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The "Steamboat Willie" debacle or: Why IP does us more harm than good (www.forbes.com)

submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Hello frens,

As a great opponent of any form of IP, I have been following the event of Disney's Steamboat Willie entering the public domain with great amusement. The incidents where creators have been falsely demonetized on youtube for rightfully using this film is further underpinned by Disney's decades-long shameless practices. The linked article sums it up quite well I think.

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[–] [email protected] 39 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Title of this post is a bit misleading. You’re suggesting the article spells out how Disney’s, and other companies’, rabid protection of its IP is a Bad Thing, when it’s really more of a history and primer on what’s changed with Steamboat Willie entering PD.

[–] [email protected] 42 points 10 months ago

Thanks to the so-called “Mickey Mouse Protection Act” of 1998, Disney, along with other entertainment companies, permanently damaged the collective creative landscape by walling off the public domain.

The great irony, of course, is that Disney built its library of animated classics by adapting European fairy tales that exist in the public domain. Despite Disney benefiting from the free use of old stories, the studio has never hesitated to take legal action to protect its most iconic character, several decades after Walt Disney created him.

Over the decades, Disney’s brutal copyright take-downs have become the stuff of legend. The litigious studio famously forced daycare centers to remove murals featuring Mickey and Minnie; for Disney, copyright law even applies to a child’s tombstone.

[...] the mouse is symbolic of a decades-long battle over the public domain, which the public lost. Today, the battleground has shifted, as powerful corporations no longer view tight copyright protection as beneficial, thanks to the requirements of generative AI.

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