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Comment by echelon | Hacker News Reader

The big question: what happens when Mickey Mouse enters public domain in 2024?

Will people be able to make Mickey cartoons independent of and without the blessing of Disney? Will they be able to sell merchandise? Market themselves using the Mouse? Incorporate the character in their logos?

Does this only apply to the "Steamboat Willie" version of Mickey? Can one use artistic license to get closer to modern Mickey without running afoul of modern copyright?

Pooh is one thing, but Mickey going public domain will be monumental.

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Trademark and copyright are separate. So it's legit to stand outside of Disneyland selling Blu-rays of Steamboat Willie, but there are still limitations on how you can use the character

Some level of remixing/reediting the movie is probably OK, but I'm not sure where the line gets drawn

Disney has bought legislation to extend copyright term every time MM has been up for expiry.

Do you have reason to believe history won’t repeat itself this time?

They have to balance the willingness of people to accept copyright as fair with the few benefits extending copyright even further would have. At this point the few bits of intellectual property that will become public domain are so few and mainly of historic interest, that a protracted lobbying attempt (which could fail) would do more harm to their brand than just defending trademarks and existing copyrighted works.

I think the generally held view of the major content owners is that the current (absurdly protracted) limits are good enough.

Sucking a statistic out of thin air, I'd be amazed if you can get 1% of people to even be aware of copyright terms, much less feel politically motivated to spend political capital fighting Disney.

It's the easiest lobbying in the world to extend copyright terms. There are waaay more important one-issue topics on the table than to worry about mickey mouse.

If Disney wants to extend it, they will. And if they do there might be 15 seconds of bad press, then the next big story will come along...

Google and other tech companies exist now that would like to see copyright contracted.

But maybe none of it matters anyway. As tech improves, the cost to create approaches zero.

This is the most concerning part to me:

The cost to create will be essentially zero, but the cost to create something that does not already infringe copyright is going to be astronomical since it’s inversely proportional.

Imagine if Disney could push a button and create 100 billion characters. You’d probably be infringing the moment you draw your first concept. “20000 of our works have that exact same ‘distinctive’ hairstyle. Cease and desist.”

This would be a great argument except they’ve already done it. Did people push back when it was expanded past the creator’s death? Or when it was 20 years past? Or when it was pushed worldwide?

We’re now at 70 years after the creator’s death, and there’s just far too much money being made. They come up with terms like “modern copyright” and use words like “protection” and “investment”, but at the end of the day it’s big companies using whatever leverage they can in order to stay big.

The last time copyright was extended was in 1998. Copyright was considered a boring topic then, so no one but a few librarians cared about a copyright extension. The political landscape has changed since then. Organizations such as the EFF and even Google would present strong resistance to another extension of copyright.

I can’t find it now, but I think you’ve missed something important: 1998 may have been the last extension in the US, but they’ve successfully steamrolled that extension in to other countries in the past decade.

If someone knows what I’m talking about, please cite. I do not have enough memory shreds for a good Google search. I think it was a “mild” coercion to “bring other countries up to date”, talking about how artists were essentially being robbed in countries where the copyright had not fallen in line with this 50-70 years past the creator’s death.

AFAIK Disney still has a trademark on Mickey Mouse, which will last as long as Disney successfully continues to enforce it; losing the ability to control the reproduction of Steamboat Willie doesn't lose them that trademark. (IANAL)

So, there are some really weird cases that lead to very interesting lawsuits. Sherlock Holmes was involved in one: A derivative was made based on early books becoming public domain, and the estate sued them because they felt aspects of his character shown in the derivative work wasn't actually added until a later book which was not yet in the public domain.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/25/21302942/netflix-enola-ho...

Which is to say, if you happen to put a red shirt on your Pooh rip-off, it's very likely Disney can, and will, sue you. This alone means that if you want to adapt Pooh (or Steamboat Willie), you probably need to go a very different direction than Disney has, such that the character is not likely to be recognizable as the same.

The Sherlock Holmes case is the one I was reminded of as well. With such high impact fictional characters it took years, spread over a range of published works, to establish the quintessence and backstory people know them by now (not that Mickey Mouse has many redeeming qualities beyond being instantly recognizable).

That said, I'm looking forward to a potential noir detective reimagining of Pooh. I hope they don't do the zombie thing though; that feels overdone by now.

I believe that there's some disquiet about trademarks being used to essentially create an unlimited copyright on characters.

Less than you think: I can’t remember the report, but Disney said the Pooh franchise had four times as much revenue as Mickey Mouse at least in recent years.

> Will people be able to make Mickey cartoons independent of and without the blessing of Disney?

Note that Mickey Mouse is trademarked and will undoubtedly still be trademarked come 2024.

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