...that is, unless Disney can force another extension to Copyright law in the next couple days. I wouldn't be surprised if they did (or tried, at least)
Disney is unlikely to attempt to push through another copyright term extension (see https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/01/hollywood-says-i... for fuller details). The two main reasons are that there is a much more forceful caucus in politics against copyright extension than there was 25 years ago, and the arguments for doing so are weaker (the copyright extension 25 years ago was partially driven by raising copyright term in the US from "life + 50" to "life + 70", in line with European standards).
If one pays careful attention however, one would note that Disney has, over the past few years, started using a clip from Steamboat Willie more aggressively in its films, which has led many to wonder if they're planning on taking down anyone who distributes Steamboat Willie on the basis of trademark violations instead.
Make steamboat willie trademark not copyright, and the laws become a lot more flexible around that.
I assume that companies foresaw this coming and decided not to invest in further developing or promoting characters that they couldn't have exclusive merchandising rights for the foreseeable future. Just making money off a new movie isn't enough if you can't have sole rights to license the t-shirts and have the current children introduce it to their children.
* She knows Mikey and Minie, I was sure about that, but I asked her anyway what kind of animal they are. [Hi from Argentina. In Spanish(es-ar) it's not obvious that "Mikey Mouse" is a "ratón".] She likes them.
* Surprisingly, she knows Tom and Jerry, but she thinks it's a cat and two mice (??). I guess my brother show her a few cartoons (??), and in some of them Jerry has a friend (??).
* All the other are dead. They have been good characters.
> and in some of them Jerry has a friend (??)
That’s probably Nibbles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nibbles_(Tom_and_Jerry)
How can you quantify this damage?
I don't have anything concrete to back this up, but it seems more likely to me that they just don't see much potential revenue in content from the 1920's, so they see little to be gained from further spending on copyright-extension lobbying.
Put another way, they've already succeeded. Copyright terms aren't actually unending, but in profit terms (or practical terms more broadly) the difference is minimal.
Practically speaking, life+70 is not that far off from perpetual copyright anyway. Nobody cares if a book published today will be escheated to the public domain in 2093, and very few works from 1927 are valuable enough to retain copyright today. In fact, it's so valueless that the vast majority of works still under copyright do not have public documentation of title. The only way to find out who owns these works is to get sued for pirating them.
So the idea is to create some kind of small formality that people have to jump through in order to retain ownership over a work, because vastly more works will hit the public domain even if it means Mickey Mouse will always and forever live in a cramped pet store cage shaped like a circle-C.
How to define "commercially viable" is... complicated. You can either make copyright fully pay-to-play to soak Disney, or you can err on the side of cheap renewals. I've also heard talk of sliding-scales based on taxable value of the property under copyright. I don't think it really matters as long as we have a reasonable process to strip orphan works of their copyright protection.
Basically "old time radio" too.
We could then shorten copyright down to something like 20 years and anything still being sold or used can be renewed while completely obsolete gameboy games become freed.
Even if the fee was something like $10/year, probably the majority of copyrights would not be renewed.
looks at the fiasco related to content being shelved at WB for tax write-offs
Under that model corporations could buy up content that should become public domain, depriving the public of rights to it, and get a tax credit for it :P
Under this scheme, "High Noon" would be leaving copyright this year. If the fee was 5% and the current owners said it was worth $500k they would have to pay $25k to keep it. If you thought 500k was a lowball number, you can buy it from them and declare your own value (to where nobody would force you to sell it to them) and pay the fee based on that.
The work is then in the hands of someone with incentive to create economic value from it, and the public gets a royalty on giving you that privilege. A company that is just hoarding content that they're not making money on would have a hard case to make to investors.
Certainly we have carved out exceptions to that default position, but only for very clear and distinct policy reasons. 1. consumer protection (trademark) and 2. incentivizing innovation and expression (patent and copyright).
The idea that my great-great-grandchildren might want to benefit from my having written a book really does not factor into whether I might write a book. If I'm not incentivized by life of the author + 70 years, I would probably not otherwise be incentivized.
Also, corporations don't pay to extend their copyrights. Other than the money Disney pays their lobbyists.
Don't get me wrong, copyright length is certainly too long, but blaming Disney is rather Americentric, considering the US was rather late to the game on long copyright durations.
The Copyright Act of 1976 increased the duration specifically in order to comply with the Berne Convention the US would end up joining. There's not a particular reason for why '76, other than legislators finally decided the US would join what was considered the international standard.
Both of these were more or less coincidences, in my opinion.
Thats an interest way of interacting in society. I want that power.
I will leave it up to the reader as an exercise to determine what is special about 1938.
In 1939 you have Namor the Sub-Mariner which is owned by Disney.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vhL6QsPGac
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworl...
There's a lot of valuable stories in Golden Age comics. One thing that makes them unique(?) is so many of them are total surreal nonsense, like the writers hadn't slept in a month, or their studios all had carbon monoxide leaks. Don't think you'll get that from a modern work environment.
https://www.printmag.com/comics-animation-design/fletcher-ha...