Mickey Mouse is free at last (from 'copyright')

Those in charge of the Disney archive say that in 1930 a man waited for Walt Disney outside a hotel in Los Angeles to make him a proposal. The subject was willing to offer him $300 in cash to allow him to reproduce a drawing of his on the covers of some notebooks. The cartoon that interested him was that of a mouse that had appeared a couple of years earlier in the animated short film Steamboat Willie, directed by Disney and Ub Iwerks. Disney, a little short on liquidity at the time, said yes right there. It was the beginning of the exploitation of Mickey Mouse, a character that has appeared in countless products over several generations. As of January 1, the most famous rodent in the world is free.

Mickey Mouse loses copyright protection in the United States in 2024. The first modern version of the cartoon, which debuted in that Disney and Iwerks short, where the mouse pilots a steamboat and whistles a song from 1910, appears on the list of works that enter the public domain. This annual selection, known as Public Domain Day, is collected by Jennifer Jenkins, a subject matter expert at Duke University. The generation that is freed this January after 95 years of rights is especially powerful.

They are works, films and songs published in 1928 (and some sound recordings from 1923). Along with Mickey they also appear Lady Chatterley's Loverby D. H. Lawrence; orlandoby Virginia Woolf, or The Threepenny Opera, by Bertolt Brecht, among others. They include films by Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, the last silent film that Harold Lloyd made and The Passion of Joan of Arcby Carl Theodor Dreyer, considered one of the early masterpieces of cinema.

Steamboat Willie It was the third work to feature Mickey and Minnie, but it was the first to be exhibited publicly. Another of those shorts is Plan Crazy. Disney, as he himself explained, was inspired by performances by stars of the time such as Douglas Fairbanks and Charlie Chaplin to mold the mouse. The title of the short was taken borrowed from Steamboat Billa Buster Keaton film (which has been in the public domain for 67 years).

The mouse occupies the most prominent position among the cultural products that will be released from copyright in 2024 in the United States. Especially due to the battle for copyright that the Disney company has maintained in court in recent decades to squeeze the benefits that the copyright for your creative universe. “What Disney has always done is reuse the public domain to enclose it again,” says Ignasi Labastida, one of the leaders of the Creative Commons organization, dedicated to promoting access and exchange of culture.

An example is the 2016 version of The jungle booka film that emerges from the 1957 original and this, in turn, from a collection of stories by Rudyard Kipling that lost the copyright in 2011. The same thing happens with Frozeninspired by a story by Hans Christian Andersen; Fancywhich draws from a poem by Goethe, or The Lion Kinginspired in Hamlet, of Shakespeare. Not to mention The little Mermaid, Cinderella either Pinocchio. “By making a derivative work, it generates new rights, but now it is clear that these cannot be extended infinitely,” says Labastida.

Disney doesn't just use great works of literature as a creative source. He is also one of the most active actors in defending the rights of his creations. “His role has been critical in the battle of the lobbies that extended the protections of copyright in 1976 and then in 1998,” writes science fiction author and digital activist Cory Doctorow. The rule approved in Congress in 1998, proposed by the singer Sonny Bono, who became a legislator, froze the passage of works into the public domain for 20 years, setting the period of rights at 95 years. There are some experts who call this law the Mickey Mouse Act, although this may be an exaggeration according to Jenkins (because there were other actors who pushed for its approval).

With this law, Mickey Mouse gained time under the protection of the copyright. She loses it now, but only in the United States. “2024 is a symbolic year,” Jenkins writes. “The love triangle between Mickey, Disney and the public domain is about to evolve and may even be resolved in real time,” adds the specialist. In the European Union, the laws provide for expiration 70 years after the death of the creator of the work. In Spain it is 10 more years. This is why we will have to wait until 2036 and 2046 to see Walt Disney's creations released in Europe.

Starting this year, people will be able to freely use the mouse in the United States. However, in a matter as controversial as copyright There are some conditions. Whoever wishes may use the drawing of Steamboat Willie to copy, share, adapt or add to it. But it is still a trademark, so it cannot be used to link a third-party product to Disney.

“More modern versions of Mickey have not been affected by the expiration of the copyright of Steamboat Willie“, and Mickey will continue to play the role of global ambassador for our company and in our narrative, amusement parks and in our merchandise,” the company said in a statement to the Associated Press agency. This means that the versions of the rodents that appear in Fancy or in the successive television series that the network has developed continue to have copyright. The company assures that “it will work to prevent confusion due to the unauthorized use of Mickey and other iconic characters.”

The never-never land

In addition to Mickey, another beloved childhood character makes his Public Domain Day debut. It's about Peter Pan, the boy who refuses to grow up in never-never land. He was created by the Scottish JM Barrie and his case helps to understand how capricious and problematic the subject of copyright can be in a global world. The work loses its protection in the United States in 2024, despite the fact that the play has been performed since 1904 and the novel appeared in 1911.

Peter Pan It is now listed because it was first published in its entirety in 1928. In the United Kingdom, however, the story is very different. Shortly after the play's release, Barrie gifted the rights to the Great Ormon Street Children's Hospital. Since then it has been the main form of financing for the center, which collects royalties from the books, films and plays of the original work.

The rights expired in 1987, but the then Prime Minister, James Callaghan, proposed a rule to extend protection of the novel in perpetuity. With the harmonization of laws that the EU brought, Peter Pan became a problem. So the rest of Europe adopted the 70 years since Barrie's death, while in the UK the hospital remains the beneficiary.

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