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The League of Un-Copyrighted
Gentry
by Filip Stojanovski
 I
just enjoyed watching
The League of
Extraordinary Gentlemen (includes a woman), a
comics-based tale of adventure and action, whose wonderfully
rendered computer effects often have visual sensibility reminiscent of
the best days of ID Software.
The movie is worth watching, in
spite of heavy propagandistic shading & displayed misogyny. The story
revolves around a group of 1899 ragtag characters who attempt to stop
some arms merchants from 'promoting increased return of investment' by
starting a world war. So far, progressive enough.
Sadly, the movie also glorifies
imperialism, both British and American (its 'heir'), endorsing
the idea that even though an individual person might not like an empire
(disenchantment allowed for family reasons) s/he has to support
it, since the interest of the (current) world empire coincides with the
best interests of humanity and world peace. The movie portrays
colonialism as benevolent and protective, especially in Africa (!);
totally ignores the
contemporary Balkan situation; and avoids considering the fact that,
just as Washington
warned,
empire/alliance-building was the primal reason for the World War
I.
Of course, the really extraordinary
feature of this movie is that all characters come from works
of art & entertainment with expired copyright, and are now in
public domain. In order to fully understand the significance of this
fact, here's a short excerpt from the site of the U.S. Copyright Office,
from the document
"Copyright
Basics":
A work that is created (fixed in
tangible form for the first time) on or after January 1, 1978, is
automatically protected from the moment of its creation and is
ordinarily given a term enduring for the author's life plus an
additional 70 years after the author's death. In the case of "a joint
work prepared by two or more authors who did not work for hire," the
term lasts for 70 years after the last surviving author's death. For
works made for hire, and for anonymous and pseudonymous works (unless
the author's identity is revealed in Copyright Office records), the
duration of copyright will be 95 years from publication or 120 years
from creation, whichever is shorter.
Similar conditions refer to works
created before the stated date. In short: the copyright (the privilege
to prevent free use of certain product) may be extended up to 70 years
after the death of the individual author, or up to 95 years since the
publication if the copyright holder is a corporation.
This cute and fun movie would have been
much poorer without the ability to re-use the characters and plot ideas
("raw materials"). League's success provides excellent proof for
the need to revise the current, oppressive, legislature on intellectual
property.
The movie also has educational value,
providing a cross-section of some of the most important early SF & F
works. Here's a handy list of (some of) the characters and authors
featured in the League:
- Allan Quatermain, from the
King Solomon's Mines (1885), by
Sir Henry Rider
Haggard (1856-1925)
- Tom Sawyer, of
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), by
Mark Twain
(1835-1910)
- Rodney Skinner, based on
The Invisible Man
(1897), by
Herbert George Wells (1866-1946)
- The antihero of
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll
and Mr. Hyde (1886), by
Robert Louis
Stevenson (1850-1894), with references to
The
Murders in the Rue Morge (1841), by
Edgar Allan Poe
(1809-1849)
- Captain Nemo from
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1870), by
Jules Verne
(1828–1905). Quatermain also mentions Mr. Fog, the hero of Verne's
Around the World in 80 Days (1873). Nemo's second in command
is Ishmael of
Moby Dick
by Herman
Melville (1819-1891).
- Dorian Gray, from
The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), by
Oscar Wilde
(1854-1900)
- Mina Harker, from
Dracula (1897), by
Bram Stoker
(1847-1912)
- Moriarty, the arch-villain of the
Sherlock Holmes novels by
Sir Arthur
Conan Doyle (1859–1930)
In addition, an inquisitive question
from Deckard:
Do the authors of the movie have the
copyright on their new universe? Do I have the right to use the same
characters and write a sequel of the movie?
[Originally published on
Razvigor blog, September 9, 2003.] |
