Re: [seul-edu] [Fwd: Debian-kids goals (draft)]: cartoon characters

[Philippe Ambon <pambon@mandrakesoft.com>]

Hi everybody,
My name's Philippe and I've been following your discussion for a while.
I'm in charge of developping a special Mandrake distro for Education.
point we could discuss another time.

Now that I've introduced myself, let me share a few things about this
great idea. The copyright laws are not the same everywhere. For example,
in France the rights are "falling into the public domain" (that's the
best translation I could find) 70 years after the death of creator, the
rights being transfered to his/her heirs. The producer also has some
rights that I don't know much about. 
Creating a database with "open source pictures" seems to be a very
efficient way to create a pool of images for future developpers that
would also add their new pictures to the database. This would create a
great effect of leverage, multiplying very fastly the available pictures
and toons. The only major point that I see would be to have a special
licence on these pictures. This licence should a picture GPL like where
creators abandon their financial rights on the character. An important
point is that this licence should still, in my view, require to get the
approval of the creators for it's use. Imagine just a second Tux being
used in an "adult only" programm! This would ruin all your efforts to
use him for educational purpose. 

Concerning the use of commercial toons, I don't think companies like
Disney who are living of their characters would ever authorize their
free use. If anyone wants to contact them to ask about using some
characters, he'd better have the new licence's text (written down) with
him if he only wants to stand a 1/10000000 chance to be listened to.

Here's what I wanted to share.
I hope you'll find it interesting; have a good day


Fredrik Liljegren a écrit :
> 
> > >um, I aqm not sure but I am positive that here in the US it
> > is 75 years
> > >and that lobbying groups are pushing for 95 years. are there
> > any lawyers
> > >in the list who have a clue on this?
> 
> > They also give this shorter mini-overview: "We cannot publish
> > any texts
> > still in copyright. This generally means that our texts are
> > taken from books
> > published pre-1923. (It's more complicated than that, as our
> > Copyright Page
> > explains, but 1923 is a good first rule-of-thumb for the U.S.A.)"
> >
> > For more detail, and for the international complications, we
> > will need an
> > attorney's guidence (I am not one).
> 
> Well, if there is a Copyright there has to be a copyright holder.  Many here
> has said that e.g. Disneys characters couldn't be used, but that's all a
> question of making the copyrights holder see it as positive.  Both for
> Disney and whoever might hold the copyright of Alice in Wonderland this
> could be seen as good free advertising.  Many cartoon-creators provide
> windows themes or at least background images and screensavers; they might be
> convinced to have them released for linux with a license that allows even
> Debian to have it in it's main distribution.  Especially if they have others
> willing to do the job for them!
> 
> As for olders and questionable copyrights; it could still be easier to ask
> the one that might still be holding it.  The copyright holder, or perhaps
> former copyright holder, of old children books, might just be happy with
> giving us the right to do this.  You can't know before you've asked.
> 
> Regards, EOF

-- 
Philippe AMBON			
MandrakeSoft			 	(°-
Chargé de mission éducation	 	//\
http://www.linux-mandrake.com    	\_/