Unhappy birthday: Mickey Mouse turns 80

Today marks the 80th anniversary of the first Mickey Mouse cartoon, “Steamboat Willie.” It also marks the 5th anniversary of the date that cartoon should have entered the public domain, if not for the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. Now the cartoon will be protected until 2023.

It has been observed by many copyfighters that whenever the copyright on “Steamboat Willie” is in danger of running out, Disney goes running to the Congress to extend the copyright term. (Some claim that it was to bring the United States in line with international copyright treaties, but on the other hand a number of other countries in full compliance with those treaties have shorter copyrights.)

This affects not only Disney’s own properties but virtually everything that has been published since 1923.

Disney is, of course, concerned that once “Steamboat Willie” hits the public domain, they will have a million competitors all making their own derivative works based on “Steamboat Willie”‘s Mickey Mouse. This is a touch ironic given that “Steamboat Willie” was itself a derivative work—a parody of the Buster Keaton film “Steamboat Bill, Jr.” released earlier that year.

Copyfighter Lawrence Lessig and antique bookseller Eric Eldred sued to overturn the law, going all the way to the Supreme Court. Unfortunately, they lost 7-2. The history of the suit and its failure at the Supreme Court are chronicled in chapter 13 of Lessig’s book Free Culture.

It will be interesting to see what happens in another five years, when the expiration of Disney’s treasured copyright once more begins to loom ten years away. Will Disney begin to lobby Congress for another extension? Will Congress and the American people have learned their lesson about copyright extension yet?

Time will tell.