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In the case of companies like Disney they have a stake in keeping a copyright going because they (or rather the animators) have created interpretations of classic fairy tales. I.e. Snow White, Pinocchio, Sleeping Beauty, etc. and they don't want others to make their own versions which might take $$ away from the purchase of their versions (or so I understand from old chats here at MR). Others do it for similar reasons. Conde Nast claims ownership of a boat load of OTR programs for example. The ironic thing is that they wouldn't have OTR episodes to claim ownership of in a lot of cases if it weren't for private citizens collecting the shows way back when. That's because the media was either very fragile and/or the radio stations that presented the programs back in the heyday of radio didn't think they were worth preserving and so they weren't save by the citizens that listened to them. I don't deny that Disney has the right to protect what it makes, but the actual stories themselves pre-date the creation of the Disney Studios by generations in a lot of cases.
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