> Just wait for it, it's almost time for another term extension, or else Steamboat Willy is going to become public domain in a few years. This is broadly a myt

> Just wait for it, it's almost time for another term extension, or else Steamboat Willy is going to become public domain in a few years. This is broadly a myth. Most extensions of copyright globally have been about unification of duration, which tends to settle at the longest as any international treaties about anything do. Ultimately Germany and France were the biggest drivers of this globally, far more than works out of the US. Now that process and unification has broadly happened (at least for newer works) it's unlikely there will be any meaningful term extensions. It's not impossible that some works that receive lower protections might be equalised, or that there might be some mandatory collective schemes for works of completely unknown provenance, but even they seem unlikely. The truth is that a term extension for Steamboat doesn't really do much for Disney for the political capital required to obtain it. They still have the trademark effectively in perpetuity, Steamboat itself as a work generates no revenue, and there's no real risk to Mickey as a character as Disney likes to portray him nowadays anyway as it's materially different. Steamboat Willy is a massive red herring in terms of discussion of copyright policy.