If you're excited that things are entering the #PublicDomain — which you should be! — perhaps it's worth considering reforming copyright.
In many places currently it's 70 years after the death of the author, or longer. This is insanity.
An important piece of culture made by a young author could be locked behind copyright (with rights usually held by publishers, not authors themselves anyway) for over a *century*.
That's how you get #Disney to own almost everything.
Reform #copyright!
...and Disney of course used lots of public domain material while at the same time trying to extend copyright indefinitely on its own creations.
Cinderella, Aladdin, Snow White, Little Mermaid, The Jungle Book, Beauty & The Beast, Alice In Wonderland, Pocahontas, Frozen (based on the Ice Queen), Mulan, Pinocchio, Sleeping Beauty, Robin Hood etc etc etc were all PD, but Disney has done everything it can to try to stop cartoons they made almost 100 years ago become PD themselves.
Disney have even started using their first Mickey Mouse cartoon "Steamboat Willie" as an animated logo to try to stop it going public domain in January 2024.
The theory is that if a logo is trademarked, then the contents of the logo also remains out of the public domain while the trademark continues to be used.
It's not clear yet if they will get away with it, but it's clear they are trying to.
a key feature here is that trademarks lack an expiration date, even a nominal, ridiculously extended one.
most maintenance is accomplished through the process that generates those cease-and-desist letters that are being sent out anyway
Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦
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