11 ms·

How Mickey Mouse Evades the Public Domain

266 points by nthitz 11y ago

kogus 11y ago
Copyright applies to all creative works. Changing those laws to protect a handful of valuable properties is a global solution to a local problem. According to the article: ...Disney has ingrained Mickey Mouse so deeply in its corporate identity that the character is essentially afforded legal protection for eternity, so long as Disney protects him (trademarks last indefinitely, so long as they are renewed). If that's true, then why does Disney care whether the copyright expires?
- jerf 11y ago
  If they start losing copyright, they start losing back catalog. I doubt there's a huge demand for the 1920s Steamboat Willie [1], but in 2032 they'll lose Snow White and the Seven Dwarves and in 2035, Pinnochio. Of course, that's an awfully long ways off by a time-value-of-money analysis at the rates a modern company would normally use, so the other thing to look at and be... outraged? perturbed? surprised?... at is just how goddamned cheap Congress has historically been. Did you notice this line: "In one instance, Eisner paid Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS) $1,000 on the very same day that he signed on as a co-sponsor." I mean, I presume that's not necessarily their only cough "donation" to the Senate Majority Leader, but one presumes that the Majority Leader ought to command a price premium, too, and for $1000 to be a notable donation to talk about, well, holy cow. I'd bet Disney wouldn't pay $10 billion as a lump sum in 2023 to extend copyright again... but we're not talking anywhere near that sort of money to get copyright extended. If they can do it for <$10 million, the cost/benefit is a no-brainer. Remember, the value to Disney only has to exceed their expected costs. If their expected costs for a copyright extension is an accounting rounding error, of course they're going to try to extend it. [1]: Which, if you've never seen it before, I recommend giving it a view: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBgghnQF6E4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBgghnQF6E4 The past is a foreign country!
  - ceejayoz 11y ago
    > I mean, I presume that's not necessarily their only cough "donation" to the Senate Majority Leader, but one presumes that the Majority Leader ought to command a price premium, too, and for $1000 to be a notable donation to talk about, well, holy cow. The limits are pretty low on individual donations. http://www.fec.gov/info/contriblimitschart1516.pdf http://www.fec.gov/info/contriblimitschart1516.pdf For 2015-2016, you can only give $2,700 to a specific candidate as an individual.
    - HillRat 11y ago
      That's what bundlers are for -- it's amazing how many corporate employees are willing to ante up to the maximum limit amount. Sometimes even folk making fifteen bucks an hour. Very civic-minded, they are. Less cynically, most contributions aren't about bribery for legislation (superPACs looking increasingly like an exception), but about simple access, ensuring that your calls get returned and your point of view is at least heard. It's still quite arguably a corrupt system, but the corruption is slightly abstracted from the simple act of giving money.
    - jellicle 11y ago
      And then you can also donate much more to the various party committees, and you can do it as a "directed donation", so that the money is credited to Politico X and the party committee immediately forwards the money back to Politico X. But corruption talk that centers on the individual donations made to politicians is mostly wrong. That's not how corruption works. That's a reflection through a mirror of the actual corruption happening, which is mostly about influence, not money. Politico A and Entity B have made a deal to use their influence to support each other, and that is reflected in some puny $1000 donation somewhere, but it's not mostly about the $1000.
  - gene-h 11y ago
    Well if congress is really that cheap, perhaps someone should make a kickstarter to buy back our government.
    - 11y ago
- onewaystreet 11y ago
  > If that's true, then why does Disney care whether the copyright expires? Disney spends millions a year promoting the Mickey Mouse brand. If anyone could use the brand then they would be freely benefiting from that.
  - exodust 11y ago
    You've missed the point, which is that even if the copyright expired on Mickey, Disney might have another legal option to protect him, as explained at the end of the article. But I think as someone else suggested, the reason they care is because of not just Mickey, but their back catalogue of other material which may not fall under that same brand protection. And because Disney doesn't know any better than to continue their campaign of paying people off to get their precious copyright extensions. It's what they do. Public domain works are an important creative incentive for new works and increased availability of art. Old and new Art enriches our culture, is a source of wisdom and inspiration for young and old, and the more we have the better. We need a strong connection with out artistic past. Society is worse off for this Disney sponsored 100 year blind spot in our cultural rear mirrors.
    - thaumasiotes 11y ago
      Words are (1) public domain, and (2) eligible to be trademarks. Suppose you make paper, but instead of white, it's light blue. You sell it under the brand "Blue Paper". You can (I believe) trademark that (for example, your logo probably has the words in a particular font), but you can't stop anyone else from selling blue paper as "Blue Paper", because that's purely descriptive of the product. Similarly, once a video featuring Mickey Mouse is out of copyright, it's perfectly OK for people to sell that video. And it seems to me that they could defend using an image of Mickey Mouse on the packaging, under the same logic -- despite the fact that the image of Mickey is trademarked by Disney for the purpose of selling cartoons. It's not obvious that the trademark is actually protective there.
      - exodust 11y ago
        But that video would be easy to obtain for anyone, so the business model of selling it would not be a threat to Disney. Further more, if you're in the business of selling public domain works, don't expect the courts to protect you when Disney comes knocking about your use of their character on the video cover. Even though you can sell the video, you don't own the rights. You would have very little to say in court except "I want to make money from public domain art". And you wouldn't be permitted to sell collections of Disney films, even those expired. From what I understand, that is not allowed when selling public domain works. For example you wouldn't be allowed to sell a "best of old Disney films" collection, or have a website called "Mickey Mouse Movie Store", even if all the movies were in the public domain.
- placeybordeaux 11y ago
  The law suites would be a bit tricker and therefore there would be more of them.
- jandrese 11y ago
  Because the protections afforded by trademark are far more limited and targeted. Trademark law is the scalpel that cuts out the fakes using your logo or companies trying to pass themselves off as you. Copyright is the blunt instrument (especially with the corporate insistence that fair use doesn't exist) that you can browbeat people with. There is nothing like the DMCA for trademark.
- jadoti 11y ago
  It's not about the mouse. If they lose copyright, all their start going into the public domain. They can no longer use their silly "it's in the vault" tricks to drive fake scarcity, as someone else can just copy it and publish it. The irony is their movies, atleast most of them, come from the public domain.
- cookiecaper 11y ago
  Disney is massively protective of its characters, especially what it calls the "core characters". Even Disney-authorized travel agents are told that they can never, I mean never, display an image of Mickey or Minnie Mouse without prior written authorization. There are a handful of artists whom Disney has granted a license to use their characters in specially-cultivated artwork and if these artists try to post their own art that uses licensed characters on their own Facebook accounts, Disney brings out the lawyers. They are rabidly, ridiculously protective of these characters and brands because they don't want to ever risk the consumer getting sick of them or associating them with something negative. Although Disney would continue to own the Mickey Mouse trademarks, you can probably tell that they wouldn't be fond of the potential dilutive effects that may flow from the free commerce of public domain works involving these characters. To them, Steamboat Willie going PD is the death knell not only of the Mickey Mouse cash cow, but the entire brand icon empire (without which Disney becomes little more than a mediocre theme park destination).
xmodem 11y ago
Maybe there's some sort of middle ground here. Perhaps copyright extensions should be able to be applied for on a per-work basis, and to succeed, you have to demonstrate that you're still profiting from the work. Let Disney have indefinite copyright on mickey mouse. But let's not lose the last century of our history.
- zanny 11y ago
  And then your problem becomes infinite profit for finite work. If you want to talk about things that break economics, its a perpetual money machine. It just changes the game to making sure any potentially popular idea in the future must be rigorously defended under copyright forever. You know, like what people do with patents right now, which is also a destructive and horrible IP mess all on its own.
  - meric 11y ago
    If we have to choose between giving Disney the exclusive right to a perpetual money machine, or to give all copyright owners the same, because Disney is so ingrained into the governing oligarchy, then I think the former choice would be better for society overall.
    - ZenPsycho 11y ago
      Indeed, the choice seems to be give Disney a perpetual money machine, vs. give Disney a perpetual money machine AND wreck the public domain.
    - jdeisenberg 11y ago
      From what I understand, giving Disney an exception would be a violation of the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause.
      - ZenPsycho 11y ago
        It wouldn't need to necessarily be an exception, but it could be, as suggested elsewhere in the thread, an appropriate property tax... If this stuff is indeed "intellectual property" then it should have property taxes. People who don't pay the tax can involuntarily donate to the public domain after the previous reasonable term of say, 56 years after creation.
deciplex 11y ago
> While it is impossible to say for certain whether or not Disney’s efforts directly impacted politics, the results heavily worked out in their favor: the bill quietly and unanimously passed in the House and Senate with no public hearings, no debate, no notice to the public, and no roll call. Of course it's possible to say that: "Disney’s efforts directly impacted politics". There, I said it.
- Qwertious 11y ago
  Perhaps that bill would have happened even if Disney hadn't been lobbying. A lot of people don't give a second thought to "intellectual property".
deleted 11y ago
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forgingahead 11y ago
Heald crawled through more than 2,000 books on Amazon.com, and found that there were more books available from the late 1800s than there were from the 1990s. His conclusion: “Copyright protections had squashed the market for books from the middle of the 20th century, keeping those titles off shelves and out of the hands of the reading public.” THAT is his conclusion? What about radio, TV, increased film production, and finally the internet and other sources of distraction for people?
- KayEss 11y ago
  You're positing that there are less books from the 1990s available because less books were written then than in the 1800s?
  - dpark 11y ago
    To be fair, it also sounds like an unfair comparison. A century vs a decade. And how many duplicates in the out of copyright works? The public doesn't really benefit from 100 different editions of Sherlock Holmes's early adventures that differ only in how the cover is rendered and whether the "publisher" charges 99 cents or a 1.03 dollars. Edit: Oops, late 1800s vs 1990s is not add unbalanced as a century vs a decade. The dupes are still a big issue if he didn't handle those.
    - Cogito 11y ago
      To clarify, because it may not be clear without looking at the accompanying graphic in the article, 1800s in this case refers to the decade, not the century. That is, more books in the years 1800-1809 than 1990-1999.
acabal 11y ago
I'm not sure which is more embarrassing: today's ludicrous copyright terms that automatically lock away culture from all of us for potentially over a century, or the fact that legislation that spans centuries can be bought for a mere $149,612. The article claims Trent Lot got a piddling $1,000 (well, publicly at least) for getting on board. That's less money than Disney generates for itself per second of its existence.
- frozenport 11y ago
  Recall the LIBOR rate was fudged for a cup of coffee [1]. Life is more about politics then wealth in capital. [1] http://www.marketwatch.com/story/interest-rates-were-fixed-for-a-cup-of-coffee-and-a-25-billion-fine-2015-04-23 http://www.marketwatch.com/story/interest-rates-were-fixed-f...
  - tristanj 11y ago
    I wouldn't take that quote too seriously. If you read the doc where those quotes came from, it's clear the traders are joking around. They would have done it for favors anyway, no coffee needed. Source here, with some example quotes below: http://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/pr6510-13 http://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/pr6510-13 December 4, 2008: (RBS Order p. 25-26.) Swiss Franc Trader: can u put 6m swiss libor in low pls? Primary Submitter: NO Swiss Franc Trader: should have pushed the door harder Primary Submitter: Whats it worth Swiss Franc Trader: ive got some sushi rolls from yesterday? […] Primary Submitter: ok low 6m , just for u Swiss Franc Trader: wooooooohooooooo[,] 0.01%? thatd be awesome Primary Submitter: 1.33 Swiss Franc Trader: perfect[.] u r a nice man May 5, 2009: (RBS Order p. 27.) Swiss Franc Trader: can we get high 3m, low 6m pls! Primary Submitter: maybe Swiss Franc Trader: PPPPLLLLLEEEEEAAAAASSSSEEEEEE Primary Submitter: ok 41 52 Swiss Franc Trader: perfect perfect May 14, 2009: (RBS Order p. 28-29.) Swiss Franc Trader: [Primary Submitter] pls can we get super high 3m[,] super low 6m Swiss Franc Trader: PRETTY PLEASE! Primary Submitter: 41 & 51 Swiss Franc Trader: if u did that[,] i would lvoe [sic] u forever Primary Submitter: 41 & 55 then … Swiss Franc Trader: if u did that i would come over there and make love to you[,] your choice Primary Submitter: 41+51 it is Swiss Franc Trader: thouht [sic] so Primary Submitter: so shallow
tagrun 11y ago
This made me wonder, is there a country where lobbying (or somehow influencing law-making with money/land/position/etc) is illegal and seen akin to bribe?
MichaelBurge 11y ago
How about: "Copyright is for 7 years. Extensions can be granted for additional 7 year periods indefinitely, but must be requested by the copyright holder. There is a modest fee(say, $100) to file an extension." That way Disney gets to keep Mickey Mouse, things that are abandoned or neglected get released into the public domain, and the fee stops people from just throwing everything into some software that reapplies indefinitely without thinking. It could be tweaking by increasing the period(maybe 14 years would be better), by changing the fee(maybe $5 or free is better), or by changing the initial period(maybe 20 years for the first period, and it renews for 10).
- cookiecaper 11y ago
  Because we don't want Disney to be able to keep Mickey Mouse forever, and because the Constitution mandates that copyrights be for a "limited time", so an indefinite renewal scheme would require a Constitutional amendment.
  - imtringued 11y ago
    Let them have their toy if that means they won't destroy ours.
  - MichaelBurge 11y ago
    Addendum: Copyright extensions have a maximum term of 10 trillion years. Now their time is limited. I bet Disney would be happy with this compromise.
    - cookiecaper 11y ago
      The late Jack Valenti, former head of the MPAA, actually suggested that copyright terms last for "forever minus one day". Lawrence Lessig argued a case before the Supreme Court (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eldred_v._Ashcroft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eldred_v._Ashcroft) trying to get the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act overturned, but lost 7 to 2.
- joenathan 11y ago
cobbzilla 11y ago
when Lessig argued Eldred v Ashcroft before the Supreme Court, the argument went something like: the Constitution states that copyrights are to be granted for a "limited time"; if Congress can pass an unlimited number of finite extensions to the copyright period, this flouts the original meaning and is unconstitutional. alas, the majority bought into the government's argument that this most recent extension was (again) to bring US law in "harmonization" with EU law, and was so permitted. BUT, iirc, there was some grumbling along the lines of "if they try this again, Lessig's argument will carry more weight". so it will be interesting to see what happens next time around.
enobrev 11y ago
How about this... Everyone gets two copyrights for their lifetime x 2. Five copyrights for their lifetime. Ten for 20 years, Fifty for 10 years, Everything else expires after, say, 2 years. So you get to protect your most important works, but the rest of us get to take a crack at the things you couldn't quite get right.
- nemothekid 11y ago
  I look forward to corporations buying lifetime copyrights en-masse.
  - enobrev 11y ago
    That's the compromise. Disney gets "The Mouse" for the entirety of its existence as a legal entity, and six more works. And that's it. After that, they'll need to start being thrify with their copyright or release things into the public domain to add new works.
    - nemothekid 11y ago
      I think you are missing my point. Essentially Disney will start buying your lifetime copyrights. Given that there are 300MM Americans, I'd imagine if every American got 2 lifetime copyrights, the market for transferring those copyrights wouldn't be terribly expensive. Disney could probably buy 100 lifetime copyrights for the cost of the legal work they do today.
      - pferde 11y ago
        It would be tied to lifetime of the particular Americans. I imagine assassination black market would flourish. :)
    - halviti 11y ago
      Or they could just create shell companies to own the copyrights, allowing them to have an indefinite number of copyrights for forever!
beloch 11y ago
The really disgusting thing is that the U.S. then turns around and tries to force it's insane copyright laws on other countries under the guise of trade agreements like TPP. It seems inevitable that, eventually, the birth of Mikey Mouse will divide what is public domain from what is not around the entire globe for all time. Of course, the U.S. could instead do something sensible like create a "Mickey Mouse law". e.g. For ongoing fees of a fairly large size, companies can retain a copyright indefinitely. Set the fees to a little less than the amount Disney spends on lobbyists and graft and everybody wins. Disney keeps the rights to Mickey and saves money. Things not named Mickey Mouse start entering the public domain again.
- deleted 11y ago
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- anon4 11y ago
  Doesn't the last section say that trademark law can be used for pretty much exactly that, in effect?
  - rmc 11y ago
    Yes, trademark is much longer. But it also has a lot of caveats. Namely you can lost trademarks.
  - rdc12 11y ago
    The article briefly mentions some of the other IP that Disney has (Pluto, Goofy etc) from the same era as Mickey, while they are not as important to Disney as Mickey, I doubt the trademark way would cover them too.
- lostlogin 11y ago
  Don't be so hard on the US. We have a sycophantic prime minister who would do anything the US asked, legal or not (just ask Dotcom) it's hardly fair on the US to expect this not to be used to mild advantage. New Zealand, John Key.
- digi_owl 11y ago
BMorearty 11y ago
In 1979, when I was 13, I audited a college-level cartooning course in San Francisco by Dan O'Neil, the underground cartoonist mentioned in the article. Little did I know Disney had sued him. But I do clearly remember him teaching the class tips on how to draw Mickey Mouse, and talking about the Mouse Liberation Front. I guess he was trying to increase the ranks of cartoonists who could fight Disney by parodying Mickey.
scotty79 11y ago
> Disney Political Action Committee (PAC) paid out a total of $149,612 in direct campaign contributions to those considering the bill. > Eisner paid Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS) $1,000 on the very same day that he signed on as a co-sponsor. Wow. Not only you can buy law. But you can do it on the cheap. Lobbying is great. Go USA!
xerophyte12932 11y ago
This is a good illustration for why I feel democracy is fundamentally broken. Democracy requires a large number of people to agree on on party/person and to reach these people and to convince them to vote for your candidate, you have to spend tons of money. Either: A) You use your own money. Which means you fall under "the financial elite". B) You take money from financial elites, which means you will owe them and pay back in some form. Why else would they give you their precious money? Thus the power remains restricted to the the financial elite. The elected candidate represents the elites more than the common person because while the common person just gave the candidate a singular vote, the investor gave the candidate much needed money that helped gather all those votes
- feider 11y ago
  " to reach these people and to convince them to vote for your candidate, you have to spend tons of money" I recall reading from freakonomics that (according to them) inverse is actually true: candidates do not do better because they have bigger budgets, but they're likely to receive more financial support if they are more likely to get elected. Truth probably lies somewhere in between, but stating that "democracy is fundamentally broken" is just too naive.
  - kobayashi 11y ago
    Having worked in federal politics, I can confirm that the notion that "democracy is fundamentally broken" is something far more frequently heard from those who have little-to-no experience in politics, than those who have seen the good and bad of politics' inner workings. In fact, I've never heard it from somebody who works in politics, and those are some of the most jaded people I've ever come across. IMHO, democracy is definitely not broken, and it's biggest threat stems from those who peddle in FUD relating to government & democracy. Essentially, things aren't as bad as most would like you to believe, and individuals getting involved in politics are the ones with the biggest influence in politics. It's far more accessible than many would have you believe, especially because politics runs on the hard work of young people, who then become insiders, write policy, and affect change.
Animats 11y ago
It's time to propose the Copyright Harmonization Act. Same terms as TRIPS - 50 years after first publication. USTR prohibited from promoting longer terms. Anyone at Google want to get behind this?
Lanari 11y ago
How is on USA companies cooperating with each others (Microsoft and Apple on 90s vs. Sun is the example in my head) is illegal, while the government cooperating with a company is fine? USA doing kind of like China, trying to make it the easier it is for companies to prophet from the people even if it's something supposed to be owned by the people... =
GlobalFrog 11y ago
I wonder whether the extensions are US only ? I understand that Disney has the capacity to protect their trademarks all over the world, but I guess that there has to be several countries where derivative works from the existing locally expired copyrights can already be created. So, in such countries, wouldn't it be possible to use the exact same characters to create new works (comics for example) if you name it differently ? And the corollary of that is how the copyrights/trademarks issues are handled by the various treaties negociated now (TAFTA, TPP, MEFTA, FTAA, TTIP). To be really effective worldwide, copyright extensions are to be validated everywhere otherwise, it would be of limited effect. So it would be interesting to know the extent of lobbying of powerhouses like Disney in those treaties negociations and their requests and proposals there.
- EGreg 11y ago
  You mean like this? https://mobile.mmedia.me/lb/ar/analysisar/%d9%81%d8%b1%d9%81%d9%88%d8%b1_%d8%b4%d9%87%d9%8a%d8%af_ https://mobile.mmedia.me/lb/ar/analysisar/%d9%81%d8%b1%d9%81...
microcolonel 11y ago
Ideally all of the extensions would be thrown out, if they were found to be ridiculous enough before the supreme court. Fat chance of that, though.
yvdriess 11y ago
The article points out that the majority of the Disney movies are based on public works. It may be interesting to note the controversy around the 'concidental similarities' between The Lion King and Kimba the White Lion. (http://www.kimbawlion.com/kimbawlion/rant2.htm http://www.kimbawlion.com/kimbawlion/rant2.htm)
rogeryu 11y ago
Copyright law changes should not apply to work already created.
rdlecler1 11y ago
Why do we think IP should expire but physical property ought to be retained.
- halviti 11y ago
  Ideas and concepts have the ability to benefit society as a whole. Physical property benefits very few. Also after a certain period of time, it becomes a bit of a stretch to suggest that nobody else would have thought of that same idea over a long enough time frame. Now of course, I'm not really speaking to Mickey Mouse, so much as I am scientific breakthroughs and good ideas that improve on old concepts, but it's all IP.
  - traject_ 11y ago
    My only problem with that argument is , by that logic, wouldn't land containing a large deposit of oil or some natural resource be public property. The property given to the public would definitely benefit society as a whole.
  - rdlecler1 11y ago
    Physical property benefits very few if you and your offspring are allowed to squat on it for eternity as scarcity drives up its value. If you had limits on it, maybe that peppery goes back to auction bringing more properly into supply for more communal use.
- snarfy 11y ago
  Ideas are forever. Physical property is not.
  - traject_ 11y ago
    I'm pretty sure the land I'm standing on will take a few billion years to disintegrate.
- gkya 11y ago
  IP should not expire as long as the intellectual product is not publicised, i.e. while it is in the head of whom produced it. But if it is publicised, i.e. published, it is public, and no longer property. If I had a house, that's physical property. If I and my family live in it, it's our property. If I let the public in, i.e. publicised it, then it is public, and essentially not property anymore.
prof_hobart 11y ago
>There can be little doubt that anyone seeing the image of Mickey Mouse (or even his silhouette), immediately thinks of Disney. Image probably, but the phrase "Mickey Mouse" has acquired a fairly common meaning (at least in the UK and Ireland, don't know about the rest of the world) outside of the character - roughly meaning something like simplistic, shoddy or cheap. For example, this (http://www.independent.ie/regionals/droghedaindependent/news/mickey-mouse-solution-slammed-30557836.html http://www.independent.ie/regionals/droghedaindependent/news...) article talking about a plan as a "'Mickey Mouse' solution to a much bigger traffic problem in the Dublin Road area." I suspect that few people over here would immediately think about Disney when they read this article.
deleted 11y ago
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Pxtl 11y ago
I noticed that the Frozen DVD includes a Mickey short featuring old early Mickey animation reconstructed. I wonder if that was made to show current use of the classic "steamboat mickey" style of the character for trademark reasons?
goodcanadian 11y ago
Something that I've never understood: Even if steamboat Willie were to enter the public domain, couldn't Disney effectively maintain control of its characters through trademark law? The fact that Mickey mouse is a Disney trademark should prevent most new uses of the character even if it doesn't prevent the copying of old shows.
- joshstrange 11y ago
  This is covered in the article: > Ultimately, none of this may matter: Even if Mickey’s copyright does expire in 2023, Disney has no less than 19 trademarks on the words “Mickey Mouse” (ranging from television shows and cartoon strips to theme parks and videogames) that could shield him from public use. It goes on to talk a little more about it as well.
BrianEatWorld 11y ago
I wonder if a solution would be a payment to extend copyright. I think the strongest argument in the article is about the disappearance of works, but, as pointed out, this doesn't really apply to Mickey Mouse. Instead of having a universal expiration, which is causing some works to die, have a shorter expiration but then allow those who are still monetizing their works to pay a portion to extend it. This would provide a less grey market alternative to lobbying and perhaps the revenue generated could be put back into the arts.
- acomjean 11y ago
  I've thought the same thing. This seems like a simple way to deal with it. And since most created works don't make money, even fewer after X years this would seem to do the most "public" good while allowing Disney to keep Mickey. This is especially true for software games where you can't even get the hardware, thus software sales are essentially 0. A lot of the older games will just get forgotten while the copyright runs out. Some get remade and sold and have no problem with that. Companies won't like it though, because some will forget to register and loose out on potential profits.
- FollowSteph3 11y ago
  To make it really work I think the cost would have to go up exponentially with time. Maybe once a decade you pay. And you could even pre-purchase but at the exponential price. This would allow most works protection early on at an affordable price and companies like Disney that make a lot of money to be able to keep their copyrights. The other major benefit is that if something is successful and people want it such as a book you have a monetary incentive to publish it to pay the copyright fees. When it's not popular enough to make money with the copyright alone than that's a good signal that it's been copyrighted long enough
cowardlydragon 11y ago
Why not simply make an escalating cost/tax over time to maintain the copyright? I'm in favor of exponents :-) Governments love taxes, so this would be another tax... That way companies don't squat on "long tail" copyrights and squelch creativity.
peter303 11y ago
This causes a large gray area in Google Books. There are large number of books still under extended copyright, but no copyright owner can be found. Google has been to court several times by opponents who also want to make money off of distributing grey books. One part of me wants to see 100% of the world's books online, not the 15% or so now. Another part of me wants to be done in as a finacially fair way as possible.

266 points by nthitz 11y ago

kogus 11y ago

Copyright applies to all creative works. Changing those laws to protect a handful of valuable properties is a global solution to a local problem. According to the article: ...Disney has ingrained Mickey Mouse so deeply in its corporate identity that the character is essentially afforded legal protection for eternity, so long as Disney protects him (trademarks last indefinitely, so long as they are renewed). If that's true, then why does Disney care whether the copyright expires?

jerf 11y ago
If they start losing copyright, they start losing back catalog. I doubt there's a huge demand for the 1920s Steamboat Willie [1], but in 2032 they'll lose Snow White and the Seven Dwarves and in 2035, Pinnochio. Of course, that's an awfully long ways off by a time-value-of-money analysis at the rates a modern company would normally use, so the other thing to look at and be... outraged? perturbed? surprised?... at is just how goddamned cheap Congress has historically been. Did you notice this line: "In one instance, Eisner paid Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS) $1,000 on the very same day that he signed on as a co-sponsor." I mean, I presume that's not necessarily their only cough "donation" to the Senate Majority Leader, but one presumes that the Majority Leader ought to command a price premium, too, and for $1000 to be a notable donation to talk about, well, holy cow. I'd bet Disney wouldn't pay $10 billion as a lump sum in 2023 to extend copyright again... but we're not talking anywhere near that sort of money to get copyright extended. If they can do it for <$10 million, the cost/benefit is a no-brainer. Remember, the value to Disney only has to exceed their expected costs. If their expected costs for a copyright extension is an accounting rounding error, of course they're going to try to extend it. [1]: Which, if you've never seen it before, I recommend giving it a view: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBgghnQF6E4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBgghnQF6E4 The past is a foreign country!
- ceejayoz 11y ago
  > I mean, I presume that's not necessarily their only cough "donation" to the Senate Majority Leader, but one presumes that the Majority Leader ought to command a price premium, too, and for $1000 to be a notable donation to talk about, well, holy cow. The limits are pretty low on individual donations. http://www.fec.gov/info/contriblimitschart1516.pdf http://www.fec.gov/info/contriblimitschart1516.pdf For 2015-2016, you can only give $2,700 to a specific candidate as an individual.
  - HillRat 11y ago
    That's what bundlers are for -- it's amazing how many corporate employees are willing to ante up to the maximum limit amount. Sometimes even folk making fifteen bucks an hour. Very civic-minded, they are. Less cynically, most contributions aren't about bribery for legislation (superPACs looking increasingly like an exception), but about simple access, ensuring that your calls get returned and your point of view is at least heard. It's still quite arguably a corrupt system, but the corruption is slightly abstracted from the simple act of giving money.
  - jellicle 11y ago
    And then you can also donate much more to the various party committees, and you can do it as a "directed donation", so that the money is credited to Politico X and the party committee immediately forwards the money back to Politico X. But corruption talk that centers on the individual donations made to politicians is mostly wrong. That's not how corruption works. That's a reflection through a mirror of the actual corruption happening, which is mostly about influence, not money. Politico A and Entity B have made a deal to use their influence to support each other, and that is reflected in some puny $1000 donation somewhere, but it's not mostly about the $1000.
- gene-h 11y ago
  Well if congress is really that cheap, perhaps someone should make a kickstarter to buy back our government.
  - 11y ago
onewaystreet 11y ago
> If that's true, then why does Disney care whether the copyright expires? Disney spends millions a year promoting the Mickey Mouse brand. If anyone could use the brand then they would be freely benefiting from that.
- exodust 11y ago
  You've missed the point, which is that even if the copyright expired on Mickey, Disney might have another legal option to protect him, as explained at the end of the article. But I think as someone else suggested, the reason they care is because of not just Mickey, but their back catalogue of other material which may not fall under that same brand protection. And because Disney doesn't know any better than to continue their campaign of paying people off to get their precious copyright extensions. It's what they do. Public domain works are an important creative incentive for new works and increased availability of art. Old and new Art enriches our culture, is a source of wisdom and inspiration for young and old, and the more we have the better. We need a strong connection with out artistic past. Society is worse off for this Disney sponsored 100 year blind spot in our cultural rear mirrors.
  - thaumasiotes 11y ago
    Words are (1) public domain, and (2) eligible to be trademarks. Suppose you make paper, but instead of white, it's light blue. You sell it under the brand "Blue Paper". You can (I believe) trademark that (for example, your logo probably has the words in a particular font), but you can't stop anyone else from selling blue paper as "Blue Paper", because that's purely descriptive of the product. Similarly, once a video featuring Mickey Mouse is out of copyright, it's perfectly OK for people to sell that video. And it seems to me that they could defend using an image of Mickey Mouse on the packaging, under the same logic -- despite the fact that the image of Mickey is trademarked by Disney for the purpose of selling cartoons. It's not obvious that the trademark is actually protective there.
    - exodust 11y ago
      But that video would be easy to obtain for anyone, so the business model of selling it would not be a threat to Disney. Further more, if you're in the business of selling public domain works, don't expect the courts to protect you when Disney comes knocking about your use of their character on the video cover. Even though you can sell the video, you don't own the rights. You would have very little to say in court except "I want to make money from public domain art". And you wouldn't be permitted to sell collections of Disney films, even those expired. From what I understand, that is not allowed when selling public domain works. For example you wouldn't be allowed to sell a "best of old Disney films" collection, or have a website called "Mickey Mouse Movie Store", even if all the movies were in the public domain.
placeybordeaux 11y ago
The law suites would be a bit tricker and therefore there would be more of them.
jandrese 11y ago
Because the protections afforded by trademark are far more limited and targeted. Trademark law is the scalpel that cuts out the fakes using your logo or companies trying to pass themselves off as you. Copyright is the blunt instrument (especially with the corporate insistence that fair use doesn't exist) that you can browbeat people with. There is nothing like the DMCA for trademark.
jadoti 11y ago
It's not about the mouse. If they lose copyright, all their start going into the public domain. They can no longer use their silly "it's in the vault" tricks to drive fake scarcity, as someone else can just copy it and publish it. The irony is their movies, atleast most of them, come from the public domain.
cookiecaper 11y ago
Disney is massively protective of its characters, especially what it calls the "core characters". Even Disney-authorized travel agents are told that they can never, I mean never, display an image of Mickey or Minnie Mouse without prior written authorization. There are a handful of artists whom Disney has granted a license to use their characters in specially-cultivated artwork and if these artists try to post their own art that uses licensed characters on their own Facebook accounts, Disney brings out the lawyers. They are rabidly, ridiculously protective of these characters and brands because they don't want to ever risk the consumer getting sick of them or associating them with something negative. Although Disney would continue to own the Mickey Mouse trademarks, you can probably tell that they wouldn't be fond of the potential dilutive effects that may flow from the free commerce of public domain works involving these characters. To them, Steamboat Willie going PD is the death knell not only of the Mickey Mouse cash cow, but the entire brand icon empire (without which Disney becomes little more than a mediocre theme park destination).

xmodem 11y ago

Maybe there's some sort of middle ground here. Perhaps copyright extensions should be able to be applied for on a per-work basis, and to succeed, you have to demonstrate that you're still profiting from the work. Let Disney have indefinite copyright on mickey mouse. But let's not lose the last century of our history.

zanny 11y ago
And then your problem becomes infinite profit for finite work. If you want to talk about things that break economics, its a perpetual money machine. It just changes the game to making sure any potentially popular idea in the future must be rigorously defended under copyright forever. You know, like what people do with patents right now, which is also a destructive and horrible IP mess all on its own.
- meric 11y ago
  If we have to choose between giving Disney the exclusive right to a perpetual money machine, or to give all copyright owners the same, because Disney is so ingrained into the governing oligarchy, then I think the former choice would be better for society overall.
  - ZenPsycho 11y ago
    Indeed, the choice seems to be give Disney a perpetual money machine, vs. give Disney a perpetual money machine AND wreck the public domain.
  - jdeisenberg 11y ago
    From what I understand, giving Disney an exception would be a violation of the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause.
    - ZenPsycho 11y ago
      It wouldn't need to necessarily be an exception, but it could be, as suggested elsewhere in the thread, an appropriate property tax... If this stuff is indeed "intellectual property" then it should have property taxes. People who don't pay the tax can involuntarily donate to the public domain after the previous reasonable term of say, 56 years after creation.

deciplex 11y ago

> While it is impossible to say for certain whether or not Disney’s efforts directly impacted politics, the results heavily worked out in their favor: the bill quietly and unanimously passed in the House and Senate with no public hearings, no debate, no notice to the public, and no roll call. Of course it's possible to say that: "Disney’s efforts directly impacted politics". There, I said it.

Qwertious 11y ago
Perhaps that bill would have happened even if Disney hadn't been lobbying. A lot of people don't give a second thought to "intellectual property".

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forgingahead 11y ago

Heald crawled through more than 2,000 books on Amazon.com, and found that there were more books available from the late 1800s than there were from the 1990s. His conclusion: “Copyright protections had squashed the market for books from the middle of the 20th century, keeping those titles off shelves and out of the hands of the reading public.” THAT is his conclusion? What about radio, TV, increased film production, and finally the internet and other sources of distraction for people?

KayEss 11y ago
You're positing that there are less books from the 1990s available because less books were written then than in the 1800s?
- dpark 11y ago
  To be fair, it also sounds like an unfair comparison. A century vs a decade. And how many duplicates in the out of copyright works? The public doesn't really benefit from 100 different editions of Sherlock Holmes's early adventures that differ only in how the cover is rendered and whether the "publisher" charges 99 cents or a 1.03 dollars. Edit: Oops, late 1800s vs 1990s is not add unbalanced as a century vs a decade. The dupes are still a big issue if he didn't handle those.
  - Cogito 11y ago
    To clarify, because it may not be clear without looking at the accompanying graphic in the article, 1800s in this case refers to the decade, not the century. That is, more books in the years 1800-1809 than 1990-1999.

acabal 11y ago

I'm not sure which is more embarrassing: today's ludicrous copyright terms that automatically lock away culture from all of us for potentially over a century, or the fact that legislation that spans centuries can be bought for a mere $149,612. The article claims Trent Lot got a piddling $1,000 (well, publicly at least) for getting on board. That's less money than Disney generates for itself per second of its existence.

frozenport 11y ago
Recall the LIBOR rate was fudged for a cup of coffee [1]. Life is more about politics then wealth in capital. [1] http://www.marketwatch.com/story/interest-rates-were-fixed-for-a-cup-of-coffee-and-a-25-billion-fine-2015-04-23 http://www.marketwatch.com/story/interest-rates-were-fixed-f...
- tristanj 11y ago
  I wouldn't take that quote too seriously. If you read the doc where those quotes came from, it's clear the traders are joking around. They would have done it for favors anyway, no coffee needed. Source here, with some example quotes below: http://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/pr6510-13 http://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/pr6510-13 December 4, 2008: (RBS Order p. 25-26.) Swiss Franc Trader: can u put 6m swiss libor in low pls? Primary Submitter: NO Swiss Franc Trader: should have pushed the door harder Primary Submitter: Whats it worth Swiss Franc Trader: ive got some sushi rolls from yesterday? […] Primary Submitter: ok low 6m , just for u Swiss Franc Trader: wooooooohooooooo[,] 0.01%? thatd be awesome Primary Submitter: 1.33 Swiss Franc Trader: perfect[.] u r a nice man May 5, 2009: (RBS Order p. 27.) Swiss Franc Trader: can we get high 3m, low 6m pls! Primary Submitter: maybe Swiss Franc Trader: PPPPLLLLLEEEEEAAAAASSSSEEEEEE Primary Submitter: ok 41 52 Swiss Franc Trader: perfect perfect May 14, 2009: (RBS Order p. 28-29.) Swiss Franc Trader: [Primary Submitter] pls can we get super high 3m[,] super low 6m Swiss Franc Trader: PRETTY PLEASE! Primary Submitter: 41 & 51 Swiss Franc Trader: if u did that[,] i would lvoe [sic] u forever Primary Submitter: 41 & 55 then … Swiss Franc Trader: if u did that i would come over there and make love to you[,] your choice Primary Submitter: 41+51 it is Swiss Franc Trader: thouht [sic] so Primary Submitter: so shallow

tagrun 11y ago

This made me wonder, is there a country where lobbying (or somehow influencing law-making with money/land/position/etc) is illegal and seen akin to bribe?

MichaelBurge 11y ago

How about: "Copyright is for 7 years. Extensions can be granted for additional 7 year periods indefinitely, but must be requested by the copyright holder. There is a modest fee(say, $100) to file an extension." That way Disney gets to keep Mickey Mouse, things that are abandoned or neglected get released into the public domain, and the fee stops people from just throwing everything into some software that reapplies indefinitely without thinking. It could be tweaking by increasing the period(maybe 14 years would be better), by changing the fee(maybe $5 or free is better), or by changing the initial period(maybe 20 years for the first period, and it renews for 10).

cookiecaper 11y ago
Because we don't want Disney to be able to keep Mickey Mouse forever, and because the Constitution mandates that copyrights be for a "limited time", so an indefinite renewal scheme would require a Constitutional amendment.
- imtringued 11y ago
  Let them have their toy if that means they won't destroy ours.
- MichaelBurge 11y ago
  Addendum: Copyright extensions have a maximum term of 10 trillion years. Now their time is limited. I bet Disney would be happy with this compromise.
  - cookiecaper 11y ago
    The late Jack Valenti, former head of the MPAA, actually suggested that copyright terms last for "forever minus one day". Lawrence Lessig argued a case before the Supreme Court (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eldred_v._Ashcroft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eldred_v._Ashcroft) trying to get the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act overturned, but lost 7 to 2.
joenathan 11y ago

cobbzilla 11y ago

when Lessig argued Eldred v Ashcroft before the Supreme Court, the argument went something like: the Constitution states that copyrights are to be granted for a "limited time"; if Congress can pass an unlimited number of finite extensions to the copyright period, this flouts the original meaning and is unconstitutional. alas, the majority bought into the government's argument that this most recent extension was (again) to bring US law in "harmonization" with EU law, and was so permitted. BUT, iirc, there was some grumbling along the lines of "if they try this again, Lessig's argument will carry more weight". so it will be interesting to see what happens next time around.

enobrev 11y ago

How about this... Everyone gets two copyrights for their lifetime x 2. Five copyrights for their lifetime. Ten for 20 years, Fifty for 10 years, Everything else expires after, say, 2 years. So you get to protect your most important works, but the rest of us get to take a crack at the things you couldn't quite get right.

nemothekid 11y ago
I look forward to corporations buying lifetime copyrights en-masse.
- enobrev 11y ago
  That's the compromise. Disney gets "The Mouse" for the entirety of its existence as a legal entity, and six more works. And that's it. After that, they'll need to start being thrify with their copyright or release things into the public domain to add new works.
  - nemothekid 11y ago
    I think you are missing my point. Essentially Disney will start buying your lifetime copyrights. Given that there are 300MM Americans, I'd imagine if every American got 2 lifetime copyrights, the market for transferring those copyrights wouldn't be terribly expensive. Disney could probably buy 100 lifetime copyrights for the cost of the legal work they do today.
    - pferde 11y ago
      It would be tied to lifetime of the particular Americans. I imagine assassination black market would flourish. :)
  - halviti 11y ago
    Or they could just create shell companies to own the copyrights, allowing them to have an indefinite number of copyrights for forever!

beloch 11y ago

The really disgusting thing is that the U.S. then turns around and tries to force it's insane copyright laws on other countries under the guise of trade agreements like TPP. It seems inevitable that, eventually, the birth of Mikey Mouse will divide what is public domain from what is not around the entire globe for all time. Of course, the U.S. could instead do something sensible like create a "Mickey Mouse law". e.g. For ongoing fees of a fairly large size, companies can retain a copyright indefinitely. Set the fees to a little less than the amount Disney spends on lobbyists and graft and everybody wins. Disney keeps the rights to Mickey and saves money. Things not named Mickey Mouse start entering the public domain again.

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anon4 11y ago
Doesn't the last section say that trademark law can be used for pretty much exactly that, in effect?
- rmc 11y ago
  Yes, trademark is much longer. But it also has a lot of caveats. Namely you can lost trademarks.
- rdc12 11y ago
  The article briefly mentions some of the other IP that Disney has (Pluto, Goofy etc) from the same era as Mickey, while they are not as important to Disney as Mickey, I doubt the trademark way would cover them too.
lostlogin 11y ago
Don't be so hard on the US. We have a sycophantic prime minister who would do anything the US asked, legal or not (just ask Dotcom) it's hardly fair on the US to expect this not to be used to mild advantage. New Zealand, John Key.
digi_owl 11y ago

BMorearty 11y ago

In 1979, when I was 13, I audited a college-level cartooning course in San Francisco by Dan O'Neil, the underground cartoonist mentioned in the article. Little did I know Disney had sued him. But I do clearly remember him teaching the class tips on how to draw Mickey Mouse, and talking about the Mouse Liberation Front. I guess he was trying to increase the ranks of cartoonists who could fight Disney by parodying Mickey.

scotty79 11y ago

> Disney Political Action Committee (PAC) paid out a total of $149,612 in direct campaign contributions to those considering the bill. > Eisner paid Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS) $1,000 on the very same day that he signed on as a co-sponsor. Wow. Not only you can buy law. But you can do it on the cheap. Lobbying is great. Go USA!

xerophyte12932 11y ago

This is a good illustration for why I feel democracy is fundamentally broken. Democracy requires a large number of people to agree on on party/person and to reach these people and to convince them to vote for your candidate, you have to spend tons of money. Either: A) You use your own money. Which means you fall under "the financial elite". B) You take money from financial elites, which means you will owe them and pay back in some form. Why else would they give you their precious money? Thus the power remains restricted to the the financial elite. The elected candidate represents the elites more than the common person because while the common person just gave the candidate a singular vote, the investor gave the candidate much needed money that helped gather all those votes

feider 11y ago
" to reach these people and to convince them to vote for your candidate, you have to spend tons of money" I recall reading from freakonomics that (according to them) inverse is actually true: candidates do not do better because they have bigger budgets, but they're likely to receive more financial support if they are more likely to get elected. Truth probably lies somewhere in between, but stating that "democracy is fundamentally broken" is just too naive.
- kobayashi 11y ago
  Having worked in federal politics, I can confirm that the notion that "democracy is fundamentally broken" is something far more frequently heard from those who have little-to-no experience in politics, than those who have seen the good and bad of politics' inner workings. In fact, I've never heard it from somebody who works in politics, and those are some of the most jaded people I've ever come across. IMHO, democracy is definitely not broken, and it's biggest threat stems from those who peddle in FUD relating to government & democracy. Essentially, things aren't as bad as most would like you to believe, and individuals getting involved in politics are the ones with the biggest influence in politics. It's far more accessible than many would have you believe, especially because politics runs on the hard work of young people, who then become insiders, write policy, and affect change.

Animats 11y ago

It's time to propose the Copyright Harmonization Act. Same terms as TRIPS - 50 years after first publication. USTR prohibited from promoting longer terms. Anyone at Google want to get behind this?

Lanari 11y ago

How is on USA companies cooperating with each others (Microsoft and Apple on 90s vs. Sun is the example in my head) is illegal, while the government cooperating with a company is fine? USA doing kind of like China, trying to make it the easier it is for companies to prophet from the people even if it's something supposed to be owned by the people... =

GlobalFrog 11y ago

I wonder whether the extensions are US only ? I understand that Disney has the capacity to protect their trademarks all over the world, but I guess that there has to be several countries where derivative works from the existing locally expired copyrights can already be created. So, in such countries, wouldn't it be possible to use the exact same characters to create new works (comics for example) if you name it differently ? And the corollary of that is how the copyrights/trademarks issues are handled by the various treaties negociated now (TAFTA, TPP, MEFTA, FTAA, TTIP). To be really effective worldwide, copyright extensions are to be validated everywhere otherwise, it would be of limited effect. So it would be interesting to know the extent of lobbying of powerhouses like Disney in those treaties negociations and their requests and proposals there.

EGreg 11y ago
You mean like this? https://mobile.mmedia.me/lb/ar/analysisar/%d9%81%d8%b1%d9%81%d9%88%d8%b1_%d8%b4%d9%87%d9%8a%d8%af_ https://mobile.mmedia.me/lb/ar/analysisar/%d9%81%d8%b1%d9%81...

microcolonel 11y ago

Ideally all of the extensions would be thrown out, if they were found to be ridiculous enough before the supreme court. Fat chance of that, though.

yvdriess 11y ago

The article points out that the majority of the Disney movies are based on public works. It may be interesting to note the controversy around the 'concidental similarities' between The Lion King and Kimba the White Lion. (http://www.kimbawlion.com/kimbawlion/rant2.htm http://www.kimbawlion.com/kimbawlion/rant2.htm)

rogeryu 11y ago

rdlecler1 11y ago

Why do we think IP should expire but physical property ought to be retained.

halviti 11y ago
Ideas and concepts have the ability to benefit society as a whole. Physical property benefits very few. Also after a certain period of time, it becomes a bit of a stretch to suggest that nobody else would have thought of that same idea over a long enough time frame. Now of course, I'm not really speaking to Mickey Mouse, so much as I am scientific breakthroughs and good ideas that improve on old concepts, but it's all IP.
- traject_ 11y ago
  My only problem with that argument is , by that logic, wouldn't land containing a large deposit of oil or some natural resource be public property. The property given to the public would definitely benefit society as a whole.
- rdlecler1 11y ago
  Physical property benefits very few if you and your offspring are allowed to squat on it for eternity as scarcity drives up its value. If you had limits on it, maybe that peppery goes back to auction bringing more properly into supply for more communal use.
snarfy 11y ago
Ideas are forever. Physical property is not.
- traject_ 11y ago
  I'm pretty sure the land I'm standing on will take a few billion years to disintegrate.
gkya 11y ago
IP should not expire as long as the intellectual product is not publicised, i.e. while it is in the head of whom produced it. But if it is publicised, i.e. published, it is public, and no longer property. If I had a house, that's physical property. If I and my family live in it, it's our property. If I let the public in, i.e. publicised it, then it is public, and essentially not property anymore.

prof_hobart 11y ago

>There can be little doubt that anyone seeing the image of Mickey Mouse (or even his silhouette), immediately thinks of Disney. Image probably, but the phrase "Mickey Mouse" has acquired a fairly common meaning (at least in the UK and Ireland, don't know about the rest of the world) outside of the character - roughly meaning something like simplistic, shoddy or cheap. For example, this (http://www.independent.ie/regionals/droghedaindependent/news/mickey-mouse-solution-slammed-30557836.html http://www.independent.ie/regionals/droghedaindependent/news...) article talking about a plan as a "'Mickey Mouse' solution to a much bigger traffic problem in the Dublin Road area." I suspect that few people over here would immediately think about Disney when they read this article.

deleted 11y ago

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Pxtl 11y ago

I noticed that the Frozen DVD includes a Mickey short featuring old early Mickey animation reconstructed. I wonder if that was made to show current use of the classic "steamboat mickey" style of the character for trademark reasons?

goodcanadian 11y ago

Something that I've never understood: Even if steamboat Willie were to enter the public domain, couldn't Disney effectively maintain control of its characters through trademark law? The fact that Mickey mouse is a Disney trademark should prevent most new uses of the character even if it doesn't prevent the copying of old shows.

joshstrange 11y ago
This is covered in the article: > Ultimately, none of this may matter: Even if Mickey’s copyright does expire in 2023, Disney has no less than 19 trademarks on the words “Mickey Mouse” (ranging from television shows and cartoon strips to theme parks and videogames) that could shield him from public use. It goes on to talk a little more about it as well.

BrianEatWorld 11y ago

I wonder if a solution would be a payment to extend copyright. I think the strongest argument in the article is about the disappearance of works, but, as pointed out, this doesn't really apply to Mickey Mouse. Instead of having a universal expiration, which is causing some works to die, have a shorter expiration but then allow those who are still monetizing their works to pay a portion to extend it. This would provide a less grey market alternative to lobbying and perhaps the revenue generated could be put back into the arts.

acomjean 11y ago
I've thought the same thing. This seems like a simple way to deal with it. And since most created works don't make money, even fewer after X years this would seem to do the most "public" good while allowing Disney to keep Mickey. This is especially true for software games where you can't even get the hardware, thus software sales are essentially 0. A lot of the older games will just get forgotten while the copyright runs out. Some get remade and sold and have no problem with that. Companies won't like it though, because some will forget to register and loose out on potential profits.
FollowSteph3 11y ago
To make it really work I think the cost would have to go up exponentially with time. Maybe once a decade you pay. And you could even pre-purchase but at the exponential price. This would allow most works protection early on at an affordable price and companies like Disney that make a lot of money to be able to keep their copyrights. The other major benefit is that if something is successful and people want it such as a book you have a monetary incentive to publish it to pay the copyright fees. When it's not popular enough to make money with the copyright alone than that's a good signal that it's been copyrighted long enough

cowardlydragon 11y ago

Why not simply make an escalating cost/tax over time to maintain the copyright? I'm in favor of exponents :-) Governments love taxes, so this would be another tax... That way companies don't squat on "long tail" copyrights and squelch creativity.

peter303 11y ago

This causes a large gray area in Google Books. There are large number of books still under extended copyright, but no copyright owner can be found. Google has been to court several times by opponents who also want to make money off of distributing grey books. One part of me wants to see 100% of the world's books online, not the 15% or so now. Another part of me wants to be done in as a finacially fair way as possible.