Honest question: How are those examples different from studios adapting, say, Shakespeare to a more "modern" context? 10 Things I hate About You (1999) is an adaptation of Taming of The Shrew.
The difference is that those studios don't try to rewrite laws via lobbying to block their IP from entering the public domain after profiting greatly off public domain.
If I'm understanding copyright law correctly (I am not a lawyer, but am familiar), Disney has copyrighted the specific adaptation of those stories from the public domain - not the stories themselves. So someone can't, say, do Snow White in the same way as Disney did (same script, artistic style etc) but they can do things like Snow White and The Huntsman (2012), which made ~$397m worldwide. I do agree that rewriting laws via lobbying is a problem. I'm just not sure that Mickey Mouse should be public, seeing as how that IP is so tied up in so much of what constitutes value for Disney.
Edit: Just read a bunch about the history of Disney and the Mickey IP. Yeah, totally not comfortable with that.
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