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This is precisely why it is important to counteract the creeping tightening of copyright law in favor of Disney. They've successfully lobbied Congress for exten

This is precisely why it is important to counteract the creeping tightening of copyright law in favor of Disney. They've successfully lobbied Congress for extensions every time Mickey comes up to the end of his protection. >Disney has a history of taking punitive action against news organizations and analysts when they publish articles or analysis that it deems unfair. This kind of behavior can only be afforded by companies with extremely tight control over their media distribution vertical. Government policy created this monster.

tzs 9y ago
> This is precisely why it is important to counteract the creeping tightening of copyright law in favor of Disney. They've successfully lobbied Congress for extensions every time Mickey comes up to the end of his protection. "Every time" is a kind of odd way to describe something that has only happened once definitely, and possibly one other time. The copyright on Mickey Mouse has been extended twice. The first was the Copyright Act of 1976, which changed copyright terms to match those of most of the rest of the world. Works that were still under copyright at the time were retroactively given the term they would have had in the rest of the world (life + 50 for works of individual authors, publication + 75 for works for hire). I've not found anything on whether or not Disney lobbied for the 1976 Act. They undoubtedly were in favor of it, but there probably was little need to actually lobby for it. It's main purpose was to bring US law more in line with the rest of the world, paving the way for the US to eventually join the Berne Convention. It also codified fair use and the first sale doctrine, and legalized library photocopying, relaxed notification and registration requirements. There was widespread enough support for all of these that lobbying would not be needed. The second was the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998, which Disney definitely lobbied for.

tzs 9y ago

> This is precisely why it is important to counteract the creeping tightening of copyright law in favor of Disney. They've successfully lobbied Congress for extensions every time Mickey comes up to the end of his protection. "Every time" is a kind of odd way to describe something that has only happened once definitely, and possibly one other time. The copyright on Mickey Mouse has been extended twice. The first was the Copyright Act of 1976, which changed copyright terms to match those of most of the rest of the world. Works that were still under copyright at the time were retroactively given the term they would have had in the rest of the world (life + 50 for works of individual authors, publication + 75 for works for hire). I've not found anything on whether or not Disney lobbied for the 1976 Act. They undoubtedly were in favor of it, but there probably was little need to actually lobby for it. It's main purpose was to bring US law more in line with the rest of the world, paving the way for the US to eventually join the Berne Convention. It also codified fair use and the first sale doctrine, and legalized library photocopying, relaxed notification and registration requirements. There was widespread enough support for all of these that lobbying would not be needed. The second was the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998, which Disney definitely lobbied for.