How Mickey Mouse Keeps Changing Copyright Law

When the Copyright Act was start enacted in the United States, the copyright duration was merely fourteen years. Today Copyright duration can last over a century in some cases. Why such a desperate change? Some say it is all due to a cute little mouse named Mickey.

Copyright duration had some changes over the 125-years before Mickey Mouse. In the Copyright Human activity of 1790, the fourteen-twelvemonth term was renewable for 1 additional 14-year term, if the writer was alive at the end of the outset xiv years. And information technology merely practical to maps, charts, and books. Registration and utilise of a copyright notice were likewise required. If you lot didn't meet those requirements, the work immediately entered into the public domain. By 1831 it was changed to 28 years with a 14-year renewal and in 1909, copyright duration became 28 years with a 28-year renewal. Very few works actually maintained those copyright durations equally only a small percentage of people even bothered to register copyrights in the kickoff identify, and of those that did, only a tiny fraction renewed them.

Disney now has until 2023 to figure out how to extend that date one time again.

Enter Steamboat Willy, the offset Mickey Mouse cartoon and the starting time animated curt by Walt Disney in 1928. Under the 1909 Copyright scheme, the Mickey Mouse character had copyright protection for 56 years (with the renewal), expiring in 1984. With the impending loss of copyright on it's mascot, Disney is said to accept begun serious lobbying button for changes to the Copyright Act.

Mickey Mouse and Copyright

In 1976, Congress authorized a major overhaul of the copyright organization assuring Disney extended protection. Instead of the maximum of 56 years with extensions, private authors were granted protection for their life plus an additional 50 years, (which was the norm in Europe). For works authored past corporations, the 1976 legislation besides granted a retroactive extension for works published before the new system took effect. The maximum term for already-published works was lengthened from 56 years to 75 years pushing Mickey protection out to 2003. Anything published in 1922 or before was in the public domain. Anything after that may still be under copyright.

With only 5 years left on Mickey Mouse's copyright term, Congress again changed the duration with the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 . This legislation lengthens copyrights for works created on or after January 1, 1978, to "life of the author plus lxx years," and extends copyrights for corporate works to 95 years from the yr of get-go publication, or 120 years from the yr of creation, whichever expires get-go. That pushed Mickey'due south copyright protection out to 2023.

The chart higher up illustrates the "Mickey Mouse Curve," showing how copyright duration has inverse close to each time Mickey Mouse is virtually to expire.

Not everybody has been happy most these changes due to our inability to use old work to create new artistic works. One author noted that we are "the first generation to deny our ain culture to ourselves" since "no work created during your lifetime will, without witting action by its creator, become available for you to build upon."

Disney now has until 2023 to figure out how to extend that date in one case once again. In five years or so, nosotros can probably expect to run across stories almost proposed changes to copyright duration, once once more. It is unlikely that a company as potent as Disney will sit down by and permit Steamboat Willie to enter the Public Domain.

What would you do with Steamboat Willie's Mickey Mouse if information technology enters the public domain? Post your ideas in the comments section below.