Copyright and the Mouse

[robkelk]

Oh yeah, I meant to drop a post on the board that all the Sherlock Holmes stuff is now public domain. Thanks for the link!

Also, I'll note that a year from now, Steamboat Willie is due to go into the public domain, too. In the past, whenever Steamboat Willie has even got a whiff of the public domain Disney has pulled out all the stops and gotten extensions of copyright duration rammed through Congress. It will be interesting to see if they do it again this year.

But that's a topic for another thread, in a different section of the board.

Well, that all depends on whether Congress can be distracted from messing with copyright for a year. And with a split Congress (GOP House, Dem Senate), keeping them distracted should be easier than usual.

Unless the Mouse throws a lot of money at a lot of people. Which they can.

[classicdrogn]

Depends on how much money counts as "a lot" perhaps... last I heard, Disney stock was down about 44% after basically all their divisions took a beating this past year, with the only media property produced looking like it'll do well being the Avatar sequel, and even that not as well as predicted. Stock price isn't the same as the corporate lobbyists' war chest of course, but considering there's speculation about selling off stuff ranging from CNN to various media franchises to make up the money lost on Disney+, cratering theme park attendance, and box office bombs, that war chest may be shallower than it has been in quite some time.

The link that was posted in the other thread quoted the director of whicheve4r agency handles copyright as saying that letting it extend to 95 years was itself "a huge mistake" so there's not likely to be a warm reception from that angle either.

[nemonowan]

If they really cared about it, they would have been lobbying for an extension five years ago.

I think that they figure that everything recognizable Mickey has been locked down tight enough in trademark protections that nobody will be able to do much more than redistribute that specific short movie.

[Jinx999]

I also suspect they've realised that they've pushed it to the absolute limit and any more will produce massive amounts of backlash.