I actually think this is a more desirable state for the protection of our cultural stories vs. IP law letting corporations own exclusive rights to a work of fiction and its characters. Yes the vast majority of something being "remade" in the public domain will be shit, and most of the time nobody pays any attention to it. Everyone knows the Arthurian legend. Some random schmuck with yet another take on the tale doesn't affect our shared understanding. When a large corporation (Disney, Amazon) is attached and has sole ownership of "canon", it adds an undeserved and unearned reputation to the production, making it easier for them to legitimately take old icons away from us and destroy our culture. You'd always have people trying, but the attempts wouldn't get much attention.
On the other hand if someone makes some really good and inspiring version of something that people love, like trekkies making better lore-accurate versions of Star Trek than what CBS puts out, that can become "canon" in the minds of fans. That's the free market of ideas at work.
Agreed. Its the same as how almost every Star Wars fan I know basically picks and choses from the Disney Star War the stuff that they like, and then everything else they enjoy about Star Wars is still the "Legends" continuity. And then much like with Trekkies, there are plenty of Star Wars fan made things that are beloved by the community.
There is a part of me that thinks we might actually be able to get to a point of more stuff being the public domain like that though. Mickey Mouse is coming up on the end of his time as the exclusive property of Disney. In the past, they could have just gotten an extension to their copyright and gone on with their thing. But now that there is growing anger from parents and consumers over the company (Disney has recently been polling in line with the likes of EA in terms of approval), and the fact they have alienated an entire political party who would have done it for them? Now, there is a good chance Mickey could go out to be used by anyone, just like Winnie the Pooh (another example of the woke not being able to effect his shared cultural reputation).
I actually think this is a more desirable state for the protection of our cultural stories vs. IP law letting corporations own exclusive rights to a work of fiction and its characters. Yes the vast majority of something being "remade" in the public domain will be shit, and most of the time nobody pays any attention to it. Everyone knows the Arthurian legend. Some random schmuck with yet another take on the tale doesn't affect our shared understanding. When a large corporation (Disney, Amazon) is attached and has sole ownership of "canon", it adds an undeserved and unearned reputation to the production, making it easier for them to legitimately take old icons away from us and destroy our culture. You'd always have people trying, but the attempts wouldn't get much attention.
On the other hand if someone makes some really good and inspiring version of something that people love, like trekkies making better lore-accurate versions of Star Trek than what CBS puts out, that can become "canon" in the minds of fans. That's the free market of ideas at work.
Agreed. Its the same as how almost every Star Wars fan I know basically picks and choses from the Disney Star War the stuff that they like, and then everything else they enjoy about Star Wars is still the "Legends" continuity. And then much like with Trekkies, there are plenty of Star Wars fan made things that are beloved by the community.
There is a part of me that thinks we might actually be able to get to a point of more stuff being the public domain like that though. Mickey Mouse is coming up on the end of his time as the exclusive property of Disney. In the past, they could have just gotten an extension to their copyright and gone on with their thing. But now that there is growing anger from parents and consumers over the company (Disney has recently been polling in line with the likes of EA in terms of approval), and the fact they have alienated an entire political party who would have done it for them? Now, there is a good chance Mickey could go out to be used by anyone, just like Winnie the Pooh (another example of the woke not being able to effect his shared cultural reputation).