Re: My Website Has Been Taken Down

[nem <nem@nospam>]

"Bill Buckels" <bbuckels@mts.net> wrote in news:
 
> However, the golden age of Mickey Mouse was in those old black and
> white politically incorrect cartoons that my Dad watched when he was a
> kid, along with The Little Rascals and Laurel and Hardy and Abbott and
> Costello. I watched all of them too.

I do know that Cartoon Network is in the habit of censoring some Tom & 
Jerry cartoons for reasons you can well imagine.
 
> For purposes of the original ancient intent of Copyright, Mickey's
> Copyright should have run-out since Walt isn't around anymore. However
> as an exclusive TradeMark and like a Certificate of Authenticity even
> I would defend Disney's right to protect Mickey forever.
> 
> Mickey was never abandoned.

You see, Mickey (and all of Disney's characters) is a trademark. 
Trademarks only expire by not being enforced. That's why Ford keeps 
dusting off the Cobra name every few years, so they don't lose it. As 
long as Disney exists and continues to use Mickey in various forms 
(doesn't have to be cartoons featuring him, as they haven't made any in 
years), they still own him. Disney knows that perfectly well. What they 
really want to do is keep the rights to their early cartoons. It's not 
hard to do when you can buy Congressmen so easily.
 
> Software shouldn't be covered by Copyright anyway but we're stuck with
> that now.

It was way back in 1962 when a court ruled that software could be 
copyrighted.

> Since special rules targetted at protecting Software through Copyright
> are applied, and since Corporations have the distinction of possibly
> living forever and transferring Copyrighted assets to other
> corporations some rules need to apply here.

I would say that software should be covered by different rules than 
other things, because it depends on hardware that will eventually become 
outdated, no longer manufactured, and unsupported.
 
> 2. Any Software not declared is not considered Copyrighted and is 
> sutomatically in the public domain.
> 
> There. That should do it:)

All you would have to do is not put a copyright notice anywhere on the 
software (maybe put the words 'Public Domain'), and bammo, it's 
instantly PD.
 
> Something like the following would also be good:
> 
> 1. All Software must be placed into the Public Domain immediately upon
> withdrawing sales and support. No exceptions.
 
Maybe. One might also add that the software should be made PD if the 
author no longer has the source code for it.