But again… why do people need to be able to use someone else’s story or characters and create their own versions? Why can’t they create their own original stories and characters? If we want creativity to flourish we shouldn’t encourage copying.
I get that Disney has used stories in the public domain before. And I think if a character or story is not being actively used or promoted by its creator or owner then there should be a process of them entering public domain. If for no other reason than protect it from falling into obscurity and irrelevance. But as long as the creator/owner is still actively producing content/distributing a specific work then I don’t believe someone else should have a right to profit off someone else’s idea.
You say "Disney has used stories in the public domain
before".
[emphasis mine]
You do realize you're talking about the majority of their animated features when you say that, right?
Take a look at
this page on Disney Animation Studio's website and see if you can spot the ones they
didn't crib from existing stories, characters or ideas.
You say "before" like it's something from the distant past.
Disney's been pretty open about the origins of Frozen, the story of Rapunzel isn't new or original, Moana takes heavily from stuff Disney didn't come up with - so much so they've
been accused of appropriation for it.
Lets not even get started on them attempting to
trademark day of the dead, something that's existed for more than a century before Walt was born that they actually tried to
take out of public domain. No,
seriously.
It's safe to say they're still
very much benefiting from the public domain, today in the here and now, not just from the money continuing to be generated from their classic works in everything from Disney+ and theme park t-shirt but also new movies and shows they're continuing to put out.
Why can't
Disney just come up with something
original that's a hit?
To quote you "Why
does Disney do people need to be able to use someone else’s story or characters and create their own versions?"
It's a good question since more than 75% of their "creative" animated theatrical output may never have happened if they hadn't had access to public domain stories and characters.
Nearly all of their biggest money-makers are what you'd call
unoriginal.
Certainly none of the older stuff largely attributed with building them into the studio that they became, powerful enough to convince sponsors to help them open a theme park in California during Walt's Lifetime was "original".
Do you think Disney would have amounted to anything more than a company that made animated shorts that appeared
before the movies people were paying money to go see in theaters if not for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs?
Why didn't Walt use the Fab Four for his first full length animated feature?
Why does Disney have a history of coming up with so little of their own good content that's new and
entirely original?
Heck, even Mickey Mouse started off in his first shorts behaving like a copy of Oswald the Luck Rabbit developed by Walt but
owned by Universal which was kind of a copy of Julius the Cat from Disney's Alice comedies which could easily be considered a direct knockoff of Pat Sullivan's Felix the Cat.
Seriously,
this was the original Felix the Cat and
this was Disney's Julius the Cat once he became a feature character and the similarities weren't just in that they were drawn nearly identically.
In fact, it was someone at Universal who came up with the idea of a rabbit as a character that would eventually become Oswald (not Walt) because they felt that Julius, who started life as a sidekick character to a real little girl before becoming his own thing, was too close to other animated shorts being produced (cough, cough, Felix).
So if we're being
totally honest, we could really say it was all started by a
Cat rather than a Mouse - someone else's cat.
To be clear, I'm not saying I have any problem with them doing any of this morally or legally.
Disney has done things in terms of coming up with their "original" content more-or-less (sometimes a whole lot more more and sometimes less) the way just about every creative person or company has since dating back to before Roman and even Greek times.
They've certainly put enough of a mark on the characters and stories they've retold to make
their versions
uniquely Disney and that is the whole idea behind what's
supposed to happen with content in the public domain in terms of sparking creativity.
Disney gave us Tinkerbell as a fully fleshed character (and tied to Disney almost as much as Mickey, appearing before every modern Disney movie) with a complete personality and a physical body because they were allowed to use the story of Peter Pan from a play where she was never depicted as anything more than an "unremarkable fairy" represented by a speck of light and incapable of holding more than one emotion at a time due to her size.
With all I've typed - and I'm sorry, I know it's a lot - I'm just saying that in an honest discussion where people are voicing their concerns for Disney, it needs to be acknowledged just how much of the Disney empire was built on
other people's stories, characters, and ideas - how much Disney - both the man and the corporate entity - grew and profited off the creative works of other people who did not enjoy even a fraction of the protections that Disney will continue to maintain today, even after the earliest versions of Mickey
finally slip into public domain.
I know it probably seems like it but I'm not trying to pick on you. I'm just trying to make sure you fully grasp and understand the implications on the kinds of things you're suggesting because it really is a lot bigger than a nearly 100 year old version of Mickey Mouse that can still only be used in the most limited of ways and could
always be used in the ways you (and I) would likely find most offensive under the
protections of parody and non-commercial work* despite Disney still trying to unsuccessfully sue.
*Removed this link because I thought better of it due to the subject being NSFW but it was to a piece of art by Keith Haring called "Untitled (Mickey Mouse)" from 1983 which Disney absolutely would not have approved that sold for over $200k which you're free to try looking up, if you like. He did several with Mickey as his subject but you'll know you've found the right one because it features three Mickey Mouses you probably wouldn't want your child or grandmother to see... and I'll leave it at that. Anyway, all this was and is totally allowable under existing copyright law regardless of the copyright status of Mickey - as it should be.
) Aladdin, Treasure Planet (based on the Disney movie Treasure Island, based on a Book by someone else),Jungle Book, Peter Pan, Lion King, Robin Hood, Alice in Wonderland, Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, Hunchback, Hercules, Pocahontas, Tangled, Princess and the Frog, Frozen (which they themselves made clear borrows heavily from the Ice Queen), etc.*, also, right?
