Mickey Mouse is finally, kind of, becoming public domain | Mashable.
Mickey Mouse will sort of become public domain on Jan. 1
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| This guy belongs to us all now. Credit: LMPC via Getty Images |
If you've ever wanted to make money off a drawing of Mickey Mouse shooting guns or what have you, Jan 1. is your lucky day.
That's because, as pointed out in an interesting Variety feature, Disney's mascot finally becomes public domain on that day, 95 years after his 1928 debut. It's a landmark day in U.S. copyright law history, as Disney's iconic mouse has long been seen as a mascot of sorts for a 1998 congressional act that extended copyright terms to a somewhat extreme degree, giving Disney a couple extra decades of control over the character.
Of course, Mickey Mouse in all his totality is not becoming public domain on Jan. 1.
To be more specific, just the "Steamboat Willie" version of the character from the original 1928 cartoon short of the same name is losing copyright status on that day. The more modern version of the mouse from contemporary cartoons or even Kingdom Hearts still belongs to Disney for the foreseeable future.
As a fun piece of trivia, another famous cartoon animal, Tigger, also enters the public domain on Jan. 1. He'll join his buddy Winnie the Pooh, who also became a public character recently. You may recall a slasher movie starring the famous honey-obsessed bear from earlier this year. Don't be shocked if you see similar developments with Tigger and Steamboat Willie going forward.
Hopefully, more interesting and creative endeavors starring these beloved characters will come along, too.
Topics Disney
TIME TO DECOLONIZE MICKEY!
ReplyDeleteDecolonize With Soul
About time! Looking foward to retread of Air Pirates.
ReplyDeleteGet pencils ready!
ReplyDeleteMashable ,,WHAT IS THIS MICKEY MOUSE SH*T?!"
ReplyDelete(Gunnery Sgt. Hartman, Full Metal Jacket, 1987)
https://youtu.be/7Frd3P6ivHs?si=XAYgaK1w7AbQZwuW
Its still news on Canadas FB
ReplyDeletehttps://youtu.be/TtZLVFWPaHs
ReplyDeleteInteresting
ReplyDeleteWinnie the Pooh went public, and thanks to that we now have him starring in a horror movie.
ReplyDeleteIt was so laughably bad.
DeleteI didn't even watch it, and I was already pretty sure it was a terrible movie.
DeleteOH BOY!!
ReplyDeleteLOL!!
DeleteThey can keep him. He's nothing but a symbol for an awful corporation. Sorry Walt.
ReplyDeleteLOL! Now you will be able to buy cheap Mickey shirts, hats,souvenirs, before you go to the parks. And pay crazy Disney prices for the official stuff. Made in China!
ReplyDeleteWhen this happens.it will be a sad day.this is not Walt Disney wanted
ReplyDeleteHope no1 makes some god awful horror movie.
ReplyDelete70 years is the law they have already got a congress extension of 20 years. Google "Mickey Mouse Protection Act"
ReplyDeleteDon't hold your breath! The magic wokeness kingdom will not let that happen.
ReplyDeleteIs "woke" in the room with us?
DeleteDisney = woke!
Delete10 years ago I would be in favor of extending the law, now, take down the money hungry rat.
ReplyDeletehad disney not gone off the woke rails, they prob would've got congress to extend their copyright again. too bad for them. copyright laws need to be reformed, tho. 95 years is insane
ReplyDeleteThis is because Disney Corporation can no longer extend its copyrights as it was able to.....old news....
ReplyDeletePerfect...Mickey "Walked OUT" ...On Dizney ...Long Time AGO....
ReplyDeleteToo Woke! ....Won't have Identity Crisis or Pro...... CONFUSION!
I find weird that mickey is shaking his BOOTY !
ReplyDeleteMickey Mouse got tired of wearing a blouse
ReplyDeleteThe most overrated cartoon character. Warner Bros classic cartoons were better.
ReplyDeleteLOL, never really thought about it but your right.
ReplyDeleteNot only was WB's Looney Tunes better but so were Sherman & Peabody, Rocky & Bullwinkle, Flintstones, etc, etc. These cartoons had characters with.....actual character and were incredibly witty and funny.
ReplyDeleteThe headline should read that Tigger is set to become public domain. Woohoohooo!!
ReplyDeleteModern version of Mickey Mouse?? Come on Disney! Time to let the mouse loose, as it were.
ReplyDeleteSo now that Tigger's going to be in the public domain next year, does that mean those people who made the Winnie the Pooh horror movie will have him in the sequel :)?
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeletetheFuDec. 22 06:31 am JST
Disney trademarked many of the later versions of Mickey and other main characters. Trademarks don't expire, unfortunately.
Copyrights are much too long for the intended purpose. Copyright assignment to corporations or anyone not the actual creator shouldn't be allowed either and the limitation needs to be just 50 yrs, so the original creator can make money from the copyright, but not have it be withheld from other users indefinitely. 125 yrs is much too long. In fact, I'd rather see an exponential scale for maintaining copyright protections - increasing costs every 10 yrs, but adding a zero.
0-9 years - free
10-19 yrs $100K
20-29 yrs $1M
30-39 yrs $10M
40-49 yrs $100M
50+ yrs, unavailable.
Very few copyrights would be asserted in the 10th year, so lots of better, spinoff works would be possible. Think of how great that would be for economies around the world, compared to just 1 person owning the copyright for 125 yrs (or death).
Field
ReplyDeleteWalt Disneys head is rolling in it’s freezer.
ReplyDeleteLOL!!!!
DeleteHis head is probably mush since cryo is a scam
DeleteLook, I know you’re only joking, but please don’t insult Walt Disney’s memory
DeleteGood! The intent was always that these things belonged to the World and everyone in it.
ReplyDeleteThe intent was always that these things were to be enjoyed by the World and everyone in it and not to claim them.
Deleteanyone out there remember The Realist?
ReplyDeleteMerry Christmas
ReplyDeleteAbout effing time!
ReplyDeleteGood.
ReplyDeleteWell at least modern versions of Mickey and Minnie Mouse remains at Disney, I love these two characters so much. 🥰
ReplyDeleteGiven the so-called "creator culture's" propensity for obscenity and pornography, and using the "live-action slasher film" that uses the Winnie-the-Pooh character as an example, I would encourage Disney to fight hard to protect its trademarks and even extend copyrights further. Let the modern creators despoil their own conceptions if that's all they can do.
ReplyDeleteYes, let's work hard to make sure that megacorporations can monopolize culture ad infinitum the same way they monopolize everything else. I'm sure there's no way that can go wrong.
DeleteSo in other words, you want private capital to have even more control over the work created by artists. Copyright protection is there to protect creators’ control over their own work. Enabling massive corporations like Disney and Warner Brothers to crush creators was never the intention.
DeleteI agree. I'm afraid I'm extremely puzzled by all the people who defend the right to just use someone else's work without remuneration and explicit permission. Makes us seem like a nation of lazy thieves.
Delete* seem * ?
DeleteThe idea that creators of intellectual property should have exclusive rights to their works for some period of time is not what gets people worked up. It is that this constitutionally guaranteed right has been so perverted by repeated extensions of the time in which works are protected that the Founding Fathers are rolling over in their grave.
DeleteCopyright is a reason our society is stagnating. why create new stuff if you can wring out sales from old stuff. In a related vein: it is why music from the 60s and 70s gets lots of airplay. Why look for new when you can flog the old?
ReplyDeleteDisney's entire company is built around Mickey and fellow animated characters. Donald is an artistic creation. I get where Disney is coming from -- and I think most people do, too. This article doesn't touch on it, but most of us are much more affected by US patent laws. For the drug industry, old patents remain sources of great income. Companies find ways to extend old patents and keep drug prices high. That doesn't seem fair because most drug research is taxpayer funded. Look no further than Moderna. The US footed research, clinical trials, and FDA approvals. Yet Moderna holds the patents and keeps all the profits. Now, that should make everybody mad as hell.
ReplyDeleteLike Christianity, and the US Military, The Walt Disney Co (DIS) is everything everywhere all at once. One cannot escape from their message, beaten into ones brain on a minute by minute basis. There is literally nothing one can do to escape their nonsense short of locking oneself in a darkened room, and never seeing or speaking to another human being ever again. Or getting oneself locked up abroad in a penal colony in Siberia (though somehow I think, Disney would be projected on a wet and cold brick wall, a VHS copy of The Little Mermaid smuggled in). Not one human could/would ever confuse the sacred mouse with anything, ever, anywhere. The WalDisCo had almost $83Billion in revenue this year. (It would rank 20th in GDP [out of 216] if it was a country.) They own you. They own me. Do they really need protection? In 2023 I’m looking forward to the animated rated R independent teen sex-romp - Steampunk Willie.
ReplyDeleteWhat a Goofy story. I've heard of some Dumb-o moves, but this one is the Cruella-est of all.
ReplyDeleteCorporations love crushing the little people & then loves getting their money.
ReplyDeleteThat is why they MUST start paying their fare of taxes. They think they must win, all the time.
In the 70s Disneyland banned men with beards from entering Disneyland (beards were a lot rarer back then and suddenly associated with "hippies".) A cartoonist named Dan O'Neill had a syndicated comic originating at the San Francisco Chronicle. O'Neill did a satirical cartoon showing Mickey Mouse in a Nazi uniform and Mickey had a little Hitler mustache. Disney took O'Neill and the Chron all the way to the US Supreme Court and won. O'Neill's comment: "I cannot believe the government of the United States has the power to tell me I cannot draw a mouse."
ReplyDeleteThe Disney company has created a lot of terrific entertainment over the years. The character of Mickey Mouse creates joy in many, many children.
ReplyDeleteYears ago my niece asked me “Is Mickey Mouse real?” When she received affirmation my niece concluded “I thought so, but I couldn’t figure out how a mouse could be SO BIG!” Lol.
In the US a patent, presumably more worthy and useful than a cartoon rodent, lasts 14-20 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Term_of_patent Why should a copyright last longer?
ReplyDeleteDisney has so many politicians in their pockets that mickey will never be in the public domain
ReplyDeleteI’m at a loss as to who/why the Winnie the Pooh and Piglet slasher film.
ReplyDeleteI’m sick of the sick world in which we live.
Any entity with deep enough pockets can litigate its opponents to death.
ReplyDeleteYouTube controls whether you can see it. Google controls whether you can find it. Congress is obsolete.
ReplyDeleteThis is the copyright clause in the US Constitution:
ReplyDelete"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
Note how it starts.
It's easy to make a remix of Steamboat Willie that has a banner saying "NOT ENDORSED BY THE WALT DISNEY CORPORATION" and that will remove any confusion and then people can do what they want with it once the copyright expires. The whole world should mess with it.
1928.
ReplyDeleteJohn Kenneth Galbraith wrote:
“1928, indeed, was the last year in which Americans were bouyant, uninhibited, and utterly happy. It wasn’t that 1928 was too good to last; it was only that it didn’t last.”
Makes perfect sense that Mickey Mouse rose out of that milieu. I’d want to hang onto that for as long as I could, too.
(Totally unrelated aside: Leo Durocher played shortstop for the… Yankees!)
Hallahan High School has/had Mickey Mouse as mascot with full permission of Disney. My mother graduated in 1939 and told me the background. I graduated in 1967 and Mickey was still there.
ReplyDeleteI hate to be the bearer of bad news, but that high school closed at the end of the 2020/2021 school year. And yes, Mickey Mouse was still its mascot on the last day of classes.
DeleteOne of the problems of our copyright law is that it protects everything. For example, most books are copyrighted but most books turn very small or no profits. And yet, 20 or 30 or 40 years after the book was written or the author’s death, the book is still technically under copyright, even if the heirs and estate are non-existent. This prevents such books from being copied and made available digitally or on the internet, because there is always a chance that an heir might appear and sue the publisher. We need to somehow change that aspect of the law.
ReplyDeleteAt least, that is my understanding of the copyright law, which is extraordinarily complex.
if an author hopes their overlooked book will gain new readership through free circulation, the author could designate that book public domain well before it would go out of copyright.
Deleteone suggestion I have heard is to roll back the number of years copyright protects but allow owners and companies to pay for extensions for works they feel are valuable. That allows abandoned works to enter the public domain but allows that to not happen if the creators want to pay.
DeleteOf course congess would have to act so it isn’t likely.
The original intent of copyright and patent law, as enshrined in the constitution, was to encourage a thriving public domain from which new authors and inventors could draw to create their own innovations. The "limited time" monopoly allowed authors and inventors to exclusively profit from their creations before those creations entered and enriched the public domain. But since then, Congress has continually increased copyright terms as corporations came to own most copyrights.
ReplyDeleteBy 1998, copyrights for works created after 1976 lasted until 50 years after the death of the author; older copyrights lasted for 75 years. But that wasn't enough for multinational media conglomerates like Disney and AOL-Time-Warner, which considered the public domain merely a loss to shareholders. Their campaign donations bought the "Sonny Bono Copyright Act," which extended copyrights by 20 years and relieved them of the hassle and expense of renewing older copyrights still in their first terms. During the highly-scripted Congressional "debate" on this bill, not a word was uttered in opposition. They presumably expected to buy extensions every 20 years, thus perverting the Framers' intent of a vibrant public domain into a limitless monopoly for immortal corporations.
There now seems to be enough opposition to corporate dreams of eternal copyrights so that the conglomerates no longer consider it practical to buy additional extensions from Congress. A small but important victory over greed!
I wonder how The Simpson's episode 'Itchy & Scratchy Make A Movie' got by with their hilarious take 'Steamboat Itchy' ????
ReplyDeleteOn another note I far prefer the more rodent-like Mickey before he became the too-cute character most remember.
Haven't seen it but parody is protected by the First Amendment as a form of expression.
Deletethank you. That explains Bambi meets Godzilla.
DeleteCopyright law allows the right to parody, which is protected! Long live Steamboat Itchy!
DeleteConsider how much of Disney’s foundation was built with public domain properties (Snow White, Pinocchio, Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, ad infinitum), and the irony is unmistakable.
ReplyDeleteMaybe we should make everything 12 years - a) copyrights b) members of the House of Representatives c) US Senators d) Supreme Court Justices. We can keep President at two terms or 8 years (Trump would resign with one day left and claim he only had one full term).
ReplyDeleteWe should not be satisfied with works of art entering the public domain after a 100 years. t
ReplyDeleteWe should push for the “Mickey Mouse Protection Act” to be repealed.
The concept of copyright is to promote creative works by giving creators the exclusive right to profit from their creations *for a limited period*.
ReplyDeleteFair enough. But author's life plus 70 years (that could be more than 120 years altogether) is ridiculous.
If I'm thinking of putting time and effort into a creative work from which I hope to profit, does anyone seriously think that I'll be swayed by a fine calculation of how much royalties my grandchildren will getting from it in 100 years?
Fifty years from the creation of the work should be more than enough.
This is why the term of copyright should be limited. In the early Republic it was 15 years, but one year might be better.
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like humanity is quickly running out of new ideas. When existing copyrights need to be extended and defended vehemently, and existing characters "reinvented" with different traits and proclivities to appease certain demographics... it does not bode well for the future.
ReplyDelete