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Comment by BearGoesChirp | Hacker News Reader

Unless something major changes, public domain will never happen again. Corporations such as Disney will continuously lobby to extend it to cover their older works.

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I'm ok with Disney keeping copyright on their works; I just wish that wasn't tied together with so many other works that have been abandoned by their authors (like old games, books, media, etc).

I'm really not. They lobby for special legislation around all their specific works. Mickey Mouse should really be in the public domain by now. They should respect those laws and move on to new trade-markable characters and learn to rebrand themselves. The fact that they are so big that they can be granted special exemption is pretty alarming.

It seems you’re conflating trademark and copyright. Personally, I’m fine with trademarks continuing in perpetuity as long as the owner maintains the registration. Disney gets to keep their brand name and trademarked characters. It’s copyright on Disney’s films and music that’s the problem. Maybe I can’t make my own Mickey film, but I could certainly remix Steamboat Willie cartoons if they entered the public domain. Or do similar with their music. But it’s really not even about that. If Disney gobbles up all the copyrightable content, maintains copyright forever, then creating something new (but too similar) can put an individual artist in trouble with copyright law. That’s unacceptable.

Except you should realize 99% of Disney's "works" were ripped off of public domain (and expired copyright) works, which they THEN (after making billions) lobbied to have copyright extended so nobody would ever be able to do what they did.

It has to be one of the sickest corporate abuses ("anti-consumer, anti-society") in US history.

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