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Comment by bbanyc | Hacker News Reader

The Gershwin estate was the other big force lobbying for the 1998 copyright extension, besides Disney of course.

I guess United Airlines doesn't have to pay royalties for its theme song anymore.

Seems like the EU preceded the US in this copyright extension and the pressure was on the US to harmonize per terms of the Berne convention. I wonder why the EU increased the copyright terms Disney was the main lobbying force?

> After the United States' accession to the Berne convention, a number of copyright owners successfully lobbied the U.S. Congress for another extension of the term of copyright, to provide for the same term of protection that exists in Europe. Since the 1993 Directive on harmonising the term of copyright protection, member states of the European Union implemented protection for a term of the author's life plus seventy years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act

"Harmonization" is PR propaganda for corporate interests. "Harmonization" is a rachet that gives cover to corrupt politicians extending copyright for one nation under cover of another's action.

It's also a sick irony that the word "harmonization" is used to mean "preventing music from being played".

The Berne convention doesn't go beyond lifetime + 50 years.

The Berne convention means that the US must respect copyrights held by authors in other countries according to the copyright laws in those other countries. If authors in other countries get longer copyright protection, their works can be monetized longer, leading to a trade imbalance in IP. Countries with laws that offer shorter copyright protection will be incentivized to increase the duration of copyright protection as a result.

No, I believe it means that the US must protect copyrights of qualifying foreign works under its own laws. This is lex loci protectionis. A foreign work may even be expired in its own country, but still protected in the US if the US provides longer terms. The US doesn't actually have to do that, but it hasn't implemented the "rule of the shorter term".

You are right. I misread it. These works that have recently entered the public domain in the US have already been in the public domain in some other countries.

And the other way around: Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain is given as an example of a work that's now public domain under US law, but Mann died in 1955 and his works are copyrighted in the EU until 1 Jan, 2026.

> I wonder why the EU increased the copyright terms Disney was the main lobbying force?

Some EU countries have pretty old and powerful copyright lobbies of their own, Germany is such an example with Springer and other big publishers.

That's why Germany loves "ancillary copyrights" of all kinds, the one for press publishers [0], pressuring Google, was one that even went international.

The same copyright interest holders were also responsible for establishing legal constructs like "auxiliary liability" [1], which ultimately led to the situation that most of the German language Internet needs to be moderated or else hosters make themselves liable for content posted by users [2].

So while Disney might be the biggest, and most visible, culprit, they are far from the only ones.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancillary_copyright_for_press_...

[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/St%C3%B6rerhaftung

[2] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forenhaftung

> I wonder why the EU increased the copyright terms Disney was the main lobbying force?

The EU increased their copyright terms mainly to harmonise them, and Germany won the argument that this harmonisation shouldn't make things any worse for their copyright owners, so it got harmonised at the length of Germany's existing duration which was life+70.

Germany has a pretty strong publication copyright lobby of it's own. Americans on HN seem obsessed with Disney, but generally most international copyright extensions are due to unions working in the publishing and photography sectors much more than any corporations.

Is anything currently working its way through congress to extend it again? Anything we can try and get ahead of?

Considering the public domain is up to 1924 and Steamboat Willie is from 1928, Disney is certainly going to start pushing for an extension soon if they haven't already started lobbying for specific legislation on the issue.

I bet they try something different this time than just an extension... maybe some sort of "brand icon" exemption that exempts any character who is strongly associated with a brand from copyright expiration. They probably sense that continuous extension isn't going to work forever.

Disney recently released some special edition gold fish crackers with the Steamboat Willie design. They are pushing for something.

"copywashing". Stealing content from the public domain by creating new copyrighted works that are substantially similar to old copyrighted works.

That would probably be a violation of Berne Convention because brands are national constructs and require registration and convention requires copyright to exists independently of national borders and without registration.

That'd fall under trademark law, no?

The logo for Disney Animation before their movies is a clip of a few seconds of Steamboat Willie. I expect them to lean even more heavily on trademark protection once the copyright expires.

Besides, it's not like the copyright on the old theatrical shorts is that valuable. The real interesting stuff will be in the 2030s when the feature-length films start entering the public domain...of course by that point you probably won't be able to find any non-DRM video, if current trends continue.

Non-DRM video is alive and well on torrent trackers.

On a free and open internet, which may not exist much longer with current trends.

My intuition tells me that those of us who care about freedom will find a way to seep through the cracks of any wall attempting to destroy it. I agree the current atmosphere is bleak, but let's not give up so easily.

I just built the Steamboat Willie LEGO set. Was wondering what prompted that particular curiosity; copyright extension leveraging seems a plausible motivation.

As long as we are watching Disney won't try. Votes are more powerful than money in politics when the voters are paying attention. Thus so long as we are paying attention Disney won't try anything. If we ignore the issue though...

Disney themselves according to shareholder reports also believe that Trademark law is in a strong enough position today that they aren't officially concerned about further copyright extensions when they can use the power of Trademark lawsuits to protect their IP. The copyright term is just one moat in their strategy, and they may indeed feel (as they've told shareholders) like they've made that copyright moat big enough they can focus on the next moat.

I remember this article from a while ago (beginning of 2018), saying the RIAA and MPAA was not actively pursuing anything to extend it again: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/01/hollywood-says-i...

I didn't see anything refuting that in a short look around, but maybe that's changed.

Beginning of 2018? Later that same year the CLASSICS Act was signed into law, which extended copyright for many older recordings to 144 years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLASSICS_Act

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