Most of the relevant copyrights are expired everywhere. The last ones expire this coming December.
will continue in the UK at least thanks to former prime minister Jim Callaghan.
Encouraged by his wife Audrey, who was a chairwoman of Great Ormond Street,
Callaghan successfully campaigned to get the UK's 1988 copyright act amended
to give the hospital the unique right to royalties from stage performances of Peter Pan and any adaptation of the play forever."
Very convenient.
To be clear, I’m fully in support of the cause. But this is still cronyism.
Corruption is a rude and dirty word. It's use would besmirch the good reputation of those engaging in it. Cronyism is considered much more polite.
Because Great Ormond Street is the UKs top children's hospital, kids get referred there from all over the country so their charity also fund places for families to stay nearby and sometimes pay for travel.
Great Ormond Street's charity raises enough money to also make grants for research into childhood disease and stuff.
Parliamentary sovereignty is often seen as a central element in the British constitution, although its extent is contested. It means that an Act of Parliament is the highest form of law, but also that "Parliament cannot bind itself".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_Kin...
A fringe group of modern day commonwealth citizens construct quite elaborate fantasies based on that:
https://ukhumanrightsblog.com/2020/12/04/magna-carta-and-fre...
A lot of things in modern democracies, or even older ones (like the US's federal constitution) are really there to act as roadblocks and prevent a simple majority of voters from electing some shitty politicians who make wild changes in the law. It's a bit like that scene in "Alien" when Sigourney wants to blow up the Nostromo, and has to go through a ridiculous process of flipping switches and raising and turning and lowering some metal cylinders inside a control panel in the floor: blowing up the ship doesn't really need all that stuff, but it's just there to make it hard to do quickly and easily.
I wonder if this creates a feeling among voters that it is OK or even desirable to vote for batshit politicians, because they'll be constrained by the constitution and "nothing ever changes anyway".
And then those politicians decry the constraining checks and balances as the "deep state" or "the blob".
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/48/part/VII/crossh...
Copyright law on both sides of the pond is asinine.
The supporters of copyright fear monger and present a parade of horribles that will flow if excessive copyright isn’t allowed. (Folks will “abuse” the Mickey Mouse character via pornography, etc).
But I think history has, and will continue to, prove out that these are BS and that it’s all just a cash grab.
Clearly these people haven't actually looked at cartoon porn sites.
If I draw fan art of Mickey Mouse, it's copyright me, not Disney. If I sell it or use it for promoting something, then it's probably a violation of Disney's trademarks - trademarks are there to make sure you don't think something was made by one entity when it was actually made by another.
Trademarks don't expire after 50 or 80 years or whatever. They exist as long as the holder continues to assert them.