Quote:
Originally Posted by Shaggy
Why would Disney have to worry about competing when it's far easier to eliminate the competition by suing.
|
Because all someone has to do is draw a different mouse, on a different steamboat, better than Disney's. You can't sue over that. What you can sue over is someone taking Disney's mouse (or steamboat) and using a close copy of it to make money*. The Disney Company is quite correctly adamant about that.
Some folks on teh Intertoobz are of the opinion that all information, including copyrighted IP, should be free immediately. Chinese media pirates agree. The law in most places disagrees.
Most people can get into (and eventually out of) a rational, productive argument about how long IP should be protected. Totally unprotected, or protected forever, are both reserved for zealots, or very greedy (and often unwise) corporate executives. Personally, I think the correct answer for terms of copyright are on the order of a few decades, not a century, but I don't get too excited about it.
Regards,
Jack Tingle
*Parodies excepted.