The current copyright system is beyond messed up. Locking up IP for multiple generations is just downright pro-corporate nonsense, and we mostly have Disney to thank for it.
The question would be better phrased as what is wrong with the copyright system. Disney just seems to be the best at maximizing the system to their benefit.
I don't think copyright itself is bad, but the way in which Disney has gotten the government to enforce it is absurd. If I ever release a creative work, I'd make sure to do it in a way where the work is free to share but I would still own the right to produce that work until I am dead. I think that's perfectly reasonable, but copyright in the US today is effectively indefinite and intentionally difficult to make sense of. All you have to do is shove a bunch of other licensed copyrighted material into your work so that only your company can resell that work after the main copyright has expired.
Another way to frame this is - Disney has decided to not extend the copyright laws for all Americans and let this happen.
The damage of the multiple extensions the company has already forced on all of us are devastating.
Multiple times Disney has changed the law to extend copyright provisions and allow it and other corporations to take without giving back, siphoning value out of the public domain for decades upon decades.
We have paid a hefty price for their profits, over and over again.
It has never occurred to me before how odd it is for Disney to take public-domain stories, rework them into blockbusters, then lock them up with copyright indefinitely. What a strange combination of ideas.
I don't really have a good solution. My gut reaction is that having a system that rewards the same companies that pushed for infinite copyright duration, rather than removing their hold over our shared culture, isn't a good solution. That isn't the most pragmatic of me, but I'd rather not reward Disney for breaking the public domain.
Except you should realize 99% of Disney's "works" were ripped off of public domain (and expired copyright) works, which they THEN (after making billions) lobbied to have copyright extended so nobody would ever be able to do what they did.
It has to be one of the sickest corporate abuses ("anti-consumer, anti-society") in US history.
Who's this "we" trying to reward content creators? Whose side do you think legislators are on? Copyright law in its current form exists mainly to make The Walt Disney Company money, after all they're the ones who paid for all the fucking laws.
Thing is, Disney has profited immensely from public domain, and then they have done everything in their power to restrict public domain as much as possible.
Works have to be released into the public domain, or there will be nothing but licensed regurgitation of the same things.
Why should Disney get an infinite copyright? I think copyright should be limited to natural persons. No one involved in the creation of Mickey Mouse is still alive. Imagine if the Brothers Grimm, Inc. had just kept infinitely renewing their copyright claim? Disney wouldn’t even exist. Disney is a company that was built upon works in the public domain and now is depriving the rest of the world from the very thing that allowed Disney to flourish in the first place.
And nobody is now allowed to create any derivative work to benefit society for the next ~200 years (or perpetually, if Disney has their way).
Ironic, since virtually all of Disney's works are based on public domain works that they themselves would be banned from using if their bought laws had existed then.
At this point, I would be actually happy for Disney IP to be in copyright forever, as long as they leave the copyright law alone and works start entering public domain again.
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