That way Disney can keep their mickey mouse, but someone can find a book written 40 years ago that isn't in circulation anymore and reprint it. Or create unauthorized sequels, riffs, whatever.
Why bother? Is there a good reason in the public interest to keep Mickey out of the public domain, or is this a workaround to do as much in the public interest while submitting to the fact Disney has enough money to block the otherwise status quo ending of copyright.
If the former, I'd suggest that you have a warped vision of how Disney's profitability is the public good, and secretly think you're lying. Or if it's the later, our democracy has some really fundamental problems and caving on this just makes them worse.
I was just listening to an NPR segment on how Elvis Presley's image has become tainted by cheap crap, and that inspired Frank Sinatra to ensure the same doesn't happen to him. His biggest fear was that his face would be sold on a coffee mug. Should anyone be able to do anything with Frank Sinatra's likeness now that he's passed?
Should the estate of George Lucas be able to create new Star Wars movies in X years to compete with Disney's Star Wars movies in effort to undo everything they added to the universe "Because it wasn't George's vision", even though he sold off the rights?
I know I'm throwing hypotheticals and edge cases out there, but I just want us to focus on the issue deeper than "What reason is there to keep Steamboat Willy out of the public domain?" There's no good reason. But there are tons of good reasons to ensure people can't profit off an active brand's image.
So, should a brand get to control in perpetuity whatever they choose to associate with themselves? Should we extend trademark protections to whatever a brand wants to self-identify with, even if it falls outside the traditional scope of a mark?
Basically, I'm getting to the question: should it be the brand's responsibility to choose a protectable mark, or should it be on society to accept a loss to the scope of public domain whenever a brand has a lack of foresight? (and/or arrogance they could keep getting laws written for themselves?)
I was just listening to an NPR segment on how Elvis Presley's image has become tainted by cheap crap, and that inspired Frank Sinatra to ensure the same doesn't happen to him. His biggest fear was that his face would be sold on a coffee mug. Should anyone be able to do anything with Frank Sinatra's likeness now that he's passed?
I favor a 'longer of (alternatives)' term that can persist beyond death, so if you finish your great work of art and drop dead the following day it doesn't become public domain as soon as you hit the ground, but that post mortem copyright should not last very long - maybe 20 or 25 years, the typical length of a human generation, and thus enough to support a newborn heir to adulthood, for example.
Elvis' image is only 'tainted' to the extent that the availability of cheap crap makes it more difficult to sell premium-priced crap exploiting the same image. I'm old enough to remember reading of his death in the newspaper and while I'm well aware of the existence of tacky Elvis products none of them reduce my enjoyment of an Elvis musical or movie performance if I'm feeling nostalgic. Elvis is as great as he ever was, you just can't charge as much for stuff with his name on it as you used to.
Sure, I understand Frank Sinatra not wanting to end up as the commercial equivalent of a punchline, nobody would. But let's be realistic here, his estate is licensing his recordings and likeness to sell whisky right now, so why should they enjoy a legal subsidy to operate a Cult of Frank Sinatra?
Should the estate of George Lucas be able to create new Star Wars movies in X years to compete with Disney's Star Wars movies in effort to undo everything they added to the universe "Because it wasn't George's vision", even though he sold off the rights?
Of course, yes. Would we be better off culturally speaking if people had to get a Shakespeare license before staging one of his plays, to ensure that no theater goers ever had to endure a shitty Shakespeare experience? Of course not.
I don't think brands and the products put out under then should enjoy legal protection in perpetuity, and for that matter I'm not sure corporations should either. In wills and trust/contract law, there's a 'rule against perpetuities' because giving people the power to set conditions that last forever just doesn't work out well in practice and so individual autonomy is sacrificed on the altar of the larger social good. When we apply property interest to immaterial things like texts or legal bodies, they should in some way reflect that which they imitate; just as a corporation is a legal embodiment of a collective human action - ie we treat it as a person for administrative simplicity - intellectual property is the legal instantiation of private human knowledge and that privacy should not be so strongly protected as to exceed human discretionary capacity.
Put another way, persons involved in a commercial negotiation centered around an exchange of information for consideration has the option to reject inadequate offers, withdraw from negotiations, and keep the valuable information to themselves until such time as a better offer appears or the value of the information expires. We grant a property right in certain kinds of information because of the considerable costs of creation relative to the tiny costs of reproduction, and I believe there is a sound economic and moral basis for doing so - but that basis must be rooted in some cognizable measure of individual human experience, which after all is the only sort of experience we can honestly lay claim to. Collective organizations may well have experience (in the sense that an ant colony may be capable of cognition, experience, and consciousness notwithstanding the limited mental capacity of individual ants) but the threshold of eusocial consciousness remains obscure and may be formally undecidable using existing methods. Insofar as legal rights and responsibilities accrue to individual humans, the median individual human experience must therefore remain our legal yardstick for the time being.
If someone wants to argue that such a state of affairs is fine, OK. We can have that conversation. But I see it as a fundamental threat to the rule of law.
If it's true, then we should act in consequence instead of flipping out at the suggestion of palliative measures.
It's like refusing to consider measures to mitigate harm caused by global warming because you don't want to "admit" that corporate interests make it very difficult to prevent global warming.
It's true that some kinds of creative work can't be adequately copied. People enjoy hearing musicians play and sing at live concerts, because something about the immediacy of the social experience is more enjoyable than just listening to a recording. Likewise, original works of painting and sculpture are almost impossible to truly duplicate.
But this is not the case for some other works of art, like novels or movies. The costs of creation are as high as for any other kind of artistic work product, while the marginal costs of reproduction are very much lower, and if they become too disjunct the business model collapses. Nobody is going to spend millions of dollars making films if it'c clearly impossible to recoup that investment, for example, nor are authors likely to spend years sweating over novels. Libertarians like to say 'your failed business model is not my problem' but ignore the fact that the business model is not failing, because people around the world are in fact quite happy to pay money to read books and watch big-budget movies absent any external compulsion to do so. And if I want to make a better sci-fi movie than the forthcoming Star Wars picture, the principal obstacle is not a legal one but the enormous cost of hiring so many skilled craftspeople and resources to make something of equivalent artistic and technical quality. The only legal barrier is that I can't call it 'Star Wars' or reuse elements from existing Star Wars products outside of the narrow exceptions of the fair use doctrine like parody, critical or educational use etc.
And make Mickey Mouse public domain.
IMO, this is not about profit, so much as artistic integrity.
It's also likely to pass the Disney test. They are not making money from Steamboat Willy it's all about protecting the image.
Why? If no derivative works can be made within the original author's lifespan, that would mean that the author's audience would likewise rarely live to see any. By the time the author is dead, their works are might be irrelevant or forgotten. Who is going to remix them then? Copyright terms lasting lifetimes rob entire generations of their culture. The original length of copyright in the US was only 14 years.
I just want to minimize the amount of me too pandering that follows any popular new thing.
Maybe start copyright at 40 years. If you find the work valuable you could register to extend it. If you don't find it valuable and don't bother to register the work it falls into public domain. Seems like an easy solution.