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Comment by foob | Hacker News Reader

My pet theory is that the only reason we didn't see a copyright extension act this year, like we've seen every time Steamboat Willy was about to enter the public domain in the past, is that Disney ended up on one side of the culture wars with what went on in Florida. It's far more difficult to get bipartisan support for robbing the public of what should be in the public domain once you've involved yourself in partisan politics.

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I doubt it played a very big role. Consider: the last general copyright extension in the US was the CTEA in 1998. Back then, the movie and music industries were among the biggest players in the copyright space. Since 1998, though, Silicon Valley companies (most obviously Google) have become powerhouses with lots of money and lots of incentive to fight future copyright extensions.

Do silicon valley companies still have a big incentive to fight copyright extension?

The public domain and copyright expiry is one more set of requirements for SV code to have to implement and support. It's way easier if the owner stays for ever, and that there is a single owner

Yes. They have every reason to want it. The more raw material isn't covered by copyright, the more they can feed into anything.

And that's not even counting the relevance of organizations like the Internet Archive, which was not nearly as meaningful in 1998.

> The public domain and copyright expiry is one more set of requirements for SV code to have to implement and support. It's way easier if the owner stays for ever, and that there is a single owner

And this makes no sense. Applications are not required to recognize public domain content and make it unrestricted when copyright expires. Having it remain under ownership forever doesn't make anything easier. And, in fact, copyrights having a single, simple owner is just... not the case. So to whatever extent there is a need to keep track of owners, copyright expiration only makes things easier (because if a work is in the public domain, you can no longer screw it up).

There have only been two copyright extensions that affected the copyright on Mickey Mouse, and I haven't been able to find any significant Disney involvement with the first one.

The first one was when the Copyright Act of 1909 was replaced with the Copyright Act of 1976. Between 1909 and 1976 there had been a lot of changes in technology, such as the rise of radio, TV, movies, and computers, and it was widely agreed that the 1909 Act was not up to handling it. Also international distribution was more common, and most thought the US needed its copyright law to be more compatible with the rest of the world. The 1976 Act started that harmonization (although it left a lot of it for the Berne Implementation Act of 1988).

The second was the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998. That one Disney was a significant force in its creation and passing.

The 1976 act was also useful in settling the idea of a "work for hire". There'd previously been a lot of bespoke, confusing contacts and promises made around ownership of IP and the 1976 act settled it. It didn't make artists who'd been ripped off (Siegel and Schuster) whole, but it cleared up delineations. This paved the way for future artists to actually know what they were seeking, and keep some of the good stuff for themselves

They would have started the lobbying long before this year.

They seem to have given up on making copyright law even more absurd, there's no public support for it, instead they seem to be attempting to use trademark law to keep control over their characters (which only requires you to keep using and defending the trademark)

Notice how they use a clip from Steamboat Willie as the intro logo for Walt Disney Animation Studios, this keeps that design of Mickey as an active trademark of Disney, and they could sue anyone using it for trademark confusion. ("Mickey is the logo for Walt Disney Animation Studios, anyone else using it might confuse consumers into thinking they are Walt Disney Animation Studios and must be stopped!")

> robbing the public of what should be in the public domain

I love your choice of words. These copyright monopolists are robbing and defrauding us of our rights. Literal robber barons.

The social contract was we'd pretend their stuff wasn't trivially copyable so they could make some money and then the works would enter the public domain. They have repeatedly failed to keep up their ends of the bargain while making fortunes off of government enabled monopolies on information. Therefore we should not be obligated to keep honoring their monopolies either.

I recall a few years ago there was something published where the MPAA basically said "We don't think we have enough public support to pull it off" I may be mixing my signals, but I think it was just a year or two after the whole SOPA/PIPA win.

Yes, that was the takeaway by the MPAA-aligned laywers at the time.

The timing is off. The analysis I read that I found more convincing is that now you have other moneyed interests like Google who do NOT favor the extension.

If there is some influence I think it’s much more likely to be because Disney hoovered up so much other IP and now Mickey is a tiny slice of a much much larger pie.

What exactly went on in Florida? Sorry, I'm not across this.

Florida passed the "Don't Say Gay" bill, to which Disney publicly stood against. Since then, GOP led Florida government has decided that Disney is the enemy and has taken active measures to bludgeon them.

This happened too recently for it to change Disney's calculus. They would've had to start a lobbying campaign close to a decade ago to get it taken up in the Senate in time.

Thanks. That didn't really explain much - apparently the bill isn't about banning the word "gay" - but it gave me context to look it up.

For others who don't follow American drama, apparently it's legislation[1] passed banning discussion on sexual orientation or gender identity from kinder to grade 3 (I believe 5-9 years old range in the US educational system).

Apparently Disney opposed it and has some sort of significant resort there, so the government fired back by taking back ownership of the land that the resort is on, which they appeared to have unfettered control over to the extent of being their own unaccountable government[2].

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_Parental_Rights_in_Edu...

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Florida_Tourism_Oversi...

How much influence does the Florida legislature have over federal copyright law, really?

It is an "anti-woke" law, which is likely to become a purity test in next year's election. GOP lawmakers who come in favor of Disney would have a harder time in a race against a similar candidate who is against. Add in a little dose of "owning the libs", and that's that.

Probably very little. This theory is pretty bad from many angles, including timing.

Very little overall, but conservatives it got a fair amount of press and conservative media in particular started echoing a sentiment of “Disney doesn’t share your values”.

Additionally the current governor of Florida (who pushed forwards the bill) is running for the republican nomination for president so its made a pretty big splash regarding the “culture wars”

“Running” is being rather generous to his campaign.

Realistically, this might be a primary issue for a few key Republican seats elsewhere though. The question is whether “owning the libs” via acting against what Disney wants or “owning the libs” via acting against what Google want is more compelling to those people.

The people driving GOP policy these days aren’t exactly rational.

The short version is a bunch of conservatives were/are irate because Disney exercised their freedom of speech and it wasn't aligned with their own beliefs

It might not be the only reason, but I think it's a good insight. It's also a reminder that when something "has bipartisan support" should be a red flag: it usually means it's another way the government is robbing from you (the public).

Well, if it doesn't have bipartisan support it still could be - and often is - another way the government is robbing from you, just only one set of partisans gets to benefit from it for some reason, so the other set is objecting.

How was the government robbing us with the First Step Act? That's smack dab in the middle of the Trump Administration, complete with Democratic support and Koch Foundation support.

Also, the recent bipartisan bill to keep the government open literally did the opposite of robbing the public.

Here's a good one to check your insight: the so-called "Bipartisan Safer Communities Act." You've got Republicans helping to pass gun-control legislation of all things during the Biden administration! That's certainly a red flag if I ever saw one. So what is the way this law is being used to fleece people?

> Here's a good one to check your insight: the so-called "Bipartisan Safer Communities Act." You've got Republicans helping to pass gun-control legislation of all things during the Biden administration! That's certainly a red flag if I ever saw one. So what is the way this law is being used to fleece people?

It's a good example, but (to me) for the opposite reason of what you implied.

Let's see if gun violence and mass shootings stats will actually decrease in 5 or 10 years from now then.

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