Mickey’s Copyright Adventure: Early Disney Toon Is Set to Be Public Property

It&#x27;s pedantic to say it, but copyright is not directly intended to help creators; its purpose is to enrich the public by inspiring creators to produce more. Helping creators profit&#x2F;benefit from their work is a means to an end.<p>Creative work benefits the public in at least two ways: primarily, by being itself. People like reading the original Harry Potter books. Copyright encourages that by allowing creators to sell their work: Rowling is rich.<p>Secondarily, by inspiring other works. Fifty Shades of Grey started out as Twilight fan fiction. Art inspires more art. Copyright hinders this process.<p>Based on the above, copyright should now be much shorter: on the order of a few years.<p>In the past it took time to extract value from a work. Successful books had dozens of printings. Shipping books around the world was slow. Discovery of material to adapt into film took time. Note, this wasn&#x27;t universally true: the Gone With the Wind film adaptation happened only three years after the book was published.<p>But take for example the Lord of the Rings books. They were published in the UK in 1954 and 1955, but some sort of copyright issue&#x2F;loophole caused them to be widely available in the U.S. in the 1960s, before authorized editions came out. When they did become available, authorized editions then had a note that included a phrase something along the lines of, &quot;Those having a courtesy for living authors (at least), will purchase this edition (of the book) and no other.&quot;<p>In any case, now with the internet and digital media, the majority of the value for most publications should be available within just a few years of release. As such, the balance between the time allotted for initial value production and the value as material to inspire other works should shift forward substantially.<p>If I were setting copyright law, I&#x27;d probably make it something like 5 years automatically, with extensions available yearly after that by filing inexpensive paperwork, up to a maximum of 10(?) years.

Copyright in Canada for films is 75 years. So, Disney works before 1948 are public domain here. I can&#x27;t seem to actually find any of them, though. I am not a lawyer, but I&#x27;m pretty sure I&#x27;d be within my legal rights to take e.g. an original print of Bambi as released in 1942, scan it, and make it available online for Canadians. I&#x27;m also pretty sure I&#x27;d get sued anyway.<p>Getting a copy of the original is also something of a challenge for this practically. (VHS and DVD releases are probably subject to a new copyright, remastering is often copyrightable.) If all extant accessible versions of a work are under copyright, then the work being in the public domain is only theoretical.

Lol at the &quot;time is money&quot; screenshot from <i>Mickey&#x27;s Christmas Carol</i>, kudos to the graphics folks who found that gem for this article

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The cautionary article by the New York times, clearly entangled as a media company with Disney as well, seems to be doing Disney a favor. As it will most likely appear as a top result for when the inevitable creative artists try to capitalize on this expiration of their copyright.

What is the Mickey Mouse trademark for, exactly? A character is not a product or service. If the trademark forbids anyone but Disney from making cartoons featuring Mickey Mouse, it is obviously an abuse and it should be revoked.

Note that &quot;Mickey: the character&quot; does not suddenly become public domain, Mickey is a trademark of the Disney corporation, and trademarks do not expire. However some specific &quot;Mickey: the film&quot; will go into public domain.<p>I am not a lawyer, but I suspect this means that is will be fine to redistribute specific early mickey films, however any remixes, or reuse of the content, you may find yourself violating Disney&#x27;s mouse trademark. You would have to successfully argue that your use of Mickey came form a public domain source and does not exist in the same market as Disney&#x27;s trademark... Good luck on that, you&#x27;ll need it.

If Mickey is public domain soon, does that mean Oswald the Rabbit is already out and due for an epic reboot?!?