Photek wrote:Tomous wrote:Photek wrote:What special copyright protections does Disney have?
Basically they keep extending copyright limits so Mickey Mouse and co don't go into public ownership. I don't believe they are specific to Disney but they are the driving force in
bribing lobbying politicians to extend copyright term limits. Obviously a lot of their characters (and Marvel too) are pretty old now and would no longer be copyrighted if they didn't keep getting the term length increased.
I thought was only music......What's the craic with Spiderman then?
There's no specific issue with Spider-Man in terms of this kind of copyright *yet* - the limit is 90 years and Spider-Man is just over 60. The copyright problems with him are that Marvel sold his movie rights to Sony in the 1990s without putting any provisos in for taking him back if they made it big in the film industry, so now trying to get permission to use their own character in a movie is a giant clusterfuck.
The only character who is starting to look a bit ropey on the copyright front is probably Captain America, who is 81 and will enter the public domain in about ten years without extended copyright protections.
The 56 year limit thing won't get near going through, I don't think. Disney won't be the only company who receive a shafting off the back of it.