Okay, I’ll give this a shot.
First, some background on where I’m coming from. Right now I’m a Freshman in college, and one of my goals is to be an Intellectual Property lawyer. So these subjects are kind of important to me.
Second off, the erosion of the public domain is an issue which tends to get me, shall we say, rather fired up. So I’m not an unbiased source by any means.
First off, to quote Mighty Maximino, one issue is that people could start completely freely distributing Steamboat Willie, and then making their own cartoons based upon it. Although I am not sure about this issue, I do believe that as long as they didn’t use the name, Disney could not stop them. Disney does not like this.
Now, to Vic Ferrari, your first point says that you believe thirty years to be fair. To be honest, I do too. Anywhere from twenty to fifty years would probably work, with the former being preferred, and the latter being more passable. So far, so good.
Second, you are misinterpreting the law. It isn’t seventy years, it’s for the life of the creator PLUS seventy years. Another issue is that it retroactively applies to all current copyrights (hence the reason Disney pushes for it so hard), something that is in a legal gray area. At some point, “limited” has to be defined, and the suit is based that Congress has overstepped their boundaries at this point. Although I’m not sure how strong the case is, I do believe that things should recede. Unfortunately, this truly looks to be one of the best hopes of the public domain, given the power of the opposition.
Finally, you ask really why it matters? There are many reasons for this. First off is quite simply, nothing is going into the public domain any more. Period. Nothing can be based on works that were made in the past, nothing can examine works in the past extensively in some ways without consent of the creator.
MANY of the great authors and artists have drawn back on previous works in order to create something. For instance, Shakespeare is said to have based some of his plays on previously existing Greek plays. Extending this analogy, if he could not use these resources, many of our greatest works may not exist.
Even more telling is the fact that Walt Disney, and the Walt Disney Company itself make EXTENSIVE use of the public domain at this point in which to create their works. Look at many of their most popular movies. Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Aladdin, Tarzan, Beauty and the Beast, all were based on previously existing writings, along with numerous others. The Jungle Book was released a single year AFTER the original work had become public domain. Hollywood itself is making huge capitalizations on previous works, from the latest Veggie Tales movie, to the Time Machine, to Romeo and Juliet. Constantly, people build things on top of existing works. But at this point, the very companies that profit most from the public domain are doing everything they can to quash it, and not allow anyone to build upon their work. It’s not just about Mickey Mouse, but Disney is so bent on keeping strict control of what their founder, whom is now dead, created, that they are willing to sacrifice things to keep it that way.
Another argument is simply that the intellectual property is inherently an oxymoron. What gives a person rights to an idea, just because they published it first? There is no inherent reason that they should have control over that idea. But in order to encourage more people to come up with ideas and inventions, things like copyright law and patent law were formed. Basically, if you invent or create something, if you make it public and add it to the general knowledge pool, for a limited time you will have control over it. This is consistent with the original establishment of copyright law, to encourage people to create such works in order to add to the general knowledge.
What happened is that eventually people and companies began to lengthen and strengthen this monopoly, beyond its original purpose. A central argument is that extending copyright law to such lengths is not being done to promote new work, but to protect the interests of an extremely tiny minority that wants to maintain their artificial monopoly. A group of economists, including some Nobel Laureates had written a paper on this subject and how extending it this long has virtually no economic value.
Anyhow, that’s what this case is based on, and that’s why it is so important. Not because people want to make their own Mickey Mouse cartoons.
