Jim On Film
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Snow White 2: Lost in Outer Galactica
(Rated R)

In the last year, the Internet has been abuzz with news concerning the copyright extension that has kept Disney’s Steamboat Willie (and other works) out of the public domain, allowing Disney to continue to reap profits from their earliest works.

Some see this as selfish irony. The studio that made itself out of adaptations of public domain works--Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Jack and the Beanstalk, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and so on--is now desperately lobbying to combat public domain. For others, it means that the early animated works they’ve only been able to read about will remain out of their grasp as studios who own the copyright on those works keep them shut away in their vaults, thinking that there is no money to be made from making black and white cartoons available to the public.

According to the Constitution, Congress "shall have Power . . . to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." What this means is that, in order to offer incentive for people to create and invent, Congress can offer copyrights and patents for a limited time, allowing people to make money from their creations.

Life has changed a lot since the Constitution was written and so has the law. As of the recent extension in the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act, creative works are now protected for seventy years after the death of the creator. Meanwhile, films have a flat ninety-five years of protection.

Without further protection, Disney will slowly lose films, characters, and songs to public domain. Anyone could, once the copyright has expired, create clothing with Snow White on it. Anyone could make and sell recordings of "Someday My Prince Will Come." Anyone could create sequels to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Besides Disney losing billions of dollars in revenue from their various properties, they lose all creative control as to how their characters are portrayed and sold. For people who truly love these characters and the films from which they came, the nightmarish possibilities are endless.

First of all, for the Disney fan, what does this mean? It will means that Disney will have less incentive to create quality video and DVD releases of their work because there will be many other copies out there. Furthermore, if history repeats itself, public domain releases of films are rarely on high quality recordings. Not only would Disney be less likely to make quality restorations of Steamboat Willie and Plane Crazy available, but the copies released by other companies will likely be on low-quality videos. Furthermore, if Disney fans get angered about cheap sequels now, think of how bad they would be if they were made by a studio other than Disney?

Disney is a living company, one still using the works to which it owns copyright to pull in revenue. Yes, Disney is loaded with money, but every company has every right to make money, whether it "needs" it or not. By losing the copyright on their works, they are going to be losing oceans of revenue.

At the same time, it is not right that the same copyright laws should cover persons or companies that are deceased. Ernest Hemingway, for example, has been dead for many years. He, the originator of his copyright, is no longer making money from his intellectual property. To constantly extend his copyright makes less sense. He is not benefiting from it; his estate is. His estate controls his works and makes lots of money from them, limiting the exchange of ideas. But he is dead.

In addition to this, the motivation for creation is different. A company creates for profit. Yes, the individuals hired by the company are in it for the creation, but the paying company is formed for profit. The individual creator (when that creator owns the copyright) creates for two purposes. One is to make money, but the other is to express ideas and to share the art. Once the individual creator has passed away, it only makes sense that his or her ideas would enter the public domain in order to ensure the exchange of those ideas.

Any changes in copyright should take this into account. There is a vast difference between a company that is living--still functioning, still using that property, still creating new works--and a person who is not. The entity for which the product was created (the company) is still using it--that entity should continue to be able to make profit from their works. The person who writes a song, writes a poem, or whatever, does it to make money for him or herself and to reach an audience with a message. If that person is no longer alive to reap the benefits financially, then, after a period of time, the message should be given to the public for use to maintain access to information and ideas.

This, however, does not solve the dilemma of those living companies which limit the exchange of ideas. There should be provisions for those works which are no longer being used; this would ensure that abuse of the copyright laws are not occurring. If a company is not using or sharing its older intellectual property, they should be able to be called on it. If the living company does not make this work available on a regular basis, then it must fall into the public domain to ensure public access.

We are a capitalist society. There is nothing wrong with owning property, intellectual or otherwise. If a person buys a chair, he or she has a right to keep that chair as long as he or she is living. If a company owns the chair, it also has the right to keep that chair as long as it is living. Intellectual property should be treated no differently.

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-- Jim Miles

-- Posted October 31, 2002

Copyright Jim Miles. Licensed to LaughingPlace.com.