Here's the thing about Mickey Mouse, though: he's a cultural icon, but he's also a corporate spokesperson (after a fashion, since he's not a real person). Disney used his face as corporate identity for decades, and the character has served in a capacity that is part logo, part spokesman, part brand identity.
I really hate Disney, but if you identify yourself as a member of a consumer culture, you're going to have to get right with the fact that one of your cultural icons is owned by someone who can deny you the right to use it.
If copy rights and their terms of duration (not sure the legal term for that, what I mean is, how long does it last before it goes away) were sane and reasonable I'd be all for it. However, this is no longer the case. Copy Right was based on patent law, and to this day patents expire. And patents (if you remove the oddball notion of patenting a business model, which should not be allowed, but is another topic) expire: no matter how hard you work on the cure for cancer, you've only got a few years (pretty sure its less than 20, not sure what it is exactly) to profit from that work before it reenters the public domain. In this way, the needs of all individuals are met: the inventor has an opportunity to profit from his work, and that work is still protected from being ripped off for that time, giving the inventor an incentive to not just bury discovery. Meanwhile the public benefits, because that discovery is made public. And society benefits, because eventually that idea returns to the public domain, and any one may continue to work with it.
This was the general notion of Copy Right when it began, but a few strange and unfortunate things happened. For one, the term of duration was extended for what seemed at the time very reasonable casues to, essentially, "life of the creator plus about 20 years," more or less, thus allowing an author (or any other artist) to provide for his children in the event of his death. Now, some might call this silly (the rest of us have to save up for that contingency, but not Tolkien's kids!) but its not wholly unreasonable. But this duration was extended, and at the same time corporations have been granted the legal rights of people (like I said, strange and unfortunate), even though corporations never die of old age. I'm going to skip over a few of the little incremental steps along the way, but the end result is that the duration of copy right has been extended to grossly long periods of time. In the US:
This is governed by statutory section 17 USC 302. According to this section, a work that is created (fixed in tangible form for the first time) on or after January 1, 1978 is ordinarily given a term enduring for the author's life, plus an additional 70 years after the author's death. In the case of "a joint work" prepared by two or more authors that was not a "work made for hire," the term lasts for 70 years after the last surviving author's death. For works made for hire, and for anonymous and pseudonymous works (unless the author's identity is revealed in Copyright Office records), the duration of copyright will be 95 years from publication or 120 years from creation, whichever is shorter. For more information on joint works and works made for hire, see the BitLaw discussion on Copyright Ownership.
It didn't used to be 120 years, the duration has been extended by small steps several times, and there is absolutely no reason to suspect that they won't be extended again... right around the time Steam Boat Willy is due to enter the public domain.
Also, Mr. Hatchett, you're confusing Copy Right with Trade Mark. A Trade Mark (for instance, the Nike Swoosh) does, and should, last for ever. Thus it would be wrong for my scathing satire of US culture from the point of view of an enslaved mouse to be presented as having been created by Disney, but I believe (even though the law does not support me in this) the creation of the story itself has merit and should not be illegal.
Sure, I hate Disney, but I feel this way about, well, every artistic work ever created. I'm not trying to argue in favor of plagiarism, such as my retyping Harry Potter and selling my version of it, but rather of derivative works, such as me telling a different story about some other students at Hogwarts, perhaps a young Dumbeldor or something. This should be legal, but isn't (and in our society, its in good company there with other perfectly fine but illegal activities.) which is a shame, because I was working on a tie-in to team Dumbeldor up with Yoda. Woulda been awesome, man.
Jesus... I gotta stop arguing this crap on the intertubes.
