Sunday, September 24, 2006
Disney wants infinite copyright
Boing Boing: "There's a small technical niggle about the 'When will Mickey Mouse enter the public domain?' campaigns, and it's this: Mickey Mouse, the character, is a trademark. Trademarks stay proprietary for as long as they're in use in commerce (but trademarks only protect against misleading commercial uses, not noncommercial use or commercial uses that don't mislead). The copyright question with Disney is more properly, 'When will old Mickey Mouse cartoons enter the public domain?'"
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2 comments:
This is a hard one, because Mickey Mouse is already a social icon. Whenever someone draws a circle with two little circles on top, the first thing that you think of is Mickey Mouse, which may be breaking some copyright law somewhere. Is it even possible for Disney to get the infinite copyright? And what is to stop Warner Brothers from getting Bugs Bunny copyrighted. This could turn into a big mess.
- Jen Owen
Mikey Mouse should go into the general domain. Why should disney be an execption for standard public regulations? They have plenty of incons that are within the time range that will continue to provide plenty of revenue. As Jen says, the mouse is already a social icon so if they really decided to provide an infinite copyright, there would be no practical way to enforce it. - Maddie Regan
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