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This general situation is actually why I'm very consciously a fan of knock-offs. I'm a huge believer in libre/open culture, and I think modern copyright laws are a travesty across the board.
Give me the Evil Galactic Authority, where the noble but persecuted Star Paladins use laser-swords to fight off the evil Inquisitors. Give me a villain in a YA novel with an arc suspiciously similar to Zuko from AtLA. Give me Invincible's Omni-man and knock-off Justice League. Give me copy cats and follow the leaders, and fan fiction.
I hate that Disney and a few other companies own so much of our culture, and take a century to give us the scraps off their table. Human creativity is usually more like that of Shakespeare, who mostly retold well-known stories, or Sir Thomas Mallory, who codified an existing story tradition. Our cultures emphasis on pointless originality and innovation in storytelling is a disease, just as surely as the fact that only a small number of franchises dominate the box office is.
I don't really care much about the object-level question of Rowling's Wizarding World. But if people can find the non-copyrightable part of her work, and can retain the soul of Harry Potter in the derivative works, I wish them luck. More cultural elements should be like Romero zombies or Slender Man - not really belonging to anyone, and being used and reused to tell interesting stories, or just retelling old common places with a new twist.
Seriously! I strongly suspect that copyright law significantly hinders our culture. If ownership expired after, say, 10 years rather than our current (100?), not only would we have many great retellings, but also I don't think that the original properties would be nearly as powerful.
Like, if anyone can write about the Empire, lightsabers, etc., then maybe the cultural fad burns itself out more quickly, and its best components are more quickly turned into tropes commonly used in many different stories.
I also think copyright law hinders Western culture, but for different reasons. I don't think copyright law crushes creativity that much, or hinders creative output. It's pretty simple to make minor changes to an existing story and be protected, for example. Despite the odious nature of some recent lawsuits over hit songs, any person creative enough to make meaningful works is probably able to get around existing laws easily. Instead, I think what is essentially permanent ownership of creative works has warped how society looks at and interacts with culture more broadly. Specifically, the existence of copyrights that outlast human lifespans causes people to view other pieces of culture that can't be copyrighted through a similar lens.
The common complaints of 'appropriation' and the massive support such concepts have gained from most of the American Left are a symptom of this changing viewpoint. The person who claims that cooking Chinese food when you aren't Chinese is a hostile act against the Chinese is applying the logic of copyrights more expansively. It's quite insidious because the same people that make these claims are often some of the individuals most likely to describe themselves as anti-corporate, anti-capitalist, and against the commodification of culture. They simultaneously protest against American culture while openly reinforcing one of its norms unwittingly.
As someone who is broadly opposed to long-term copyrights(I'd prefer copyrights that expire after a decade!) on the basis they are non-productive economic rents, the trend is alarming. Of the people predisposed to oppose the current state of things on this topic, a significant portion are serving the interest of institutional copyright holders. While woke politics are losing steam, the idea of cultural appropriation has long set in throughout the current American leftward coalition. Outside of the black sheep in the stupidpol set, is there any part of the left where the concept of cultural appropriation hasn't simply become an accepted truth?
While a legal expansion of copyright into more nebulous territory is unlikely, if the cultural norms render it untenable to engage with and more importantly synthesize elements of other cultures, as is increasingly becoming the case, that would be a huge loss indeed. I can see that happening, as a large chunk of the conservative coalition simply won't care about this at all, so there will be little stopping this from metastasizing into something oppressive.
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This seems to me like we're far past the point of copyright-life-extension singularity. Examining past trends, it seems like almost a certainty that before the next 100 years is up copyright will have been extended by at least another 100 if not a factor of 10. This is especially exacerbated by the fact that to some extent copyright is based on years since the death of the creator, and surely human lifespan will soon start benefiting as we approach a medical singularity (especially considering rich and successful creators will have access to many of these benefits earlier than the average person) Thus excepting for the prospect that copyright law reform might one day place, (unlikely) most works currently under copyright will probably never enter public domain (unless all possible inheritors of the copyright are somehow killed/destroyed).
For whatever reason, as of 2019, works are actually falling out of copyright in the United States. Maybe Disney is less powerful somehow? Or maybe copyright is long enough for them and they don't see the point anymore? Or maybe they missed the 20 year calendar reminder they set in 1998 and forgot and will get right on extending copyright soon.
SOPA/PIPA changed the entire power dynamic. Big Content doesn't have the sway in Washington that it used to.
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Interesting. I hope the trend continues.
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