Originally posted by MajinBuu
The link is broken.. at least it is for me. What was it that Disney won?
There was a challenge before the Supreme Court of the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act (not sure if the name is quite right), which extended the term of copyright coverage by 20 more years.
Mind you, this is not just for newly produced stuff, but stuff that's already out there. It'd be one thing if it was only for newly produced material, but it's not. It's not like Walt Disney is going to come back from the dead and not create Mickey Mouse because his rights to MM are not extended by 20 years.
The purpose of copyright/patent law was to grant, *for a limited time*, a monopoly over creative/scientific works. There's a sort of agreement between the creator, who brings some thing into existance, and the public, who brings fame/value (to others) to that thing. Something that's created that's kept hidden from the world cannot become popular or be of any value. Once it becomes known to the public, then either of both can follow.
If Walt were to have scribbled Mickey (or Mortimer?) on that train trip back from New York, then told nobody, how valuable would Mickey Mouse be these days? It's because the world loved Mickey that it because valuable.
When Walt created Mickey, he had a certain expectation of how long he'd be able to have rights over Mickey. (Well, maybe he didn't know explicitly -- though it's possible he did what with the Oswald fiasco -- how long his copyright would last, but he could have found out. Ignorance of the law is no excuse for not following it.) It must have been good for him since he did release Mickey to the world and he did copyright him. At this point, Walt had entered into a implicit contract (between him and the public), accepting that he had complete control over Mickey and his likenesses (less certain fair use exceptions, which to get even further off-topic, the Walt Disney Company is also currently fighting) for X amount of time. After X amount of time, Walt agreed (implicitly) that his copyright would expire and Mickey would go into the public domain.
You see, the belief was that people don't create in a vacuum; they "stand on the shoulders of giants." Even Walt himself (and the company) used old public domain material to build their own fame. The idea was that eventually, this new stuff would become part of the public domain and some new Walt Disney would pick it up, tweak it their way, and make some new classic. A big creative "circle of life" so-to-speak.
Now, with companies continually buying extensions to copyright terms, this isn't happening. Copyrighted material is staying copywritten and not returning to the public domain to seed new creative works. The system is being short-circuited and one party (the copyright holders -- sadly, usually not the creators) is not upholding their obligation to the other (the public).
:brick:
Anyway, that's enough ranting from me.
-sig
