Disney's earliest Mickey Mouse enters public domain as US copyright expires (opens in new tab)

The USA often ignores the international community in many things, if the right domestic interest groups are behind it. It's just that currently the USA has powerful domestic companies/interests that are against copyright term extensions, which are more powerful than the (also quite powerful) companies in favour of term extensions.

In the past decade, the USA also has tried to spread the new extended period over the world via trade treaties, of life plus 70 years, going beyond Berne's life plus 50 years.

> As someone who works in the field

What's your read on what's going to happen with AI?

Will companies be allowed to train on copyrighted works? Seems like we'll fall behind international competition or supercharge monopolies if we don't allow it.

Japan and China permit training on copyrighted works. China goes a step further and allows AI outputs to be copyrighted.

Really interested in what insiders think or know about this.

Uruguay Round Agreements Act?

Well they did extend terms in 1998 but I agree the retroactive part is unlikely as is another extension.

I think the biggest Rubicon for Disney coming up will be losing Snow White in 2032, assuming no renewal.

> Essentially, other countries threatened trade deals if the US made terms dependent on formalities for non-US works. So the law was changed and copyrights were restored.

Congress should have grown a spine and called their bluff rather than sell out the American public like that.

Initially (19th century) the US did not recognise copyright of foreign works.

This is all about interests: when you are a net importer you want to make it easy and cheap to reproduce and use works. Buy once you start being an exporter you want your works protected, and that's a quid pro quo.

> It looks like the US had to restore/extend copyrights to foreign works as part of the agreement that established the WTO?

What happens is that lobbyists for the same (copyright) interest groups instructs their governments that extended copyright is in their interest, and that whoever have the longest should “win” and become the norm.

WTOs are basically big business “negotiating” with itself through nation states.

The copyright owners persuaded other countries to make copyright very long, then persuaded the USA to fall in line with other countries.

Read up on the history of Hollywood! It's deeply intertwined with the history of copyright.

It's not about Mickey specifically, but rather about what it represents.

The entry of new works into the commons was shut down for a long time, with Disney keeping Mickey under copyright being viewed as the main driver for the lobbying that's kept it closed. We're coming off of two sequential 20-year extensions, and got our first works entering the public domain in the US in 2019, at which point there was a clear deadline for Disney to either get copyright extended again or cede the point.

So Mickey starting to creep into the public domain means the commons probably won't be closed again, since nobody else has as much interest in pushing that as Disney did.

Because culture is built on itself. Almost everything is built, remixed, rewritten at some level. A good chunk of the Disney classics are taken from older stories, fairy tales, etc that were by then public domain.

Borrowing/"stealing"/copying happens with movies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-HuenDPZw0 (fast forward to 3:12 to see how much star wars borrowed from other pieces)

It happens with music (kirby had to remove this originally because of...copyright) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmjHlkQYoOM

CS Lewis’ last novel was inspired by an ancient myth, and it wasn’t a quick rehash. It was reworked and retold with a new voice. Perhaps Steamboat Willie will be the same!

This, to me, is a good reason for things to lose copyright sooner.

There are few people alive today who would remember when steamboat Willy was released. Culture is currently tied up in copyright long enough that things will mostly be forgotten long before they enter the public domain. Effectively lost. This is surely not desirable.

Mickey's a big one targeted at little kids. His clubhouse, funhouse, roadster racers, etc. are very popular with that demo, I assure you.

Mickey Mouse is quite literally Disney’s mascot. The same Disney with global theme park locations. It’s clear that Disney has far more prominence than Star Wars and friends combined. Hell they even own Star Wars now.

If you asked any random person on the street, chances are they know who Mickey Mouse is. It doesn’t really matter what “content” is made with him. Disney can just keep pumping out cheap CGI kids shows for brand recognition alone and Mickey would last for at least another generation.

In the past few months I personally haven given Disney hundreds of dollars for Mickey branded merchandise due to my 3 year old's love of Mickey. Mickey stuffed toys, bed sheets, water bottles, clothes, pull ups, etc. In fact, I just turned off the TV, which was just playing Mickey Mouse Clubhouse on Disney+.

I was never into Mickey as a child. I saw him as out of date even back in the 80s and 90s.

I think Disney stopped developing a lot of new content using Mickey because they knew he was going into the public domain and the ROI would not be as good as using new characters.

I’m assuming you don’t have kids? Little kids love Mickey Mouse and there’s lots of old and new content featuring him. Little kids still dream of going to Disney World to meet Mickey Mouse and the other characters.

My kid was obsessed with the 1930s Disney cartoons, including the black and white Mickeys, from age 2 to 5.

> There are almost no positive connotations of Disney I can think of outside the cohort of 5 - 10 yo girls. To call something "Disney" is to mock it. YMMV in the USA.

Disney stuff isn't my cup of tea either, but that doesn't mean it isn't very popular around the world.

When we look at the financials of Disney Theme Parks and Experiences, for example, they report strong booking worldwide with reported revenue for the fourth quarter at $8.2 billion, up 13% from last year. Operating Income at $1.8 billion, up 31% from the previous year. Source: https://skift.com/2023/11/08/disney-theme-parks-focused-on-t...

Many adults of a certain age will have very happy childhood memories of watching classic disney movies such as jungle book, cinderella, toy story, Lion King. Most creative companies would love to have the kind of love that disneys back catalog has. Alas this love does mean the easy ability to sell plastic toys for every film.

> Retroactive copyright extensions

It is kind of amazing how IP holders could pull this off. One of the foundations of law that you cannot make retroactive changes.

In Mexico you cannot have that, as the constitution says that no right that you had can be taken from you retroactively.

The problem is the Mexico is the most strict country (by law) in copyright terms, which is dead of last author plus 150 years and there is no fair use.

When your property is representative of so many as Disney’s are due to shared exposure, it is hard to defend centralized control.

You have a deal with a copyright holder? Have you considered taking them to court over it? I'd donate to help get you what their contract owes you, and I'm sure others would, too.

The real interesting question is: what does this mean for our hobbit based tourism industry? What angle can someone take to make a buck now?

Special edition hand printed and bound in the Shire (aka Matamata)? Sell it to people coming off of the Hobbiton tour.

If you don't reference the Jackson movies, can you sell those tourists a One Ring or a Sting without paying for licensing?

Countries that block pirate sites, like the UK, could block your site. They might also put political pressure on New Zealand to force you to manage the geofencing yourself.

Not only that, could an author from NZ create stories based on Tolkien writings? I suppose so, right?

I don't really have a problem with Disney Corporation using Mickey Mouse as their logo, Trademark, and otherwise as an identifying characteristic - So long as I can distribute the works that have fallen out of their exclusive use period, and create new works that don't pretend to be related in authorship. Mickey Mouse as a trademark makes sense - Mickey Mouse as a weird exclusively distributed hole in public consciousness, where most anyone who's paying attention can point to the nearly-century-old origin but not offer it up for critical discussion - That's where it got weird.

Everyone should know Mickey Mouse. Everyone should be able to see the original Mickey Mouse cartoons, as authored by Walt and Ub. Everyone should also be able to comment on and redistribute their commentary on such, original cartoon included in full. Now they can.

Only the steamboat Willie version, the one without gloves .

Also practically it doesn’t matter whether it could be fine, most businesses can’t afford to fight an extended legal battle with Disney

However if you advertise it in any way using Disney’s trademark expect to be sued and spend millions defending, even if you wouldn’t eventually be found to be infringing (which you won’t because you’ll run out of money long before that question gets in front of a judge or jury).

> A simple prominent disclaimer can fix that.

Disney can and will allege that the disclaimer fails to prevent confusion and take you to court regardless. And then you have a legal battle to prove that it does “fix that.” A legal battle that will cost you millions of dollars and years of your life, neither of which you will get back even if you win.

The question would be, do you want to fight Disney lawyers to make the argument that your use was not as a trademark, represented as Disney, or that it might cause confusion? With or without a disclaimer.

I suspect that is why Disney has been using Steamboat Willy as its production logo in recent years. Let's wait to see how it shakes out in the courts - but perhaps the threats will be enough.

Seems like an awfully dangerous game to play imo.

Definitely seems to be from 1928: https://movieposters.ha.com/itm/movie-posters/animation/mick...

Because despite Wikipedia and sister projects being one of the largest web property, it is running on a thin budget and has starved engineering resources. As far as I know, the transcode code is maintained by a single employee (possibly as a side gig / on top of everything else) and the assistance of a volunteer.

For Motion JPEG a recent config change ( https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/c/operations/mediawiki-config... ) indicates:

> Recent versions of iOS can play back suitably packaged VP9 video and Opus or MP3 audio, with a Motion-JPEG low-res fallback for older devices.

So I guess it is there for back compatibility :)

Why is it odd? The original is analogue. What resolution should it be scanned at? What about the Mona Lisa?

It's probably not this far, DALL-E / GPT4 has some issues....

https://twitter.com/bpiatt/status/1740915306359329233

Does that mean that I can publish a Mickey video in New York that's illegal to watch in California for the next couple of hours?

Neat.

    The Wonderful thing about Tiggers
    Is Tiggers are wonderful things
    Tops are made out of rubber
    Their bottoms are made out of springs
    Their bouncey, trouncey, ouncey, pouncey
    Fun, fun, fun, fun, fun
    But the most wonderful thing about Tiggers
    Is I'm the only one!

The last line is especially ironic considering the copyright monopoly situation.