|
There is a huge amount of confusion between copyright and trademark in this thread. Even if "Steamboat Willie" went into the public domain, it wouldn't mean that anyone could simply use Mickey Mouse in any new movie that they wanted to. The character is still trademarked by Disney.
Would Disney go bankrupt if someone else could release a DVD of early Mickey Mouse movies, which is the kind of thing we're actually talking about with an expiring copyright? I somehow doubt it.
It's also amusing to me that those who would defend Disney's right to perpetual copyright to the death somehow manage to forget that if perpetual copyright had been the law in the 1930's, Disney probably couldn't have made, say, Snow White, which would still have been under copyright to the heirs of the Grimm brothers.
|