Mickey Mouse could soon leave Disney as 95-year copyright expiry nears | Hacker News Reader

Mickey Mouse could soon leave Disney as 95-year copyright expiry nears

theguardian.com

61 pointsVaslo100 comments

Almost a century of government-granted monopoly on a cartoon character. During this time, Disney earned multiple fortunes and was more than adequately rewarded for its creations. It still wants copyright to last even longer.

I guess I just don't understand this. I'm all for patents expiring and I'm against "monopolies". But why does anyone think that Disney, who created Mickey and is actively developing him, should have to let anyone else use him?

This isn't something, like a medical device or drug, that would save lives or make anything better if it was more widely available. Disney didn't go crazy with copyright, like copyrighting the concept of an animated mouse. All that will happen is we'll get a bunch of knockoff Mickey Mouse products.

It's important that things fall into the public domain: https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/2019/why/

> All that will happen is we'll get a bunch of knockoff Mickey Mouse products.

For me, this was never about Disney. It was always about the gigantic amounts of non-Disney works that Disney has prevented from falling into the public domain.

My vote as an author and software developer is that copyright lasts 14 years plus a one time 14-year renewal, the original term.

I might agree to 28+14, but anything more is a net loss when considering the greater good.

It isn’t about “knock-off” Mickey Mouse products. It’s about anyone being able to re-tell culturally important stories. I would argue that we do not want a society where a single company/entity is the only one legally allowed to create stories using characters and settings that are important to the society.

As for “knockoff” products. Imagine where Disney would be if the Brothers Grimm had maintained copyright over the stories they put into writing.

Being allowed to borrow from the past (as Walt Disney did) is extremely important. For those not familiar, Lawrence Lessig has written and spoken about this extensively.

Morally I don't see why "Disney", the legal entity, should have any right to prevent anyone from creating derivative works today. Disney , the creative artist, has been fully compensated for his contribution, is long dead, but held hostage like some copyright mummy by this abominable company. Nobody can argue he would have lacked the motivation to create these characters if he'd known his copyright would expire already in the 70s.

It's ridiculous to argue copyright incentivizes innovation when Disney/Marvel/etc are comically uncreative, despite their vast resources. Sequel upon sequel...

> It's ridiculous to argue copyright incentivizes innovation when Disney/Marvel/etc are comically uncreative, despite their vast resources. Sequel upon sequel...

Completely agree. They've already been compensated. If these corporations want to keep making money, they should have to create new works. They shouldn't be able to strike gold once then enjoy the monopoly for 500 years. Stuff like Star Wars should already have entered the public domain.

If the same copyright laws that apply to the music of Bob Dylan now, had applied to all the music Bob Dylan ripped off there would be no Bob Dylan.

is that really true? lots of bands still do covers

Bands can do covers because there's an existing structure in the US for compulsory mechanical licensing. No such thing exists for anything other than non-dramatic music, as far as I know.

And even then the compulsory licensing only covers relatively "straight" cover versions – you can change the arrangement and the general style of the song, but you need to keep the basic melody and the lyrics more or less intact.

Now Dylan also did a number of those relatively straight cover versions as well, but there are also quite a few instances where he more liberally took (occasionally self-admittedly "stole", see the sibling post by mikojan) parts of a melody (or sometimes even the whole melody) and re-worked it with new lyrics, or incorporated text fragments from other works into his lyrics, etc. etc.

Yea... covers... sure...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVKTx9YlKls

Edit: Interview in the first 50 seconds. The song comes after that.

If it's a popular artist, they're paying for the rights to perform and/or record those songs. I helped a band that isn't even popular, nor signed to a label, but they wanted to post their cover to youtube and they ended up paying a popular 90's band for the rights to do the cover.

Because creators should get 5-10 years at most to make money off of their work before it enters the public domain where it belongs whether they like it or not. Anything else means we've been robbed of our public domain and fair use rights.

Copyright is time-limited and meant only to reward creators, not to allow billionaire corporations to coast on past successes for literal centuries. Copyright was actually tolerable before the monopolists corrupted it with their lobbying, now it's gotten to the point where copyright infringement is a moral good.

I don't get how you can say Disney is coasting. You can dislike them, but they're actively creating new things all the time and expanding on existing IP in genuine ways.

What's your favorite new Mickey Mouse joint?

I know you're being sarcastic, but Mickey & Minnie's Runaway Railway at Hollywood Studios opened recently. It's really well done. There's also a new uber-stylized show called The Wonderful World of Mickey Mouse on Disney+.

(That being said, there's never really been much Mickey media. This is the first ride featuring him, and he's never had his own full-length movie. Mickey is way closer to a trademark, in my opinion, and has always been that way.)

Fun fact: the guy who plays the Tres Commas VC in Silicon Valley is the current voice of Mickey Mouse.

> But why does anyone think that Disney, who created Mickey and is actively developing him

I didn't know Walt Disney is still alive

Remember, Disney can still do what they like with Mickey.

All that is happening is that the government is finally saying, after 95 years, they will no longer stop anyone else creating Mickey Mouse works.

I mean really, just how long can a company expect the world to police whether anyone else is allowed draw a picture similar to one a long dead person once drew ?

> But why does anyone think that Disney, who created Mickey and is actively developing him, should have to let anyone else use him?

After a few decades it has become part of our culture, and culture should not be gatekeeped by private companies forever. Disney itself constantly produces derivatives of private works that entered the public domain.

On a side note, copyright is absurdly long in USA, 95 years is longer than the life expectancy of most people.

For the same reason you don't pay royalties to the creator of "Happy Birthday" for each performance.

isn't that what trademarks are for?

I hope the first public-domain animation we see is of Mickey Mouse swimming in a lair of gold coins like Scrooge McDuck

We have Mr Mouse in South Park which is far worse in manners compared to your animation

I believe they haven't even bothered extending it after the last one. Disney seem to be moving Mickey out of the limelight, and no longer using the ears as often in branding. They have lots of new and old IP to milk anyway.

The copyright would only be for the original mickey as it appeared in 1928, not more modern representations.

Also I'm sure "Mickey Mouse" is trademarked.

This is going to be one of those things where being on the right side of the law is meaningless. No publisher is going to touch a Mickey Mouse kids book by a 3rd party author even if the thing is plastered with "Not affiliated with Disney Corp" from cover to cover and watermarked on each page.

Disney has planned for this day, they have a defensive moat of trademarks around Mickey Mouse. The stylistic logos, the name, the outfit, etc.

The big publishers won’t because they all have licensing agreements with some part of Disney that is too lucrative to risk for some generic knock off mouse story.

But we will see smaller entities trying new things with anthropomorphized mice.

Headline is ridiculous. Even if the earliest embodiments start to go off copyright, Disney doesn’t have to stop using them. It just means other people can, if they can do it without treading on the later works.

But then people have to deal with trademark issues and just Disney litigation in general. They have enough money to make it near impossible for anyone to use it in any meaningful way.

That's probably why they stopped fighting copyright expiration. It also had the side effect of keeping new things from entering the public domain for them to mine for new trademarkable properties. There's only so many proven franchises to buy that fit Disney's love of simple morality tales.

Disney has been bringing back Steamboat Willie in some contexts, and even bought the rights to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit a while ago. I absolutely wouldn't put it past them to actively cultivate FUD by putting these designs in new productions so that they have a pretext for claiming that people are deriving from new works rather than old ones.

In a saner world, copyright either only lasts several years, period, or requires exponentially increasing yearly tax payments to maintain.

So basically anything you make or design, I should be allowed to copy it as you get punished with higher and higher taxes to own it solely?

Yes? The longer something is public for, the less it is “yours”: people start making it their own, whether through remixes and recreations or just stories they want to create. It is good for society to allow ideas that have permeated public consciousness to be built on top of without worrying about legal repercussions.

Or alternatively there is no more incentive to put any significant effort into creating anything new since anyone can just rehash something that someone else made for much cheaper…

And yet, it already happens today. How many US companies invent something, just to be knocked-off 14-times over by various overseas entities within a year? It's not a once-in-a-while occurrence either, with virtually everything from electronics to fashion getting knocked-off very regularly with little/no repercussions.

Sounds good. I'll let you spend all your valuable time creating things. I'll use that same time to do things I want like drinking beer by pool and playing video games. Then when you do all the hard work, I'll come in and use it. You just creating, I'll just keep relaxing and enjoying all your hard work.

> I'll come in and use it.

Now you are creating too! See how this works?

This is quite literally not what the OP said. But ok I guess?

What did he say then. He basically said and I’ll say another way so others understand

1) You spend time creating a great idea for a character or story

2) You get a limited amount of time to capitalize on it

3) I have a multimillion dollar corp where I can take the idea and spend loads of money making it popular through new works I can capitalize on

4) Sorry original creator, it’s now in the public domain very shortly after so womp womp

5) Oh and by the way I am a multibillion dollar company and did the math and I can afford those taxes in the “saner world” that the individual cannot for a longer period, so….

Also works the other way where a small corp spends tons of capital to come up with an idea or story and now they just have to give it for free before they can recoup? Talk about stifling innovation

Context is important.

We're talking about Disney the multi-trillion-dollar corp holding copyright for countless works for decades after the original creators died.

Yes, in this case, resounding yes: the longer you hold on to something, the more you have to pay (exponentially, if possible).

I doubt anyone is really arguing that a creator shouldn't benefit from their works.

Mickey Mouse is almost 94 years old now. Guess what. Brothers Grimm published the 7th edition of their tales in 1857. The last of Brothers Grimm died in 1863. Walt Disney released Snow White in 1937, Cinderella in 1950, etc. But sure. Do tell us how we are not allowed to do anything about Mickey Mouse

The Brothers Grimm wrote Aschenputtel, whereas Cendrillon was written by Perrault in 1697.

That's how things work now. You think having a copyright on something will matter if the multibillion dollar company fights you and drags out the legal process until you run out of money?

A small creator doesn’t need a lot of money to sue a big corporate entity that infringes their work because (1) the statutory penalties for copyright infringement are intentionally high and (2) lawyers will take cases on a contingent fee basis if there’s a reasonable chance of winning.

After a reasonable period, yes. When a design, character, idea, enters public consciousness, it contributes and (hopefully) enlightens the community. While it should be easy and inexpensive for you to introduce that and gain from it early on, it should become more expensive as you gain more from it, and as it gains more value to the community.

So much IP is deeply ingrained in our culture and is owned seemingly indefinitely by corporations. And there are plenty of examples of those corporations abusing their legal ownership to prevent the public from enjoying its adoption of that property.

> The Congress shall have Power [...] 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.

If you making profit induces progress on science and useful arts that's cool, but if it doesn't, society does not care.

You aren't owed a profit from the ideas you have.

Get that silly idea out of your head.

> So basically anything you make or design, I should be allowed to copy it

Yes. Just like Disney did with its animated movies: many of those are based on old European tales or on works that had entered public domain.

Those characters were HUNDREDS of years old, not within the creator’s lifetime.

Neither Walt Disney, Roy Disney (the other co-founder of Disney) or Ub Iwerks (the other creator of Mickey) were still alive in the past 50 years.

Yes, some were.

But Pinocchio (the 1940 Disney movie) was based on the 1883 Italian children's novel "The Adventures of Pinocchio" by Carlo Collodi.

Disney released it just after the copyright expired. (Copyright then was a 28-year initial term with a 28-year renewal = 56 years.)

And "Song of the South" (the 1946 movie) is based the Uncle Remus stories by Joel Chandler Harris published in 1881, so entered the public domain about 8 years before the movie.

I'm perfectly fine with a 56 year limit on copyright.

What I'm hearing is that you're interested in a copyright term that expires at the death of the author?

While I don't think that goes far enough, I think it's an improvement over the current state. Let's do it.

Is Walt Disney alive then?

Or JRR Tolkien?

Or A.A. Milne?

Or...

Yup.

Holding a copyright should be affordable for about 20 years. No person or company should still be holding the copyright for something that was made more than a world war ago.

The original American law was 14 years, plus an option for one 14 year renewal.

Seems reasonable!

As a matter of fact, you ARE allowed to copy anything I make or design, because I release all my projects under a public domain license. I despise the idea of copyright this much because of how dysfunctional and abused it is.

That might be arguably true to a degree nowadays. But not having well defined copyright and patent laws stifled innovation for hundreds of years.

And now having them, and them being abused, also stifles innovation.

Not “as”, it’s “or”

Yes

I don’t see how paying the government more money solves the issue.

I mean giving them money is what got us in to this mess…

It adds a barrier and discourages abuse. You can no longer own millions of copyrights "just in case", like many companies do right now, because maintaining every single one of them costs money each year. Obscene amounts of money if you want to maintain it for a long time. Want your copyright to be 15 years? That'll be ten million dollars per copyrighted work, please.

Only the first iteration of Mickey. Not the iconic design most people instantly recognize.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6c_WgxTsMo

Disney knows once they lose the first battle the rest falls linearly over time. If copyright hadn't extended beyond 14 years, it would all be public now. As of 1976 copyright law, a fairly modern depiction of Mickey IMO would have been public in 2014 and the original in 2003 even with the extension that covered 75 years ownership by corporations.

Disney couldn't have any of that manifesting, so we're at 95 years and I won't be surprised if it's extended again (do children even recognize Mickey mouse these days?). The amount of influence wealth had over public policy to prop up its own interests is a continual problem we have in the US. Your average living breathing citizen in the US doesn't have nearly the amount of rights and freedoms that can be actualized as a select minority with deep pockets.

This clip is amazing. It was animated by one guy, Ub Iwerks, in 2 weeks. He would do almost a thousand drawings a day. Walt gets a ton of credit, but early Mickey (and Oswald) is because Ub was a phenomenal animator.

I wonder what would have happened if copyright was somehow structured differently.

To be clear: I find all current IP law overly broad, including copyright.

This being said, I have no problem with Disney still 'owning' Mickey Mouse. I also understand the investment made by Disney will cause them to fight to keep it, and the power imbalance will, in the current copyright setup, extend terms forever.

But how to balance this with a copyright that protects forgotten works for 75 years after the author's death.

I'd like to see some form of short copyright, that easily extends as long as the owner is known and still actively expanding the series. So e.g. abandonware becomes public domain fast. The Disney Vault and other types of artificial scarcity should become illegal. Pratchett is now dead for a few years, and his works should become public about now. But Disney is still expanding the Mickey universe, and they can do so without worries.

Generally, all art is derivative one way or another. Many artists don't want to admit it but their work is often the product of the times and they drew inspiration from existing work. This is what underlies "Great artists steal".

People can use great art from the past to create even better art. For example, much of modern media borrows heavily from mythology to help them build intriguing fictional worlds. If creators had a stranglehold on every single idea they produced, art would have advanced at a much slower pace. Allowing derivative works would lower the barrier of creating great work, much like open source helps software solve people's problems.

Mickey Mouse's copyright expiry allows people to create characters that look like Mickey Mouse without getting sued. I'm not sure how important that itself is (given I'm no fan), but I see no reason why it should be granted an exception.

Copyright expiry getting tied to the author's death doesn't make a ton of sense to me? The economic value of an author's work is, if anything, improved by the author's death, but if copyright expires at death or somewhat shortly after, the ability to capture that value disappears.

There are contractual ways to structure this such that authors hurt as much as the publisher, but no way to prevent the publisher from losing out when all their competitors can print a book very suddenly.

I also can't think of any justification for copyright privileging running series over standalone works. There's already trademark to protect that.

The goal of copyright is to encourage creating works. If you are dead you don’t really accrue the benefit anymore so it’s not motivating you any longer.

Should a 90 year old be less encouraged to create new works than a 30 year old? Some authors die with works finished but unpublished - why should the reward for bringing those to market be treated any different than the works published while they were alive?

I don't get it. It's reasonable for Mickey mouse's trademark to be evergreen -- nobody could put steamboat willy to represent their own company, but how exactly playing a 90 second clip of steamboat willy in a beyond fair use setting (showing a bootleg copy to some friends e.g.) hurts Disney I don't get.

So this covers basically just "Steamboat Willy", right? But isn't the likeness and name of Mickey Mouse a registered trademark? So just because the specific film "Steamboat Willy" could enter the public domain, that doesn't mean randos can start making their own Mickey Mouse cartoons.

A trademark just means you can’t use it to represent something else. You certainly can make Mickey Mouse cartoons as long as you represent the mouse faithfully.

Sure they can. Using it to represent a similiar business no.

When I was a kid, there was a local used car dealership owned by a man named Tom Mouse. He used a Mickey Mouse image on the sign for his business. IIRC, he eventually got hit with a copyright violation for it, because this was 30 years ago. But next year, it might fly, because Disney doesn't sell cars.

It's hard to imagine how one could make animations using the likeness and name of Mickey Mouse and not have it interpreted as "representing a similar business". Hence my comment.

Interesting that IP rights on a cartoon character should last 5x longer than IP rights on a piece of technology. Why?

Are we talking about different categories of IP rights? Patents are shorter because it's economically useful to have more people use them sooner.

The amount of economic activity lost by people not being able to sell Steamboat Willy on a DVD in a bargain bin is pretty low. Same with the Steamboat Willy sequels we've never gotten

Because of lobbying.

Can't wait to see him at Fox News

Can they trademark it ?

Still remember the copyright law extension mainly for it. Perhaps the political will run out. If so can it be done using proper way.

Even if that were possible, I think a trademark is only valid in the industry you're part of. So, if for example a welding company wanted to put Mickey Mouse on their sign, no reasonable person could confuse their products with Disney's products, so the trademark shouldn't apply. Additionally, every distinct image of Mickey Mouse would have to be registered as its own trademark.

Trademarks exist to distinguish competing products from each other. A trademark is a specific image used to make that distinction: it can't cover an entire concept or character.

A trademark doesn't have to be a 1:1 copy of a specific image, it can cover an entire character if the company can convince a jury the public is likely to be confused. Or prove me wrong by marketing your Dr. Peanut nuts with a large anthromorphised Dr. Peanut mascot.

Or actually, according to you, you could use the same Mr. Peanut mascot in a new pose. Try that.

Meanwhile, I know Disney has "Mickey as a Welder" logos, so maybe they would have some claim to your welding shop. Disney is into everything.

You're right that an entire character is probably trademarkable because two similar logos are likely to be confused for each other, but I don't think that's enough. Disney may depict Mickey as a welder in some logo, but unless Disney is using that mark to identify its products in the welding industry, they ought have no right to interfere with someone else doing so.

Trademarks exist so I can't trick people into buying my product instead of your product. So if you're not offering a competing product, you ought have no right to control that use.

This doesn’t make sense, clearly if a welding company had a Mickey Mouse logo it would appear as if it’s related to Disney and thus be confusing.

But you would be able to create new artistic works with the mouse, which is very good.

Trademarks exist to eliminate confusion between competing products. Your welding service should not be confused with my welding service. Because Disney does not offer welding services, they are not competitors, and confusing one competing product for the other is not possible. Therefore, any trademarks Disney has in the entertainment industry ought not apply.

Interestingly, Disney has included Nice Classification class 06 in their trademark, which basically seems to cover all sorts of metalworks and products made from metal in general. Class 40 (which in addition to welding covers all sorts of random other services, including printing both classic and 3D, glass making, cheese refining, waste separation, …) on the other hand isn't included, so a Mickey Mouse-branded welding business should in theory be fine as long as you don't try to sell Mickey Mouse-branded steel girders or pipes as well :-)

Still got a while until Song of the South is freed. We should at least carve out exemptions for works of great cultural importance that are deliberately being kept under lock and key.

I know there are some sensitive race issues, but seriously, the film won an Oscar. It's easier to see the unabashedly hateful Birth of a Nation than it is to see Song of the South!

Good, the copyright should expire (even, in my opinion, copyright should be abolished). It should not last as long as it did.

However, Disney should not abandon characters and other things in their work even if they are not copyright.

17 years for cancer drugs but 95 years for cartoons

It’s amazing what governments can do when they really want to… I remember when my home state of Vermont was going to require the labeling of all genetically modified products at the grocery store. Congress moved with such incredible speed to block that from happening.

Want to? More like are pushed, twisted and perhaps paid to (by interest groups). Being normalized doesn't make it right. The elites' being oblivious to their self-service doesn't make it right either.

> It’s amazing what governments can do when they really want to…

When the get PAID TO, you mean.

That's a very good point, but what congress did in the months after extreme, national emergencies (bombing of Pearl Harbor, 9/11, etc.) shows that they can move quickly when they want to.

As for paying, it depends on the issue. Laws stopping predatory lending practices overcame the banking industry; the ACA probably overcame spending by the insurance industry.

So I don't fully agree that they can move quickly when they're paid to, but money almost certainly moves congress on smaller issues, and those that go by unnoticed.

Just want to mention that the ACA actually increased insurance premium revenue [1]. It’s not that the law overcame lobbying, the law was transformed by lobbying into something palatable for the insurance industry.

1: https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2...

I will be very surprised if that happens. There's been no indications of that in this Congress. The negative press would be pretty obvious, and from all sides. I also don't know that Disney is worried about it. Have they said anything to indicate they're lobbying for it, or worried about the harm to the company if they lose copyright? It'd have to be in their investor statement, right?

how much such a copyright is worth?

I suppose you could look at annual revenue for Mickey Mouse branded products and that would give you a baseline. Mickey surely drives interest in other Disney products so that's why the primary sales are only a baseline.

Wouldn't "Mickey Mouse branded products" rather relate to the value of the trademark?

Sure, the Mickey Mouse design is part of the trademark and the art is part of the copyright. That's probably why any risk adverse company isn't going to touch this when the copyright expires.

such much worth is how a copyright!

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