[tyng]

If a cartoon character is still in commercial use and being further developed, I'm not sure if it's good practice to turn it into public domain. I don't think there had been corporations/artists that have had the longevity of Disney, and the fact that Disney has continued to invest in and develop the characters over the years makes this somewhat of a special case (compared to other literature characters where the author stops developing them after they are published).

I'm no copyright lawyer nor do I know much about copyright laws, but one should recognise the positive effects of copyright protection, which encourages innovation and investment. Those incremental investments Disney has made should be acknowledged.

But of course, the danger in this argument is that in the future someone can just make tiny face-value 'investments' into their copyright to argue for an extension, that would be detrimental to the whole copyright vs innovation balance.

[humanrebar]

> If a cartoon character is still in commercial use and being further developed, I'm not sure if it's good practice to turn it into public domain.

Disney doesn't have any issues defending its repackaged public domain products like fairy tales. I don't see why Mickey Mouse would be harder to brand and market than the Disney princesses.

[cptskippy]

At this point he's probably a trademark. Everything by Disney uses Mickey Mouse badges or iconography to identify itself as Disney.

[moate]

IANAL, but the Mouse Ears logo is different than the character himself. Fewer things are branded with Mickey's face.

[WorldMaker]

I feel like the distinction between copyright (with term limits, but strong protections) and trademark (with no term limits, but strong weaknesses) should be enough for a company like Disney. Maybe there should be some sort of "franchise copyright" somewhere in between the two, but I've never heard a good specific idea to that.

However, I heard one proposed idea that prolonged copyright extensions (or variable copyright terms, if you'd prefer) might make sense as a corporate property tax that increases over time after the baseline expiration (and better if you reset the baseline to something smaller again).

That would at least trigger bottom line decisions in corporations if keeping something in copyright (and out of the public domain) is worth the annual property taxes on it. Some of that tax could go directly to archival/preservation efforts for those properties in the proper spirit of insuring their legacy for the public domain, eventually. Most of that tax would indirectly go towards discouraging companies from IP "tenements" where rent is collected (subscription/access charges), but innovation/investment diminished a long time ago. (Mickey has new cartoons on YouTube every so often, but how many properties does Disney own that other than maybe a bare conversion to Netflix or soon Disney+ streaming they haven't done anything with in decades?)

[tyng]

I like this idea for its simplicity, a commercial problem with negative externality to the public can generally be solved with taxation.

[paulnechifor]

Perpetual copyright does the opposite of encouraging innovation. Consider how many of the highest grossing movies are made up of endless sequels and reboots of existing franchises vs how many are new.

I'm sure you're right that it encourages investment, but I don't think that the commoditization of culture makes it more innovative or better (for my subjective definition of better).

[Too]

Maybe a reasonable approach would be a short default copyright time with the option to renew it every 5-10 years for a big sum of money.

This will prevent copyright squatters on works with high value for public but lesser monetary value, like WWII footage just collecting dust as mentioned in the article.

[screye]

> cartoon character is still in commercial use and being further developed

I feel this should be restricted to the originator of the work itself.

A property can wait till the primary author is done with the work (inside reasonable intervals..sorry GRR martin), before starting the timer of it entering public domain.

However, works like Batman and Mickey that get tossed between committees and multiple authors, should not be viewed in the same way.

[GFischer]

It´s copyrighted for the author´s lifetime, so the primary author will have no problem, and what you say was the original intent.

It´s how many years after death that is the problem.