also see...

The Joker

Batman's worst enemy for 75 years straight, the Joker would be a welcome addition to ANY  heroes universe. Or anything, really. Carebears vs Joker? Why nawt?

Green Lantern

 

While not covering the current space cop Green Lanterns, I doubt the opportunity to reinvent Alan Scott, who fought crime with a literal Green Lantern, would be considered a great loss.

Hugo Strange

 

Batman is all  the rage on this list, huh? Hugo Strange is a psychologist, but is also somewhat of a supervillain that wants to kill Batman or maybe fuck him, I don't know.

Flash

 

The original Flash, Jay Garick, could be racing with Quicksilver today.

Hawkman

 

Okay, I don't really know who loves Hawkman. He's just all...well you could use him, anyway.

Robin

Robin is..we all know about Robin. You could go to remote islands  with no electricity and find people who know about Robin. What I'm saying is, it's a bit bullshit that he's not public domain.



But hold on! When those works were created, copyright lasted 56 years.   The above all should have lapsed years ago, and we should be already be getting works from 1959, according to those Commie Pinkos THE FOUNDING FATHERS.

So what stuff from 1959 would lapse today?

Hal Jordan Green Lantern

Hey, unlike the other list, this one includes most of the core elements of today's GL. Carrol Ferris. Guardians.

Supergirl

In this timeline, Superman has lapsed years ago. But until this year, Supergirl remains  locked up.

Gorilla Grodd

With our current fascination with hig concepts, I imagine the villainous, talkig gorilla would be a welcome addition.

Batmite

 

Okay, this one's a bit stupid. Okay, a lot stupid. Batmite is a magic being from another dimension that was around during Batman's "stupid as fuck" phase. Hey, Batman's public domain now, you can do whatever you want with him.

Bizarro

Bizarro am not....Bizarro is one of Superman's most celebrated characters. An endearingly backward version of Superman, Bizarro's just one of those characters you can always find an angle to.

Ironman

Ironman! The guy from the movies! We're not quite talking gold and red demon in a bottle Iron Man yet.

Groot

Groot wasn't always Groot. Well not the Groot he is today. He was once a megalomaniacal tree man from space. I'm guessing that could have it's own uses.

Black Widow

Okay,like Luthor, there's not a lot that Natasha Romanov  has that's  visually important. But  hey,  she's bound to have fans.

Mr Freeze

If you liked chilling with the villains, Mr Freeze would be right up your street. While his mega tragic backstory would remain offlimits for 3 decades more, you'd need fear no lawsuis for including the bubbleheaded icemaster.




I want to make it perfectly clear that when these works were copyrighted, the makers and owners of these characters knew full well that their work was supposed to lapse in 56 years, okay? It was supposed to be an incentive for them to create, and it worked, and now it's not fair to back down and say WE'RE wrong for wanting them to uphold their part of the deal. There's no serious reason why making a Supergirl movie should be  a crime at this point. But it IS.



 That's just my opinion, though. What do you think?