Free Mickey! - Information Activists Fight Copyright Laws
Pacific News Service, Walter Truett Anderson, Posted: Sep 17, 2002
Isn't it time to let creators copy or improvise on longtime icons such as Mickey Mouse without running afoul of copyright laws? A coalition of information warriors is taking on Disney, other entertainment giants and the U.S. government to, in their words, "Free the Mouse."
If you should happen to see a car with a "FREE THE MOUSE" bumper sticker, you might guess it has something to do with the animal liberation movement. You'd be wrong -- it's about another movement entirely, a loose network of computer geeks, libertarians, lawyers, and information warriors who think U.S. copyright laws have grown excessively zealous in their protection of commercially valuable symbols such as Mickey Mouse.
These activists believe it's time to let the venerable rodent scurry out into the public domain to join Santa Claus, Uncle Sam and other familiar icons that people can freely copy without paying royalties.
The movement centers on the lawsuit "Eldred v. Ashcroft," scheduled to come before the Supreme Court on Oct. 9. The lead plaintiff, Eric Eldred, maintains a Web site where you can find -- and download and read free of charge -- various unusual and out-of-print books by authors such as Oliver Wendell Holmes and H. L. Mencken. The defendant is, of course, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft and the law being challenged is the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act of 1998. Authored by the late rock singer turned Congressman -- a vigilant protector of the interests of the entertainment industry -- the law extended the terms of all existing copyrights by 20 years.
Lawrence Lessig, a Stanford University law professor who supports the challenge, calls the law the "Mickey Mouse protection act." "Every time Mickey is about to pass into the public domain, copyright terms are extended," he says.
Mickey isn't the only creation affected by the extension. Copyrights on thousands of works about to enter the public domain -- including the novel "The Great Gatsby," the classic movie "The Jazz Singer," and the 1927 hit musical "Showboat" -- were similarly extended. But Disney, with a multimillion-dollar industry based largely on the adaptation of characters and stories in the public domain, is being singled out for the most criticism for preventing its own creation from becoming similarly available to new generations of improvisors.
In its early years, the Disney organization drew heavily on familiar stories -- Snow White, Pinocchio, the Sorcerer's Apprentice -- and on parodies of other movies. In fact, Mickey Mouse made his first appearance as Steamboat Willie in a cartoon that was based on the Buster Keaton movie "Steamboat Bill." In the days when copyright laws were less rigidly enforced, such parodies weren't generally regarded as violations.
Lessig says he is happy to give the Disney people due credit for producing inventive new cultural forms that gave delight to generations of children. His argument is only that, having profited immensely from that culturally free environment, the Disney Corporation and the other entertainment giants are proceeding to create a new and much more restrictive one.
"Creativity and innovation always build on the past," Lessig says. "The past always tries to control the creativity that builds upon it. Free societies enable the future by limiting the power of the past."
So the plaintiffs are charging that the Bono law exceeds the power of Congress. The Constitution authorized Congress to pass laws guaranteeing authors and inventors protection of their works "for limited times" -- the idea being that the creators would thus be suitably rewarded, and that society would be enriched as the works passed into the public domain. The government and supporters of the Bono law argue that such extensions of copyright protection are well within the powers of Congress -- which has done it several times before -- and that the new arrangement brings the United States into conformity with the realities of the 21st century and with practices in Europe and elsewhere.
The trend is clearly in the direction of longer copyright protection. Under the first U.S. law, an author could copyright a book for 14 years -- renewable once. Under the present law, it is life plus 70 years, thus guaranteeing rewards not only to a creator but to a generation or two of heirs and/or stockholders.
So, from the government perspective, the latest extension is merely another step toward building a strong global system of copyright law and enforcement. The plaintiffs see a corporate grab turning what were once creations into commodities, constricting the growth of the public domain. Another tragedy of the commons, where that familiar mouse with the big ears may live on only in gilded captivity.
PNS contributor Walter Truett Anderson (waltt@well.com) is a political scientist and author of "All Connected Now: Life in the First Global Civilization" (Westview Press, 2001).
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