When will Mickey Mouse enter the public domain?
This iconic mouse is weeks away from being in the public domain
This iconic mouse is weeks away fromn being in the public domain Jan. 1, 2024, is the day when 'Steamboat Willie' enters the public domain
(sigh) Just a little bit longer and I'll finally be able to release my Steamboat Willy tentacle hentai comic.
Title suggestion: Minnie and the Invasive Kraken
Where do I sign up
Even with the character in Public Domain, I doubt Disney would be particularly happy with anyone using it.
They can send cease and desist letter left and right, claiming that "the use of the mouse is fine, but the elements X, Y and Z were introduced in a later work of ours that's still protected", even if it's a plain lie.
Trying to take Disney to court is suicide.
The have enough money to hire half the lawyers in the world and make them come up with a lawsuit even if there's no basis for one. They can stretch the lawsuit process to last years, and yet the fees would be but a fraction of a fraction of a percent in their yearly spending. Almost any defendant, meanwhile, would be financially ruined by it, even if they end up winning.
I find it insane that anyone should be allowed to use Mickey Mouse. Similarly, the 30s version of Superman is in public domain, soon, and that is similarly insane to me.
These are still Active properties closely tied with a company's marketing and image. We badly need to update our IP laws.
Companies last longer than a hundred years, now. It's silly we allow these things.
You do know that Disney made money from other people's works like the brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen right? Their works are in public domain
The point of patents and copyrights is to promote and reward creative artists and inventors, not create a permanent revenue stream for corporations. Walt Disney died in 1966 and he, his investors, his heirs, and even their heirs have all been handsomely rewarded.
Now let’s get Steamboat Mickey in Smash Bros.
Are you for real? The creators have been dead for decades. Apart from the discussion of who was actually creatively responsible for Disney's as significant characters. Copyright was invented to protect them, not to be a gravy train for their useless descendants or the faceless companies owning the right for some (often murky) reason.
I find it insane that tvshows regularly show people watching 70+ year old tvshows. Nobody does that in real life. Doesn't feel authentic.
I find it insane that we've reused characters in stories for thousands of years, but just a century ago it suddenly became illegal until almost every character was old enough to be forgotten and culturally irrelevant.
Fan fiction of relatively new IPs should be sellable, imho, without having to beg a corporation for permission. Its stuff we've grown up on. Disney and others are literally holding our culture hostage and dictates terms.
The public must gain it's share of the revenue for allowing a private company to use public domain IP exclusively.
Hold a yearly auction to see who is granted rights to the property which is now the public's.
We agree on updating IP laws, but I think they should be curtailed rather than extended. You should not have the monopoly on an idea your entire life. If you can't milk a fortune from it in 50 years it wasn't that good an idea, so everyone else should be free to build on and improve it after that point.
And even if you absolutely kill it and your brand is still going strong decades later, that 50 years will cover anything new your did in that time. Plus it's not like people wouldn't know yours is the original even after the copyright expire; something entering public domain doesn't make it legal to claim you invented it if you didn't.
No.
Donald Duck’s copyright expires in 2029 and we’ll finally be able to walk around pantsless in a sailor hat/shirt without being harassed by Walt Disney’s widow.
Stop, I can only get so erect:
https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/2670120-chris-christie-donald-duck
EXPECT legislative-shenanigans, people...
EITHER they'll extend copyright again,
XOR they'll just "conveniently" have copyright apply in court, even-though it doesn't apply on-paper.
Never believe a career-criminal, or Dark Triad entity, has changed, unless you see robust, consistent, years-long, actual, objective proof of that change having-happened.
Extraordinary-claims require extraordinary backing/evidence.
_ /\ _
They don't have to do any of those. They own most of the content pipe so anyone who wants to do their own spin on Mickey is going to be inherently limited on their publishing reach.
Plus with all the acquisitions they've made, the copyright to Mickey and other legacy characters is worth a much smaller portion of their empire.
And they still own the TM.
Basically I'm regurgitating a rather good video recently published by Corridor Crew so go here for more facts and fewer hacks: https://youtu.be/u2dIvUAd5QE?si=IK5wOEpSDOPyIwJz
I dont have kids so I can't speak to the ubiquity of Mickey Mouse - but was Mickey Mouse Funhouse or The Wonderful world of Mickey Mouse even that popular?
Frozen and Toy Story are their biggest sellers, it might not even be that bad for them to lose Mickey.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/u2dIvUAd5QE?si=IK5wOEpSDOPyIwJz
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
I recall an article on Ars Technica, I think from 2017?, talking about how Disney and other big corpos weren't moving pieces to give copyright law yet another push into infinity. The main reasoning was that, unlike the previous times it did (the last one being early 90s), the resistance would be real and vocal, with a possible side effect being a lawmaker reaching the conclusion that "no piece of shit deserves or needs this much time protected by copyright", starting to work in reducing copyright protection
Keep in mind, folks, that we'll only have public access to Mickey and Minnie as they're displayed on Steamboat Willie. Any other versions are still no-go.
Keep in mind, folks, that we'll only have public access to Mickey and Minnie as they're displayed on Steamboat Willie. Any other versions are still no-go.
For now... That's just because he was the first iteration of the character. The others will also age into it as time goes on.
. Later forms of the mouse, including the iconic white-gloved version with red shorts, will still be protected by copyright, according to The New York Times.
WTF is this shitty loophole? "Well, we changed his clothes, that's a whole new different character!" This makes no sense. Copyright should be abolished.
I disagree. That would just result in corporations like Disney ripping off independent artists.
But limit it to the artist's life time or perhaps 25 years.
IRC drug patents last only 20 years, and those often cost a lot of money to develop, research and bring to market.
That would just result in corporations like Disney ripping off independent artists.
Fucking thank you.
The whole "copyrights should be abolished" trope is regurgitated by people who have clearly never created anything in their life. For artists, musicians, and other content creators, copyright is vital to our lives.
If you think Disney is powerful now, imagine what Disney would be like if no other creators had any legal protection at all.
IMO copyright as a concept makes sense, but it's duration should be significantly shortened. In todays short-lived world most works lose the majority of their financial value after a few years (let's say 10) anyways. So to allow artists to benefit from their creations while still allowing remixing or reasonably recent content I'd say some sane compromise is necessary.
Either that or massively expand (and codify) what qualifies as fair use: let anyone reinterpret anything, but don't allow verbatim copying.
Disney would find a way to dig up walt and reanimate him.
Easy problem to solve: abolish corporations.
That would just result in corporations like Disney ripping off independent artists.
they already do
Public domain can get weird. The works of Mozart are obviously public domain. But if I record myself performing some of them, that recording is copyrighted. It doesn't stop you from doing the same, which would also be copyrighted. Now let's say I add a few of my own touches to my performance- which would be a derivative work. You cannot copy those in your own performance without my permission. In effect, it's the changes themselves that are copyrighted.
Once I've made my recording, you can face an uphill battle to prove that you either didn't know about mine, or that it was so obvious that it wasn't creative.
All of this ignores trademark law, which is related but distinct.
Copyright should be abolished.
Completely agree, not just copyrights but patents too.
Open environments are way more productive and creative then lock stuff for decades.
Patents were invented to make things more open. Before patents, companies and people relied on trade secrets. They would go out of their way to hide how everything worked. At least with a patent things needed to be in the open and eventually became public domain.
Open environments are way more productive and creative then lock stuff for decades.
Source?
The idea of copyright and patents is to ensure that you can get compensated for your own work. There’s no point in creating a unique idea when Disney can just copy it and take all the money for themselves.
There are flaws with how copyright and patents are implemented, but that doesn’t mean they’re fundamentally broken. The alternative would be much worse.
I guarantee that on January 1st there will be a ton of Mickey videos on the internet and it will be glorious
And I guarantee that the majority of it will simply copy todays Mickey Mouse as opposed to the one in steamboat Willie.
But that version isn't entering the public domain any time soon.
That will be funny
Over Walt’s cold dead body.
…
uhhhhh… wait, hang on I didn’t mean that
I didn't see here the obvious answer: never.
Now I can finally colorize the one cartoon that counts.
If Disney doesn't keep illegally extending the copyright dates, continuing to ruin the way copyrights are supposed to actually work, I will legitimately be surprised.
It's not illegal if you change the laws... 🙃
But if you change the laws via illegal means...
The problem is that they're doing it legally.
I refuse to believe they are not bribing judges and lawmakers. Its not possible that Disney is doing this without doing anything illegal.
Lawful Evil
Even if they wanted, there is not much time left to change anything at this point
Not with that attitude...
[̲̅$̲̅(̲̅ ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°̲̅)̲̅$̲̅]
need to revert it back to 20 years with one extension allowed.
Mickey Mouse is no longer as relevant in Disney’s dominance anymore. They got bigger cash cows to milk.
Even less so for the version in Steamboat Willy, which is all that would be released. Modern Mickey is not being released anytime soon.
Sure, but it is still the icon and mascot of disney.