...Disney has ingrained Mickey Mouse so deeply in its corporate identity that the character is essentially afforded legal protection for eternity, so long as Disney protects him (trademarks last indefinitely, so long as they are renewed).
If that's true, then why does Disney care whether the copyright expires?
Of course, that's an awfully long ways off by a time-value-of-money analysis at the rates a modern company would normally use, so the other thing to look at and be... outraged? perturbed? surprised?... at is just how goddamned cheap Congress has historically been. Did you notice this line:
"In one instance, Eisner paid Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS) $1,000 on the very same day that he signed on as a co-sponsor."
I mean, I presume that's not necessarily their only cough "donation" to the Senate Majority Leader, but one presumes that the Majority Leader ought to command a price premium, too, and for $1000 to be a notable donation to talk about, well, holy cow. I'd bet Disney wouldn't pay $10 billion as a lump sum in 2023 to extend copyright again... but we're not talking anywhere near that sort of money to get copyright extended. If they can do it for <$10 million, the cost/benefit is a no-brainer.
Remember, the value to Disney only has to exceed their expected costs. If their expected costs for a copyright extension is an accounting rounding error, of course they're going to try to extend it.
[1]: Which, if you've never seen it before, I recommend giving it a view: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBgghnQF6E4 The past is a foreign country!
The limits are pretty low on individual donations.
http://www.fec.gov/info/contriblimitschart1516.pdf
For 2015-2016, you can only give $2,700 to a specific candidate as an individual.
Less cynically, most contributions aren't about bribery for legislation (superPACs looking increasingly like an exception), but about simple access, ensuring that your calls get returned and your point of view is at least heard. It's still quite arguably a corrupt system, but the corruption is slightly abstracted from the simple act of giving money.
But corruption talk that centers on the individual donations made to politicians is mostly wrong. That's not how corruption works. That's a reflection through a mirror of the actual corruption happening, which is mostly about influence, not money. Politico A and Entity B have made a deal to use their influence to support each other, and that is reflected in some puny $1000 donation somewhere, but it's not mostly about the $1000.
"We allow people to speak to their politicians. And not just during campaign season. By pledging money, ShiftSpark lets you signal the issues tied to your support when politicians need it - BEFORE the election. This gives us more candidates, less corporate influence and politicians who listen."
[1] He was previously the president of the Manhattan Young Democrats and is currently a Vice President at the Young Democrats of America.
It is much more expensive to compete in an open and free market than it is to buy a barrier to entry etc.
Just another example of the corrupt state of American governance.
TurboTax Maker Funnels Millions To Lobby Against Easier Tax Returns
http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/27/turbotax-maker-funnels-mill...
As derivative works those should never have been afforded the level of protection they got.
If corporations are already buying the government and avoiding taxes...why can't we put that money to the public good?
It does seem to me that we could possibly reach a compromise with Disney in that respect; to be honest, I don't really care whether Mickey falls into the public domain anytime soon anymore. But it's stupid to hold the entire culture hostage for the vanishingly small percentage of things from the early 20th century that are still ongoing commercial concerns.
Although Disney would continue to own the Mickey Mouse trademarks, you can probably tell that they wouldn't be fond of the potential dilutive effects that may flow from the free commerce of public domain works involving these characters. To them, Steamboat Willie going PD is the death knell not only of the Mickey Mouse cash cow, but the entire brand icon empire (without which Disney becomes little more than a mediocre theme park destination).
The irony is their movies, atleast most of them, come from the public domain.
Disney spends millions a year promoting the Mickey Mouse brand. If anyone could use the brand then they would be freely benefiting from that.
But I think as someone else suggested, the reason they care is because of not just Mickey, but their back catalogue of other material which may not fall under that same brand protection. And because Disney doesn't know any better than to continue their campaign of paying people off to get their precious copyright extensions. It's what they do.
Public domain works are an important creative incentive for new works and increased availability of art. Old and new Art enriches our culture, is a source of wisdom and inspiration for young and old, and the more we have the better. We need a strong connection with out artistic past. Society is worse off for this Disney sponsored 100 year blind spot in our cultural rear mirrors.
Suppose you make paper, but instead of white, it's light blue. You sell it under the brand "Blue Paper". You can (I believe) trademark that (for example, your logo probably has the words in a particular font), but you can't stop anyone else from selling blue paper as "Blue Paper", because that's purely descriptive of the product.
Similarly, once a video featuring Mickey Mouse is out of copyright, it's perfectly OK for people to sell that video. And it seems to me that they could defend using an image of Mickey Mouse on the packaging, under the same logic -- despite the fact that the image of Mickey is trademarked by Disney for the purpose of selling cartoons. It's not obvious that the trademark is actually protective there.
Further more, if you're in the business of selling public domain works, don't expect the courts to protect you when Disney comes knocking about your use of their character on the video cover. Even though you can sell the video, you don't own the rights. You would have very little to say in court except "I want to make money from public domain art".
And you wouldn't be permitted to sell collections of Disney films, even those expired. From what I understand, that is not allowed when selling public domain works. For example you wouldn't be allowed to sell a "best of old Disney films" collection, or have a website called "Mickey Mouse Movie Store", even if all the movies were in the public domain.