I don't nessisarily want people to be able to use Mickey Mouse, I want to force companies to stop milking old content. Why innovate when stagnation brings a steady paycheck from old Beatles songs etc.
No one is stopping you from innovating. If Disney wishes to sit on their laurels with Mickey Mouse, that's their problem. If people don't like it, they'll go to other things.
I will, however, point out that they are very much not doing that.
Now, my sister actually makes moves at Disney so I am well aware they do make new content. But, their model is very much based on milking old content and then waiting for new content to be fond childhood movies.
Snow white is from 1937 so they put out Maleficent which was somewhat original. But they also just remade Beauty and the Beast from 1991.
OK? How is any of that stopping YOU from innovating?
And there are many different forms of innovation. For one, the technological innovation needed to bring the new Beauty and the Beast to the screen. You could also say the same thing about The Jungle Book from a year or two ago, yet the technological innovation to present the story in the way they did recently is miles away from what they had when they made the original animated film.
It's not about what I do, it's about what I get for giving them a control over intellectual property. Patents are a well studied tradeoff, but so is any form of legaly protected monopoly.
Whenever people give up power without gaining enough you can expect a backlash. Given the option I would vote to end copyright and I am not alone. Everything after that point is a compromise on my part, especially when Shakesphere had zero copyright protection. Just picture the music that rises to the top without music promoters.
Once again, I'm still not seeing how this actually affects you. I'm not seeing how this stops you from creating something new. I don't, and no one else should care about what other companies do with their creations.
You talk about "giving up power", but be honest: what power should you have over someone else's creation? Why should you get to use their creation, or why should you get to tell them how to use it?
"Just picture the music that rises to the top without music promoters."
It would be exactly the same, because music promoters would still exist. The existence or non existence of copyright is not going to change what's popular. And the existence of copyright does absolutely nothing to stop you from trying to make something new.
> I'm still not seeing how this actually affects you.
I stopped writing a book that happened to be overly close to another book someone else published. I had not read it when I started, but reading the second book I could no longer really separate the ideas. Now, sure plenty of people keep going in that situation but technically it does not take much to cross into derivative works. It's also why may (but far from all) writers stop reading others works.
I will, however, point out that they are very much not doing that.