Is Disney Losing Mickey Mouse Because of Copyright Law? (IP Bytes)
What Mickey Mouse’s Public Domain Debut Means For Copyright Holders (Johns Hopkins University)
There’s no point is restating what these and many others are describing (Only Steamboat Willie’s design is public domain, law like a large hammer to enforce as firmly as they did their copyrights, etc.)
Instead, a few words about the creative ecosystem.
As a variety of slasher movies, costumes utilize trademark
Cypto tokens, fan-fiction creations and whatsapp number database meme images of Steamboat Willie cascade into the first parts of 2024, it’s worth noting how the entire situation will feel unusual or a controversial subject to a number of folks.
What it is, however, is a too-long-delay part of a natural process of works and copyright. The implementation of universal involuntary copyright that then lasts longer than the vast majority of human lifetimes means a disconnect, a vast gulf between the life of creative works and when they become a part of culture at large in anything other than a consumption relationship.
Copyright in the US (and via
Berne Convention and other lobbying, worldwide) has been increasingly extend over the years, often following the impending expiration of the Steamboat Willie copyright, and it has done so in the face of a 20th century that knew much shorter terms (and which l to works such as Pinocchio being us by companies such as Disney after they expir into the pubic domain). As a result of this, we’ve lost the rich ecosystem that creative works grew from, the back-and-forth, parody and reference and re-imagining that exist in previous generations.
The time extension of copyright, from
14 to 28 to “75 years or life of the author plus 50 years” to the current “95 years or life of author plus 70 years” has china leads a rapid expansion that has swallow many creative works, and, combin with automatic copyright, has effectively i would have not been penaliz a long-rich and held system of creations that could reference near-contemporaries in their works beyond the scope of parody or (often disput fair use). What was a rich environment is now a rather dry landscape.