Quote:
Originally Posted by HansTWN
Yes, I had a similar idea. If Disney lost the the rights to the mouse, it would mean the loss of 10s of thousands of jobs, even 100's of thousands. Directly at Disney, but also at retailers, advertising companies, and at the factories that produce toys, etc for Disney (now the workers get paid well, if the Disney icon would become worthless then production would shift to low-end factories). A disaster for everybody, except for 99c stores and those sweatshop owners that have their employees work 60 hours each month at illegally low pay. Billions of dollars in value would be lost.
But unlimited copyright for books is a different story. The problem now is that the two are linked.
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If jobs are lost, it is because Disney failed to innovate and stagnated by resting on ideas and expressions that were created decades ago. Patents on pharmaceuticals last only 20 years or so (depending on your jurisdiction), but pharmaceutical companies appear to be doing okay; why should images of Mickey Mouse be different?
The point you bring up actually demonstrates how counter-productive copyright that lasts too long can be; the idea behind copyright is to encourage creators to create by giving them a limited monopoly, but the length of current US copyright actually encourages creators to rest on valuable IPs rather than take the risk of building new ones.