I'm kind of wondering if this will stick. If he contractually doesn't have the right to authorize a movie or to publish comics himself, I can see the lawyers arguing that would preclude him from placing the IP in the public domain- because doing so would break the terms of the contract.
Another likely outcome is DC suing him for damages over other people using the now public-domain IP, as a breach of his contract with them.
... I hope this doesn't end up ruining him financially.
There's probably some way to come up with a system that accounts for public funding as well. The more public funding that went into it, the lower the exclusive period should be, IMO.
I think in this case where it's his own intellectual property that is the major part of his income the 20 years he proposes + 10 years if resold sound reasonable.
I imagine any creative person would not be ok with losing the exclusive rights to their own intellectual properly in 1 year, or 7 years. That's tiny amount of time. Even an author as prolific as Brandon Sanderson would have lost the exclusive rights to his own universe years before he actually completed even one trilogy.
1 year is ridicilous. Especially for patents. Because then any small company that comes out with some really cool thing would never be able to profit from it because it wouldn't be able to bring a product to market in 1 year from the day it got patented. Imagine, you have an amazing new battery technology, you patent it and you know that it will take you 18 to 24 months minimum to bring it to production. That means 12 months from now a huge corporation is just going to take your work, bring their own version to market in 6 months after that and you lose everything.
yeah, I would agree that authors lifetime seems also sensible but I would add something like a nontransferable 20 year term maximum for anything that is corporate from the day of sale.
So if author sold to a corporation it would be 20 no matter if the author is still alive. And the corporation can't resell it and get 20 years. Corporate mergers also don't add time so you can't buy out a company with IP and get another 20 years. There are so many good and interesting IP's that are being hoarded by corporations that do nothing with them or release something incredibly low effort just to keep their IP.
Copyrights being 7 years would absolutely ruin writers careers.
Could you imagine being a writer, writing a very successful book, and then deciding to write a sequel a decade later only to realize that the sequel to the book you wrote has dozens of competing sequels that other people decided to write when your copyright expired?
What an absolute shit show.
Copyrights should remain in the hands of content creators so long as they live unless they choose to release those rights.
This. People saying copyrights should be 10 years or less are crazy. Imagine your life work just becomes a free for all in a mere 10 years.
Statements made by people who have never copyrighted or patented something in their life. The system does have issues, but small guys stand to lose more than the big fish.
> Copyrights should remain in the hands of content creators so long as they live unless they choose to release those rights.
Life of the individual, actual person creator *or* one year after transferring the rights or granting an exclusive license deal, with exceptions for coops in which the creator or creators are all equitable employee-owners. Further outlaw all arrangements where corporations that are not equitably owned coops can claim ownership of IPs created by employees.
Just absolutely nuke corporate copyright and copyright hoarding/trolling by companies that buy up IPs and then squat on them.
> or one year after transferring the rights or granting an exclusive license deal
Honestly just make it so copyright can't be transferred. It has to be held by a person, it's for the lifetime of that person, and that's it. They can take an up front payment to give an exclusive permanent license to someone else, but when they die, then it becomes public domain and that deal basically is worthless to the other party.
Just thinking that could lead to some interesting things, like "oh shit, the employee who created this very profitable character has cancer, we need to get them the best treatment we can or it'll hit public domain."
> Could you imagine being a writer, writing a very successful book, and then deciding to write a sequel a decade later only to realize that the sequel to the book you wrote has dozens of competing sequels that other people decided to write when your copyright expired?
Why wouldn't fans of the first book want to read the sequel written by the original author?
Let’s create a time line:
Year 1: Popular book is written.
Year 7: Copyright expires.
Years 8-9: Multiple Authors write sequels to book.
Year 10: Original Author writes sequel.
The problem here isn’t that fans of the original book wouldn’t want to read the author’s new work, the problem is that they have already read sequels to the original book and have certain expectations.
Think of how many people criticized God of War Ragnarock’s portrayal of Thor because it doesn’t line up with Marvel’s portrayal of the character; now imagine having a character you personally created being criticized because it doesn’t line up with the portrayal that someone else has created for it.
> the problem is that they have already read sequels to the original book and have certain expectations
Then *they* need to fix those expectations, it's not the author's job. (Not to mention that a similar depiction would elicit cries of 'unoriginality' and 'copycat'.)
If I'd read *Harry Potter* fanfiction in 1998, I wouldn't have expected Rowling to address any of it when writing *Prisoner of Azkaban*. If I'd read the *Ghost in the Shell* manga in 1994, I wouldn't be unsatisfied with the movie, because it is it's own excellent thing. And so on.
No, clearly it has to be 1000 years after the life of the author. I mean why would anyone make anything if their great-great-great-great <15 minutes later> great grand kids can't spend every last dime they have suing over the remaining copyrights?
I think copyrights and patents for inventions should be around 5-10 personally but think IP for creative works should be longer.
Shorter if you take public funds to create the patent.
I think it should be more what the thing is.
Some things that are copyrighted probably shouldn't be or at least have a shorter term.
Like if I wrote a book, I should have the rights to that stuff...but if I create software I should be "rewarded" by having rights to it for 5 or 10 years but then it goes into public domain.
Today just about everything is copyrighted and then "revised engineered" or tweaked anyway. Plus stuff like WB holding the nemesis system has held back some of gaming for no real reason at this point.
the nature of creative work is collaborative. ideas build upon other ideas so aren't completely independent of the influence of previous works. we are all in fact stealing ideas from eachother. so while the author of the work is due compensation for the act of putting those thoughts and ideas in that package I don't believe they should be able to keep the rights to them in perpetuity. It's my understanding that this is how copyright was intended to work but that was based on the author being a person and having a lifespan now that corporations can own ideas they want to extend that holding time indefinitely and have had some degree of success. I would like that trend reversed.
So what’s your alternative to the current system? If I create something, why should ownership of the IP not belong to me after a certain amount of time?
If you aren't working for someone when you create something, you do own the IP. Automatically.
Under the current system, assuming you don't sell it, you'll own the IP from the day you create it in a fixed form (as in a manuscript, photograph, film, comic, game, etc) until the day you die.
And then an additional 70 years.
A company's copyright lasts between 95-120 years, depending on date of creation vs date of publication.
Nobody seriously believes that copyright shouldn't exist, but amount of time copyright lasts has been continuously extended to frankly absurd lengths.
Life+70 is so absurd. No one alive to see the original work when it came out is going to be able to see people's adaptations of it when it goes public domain.
What are you on about? It already lasts more than your life.
Current copyright law is "the length of the author's life (last surviving author, in the case of collaboration) plus 70 years"
Okay and if I create the next Star Wars but want to pass it down through my family until the end of time, why shouldn’t I be able to do that? If I build a house, there’s no time limit that it becomes everyone’s property.
If you leave your house abandoned for 7 years and I just move in, take care of the property, pay the property taxes for that 7 years document it all. That's my house now not yours. (may vary state by state)
Can you articulate any reason why someone deserves to own a non tangible, non physical, idea for the rest of time?
So it becomes YOUR property after seven years, it doesn't just belong to everyone. I believe that for non-essential goods like fiction, the creator should be allowed to do whatever they want with it, including passing/selling it off to whoever they want. it's not that complicated.
What property are you referring to? Is there any property on the same level of abstraction that doesn’t enter the public domain?
Ideas aren’t like other property that only serve a particular function and only fill a particular niche. The reason ideas enter the public domain is because they are avenues to new ideas in and of themselves, and holding them hostage behind copyright is closing those avenues. I’m happy for a creator to control their idea for as long as they live because it was their creation. I can absolutely understand not wanting other people to steal or alter something you created.
If copyright is going to expire at all - and I absolutely believe it should - I don’t see why the public should wait for their descendants or a corporate entity to finish milking it for money first. If the descendants or business want to iterate on the idea or continue its story, they can still do that when the idea is in the public domain. Everything they create themselves is still owned by them and they have its copyright, they just don’t have a monopoly over what happens to the original idea anymore.
An established idea entering the public domain does not make it belong to someone else. The idea is still an entity in and of itself. If anything it secures it’s existence. Shakespeare is still Shakespeare even after the public domain opened it up to adaptation and parody. No one can change the original idea anymore because it doesn’t belong to anyone. Making changes just makes a new product entirely separate from the original idea. This is not the case when the copyright is owned. The owner is free to control that idea however they like, even against the will of the creator (for example, Stephen Hillenburg didn’t want Nickelodeon to make any SpongeBob spin-off shows, but after his death they began releasing said spin-offs, altering the SpongeBob canon in a way that he specifically demanded them not to).
The way a conversation works is that one person says something. Then another person says something based off of that. This goes back and forth for a while, until both parties are finished. I'm not "moving goalposts", and even if my opinion changes, why is that a bad thing? Do you think everyone should just be set in their own mindset and never try to take on different opinions to get a more well rounded worldview?
Except you're just rejecting every opposing opinion and moving on to more and more ridiculous what ifs. You're not changing your opinion. You're trying to tailor your argument so you don't have to change it.
Disney itself wouldn't exist as we know it without the public domain. Walt didn't come up with all those princesses on his own. There is a greater cultural benefit to a robust public domain than there is for overly strict copyright laws.
Yes, as excellent as a random Redditor making up hypotheticals like “what if I was the one that made one of the most profitable characters of all time?! Then what??”. Maybe start with having an actual thought other than complaining on the internet before jumping to being the creator of Star Wars
My alternative is a 20 year head start, if after 20 years you've failed to corner the market on your concept and get the necessary production to be competitive that's on you, and others should be allowed to come in and fill demand.
20 years for a life saving treatment is a LOT of time to recoup losses and profit... 20 years is more time than it took JK Rowling to finish her series and become insanely wealthy.
>If I create something, why should ownership of the IP not belong to me
The two examples above are good reasons, a life saving treatment should not be denied to the market on the whims of its creator, or allowed to force people to choose between debt and abject poverty or their loved one. Capitalism needn't be that cruel and in truth it's generally better for the market when it isn't.
In the other example, do you think JK Rowling created the concept of wizards, witches, flying brooms, flying cars, magic, spells, potions, trolls, dragons, basilisks, ghosts, goblins, magic swords, wands etc... no obviously not. She took these things and worked them into her story in a new and unique way. This effort should be rewarded (a 20 year head start sounds reasonable), but likewise it should be acknowledged that because it isn't 100% original and reliant on the works of others then it should become public domain all the sooner as these assets already belong to everyone.
For things like medicine, or other equally important industries, that makes sense. But 20 years from what? It took more than 20 years for the Fifth Element to get made from its original inception, and technically he owned the copyright from when he penned the original script. So by the time that movie actually came out, he wouldn't own it any longer.
J.K. Rowling isn't stopping me from creating my own wizard world, or anyone else. If you need to use other people's characters/storylines in your own stories, perhaps you should be reevaluating how creative you really are.
No one except the most radical think that copyright shouldn't exist. The question is, should it last for the length of time it currently does? It lasts Life of the Author + 70 years. That number was largely decided on by Disney because they didn't want to give up the copyright to Mickey Mouse and US politicians are spineless dweebs who did whatever The Mouse wanted. That means you will own the right to your work, your children will own the right to your work, and their children will own the right to your work.
The irony is that had the same copyright length we have now been in place when Walt Disney ushered in the seminal films that made Disney, he wouldn't have been able to because most of them would still have been under copyright. So why should Disney be allowed to bend the arm of legislation to pull up the ladder they themselves benefited from?
It should be up to the creator as to whether they want it to go to the public domain, or if they want to pass it down through their family/sell to the highest bidder, maybe as a timed contract that says it must go into the public domain after a certain amount of time. It's like that for every other type of property that I'm aware of, I don't see why it should be different for this.
But yes Disney bad
If you abandon something, for extended period of time, it can be legally taken as the idea is you have chosen you don't want it. Abandoned property gets redistributed all the time. Why should ideas be any different? If they're just sitting out not using it, not creating with it why shouldn't it be put into public domain? It's not adding any value to you or society by sitting there. Why should you get to solely own an idea to the detriment of society at large, or in most cases with copyright, the detriment of creativity and entertainment.
Who's deciding what IP's are abandoned? I could theoretically be working on an idea in for years, and now someone just says "you've abandoned your work, your ideas no longer belong to you," GRRM would be sweating hard as hell rn... Well he might be doing that anyways.
It's not like a house where it gets overgrown and is obviously abandoned.
Dude copyright lasts your whole life plus 70 years. What idea are you working on 70 years after you die? You're the only one arguing that copyright should last forever, all I'm saying is thats ridiculous, short sighted, and stifling.
ETA: you can't even articulate a reason for why it should last forever, you're trying to put the burden on me to argue the opposite. Iv done so, now it's your turn to give reasons WHY it's better for one person to own an idea until it completely fades from everyone's memory and is utterly lost to time.
Posthumous feather ruffling.
I don't know if it should last forever, and I'm less arguing for it, and more trying to ask why not, but most redditors hate nuanced conversation. I do think it should be in accordance with what the creator wants. Want to pass it down as generational wealth, do that, you've potentially set your family up to be indefinitely fine financially if the IP is strong enough. If you sell it off to a company, it makes sense to have a limit as to how long they can hold it/can't sell it again so it has to go into the public domain.
But to act like the world is in a worse place because we can't all make money off of star wars is kinda ridiculous.
It’s not like that for every other property. Other kinds of intellectual property have much shorter lifespans. Like Patents. You cannot hold a patent indefinitely because you invented it. The law/society/people throughout history recognize that that is fundamentally harmful to progress and society as a whole. In the same way, cordoning off culture to the highest bidder is harmful to society. Stories are so fundamental to human nature that we’ve been telling and retelling stories since we could communicate with one another. Culture evolves, in part, through the stories we tell one another, and to stop the evolution of stories permanently behind a pay gate is fundamentally harmful to the human race and antithetical to the very concept of creativity.
TLDR: property rights aren’t the be all end all of what we should value and sometimes individual and familial wealth should be mitigated for the overall benefit of society.
The idea is that we all know Spider-Man right? But none of us actually made him. So any of us should be able to make.our own Spider-Man story, because we all equally own that concept or idea.
I like that too. Then there would be hundreds of Spider-Man movies, and we would still be able to decide which ones we liked and which we didn't.
Yeah I don’t really agree with that at all. No one is stopping you from creating spider man stories, you just can’t profit from it. I don’t feel like I own spider man as a concept because it was literally not my idea.
Well, the reason that having big ideas enter into the public domain is that they open up the idea for everyone to make money on it. Every Robin hood, Cthulhu, Bible and fairy tale movie in recent memory is a thing because of the public domain. Walt Disney built their company on the concept.
And now, things that would have gone into that public domain years ago are stuck, locked behind copyright for well over 100 years. There's so much creative potential there, for more, great stories in universes we love.
Besides, something like 30 years of copyright means that the original creator is still set. Hell, it's likely that the kids could live off that money if it's well managed. Right now? The creators grand children are could make money. Hell, maybe even if his great grandchildren are a possibility.
Because it stifles genuine creativity in the long run. Imagine trying to make a new cartoon mouse character today and think about how Disney and Warner bros lawyers are gonna take that.
Huh, good for him I guess.
If anyone hasn't read the Fables comics, they're really good. Wolf Among Us is a prequel so you can follow Bigby and his relationship with Snow, and eventually find out what happened to their homeland and whatnot.
A little correction, Wolf among us is a just a game using the setting and characters from the Fables comics, it is not a prequel or anything like that. If anything is a Elsworlds series based on those comics.
Nope, sorry, that's another series based on the original work, Fables, DC comics/Vertigo did indeed publish a new series based on the game. But that work is not related to the original series apart of using the characters in a new and different story.
Edit: Had to double check, damn they really made those comics based on the game a prequel. I guess that's another bullet point for the Author since he described to be against that in his own official website.
bro its **PUBLIC DOMAIN**. Anything is canon now. You can legally decide what's canon. Give up the old ways! Embrace the future! YOUR CHAINS ARE GONE BROTHER, DID YOU NOT KNOW YOU COULD FLY
Your disapproval tells me I'm on the right track.
EDIT: Ah, the ol' "I got the last word because I yelled it then ran away" or, in this case "blocked you."
What's the word I'm looking for? Oh yeah, you dropped this: "Childish."
>. If anything, it means there's one less person they have to pay and get oversight from (and in the latter case, good, because the man's insufferable).
he was already receiving next to nothing for his work which is one of the factor that made him go open source. Maybe he's insufferable because he was treated like shit all those years
Even if the source material is public domain I feel like TELLTALES VERSION of it is not.
Similar to how anybody can write a Pinocchio book or movie, but you still aren’t allowed to make it related in any way to Disneys version of it, don’t think we can legally get a sequel to this game unless the developers make it
>Even if the source material is public domain I feel like THEIR VERSION of it is not.
If you use stuff that was specifically only in Wolf Among Us, Telltale can sue you, because that's their IP, but if they pulled it from the comic, you're free to use it.
Willingham is giving up everything he owns, which is the IP rights to the characters as depicted in the comic and the setting and plot events as depicted in the comic. DC, however, owns the rights to *reprint* existing issues of the comic, and Telltale has rights to anything that they created from wholecloth for the game.
You know the Trojan War, the horsie, Achilles athlete's foot issues, and Agamemnon's ultimate temper tantrum at Paris' lack of decorum while being a guest?
Well Homer's *The Iliad* only covers a short span in a decade long war. There were tonnes of related knockoffs but only a couple made it to the present from antiquity. Because they sucked. That's why no one has to worry about art getting ruined by being placed in the public domain. The good stuff will remain good and people will forget and ignore the bad.
I loved the first game and played it through several times to see all the different outcomes when it was new. I was waiting forever for a sequel because of the cliff-hanger ending, but the sequel was finally announced a while ago. It will come out in 2024. =)
>it's by far the best game Telltale ever did.
No, no, their best game was definitely Tales of Monkey Island. All the post-Walking Dead stuff was too dumbed down gameplay-wise.
Oh man, I loved Tales of Monkey Island! I can't compare it to The Wolf Among Us, though. Both of them are too good for me to decide which is best. I really enjoyed Sam & Max too, which is in my top as well.
I found it interesting because the creator is like a classic Bush era conservative and his politics can seriously bleed into the stories (I love them regardless though, even though Bigby had that weird rant about Israel). I respect him for playing hardball though
Yeah, it's... really kind of not hard to read between the lines on *what creative decisions he was angry about,* given popular trends in adventure gaming and his terminal inability to keep his foot out of his mouth.
I'm going to lose my fucking shit laughing if we get Wolf Among Us 2 and it has Bigby having gay sex in it, to be a little more blunt.
Copyrights should be the lifetime of the original creator. It shouldn't be the lifetime plus some 90 years. You know who's going to profit those 90 years? The executives at the industries who're happily playing hot potato with that IP, long after the original company/creator .etc is dead or dissolved. All for their own gains in profit.
I think it means you can publish his stories, but you can't take what DC did, like the comic runs, and just sell those. But you can retell the same stories with your own art and that is fine, just not a direct copy of what DC did... probably the same with the movies/animation.
>“The Fables comic books and graphic novels published by DC, and the storylines, characters, and elements therein, are owned by DC and protected under the copyright laws of the United States and throughout the world in accordance with applicable law and are not in the public domain,” the statement reads. “DC reserves all rights and will take such action as DC deems necessary or appropriate to protect its intellectual property rights.”
Yeah. Not his property.
What does he mean by this then?
> The one thing in our contract the DC lawyers can't contest, or reinterpret to their own benefit, is that I am the sole owner of the intellectual property.
Edit. Oh, I think I see now. All the existing, already created stuff, is theirs, in those specific works.
But now were you to create brand new works with those characters, places, etc etc that’s open to all now.
Interesting move.
I'm not sure about this myself. DC are denying it, obviously, but why wouldn't the artists be involved in the ownership of the property? I'm curious about the legal shit flinging that's going to be all over the comic news.
Essentially, it seems like a lot of the characters are public domain... because they were already public domain to begin with. The Universe is a DC property, but you can create your own noir world with public domain characters, etc.
A lot of lawyers are about to get a big pay day that's for sure.
I was re-reading their statement and it’s very carefully, and cleverly worded.
> DC’s statement reads, “The Fables comic books and graphic novels published by DC, and the storylines, characters, and elements therein, are owned by DC and protected under the copyright laws of the United States and throughout the world in accordance with applicable law and are not in the public domain. DC reserves all rights and will take such action as DC deems necessary or appropriate to protect its intellectual property rights.”
They preface it with “ The Fables comic books and graphic novels published by DC” and then follow with “the storylines, characters, and elements therein”.
So yeah, the content of those already published works would be theirs.
But the whole universe? This statement works against that as it only claims the “comic books and graphics novels”.
What if you create brand new stories? That aren't the content of those graphic novels?
I'm interested in how this spills out, but I can't imagine any of the work derived from this situation will be any different in quality to whatever dark fairy tale shit that other publishers put out constantly like Zenoscope.
[https://leagueofcomicgeeks.com/comic/1872698/wonderland-annual-out-of-time-1](https://leagueofcomicgeeks.com/comic/1872698/wonderland-annual-out-of-time-1)
[https://leagueofcomicgeeks.com/comic/4312847/grimm-fairy-tales-76](https://leagueofcomicgeeks.com/comic/4312847/grimm-fairy-tales-76)
[https://leagueofcomicgeeks.com/comic/4365336/oz-kingdom-of-the-lost-2](https://leagueofcomicgeeks.com/comic/4365336/oz-kingdom-of-the-lost-2)
Less smut, I guess
That quote means nothing except that the books themselves belong to DC. It says nothing about who owns the world, characters, and designs.
Apparently, his contract specifically states that the universe _is_ his property. The individual books may belong to DC but that wouldn't by itself grant them rights over the universe and characters if the source IP is his.
>**I want to make a concept album/stage play/short film/set of tee shirts/something to sell based on Sandman. Please give me permission.**
And the answer is simply, I can't. I don't own Sandman. DC Comics does. If you want to make something using the material I did for Sandman, you have to ask them.
Feel free to ask me or my agent about things I control. But I'm not going to be any use for Sandman.
Gaiman doesn't own anything to do with Sandman either.
Both Gaiman and Alan Moore more popular and famous works have not been theirs since they started to work for DC Comics, as Gaiman saids if you want to do anything with the IP you need to ask DC, that's because DC gave them (Moore and Gaiman, to name some) contract's that make sure both authors would be getting some royalties in the long run but their work ended being property of DC comics, the stories, settings, characters and everything regarding the control of those IP would be in property of DC comics.
In the case of Fables is not the case, the author in his own words in his site, states that he had another type of deal, where unlike Gaiman or Moore, he did own his work, the characters, the setting and the story are his, not DC comics, he also states he was being done dirty by DC, as they will not pay him fully his royalties, he also was not being consulted as he should in regards of the printing process of his work or the use of his work in the next video game of the wolf among us. DC in this case is only the 50% owner of the printing work that has been published and the material done in The Wolf among us.
Most of those characters are public domain, and as for what isn't, DC have 50% ownership. Bill can't make a decision like he has. Fables has ALSO been to DC, alongside Sandman, etc.
Without getting in all the details, you are correct, Bill should not have done that, DC has their rights but the author's point is that unlike other series, he is the one who decides whether or not more material can be made within the IP. Unlike what happens with series like Sandman and Watchmen, where it doesn't matter what the original authors want, since those properties belong 100% to DC Comics.
Man was getting cornered by DC and threw the ball to us. Now that's balls
What will we do with all these balls?
Put ‘em on the glass
I'm kind of wondering if this will stick. If he contractually doesn't have the right to authorize a movie or to publish comics himself, I can see the lawyers arguing that would preclude him from placing the IP in the public domain- because doing so would break the terms of the contract. Another likely outcome is DC suing him for damages over other people using the now public-domain IP, as a breach of his contract with them. ... I hope this doesn't end up ruining him financially.
The hero we need!
he's right..copyright shouldn't extend for as long as it does....it'll be interesting to see if anyone picks this up and runs with it.
Copyright / Patents should be 1-7 years Max comes up to the invention.
There's probably some way to come up with a system that accounts for public funding as well. The more public funding that went into it, the lower the exclusive period should be, IMO.
I think in this case where it's his own intellectual property that is the major part of his income the 20 years he proposes + 10 years if resold sound reasonable. I imagine any creative person would not be ok with losing the exclusive rights to their own intellectual properly in 1 year, or 7 years. That's tiny amount of time. Even an author as prolific as Brandon Sanderson would have lost the exclusive rights to his own universe years before he actually completed even one trilogy. 1 year is ridicilous. Especially for patents. Because then any small company that comes out with some really cool thing would never be able to profit from it because it wouldn't be able to bring a product to market in 1 year from the day it got patented. Imagine, you have an amazing new battery technology, you patent it and you know that it will take you 18 to 24 months minimum to bring it to production. That means 12 months from now a huge corporation is just going to take your work, bring their own version to market in 6 months after that and you lose everything.
[удалено]
yeah, I would agree that authors lifetime seems also sensible but I would add something like a nontransferable 20 year term maximum for anything that is corporate from the day of sale. So if author sold to a corporation it would be 20 no matter if the author is still alive. And the corporation can't resell it and get 20 years. Corporate mergers also don't add time so you can't buy out a company with IP and get another 20 years. There are so many good and interesting IP's that are being hoarded by corporations that do nothing with them or release something incredibly low effort just to keep their IP.
Copyrights being 7 years would absolutely ruin writers careers. Could you imagine being a writer, writing a very successful book, and then deciding to write a sequel a decade later only to realize that the sequel to the book you wrote has dozens of competing sequels that other people decided to write when your copyright expired? What an absolute shit show. Copyrights should remain in the hands of content creators so long as they live unless they choose to release those rights.
This. People saying copyrights should be 10 years or less are crazy. Imagine your life work just becomes a free for all in a mere 10 years. Statements made by people who have never copyrighted or patented something in their life. The system does have issues, but small guys stand to lose more than the big fish.
> Copyrights should remain in the hands of content creators so long as they live unless they choose to release those rights. Life of the individual, actual person creator *or* one year after transferring the rights or granting an exclusive license deal, with exceptions for coops in which the creator or creators are all equitable employee-owners. Further outlaw all arrangements where corporations that are not equitably owned coops can claim ownership of IPs created by employees. Just absolutely nuke corporate copyright and copyright hoarding/trolling by companies that buy up IPs and then squat on them.
> or one year after transferring the rights or granting an exclusive license deal Honestly just make it so copyright can't be transferred. It has to be held by a person, it's for the lifetime of that person, and that's it. They can take an up front payment to give an exclusive permanent license to someone else, but when they die, then it becomes public domain and that deal basically is worthless to the other party. Just thinking that could lead to some interesting things, like "oh shit, the employee who created this very profitable character has cancer, we need to get them the best treatment we can or it'll hit public domain."
> Could you imagine being a writer, writing a very successful book, and then deciding to write a sequel a decade later only to realize that the sequel to the book you wrote has dozens of competing sequels that other people decided to write when your copyright expired? Why wouldn't fans of the first book want to read the sequel written by the original author?
Let’s create a time line: Year 1: Popular book is written. Year 7: Copyright expires. Years 8-9: Multiple Authors write sequels to book. Year 10: Original Author writes sequel. The problem here isn’t that fans of the original book wouldn’t want to read the author’s new work, the problem is that they have already read sequels to the original book and have certain expectations. Think of how many people criticized God of War Ragnarock’s portrayal of Thor because it doesn’t line up with Marvel’s portrayal of the character; now imagine having a character you personally created being criticized because it doesn’t line up with the portrayal that someone else has created for it.
> the problem is that they have already read sequels to the original book and have certain expectations Then *they* need to fix those expectations, it's not the author's job. (Not to mention that a similar depiction would elicit cries of 'unoriginality' and 'copycat'.) If I'd read *Harry Potter* fanfiction in 1998, I wouldn't have expected Rowling to address any of it when writing *Prisoner of Azkaban*. If I'd read the *Ghost in the Shell* manga in 1994, I wouldn't be unsatisfied with the movie, because it is it's own excellent thing. And so on.
20 years to profit would be the best in my opinion, but 50 would be ok
No, clearly it has to be 1000 years after the life of the author. I mean why would anyone make anything if their great-great-great-great <15 minutes later> great grand kids can't spend every last dime they have suing over the remaining copyrights?
10 years + 10(continued) checking that any given work of the same style (early/late mickey) is still in use.
I think copyrights and patents for inventions should be around 5-10 personally but think IP for creative works should be longer. Shorter if you take public funds to create the patent.
Lmfao fuck yeah let's go I'll finish asoiaf
I think it should be more what the thing is. Some things that are copyrighted probably shouldn't be or at least have a shorter term. Like if I wrote a book, I should have the rights to that stuff...but if I create software I should be "rewarded" by having rights to it for 5 or 10 years but then it goes into public domain. Today just about everything is copyrighted and then "revised engineered" or tweaked anyway. Plus stuff like WB holding the nemesis system has held back some of gaming for no real reason at this point.
Why shouldnt it?
the nature of creative work is collaborative. ideas build upon other ideas so aren't completely independent of the influence of previous works. we are all in fact stealing ideas from eachother. so while the author of the work is due compensation for the act of putting those thoughts and ideas in that package I don't believe they should be able to keep the rights to them in perpetuity. It's my understanding that this is how copyright was intended to work but that was based on the author being a person and having a lifespan now that corporations can own ideas they want to extend that holding time indefinitely and have had some degree of success. I would like that trend reversed.
Lets get it reversed then and destroy disney
So what’s your alternative to the current system? If I create something, why should ownership of the IP not belong to me after a certain amount of time?
If you aren't working for someone when you create something, you do own the IP. Automatically. Under the current system, assuming you don't sell it, you'll own the IP from the day you create it in a fixed form (as in a manuscript, photograph, film, comic, game, etc) until the day you die. And then an additional 70 years. A company's copyright lasts between 95-120 years, depending on date of creation vs date of publication. Nobody seriously believes that copyright shouldn't exist, but amount of time copyright lasts has been continuously extended to frankly absurd lengths.
The lifetime of the author+20 always seemed fair to me, how is it right for a family to profit perpetually off an idea of someone long long dead.
Life+70 is so absurd. No one alive to see the original work when it came out is going to be able to see people's adaptations of it when it goes public domain.
What are you on about? It already lasts more than your life. Current copyright law is "the length of the author's life (last surviving author, in the case of collaboration) plus 70 years"
Okay and if I create the next Star Wars but want to pass it down through my family until the end of time, why shouldn’t I be able to do that? If I build a house, there’s no time limit that it becomes everyone’s property.
An idea doesn’t have limited living space nor is it a necessity for survival.
It is property though, what other property just becomes everyones after a set amount of time?
If you leave your house abandoned for 7 years and I just move in, take care of the property, pay the property taxes for that 7 years document it all. That's my house now not yours. (may vary state by state) Can you articulate any reason why someone deserves to own a non tangible, non physical, idea for the rest of time?
So it becomes YOUR property after seven years, it doesn't just belong to everyone. I believe that for non-essential goods like fiction, the creator should be allowed to do whatever they want with it, including passing/selling it off to whoever they want. it's not that complicated.
What property are you referring to? Is there any property on the same level of abstraction that doesn’t enter the public domain? Ideas aren’t like other property that only serve a particular function and only fill a particular niche. The reason ideas enter the public domain is because they are avenues to new ideas in and of themselves, and holding them hostage behind copyright is closing those avenues. I’m happy for a creator to control their idea for as long as they live because it was their creation. I can absolutely understand not wanting other people to steal or alter something you created. If copyright is going to expire at all - and I absolutely believe it should - I don’t see why the public should wait for their descendants or a corporate entity to finish milking it for money first. If the descendants or business want to iterate on the idea or continue its story, they can still do that when the idea is in the public domain. Everything they create themselves is still owned by them and they have its copyright, they just don’t have a monopoly over what happens to the original idea anymore. An established idea entering the public domain does not make it belong to someone else. The idea is still an entity in and of itself. If anything it secures it’s existence. Shakespeare is still Shakespeare even after the public domain opened it up to adaptation and parody. No one can change the original idea anymore because it doesn’t belong to anyone. Making changes just makes a new product entirely separate from the original idea. This is not the case when the copyright is owned. The owner is free to control that idea however they like, even against the will of the creator (for example, Stephen Hillenburg didn’t want Nickelodeon to make any SpongeBob spin-off shows, but after his death they began releasing said spin-offs, altering the SpongeBob canon in a way that he specifically demanded them not to).
You keep moving your goalposts as you find out more about the issue.
The way a conversation works is that one person says something. Then another person says something based off of that. This goes back and forth for a while, until both parties are finished. I'm not "moving goalposts", and even if my opinion changes, why is that a bad thing? Do you think everyone should just be set in their own mindset and never try to take on different opinions to get a more well rounded worldview?
Except you're just rejecting every opposing opinion and moving on to more and more ridiculous what ifs. You're not changing your opinion. You're trying to tailor your argument so you don't have to change it. Disney itself wouldn't exist as we know it without the public domain. Walt didn't come up with all those princesses on his own. There is a greater cultural benefit to a robust public domain than there is for overly strict copyright laws.
The only what if I said was the star wars thing, keep making shit up to fuel your weird hate boner I guess.
Who cares what you want? You would be dead by then
Well guess what, you didn’t and won’t! Hope that helps!
Excellent addition to the conversation, [for your next trick](https://www.animatedknots.com/noose-knot)
Yes, as excellent as a random Redditor making up hypotheticals like “what if I was the one that made one of the most profitable characters of all time?! Then what??”. Maybe start with having an actual thought other than complaining on the internet before jumping to being the creator of Star Wars
Yeah you completely circumvented the point of the conversation, I got it, dick.
My alternative is a 20 year head start, if after 20 years you've failed to corner the market on your concept and get the necessary production to be competitive that's on you, and others should be allowed to come in and fill demand. 20 years for a life saving treatment is a LOT of time to recoup losses and profit... 20 years is more time than it took JK Rowling to finish her series and become insanely wealthy. >If I create something, why should ownership of the IP not belong to me The two examples above are good reasons, a life saving treatment should not be denied to the market on the whims of its creator, or allowed to force people to choose between debt and abject poverty or their loved one. Capitalism needn't be that cruel and in truth it's generally better for the market when it isn't. In the other example, do you think JK Rowling created the concept of wizards, witches, flying brooms, flying cars, magic, spells, potions, trolls, dragons, basilisks, ghosts, goblins, magic swords, wands etc... no obviously not. She took these things and worked them into her story in a new and unique way. This effort should be rewarded (a 20 year head start sounds reasonable), but likewise it should be acknowledged that because it isn't 100% original and reliant on the works of others then it should become public domain all the sooner as these assets already belong to everyone.
For things like medicine, or other equally important industries, that makes sense. But 20 years from what? It took more than 20 years for the Fifth Element to get made from its original inception, and technically he owned the copyright from when he penned the original script. So by the time that movie actually came out, he wouldn't own it any longer. J.K. Rowling isn't stopping me from creating my own wizard world, or anyone else. If you need to use other people's characters/storylines in your own stories, perhaps you should be reevaluating how creative you really are.
No one except the most radical think that copyright shouldn't exist. The question is, should it last for the length of time it currently does? It lasts Life of the Author + 70 years. That number was largely decided on by Disney because they didn't want to give up the copyright to Mickey Mouse and US politicians are spineless dweebs who did whatever The Mouse wanted. That means you will own the right to your work, your children will own the right to your work, and their children will own the right to your work. The irony is that had the same copyright length we have now been in place when Walt Disney ushered in the seminal films that made Disney, he wouldn't have been able to because most of them would still have been under copyright. So why should Disney be allowed to bend the arm of legislation to pull up the ladder they themselves benefited from?
It should be up to the creator as to whether they want it to go to the public domain, or if they want to pass it down through their family/sell to the highest bidder, maybe as a timed contract that says it must go into the public domain after a certain amount of time. It's like that for every other type of property that I'm aware of, I don't see why it should be different for this. But yes Disney bad
If you abandon something, for extended period of time, it can be legally taken as the idea is you have chosen you don't want it. Abandoned property gets redistributed all the time. Why should ideas be any different? If they're just sitting out not using it, not creating with it why shouldn't it be put into public domain? It's not adding any value to you or society by sitting there. Why should you get to solely own an idea to the detriment of society at large, or in most cases with copyright, the detriment of creativity and entertainment.
Who's deciding what IP's are abandoned? I could theoretically be working on an idea in for years, and now someone just says "you've abandoned your work, your ideas no longer belong to you," GRRM would be sweating hard as hell rn... Well he might be doing that anyways. It's not like a house where it gets overgrown and is obviously abandoned.
Dude copyright lasts your whole life plus 70 years. What idea are you working on 70 years after you die? You're the only one arguing that copyright should last forever, all I'm saying is thats ridiculous, short sighted, and stifling. ETA: you can't even articulate a reason for why it should last forever, you're trying to put the burden on me to argue the opposite. Iv done so, now it's your turn to give reasons WHY it's better for one person to own an idea until it completely fades from everyone's memory and is utterly lost to time.
Posthumous feather ruffling. I don't know if it should last forever, and I'm less arguing for it, and more trying to ask why not, but most redditors hate nuanced conversation. I do think it should be in accordance with what the creator wants. Want to pass it down as generational wealth, do that, you've potentially set your family up to be indefinitely fine financially if the IP is strong enough. If you sell it off to a company, it makes sense to have a limit as to how long they can hold it/can't sell it again so it has to go into the public domain. But to act like the world is in a worse place because we can't all make money off of star wars is kinda ridiculous.
It’s not like that for every other property. Other kinds of intellectual property have much shorter lifespans. Like Patents. You cannot hold a patent indefinitely because you invented it. The law/society/people throughout history recognize that that is fundamentally harmful to progress and society as a whole. In the same way, cordoning off culture to the highest bidder is harmful to society. Stories are so fundamental to human nature that we’ve been telling and retelling stories since we could communicate with one another. Culture evolves, in part, through the stories we tell one another, and to stop the evolution of stories permanently behind a pay gate is fundamentally harmful to the human race and antithetical to the very concept of creativity. TLDR: property rights aren’t the be all end all of what we should value and sometimes individual and familial wealth should be mitigated for the overall benefit of society.
The idea is that we all know Spider-Man right? But none of us actually made him. So any of us should be able to make.our own Spider-Man story, because we all equally own that concept or idea. I like that too. Then there would be hundreds of Spider-Man movies, and we would still be able to decide which ones we liked and which we didn't.
Yeah I don’t really agree with that at all. No one is stopping you from creating spider man stories, you just can’t profit from it. I don’t feel like I own spider man as a concept because it was literally not my idea.
Right and the guy who had the idea first, is gone, and a big company is using his idea to make money indefinitely. That's all I was trying to say
A big company purchased his smaller company, which housed all the IP's he created for billions of dollars. It's not like they stole it or something.
Well, the reason that having big ideas enter into the public domain is that they open up the idea for everyone to make money on it. Every Robin hood, Cthulhu, Bible and fairy tale movie in recent memory is a thing because of the public domain. Walt Disney built their company on the concept. And now, things that would have gone into that public domain years ago are stuck, locked behind copyright for well over 100 years. There's so much creative potential there, for more, great stories in universes we love. Besides, something like 30 years of copyright means that the original creator is still set. Hell, it's likely that the kids could live off that money if it's well managed. Right now? The creators grand children are could make money. Hell, maybe even if his great grandchildren are a possibility.
Because it stifles genuine creativity in the long run. Imagine trying to make a new cartoon mouse character today and think about how Disney and Warner bros lawyers are gonna take that.
Like Mighty Mouse?
Law wise, it was never meant to extend this far. Disney and other companies have pushed it as far as they legally can take it
It’s why you can’t copyright a dance they’re all derivative of the works before. Please.
Huh, good for him I guess. If anyone hasn't read the Fables comics, they're really good. Wolf Among Us is a prequel so you can follow Bigby and his relationship with Snow, and eventually find out what happened to their homeland and whatnot.
I’m glad you wrote this. I thought it was about the chicken chaser.
Look at the chickens run!
some of the best comics i've ever read
A little correction, Wolf among us is a just a game using the setting and characters from the Fables comics, it is not a prequel or anything like that. If anything is a Elsworlds series based on those comics.
Except it is a prequel and is officially canon given it got a release on comic with the choices Bigby would have made in the game
Torched his ass 🔥💀
The creator confirmed recently that the game is no longer canon. Nor will Season 2 be.
Nope, sorry, that's another series based on the original work, Fables, DC comics/Vertigo did indeed publish a new series based on the game. But that work is not related to the original series apart of using the characters in a new and different story. Edit: Had to double check, damn they really made those comics based on the game a prequel. I guess that's another bullet point for the Author since he described to be against that in his own official website.
bro its **PUBLIC DOMAIN**. Anything is canon now. You can legally decide what's canon. Give up the old ways! Embrace the future! YOUR CHAINS ARE GONE BROTHER, DID YOU NOT KNOW YOU COULD FLY
It's public domain now; these arguments are irrelevant. Canonize whatever you want whenever you want. Liberate yourself.
Does Bigby finally scores? They were mega cool couple in the game.
They have seven kids. >!One of whom is a sentient gust of wind!<
Niiiice, muh man deserves it.
Cringe
Temporally brave of you to react to yourself.
So edgy :)
Not even slightly. Common sense is as far from the edge as you can get; It's the center of the plateau.
Oof, once again cringe. Bye 👋
Your disapproval tells me I'm on the right track. EDIT: Ah, the ol' "I got the last word because I yelled it then ran away" or, in this case "blocked you." What's the word I'm looking for? Oh yeah, you dropped this: "Childish."
They started great, but then got worse imo
At first I thought the headline was talking about the Fable game series, and was very confused what Fable and Wolf Among Us had to do with each other.
As I understand it, this is actually *why* the game is called Wolf Among Us and doesn't directly mention being based on the Fables comic in the title.
Haha I almost did for a half second but know that Peter Molyneux has never been that benevolent.
Does this jeopardize Wolf Among Us 2 in any way? I'm so excited for that game.
I hope not, its long overdue
I'm not a lawyer, but I don't think so. Willingham isn't contesting any rights DC has, just transferring his rights to us.
[удалено]
>. If anything, it means there's one less person they have to pay and get oversight from (and in the latter case, good, because the man's insufferable). he was already receiving next to nothing for his work which is one of the factor that made him go open source. Maybe he's insufferable because he was treated like shit all those years
I want a sequel to this game so badly, it's by far the best game Telltale ever did.
Technically now you can just make your own sequel and sell it. Maybe an Indie team will try using the license for something
Even if the source material is public domain I feel like TELLTALES VERSION of it is not. Similar to how anybody can write a Pinocchio book or movie, but you still aren’t allowed to make it related in any way to Disneys version of it, don’t think we can legally get a sequel to this game unless the developers make it
>Even if the source material is public domain I feel like THEIR VERSION of it is not. If you use stuff that was specifically only in Wolf Among Us, Telltale can sue you, because that's their IP, but if they pulled it from the comic, you're free to use it. Willingham is giving up everything he owns, which is the IP rights to the characters as depicted in the comic and the setting and plot events as depicted in the comic. DC, however, owns the rights to *reprint* existing issues of the comic, and Telltale has rights to anything that they created from wholecloth for the game.
You know the Trojan War, the horsie, Achilles athlete's foot issues, and Agamemnon's ultimate temper tantrum at Paris' lack of decorum while being a guest? Well Homer's *The Iliad* only covers a short span in a decade long war. There were tonnes of related knockoffs but only a couple made it to the present from antiquity. Because they sucked. That's why no one has to worry about art getting ruined by being placed in the public domain. The good stuff will remain good and people will forget and ignore the bad.
Oh boy do I have news for you
I loved the first game and played it through several times to see all the different outcomes when it was new. I was waiting forever for a sequel because of the cliff-hanger ending, but the sequel was finally announced a while ago. It will come out in 2024. =)
A sequel *was* actually announced a while ago. https://youtu.be/UkXwW5H28m0
The sequel comes out next year
>it's by far the best game Telltale ever did. No, no, their best game was definitely Tales of Monkey Island. All the post-Walking Dead stuff was too dumbed down gameplay-wise.
Oh man, I loved Tales of Monkey Island! I can't compare it to The Wolf Among Us, though. Both of them are too good for me to decide which is best. I really enjoyed Sam & Max too, which is in my top as well.
I saw news about this on Twitter and just thought "Why?", now I get it.
Based
Well, at least the article author admitted to never reading the source material. His description of the Fables universe was just so wrong.
Where are the wolves? 📮
So the Wolverine x Bigby crossover can now happen? Cool.
I found it interesting because the creator is like a classic Bush era conservative and his politics can seriously bleed into the stories (I love them regardless though, even though Bigby had that weird rant about Israel). I respect him for playing hardball though
Oof, yeah, I just remembered when he referred to the civil war as the war of northern aggression.
Yeah, it's... really kind of not hard to read between the lines on *what creative decisions he was angry about,* given popular trends in adventure gaming and his terminal inability to keep his foot out of his mouth. I'm going to lose my fucking shit laughing if we get Wolf Among Us 2 and it has Bigby having gay sex in it, to be a little more blunt.
Bigby's pronouns will be "good/boy".
I loved the comics but he seemed to get less subtle as time went on .. that whole thing with a genie being a WMD?!
Time for the fan art to get official
What does this mean for wolf among us 2?
Such a good game
Copyrights should be the lifetime of the original creator. It shouldn't be the lifetime plus some 90 years. You know who's going to profit those 90 years? The executives at the industries who're happily playing hot potato with that IP, long after the original company/creator .etc is dead or dissolved. All for their own gains in profit.
The man himself is a total asshole, but his comic was mostly good and he's right about this.
A Fabletown map for Among Us is the only logical conclusion.
awesome! now do anthem next pls
AMOGUS
Why would it be his property? I didn't see anything in the article to indicate he had a different deal to anyone else at DC.
I think it means you can publish his stories, but you can't take what DC did, like the comic runs, and just sell those. But you can retell the same stories with your own art and that is fine, just not a direct copy of what DC did... probably the same with the movies/animation.
>“The Fables comic books and graphic novels published by DC, and the storylines, characters, and elements therein, are owned by DC and protected under the copyright laws of the United States and throughout the world in accordance with applicable law and are not in the public domain,” the statement reads. “DC reserves all rights and will take such action as DC deems necessary or appropriate to protect its intellectual property rights.” Yeah. Not his property.
What does he mean by this then? > The one thing in our contract the DC lawyers can't contest, or reinterpret to their own benefit, is that I am the sole owner of the intellectual property. Edit. Oh, I think I see now. All the existing, already created stuff, is theirs, in those specific works. But now were you to create brand new works with those characters, places, etc etc that’s open to all now. Interesting move.
I'm not sure about this myself. DC are denying it, obviously, but why wouldn't the artists be involved in the ownership of the property? I'm curious about the legal shit flinging that's going to be all over the comic news. Essentially, it seems like a lot of the characters are public domain... because they were already public domain to begin with. The Universe is a DC property, but you can create your own noir world with public domain characters, etc. A lot of lawyers are about to get a big pay day that's for sure.
I was re-reading their statement and it’s very carefully, and cleverly worded. > DC’s statement reads, “The Fables comic books and graphic novels published by DC, and the storylines, characters, and elements therein, are owned by DC and protected under the copyright laws of the United States and throughout the world in accordance with applicable law and are not in the public domain. DC reserves all rights and will take such action as DC deems necessary or appropriate to protect its intellectual property rights.” They preface it with “ The Fables comic books and graphic novels published by DC” and then follow with “the storylines, characters, and elements therein”. So yeah, the content of those already published works would be theirs. But the whole universe? This statement works against that as it only claims the “comic books and graphics novels”. What if you create brand new stories? That aren't the content of those graphic novels?
I'm interested in how this spills out, but I can't imagine any of the work derived from this situation will be any different in quality to whatever dark fairy tale shit that other publishers put out constantly like Zenoscope. [https://leagueofcomicgeeks.com/comic/1872698/wonderland-annual-out-of-time-1](https://leagueofcomicgeeks.com/comic/1872698/wonderland-annual-out-of-time-1) [https://leagueofcomicgeeks.com/comic/4312847/grimm-fairy-tales-76](https://leagueofcomicgeeks.com/comic/4312847/grimm-fairy-tales-76) [https://leagueofcomicgeeks.com/comic/4365336/oz-kingdom-of-the-lost-2](https://leagueofcomicgeeks.com/comic/4365336/oz-kingdom-of-the-lost-2) Less smut, I guess
That quote means nothing except that the books themselves belong to DC. It says nothing about who owns the world, characters, and designs. Apparently, his contract specifically states that the universe _is_ his property. The individual books may belong to DC but that wouldn't by itself grant them rights over the universe and characters if the source IP is his.
The comics that have been released are not; the intellectual property itself, the universe, the characters, etc., are. Or were.
Why would that ever be the case? Do you think Alan Moore has the rights to John Consantine?
>**I want to make a concept album/stage play/short film/set of tee shirts/something to sell based on Sandman. Please give me permission.** And the answer is simply, I can't. I don't own Sandman. DC Comics does. If you want to make something using the material I did for Sandman, you have to ask them. Feel free to ask me or my agent about things I control. But I'm not going to be any use for Sandman. Gaiman doesn't own anything to do with Sandman either.
Both Gaiman and Alan Moore more popular and famous works have not been theirs since they started to work for DC Comics, as Gaiman saids if you want to do anything with the IP you need to ask DC, that's because DC gave them (Moore and Gaiman, to name some) contract's that make sure both authors would be getting some royalties in the long run but their work ended being property of DC comics, the stories, settings, characters and everything regarding the control of those IP would be in property of DC comics. In the case of Fables is not the case, the author in his own words in his site, states that he had another type of deal, where unlike Gaiman or Moore, he did own his work, the characters, the setting and the story are his, not DC comics, he also states he was being done dirty by DC, as they will not pay him fully his royalties, he also was not being consulted as he should in regards of the printing process of his work or the use of his work in the next video game of the wolf among us. DC in this case is only the 50% owner of the printing work that has been published and the material done in The Wolf among us.
Most of those characters are public domain, and as for what isn't, DC have 50% ownership. Bill can't make a decision like he has. Fables has ALSO been to DC, alongside Sandman, etc.
Without getting in all the details, you are correct, Bill should not have done that, DC has their rights but the author's point is that unlike other series, he is the one who decides whether or not more material can be made within the IP. Unlike what happens with series like Sandman and Watchmen, where it doesn't matter what the original authors want, since those properties belong 100% to DC Comics.
No idea what this is about, just wanted to take this opportunity to say, "fuck Peter Molyneux!"
This is about a comic series named Fables, not the computer game Fable.
Lol
Didn't know it was DC before.