Trung Phan has a great newsletter, and one of the topics he wrote about recently was how Disney loves — but also hates — the idea of copyrighted work losing its protection and winding up in public domain. Here’s an excerpt:
“January 1st is Public Domain Day, when works lose their copyright protection. The 2024 batch was highly highly anticipated. Why? Because Disney lost the copyright on Mickey Mouse (specifically, the version that was in the 1928 “Steamboat Willie” short film). And people care about Disney because the entertainment conglomerate has a very contradictory relationship to copyright.
On the one hand, the number of Disney films that are sniped from Public Domain is astounding. There are at least 50 of them. Just 8 of these sources — including Rudyard Kipling (The Jungle Book), Hans Christian Andersen (The Little Sea Maid), Lewis Carroll (Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland) and some little-known writer named Shakespeare — have accounted for more than $16B at the box office:
But when it comes to Disney’s own content, it’s a very different story. Why? In 1927, Walt and his chief animator created a popular cartoon character named Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. The character blew up and then the chief animator took his team to Universal and basically jacked Oswald. In response, Walt was determined to never let someone else control the fate of his animations. This has manifested in US copyright laws conveniently being extended every single time Disney’s works are about to enter the public domain:
