Happy New Year! As you nurse your hangover, check out this perfectly legal image below. It's a still from Walt Disney's 1928 cartoon "Steamboat Willie." It is reproduced here without permission from the Walt Disney Corporation. It has also been noticeably altered: I colored the buttons on Mickey Mouse's shorts purple, I added a speech bubble for him to declare his favorite academic subject, and I elongated his characteristic round ears into pointy ones.
This would not have been legal yesterday, but it is legal today -- As of 2024, Steamboat Willie has officially become a part of the public domain.
The first U.S. Copyright Act was put into effect in 1790. The creator of a musical work had the exclusive right to publish and distribute that work for fourteen years. When that fourteen years was up, he or she then had the option to renew the copyright for another fourteen years. After the renewal period, the work became a part of the public domain. When something is in the public domain, it means that other people can use that work without asking for permission, and without paying for it. The law was amended in 1831 (increasing the initial term of protection to 28 years) and 1909 (increasing the renewal period to 28 years as well). The next major revision to the law happened in 1976: The 1976 Copyright Act increased copyright protection to the life of the author plus 50 years. This can be a very, very long time.
I've given many lectures about copyright law, and the example that I usually use is the song "Old Time Rock and Roll," which was released by Bob Seger in 1978, when he was 33 years old. Seger is 78 years old now, so if he lives until he's 85 (2030), the copyright for "Old Time Rock and Roll" will last until the year 2080 - over 100 years after it was written. However, copyright terms were made even longer with the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998. This act extended copyright protection lengths by another 20 years after the death of the author. (When the extension act went into effect, it resulted in a 20-year lacuna where nothing entered the public domain, ending in 2019.) This makes “Old Time Rock and Roll” copyrighted until the year 2100 – assuming Bob Seger lives to be 85 years old.
Who is benefitting from these long terms of protection? The songwriters themselves cannot make money after their deaths. The big winners in situations like these are corporations and the children and grandchildren of great songwriters. (Have you read About a Boy by Nick Hornby, or seen the movie version? A main character lives off of the royalties he receives because his deceased father wrote a famous Christmas song.) Indeed, some of the biggest supporters of the 1998 extension act were the estates of George and Ira Gershwin and Irving Berlin, and yes, the Walt Disney Company - it was actually deemed "The Mickey Mouse Protection Act" by some counter-advocates. Prior to this act, “Steamboat Willie” was due to enter the public domain in 2003, but Disney was able to lobby for 20 more years of protection.
Putting aside my jokey image at the beginning of this post, a rich public domain is essential to creativity and the genesis of new works. Nothing is new, nothing is original; we're all using bits and pieces of previous works to cobble together more art - and I don't say that derisively; it's the way we work as humans. It's also essential for access - if something is in the public domain, it can't be behind a paywall. Knowledge is power, but access to that knowledge is an often-forgotten prerequisite. (Click for more!)
(Wondering what else entered the public domain today? Click here!)