It’s Mickey, but not as you’ve ever seen him before.
A trailer for a slasher film, featuring a masked killer dressed as Mickey Mouse, was released on 1 January, the day that Disney’s copyright on the earliest versions of the cartoon character expired in the US.
“We wanted the polar opposite of what exists,” the movie’s producer said.
A new Mickey-inspired horror game, showing the rodent covered with blood stains, also dropped on the same day.
Steamboat Willie, a 1928 short film featuring early non-speaking versions of Mickey and Minnie, entered the public domain in the US on New Year’s Day.
It means cartoonists, novelists and filmmakers can now rework and use the earliest versions of Mickey and Minnie.
People will look back on this era and say, “just because they could have doesn’t mean they should have.”
This feels like a backlash to the insane length of copyright terms.
I don’t mind a good example being made of this. The original creator(s) are long dead and gone. All the current copyright laws do are prevent innovation and protect money flow of large corporations in my opinion. Is was originally so individuals who came up with new great ideas could reap the rewards of that idea. No longer is that the case.
“The Copyright Act of 1790 was the first statute in the United States to identify definite provisions of copyright law and permitted authors the right to their intellectual property for a duration of 14 years. Today, depending on the type of work, copyright terms can reach up to 120 years. Historically, Disney has been exceedingly protective of their intellectual property and is a prominent supporter and lobbyist for copyright term extension (Bernaski, 2014). Disney’s involvement in copyright term extension originates from their goal to prevent their copyrights from entering the public domain, specifically their Mickey Mouse character.”
Source of that quote.
I say make a good example of them. The creator should benifit from their creations, but ideas should not be stifled for generations to accomplish that.
Disclaimer: I have not read my source, shame on me if it is counter to my opinion. But corporations are not people, I don’t care what the SC says.
Oh I don’t disagree. I think the standard for most of the 20th century- 19 years with an option to renew for another 19, made a lot more sense. I just don’t praise these companies seeing dollar signs because they can capitalize off of a popular work becoming public domain almost the minute it enters the public domain either.
I agree fundamentally, but I think, especially with AI faking stuff, we need to get back to people just writing things off as shitty ripoffs and ignoring them. Take away the novelty of it and it’ll go away. Disney made this particular bed. Now they gotta lay in it.
I for some reason have enough faith in humanity that once we how dumb this all plays out some realistic rules can be put in place.
I don’t think we are in disagreement here at all. We’re talking about two different things. You’re talking about Disney rightfully getting hurt by this and I’m talking about the people who are going to be using this potentially amazing opportunity in what is likely to be an extremely lazy way like that Winnie the Pooh slasher film.
Just because Disney could lobby to make copyright law insanely long doesn’t mean they should have. It wouldn’t have been s big event if Disney didn’t make it one.
I’m not talking about copyright law, and if you read a tiny bit further down, you would see that I talked multiple times about the problem with modern copyright law and Disney’s part in it.
Shitty copyright law doesn’t mean we have to have shitty movies and shitty video games.