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Comment by gkoberger | Hacker News Reader

Why? Disney has invested countless dollars into Mickey Mouse over the past 89 years. It's not like the Happy Birthday song, being hoarded without innovation purely for profit; they're actively expanding/investing/improving and making billions of people happy.

Why should random companies get to legally print knockoff Mickey t-shirts just because enough time has passed?

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Because that's what the US Constitution requires [1]:

"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries" (Emphasis added)

[1] https://www.constituteproject.org/constitution/United_States...

Copyright is limited. It's just that the Mickey Mouse collective is constantly getting laws passed that push back how far away "limited" is. It's more like a pay-as-you-go scheme for unlimited copyright while skirting around the US constitution. And of course, because Disney has enough money they can also convince Congress to apply the law changes retroactively.

Yeah, I don't know what was more offensive: extending copyright YET AGAIN or doing so retroactively to save Steamboat Willie.

I vowed to boycott Disney, but Pixar got subsumed into the evil empire and I gave up.

I take a boycott from buying Disney products (including movie tickets / movies). I will gladly watch their movies if a friend has a copy (copyright law still hasn't taken that freedom away from me), but if no-one has a copy the movie couldn't have been that good anyway. :P

The content Mickey Mouse has been in is copyrighted. Mickey Mouse himself is trademarked. So you /may/ be able to reuse Steamboat Willie for whatever purposes you wish (assuming Disney Legal doesn't get Copyright extended), but you'll probably never get Mickey Mouse as a symbol to work with.

"Mickey Mouse collective" is a term I use for the pro-copyright-extension lobby. But yes, you're right that Mickey Mouse will probably never be a usable character.

Micky Mouse always has been protected for a limited time by copyright. Micky Mouse always will be protected for a limited time by copyright.

Your talking about a company that owns at least 50% of it's success to the i.p. of characters it didn't create. Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Pinocchio, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast...i could go on. I don't think anyone would argue that the films they made, based on the work of others whom they did not pay, contained substantial original creative effort and that they deserve the success they gained from those films due to the significant changes they made. The great hypocrisy though is that Disney would not have nearly the success they have today if Disney had achieved then what they are striving to achieve today.

>> Why should random companies get to legally print knockoff Mickey t-shirts just because enough time has passed?

Because after a while is supposed that the investment paid off. Why should a single company keep Mickey or any other IP right hostage forever?

Should the same happen to your family home?

If someone could take an exact copy of my family home and live in it somewhere else, leaving me happy to live in my own home, then ABSOLUTELY!

I realize that's not what you meant, but acting as though Mickey Mouse becoming public domain will "take away" from us, in the same way giving away the house you live in will "take away" your home is at best a total fallacy.

No, the better question is; Should someone else be able to build a knock-off of your home?

IP is not the same as physical property. Disney isn't forced to give away they artwork they've made internally. Mickey Mouse as IP, i.e. as a concept, is currently not allowed to be reproduced.

If we're going to debate property rights, it's important to have the context and the property properly defined. Many people can rightfully ask if land should be allowed to be held by any single entity for infinite time, but again, that's not the question here.

The moment Mickey's copyright expires I'm creating a series called Mickey Mouse. There won't be any women though because it's about IT consultants and their daily goings-on.

Well, you'll probably want to read up on trademark law before proceeding.

Then you will get sued by Disney because they still own a trademark.

> Should the same happen to your family home?

In China land use rights can only be bought for a limited time - after this time it goes back to the government:

> https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Chinese_property_...

In this sense other countries than the US indeed give quite different answers to your rhetorical question.

Same in UK. You just take a leasehold for 100 years from queen, you don't own it.

i don't think that's strictly true - while you're correct that i [as a homeowner, specifically a freeholder] don't own the land, but i own (i think) a title to this plot of land, it's not a 100 year lease - I "own" this land for an unlimited period and i don't need to renew anything ever. not to be confused with leasehold properties (eg flats) where you have a lease, typically ~100 yrs, to the freeholder (who owns the block of flats), that you have to renew.

"Why should random companies get to legally print knockoff Mickey t-shirts just because enough time has passed?"

Because that was the deal on copyright. Protection in exchange for release into the public domain. Extending copyright is a really shitty way for them not to stick to their end of the deal.

The purpose of copyright law is only to "promote the arts and sciences". Note that it doesn't say anything about the individual creator.

There are two factors determining how much value a society can derive from the body of art created within: the amount and the distribution. (ignoring "quality" because it's unaffected by the following).

The quantity created and the distribution it gets are somewhat conflicting goals: If you maximize for distribution (all works are public domain), the amount that is created may be low because artists aren't rewarded financially / can't concentrate fully on their art etc.

Currently, the compromise is to protect a work of art for 70 years after the creator's death, assuming there are very few people who'd say "oh, I'd love to write the great american novel, but I fear my great-grandchildren won't be able to collect royalties on it, so I'll go be an investment banker instead".

Arguably, 70 years is too long to be optimal. Personally I'd say something from 10 to 20 years is probably enough, or maybe different terms for different categories like newspapers being protected for a week and movies for 30 years.

Death should be the limit, and 70 years for corporate owned assets.

You shouldn't get to make money just because your mom or dad was creative. I know that sucks if you die early and your kids are young.

I think that the 70 years thing is also to dis-incentivize killing the creator to cash in on his work a mere 10 years later. Though 70 years is overkill even in this regard, I doubt anyone would wait say, 20-30 years, for such a plan.

That may have been an argument in setting the date, but Disney was the real driver of it. The reason it's 70 years after the death of the creator is because Mickey Mouse was in danger of becoming public domain again, so they added years to the law.

I think you'd be hard pressed to find any instances of people committing murder for IP reasons.

> Why should random companies get to legally print knockoff Mickey t-shirts just because enough time has passed?

Because our Copyright laws are all sorts of outdated and ridiculous in various ways.

Because it does not benefit society in any way to grant them a monopoly on Mickey t-shirts. Society as a whole is better off when there is market competition. Monopoly is only granted to encourage the initial creativity. There is also significant public cost in protecting the Mickey monopoly, such as courts and police.

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