I would be supportive of some of these changes, but only if copyright terms were reduced from Life + 70 years to 30 years. The public domain is one of our greatest assets, and current copyright law–the law we actively seek to impose on the rest of the world via trade agreements–bury the public domain.
The Founding Fathers’ copyright was 14 years. We now in practive have a perpetual copyright, meaning Congress has acted whenever Disney’s own characters, namely Mickey, have risked entering the public domain.
Disney is the perfect example of this. Here is a partial list of Disney characters which are based on material they took from the public domain:
Adventures of Huck Finn (Mark Twain)
Aladdin (folk tale)
Alice In Wonderland (Lewis Carroll)
Around the World in 80 Days (Jules Verne)
Atlantis (Plato)
Beauty and the Beast (G-S Barbot de Villeneuve)
Bug’s Life (Aesop’s Fables)
Cinderella (Grimm’s Fairy Tales)
Chicken Little (folk tale)
Christmas Carol (Charles Dickens)
Fantasia (Bach, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven)
Frozen (Hans Christian Anderson)
Hercules (Greek myth)
In Search of the Castaways (Jules Verne)
John Carter (Edgar Rice Burroughs)
Kidnapped (Robert Louis Stevenson)
Lt. Robin Crusoe U.S.N. (Daniel Defoe)
Mulan (Chinese legend of Hua Mulan)
Oliver & Company (Charles Dickens)
Return to Neverland (J.M. Barrie)
Pinocchio (Carlo Collodi)
Pocahontas (historical person)
Princess and the Frog (Brothers Grimm)
Return to Oz (L. Frank Baum)
Rob Roy and the Highland Rogue (Sir Walter Scott)
Robin Hood (English folk tale)
Sorcerer’s Apprentice (Johann Goethe)
Snow White (Brothers Grimm)
Sleeping Beauty (Charles Perrault, Tchaikovsky)
Swiss Family Robinson (Johann David Wyss)
Tangled (Brothers Grimm)
Tarzan (Edgar Rice Burroughs)
The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr Toad (Washington Irving & Kenneth Grahame)
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Victor Hugo)
The Lion King (Shakespeare & Kimba The White Lion)
The Jungle Book (Rudyard Kipling)
The Reluctant Dragon (Kenneth Grahame)
The Sword In THe Stone (Arthurian legend)
Three Musketeers (Alexandre Dumas)
Tom and Huck (Mark Twain)
Treasure Planet (Robert Louis Stevenson)
Muppet Treasure Island (Robert Louis Stevenson)
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (Jules Verne)
White Fang (Jack London)
I would be supportive of some of these changes, but only if copyright terms were reduced from Life + 70 years to 30 years. The public domain is one of our greatest assets, and current copyright law–the law we actively seek to impose on the rest of the world via trade agreements–bury the public domain.
The Founding Fathers’ copyright was 14 years. We now in practive have a perpetual copyright, meaning Congress has acted whenever Disney’s own characters, namely Mickey, have risked entering the public domain.
Disney is the perfect example of this. Here is a partial list of Disney characters which are based on material they took from the public domain:
Adventures of Huck Finn (Mark Twain)
Aladdin (folk tale)
Alice In Wonderland (Lewis Carroll)
Around the World in 80 Days (Jules Verne)
Atlantis (Plato)
Beauty and the Beast (G-S Barbot de Villeneuve)
Bug’s Life (Aesop’s Fables)
Cinderella (Grimm’s Fairy Tales)
Chicken Little (folk tale)
Christmas Carol (Charles Dickens)
Fantasia (Bach, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven)
Frozen (Hans Christian Anderson)
Hercules (Greek myth)
In Search of the Castaways (Jules Verne)
John Carter (Edgar Rice Burroughs)
Kidnapped (Robert Louis Stevenson)
Lt. Robin Crusoe U.S.N. (Daniel Defoe)
Mulan (Chinese legend of Hua Mulan)
Oliver & Company (Charles Dickens)
Return to Neverland (J.M. Barrie)
Pinocchio (Carlo Collodi)
Pocahontas (historical person)
Princess and the Frog (Brothers Grimm)
Return to Oz (L. Frank Baum)
Rob Roy and the Highland Rogue (Sir Walter Scott)
Robin Hood (English folk tale)
Sorcerer’s Apprentice (Johann Goethe)
Snow White (Brothers Grimm)
Sleeping Beauty (Charles Perrault, Tchaikovsky)
Swiss Family Robinson (Johann David Wyss)
Tangled (Brothers Grimm)
Tarzan (Edgar Rice Burroughs)
The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr Toad (Washington Irving & Kenneth Grahame)
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Victor Hugo)
The Lion King (Shakespeare & Kimba The White Lion)
The Jungle Book (Rudyard Kipling)
The Reluctant Dragon (Kenneth Grahame)
The Sword In THe Stone (Arthurian legend)
Three Musketeers (Alexandre Dumas)
Tom and Huck (Mark Twain)
Treasure Planet (Robert Louis Stevenson)
Muppet Treasure Island (Robert Louis Stevenson)
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (Jules Verne)
White Fang (Jack London)
You took the words right out of my mouth!