this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2023
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Steamboat Willie, the first Mickey Mouse cartoon, will become public domain in literally 13 days.
Only because it's not as important for them to keep it, they make a lot of money from other properties
It's not just about money, but their image. Nintendo does the exact same thing with fan games that make $0.
No, they can't extend any further. The copyright has a hard expiration at the end of 2023.
I remember thinking that in 1998 too. It is too late to extend copyright for Steamboat Willie before it expires but that does not mean that corps like Disney won be fighting tooth and nail to extend it again in a few years when things they actually care about are expiring.
Yeah, Mickey is definitely going to be something they'll fight for in the future.
I don't find it probable they'll succeed in convincing Congress that copyright life should be significantly greater than a century, since that's nice and round and excessive, but we live in a corporation-first capitalist hellscape, so who knows?
They've lobbied before
They have, but they didn't. And it's not a foregone conclusion that they'd succeed. The longest copyright lifespan is currently 105 years from what I read, and I wonder if they could grease enough palms to convince people it should be longer than a century.
We're already in "excessively long" territory, and Congress still has a few reasonable people left, so I'm not convinced it would happen.