Mickey Mouse, née Steamboat Willie, is ninety years old this year and Disney is planning a two-hour prime-time special to celebrate. The animated icon hit the big screen in 1928. Today Mickey is the face of the Disney Company, the cartoon rodent worth an estimated $6 billion annually to the corporation’s bottom line. (Disney CEO Robert A. Iger pocketed $36,283,680 last year.) Our Constitution states, “To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.” It is the duty of Congress to determine said limited time. U.S. law at the time of Walt Disney’s death in 1966 provided copyright protection for 56 years. The Disney Company has shown that enough money for lawyers, lobbyists and campaign contributions can make those limits meaningless.
“A day will come, when, in the eye of the law, literary property will be as sacred as whiskey, or any other of the necessaries of life.” — Mark Twain, 1881.
During Mark Twain’s lifetime, copyrights were set at 28 years. If an author were still alive, it could be renewed an additional 14 years – total 42 years. Testifying before Congress is 1906, Mr. Clemens had this to say:
“I am interested particularly and especially in the part of the bill which concerns my trade. I like that extension of copyright life to the author’s life and fifty years afterward. I think that would satisfy any reasonable author, because it would take care of his children. Let the grandchildren take care of themselves. That would take care of my daughters, and after that I am not particular.”
In Twain’s recently-published autobiography, he seethes at length about the unfairness of it:
“One author per year produces a book which can outlive the forty-two-year limit; that’s all. This nation can’t produce two authors a year that can do it; the thing is demonstrably impossible. All that the limited copyright can do is to take the bread out of the mouths of the children of that one author per year. I made an estimate some years ago, … that we had published in this country since the Declaration of Independence 220,000 books. They have all gone. They had all perished before they were ten years old. It is only one book in 1000 that can outlive the forty-two-year limit.”
Curious logic. Since it would affect only himself and a very few others, there is no reason not to lengthen the limited time. Samuel Clemens is known and revered for many things; his greed has faded from public remembrance. In 1909, the year before he died, the copyright renewal term was extended to 28 years for a total of 56 years. Which means Mickey Mouse would go into the public domain in1984.
Yeah, like the Disney Company would let that happen. With intense Disney lobbying, the corporate term was extended in 1976 to 75 years. Mickey was good until 2003. Congress passed the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, aka the Mickey Mouse Protection Act, in 1998, increasing corporate copyright protection to 95 years. Disney and Mickey now are safe from the public domain until 2024. You can be sure the Disney Company is already working on legislators to fix that.
