Dan O’Neill was 53 years forward of his time.
In 1971, he launched a countercultural assault on Mickey Mouse. In his underground comedian guide, “Air Pirates Funnies,” the lovable mouse was seen smuggling medicine and performing oral intercourse on Minnie.
As O’Neill had hoped, Disney sued him for copyright infringement. He believed it was a authorized parody. But after eight years in courtroom, he was saddled with a judgment he couldn’t pay. To keep out of jail, he agreed by no means to attract Mickey Mouse once more.
“It’s nonetheless against the law for me,” stated O’Neill, 81, in a cellphone interview from his house in Nevada City, Calif. “If I draw an image of Mickey Mouse, I owe Walt Disney a $190,000 high quality, $10,000 extra for authorized charges, and a yr in jail.”
Mickey and Minnie will enter the public area on Jan. 1. From then on, Disney will not get pleasure from an unique copyright over the earliest variations of the characters. Underground cartoonists, filmmakers, novelists, songwriters — whoever — will probably be free to do what they need with them.
Mickey Mouse has lengthy been a logo within the copyright wars. Beyond the sensible affect, the expiration — 95 years after his debut within the brief movie “Steamboat Willie” — can be a serious symbolic milestone.
“This is a giant one,” stated Jennifer Jenkins, director of the Duke Center for the Study of the Public Domain. “It’s producing a lot pleasure within the copyright group — it’s lastly taking place.”
Every Jan. 1, Jenkins celebrates Public Domain Day, publishing a protracted record of works that at the moment are free for artists to remix and reimagine. This yr’s record consists of Tigger, who, like Mickey Mouse, made his first look in 1928. Other 1928 works embody “Lady Chatterley’s Lover,” “All Quiet on the Western Front” and Buster Keaton’s “The Cameraman.”
The celebrations are comparatively latest. After Congress prolonged copyright phrases in 1998, 20 years glided by when nothing entered the general public area. Works started to lose copyright safety once more in 2019, and since then, it’s been open season on “The Great Gatsby,” “Rhapsody in Blue” and Winnie the Pooh.
The latest diversifications of these works might supply a preview of what awaits Mickey Mouse.
“‘Just add zombies’ seems to be a preferred factor to do,” Jenkins stated.
“The Great Gatsby Undead” popped up on Amazon on Jan. 2, 2021, adopted by “The Great Gatsby and the Zombies.”
There can be, after all, “Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey,” the slasher movie that made a number of critics’ lists of the worst movies of 2023. Released within the U.S. in February by way of distributor Fathom Events, the movie commanded a good quantity of media consideration for its shock worth however up to now has grossed solely $5 million worldwide.
“Lots of people do a lot of issues,” stated Lawrence Lessig, a Harvard legislation professor who has written and advocated extensively on copyright points. “This is the factor that individuals in Hollywood are usually not targeted on. There’s a unprecedented vary of people that create only for the love of creativity.”
Air Pirates Funnies, from 1971, by which Mickey Mouse is portrayed as a drug smuggler.
Lessig could also be as accountable as anybody for placing Mickey Mouse on the heart of the copyright debate. He was probably the most distinguished critic of the 20-year extension, with out which Disney’s copyright on its signature character would have expired in 2004.
Lessig referred to as the legislation “the Mickey Mouse Protection Act.” He doesn’t keep in mind whether or not he coined the time period or borrowed it from another person, however he used it loads, and it caught.
Disney definitely lobbied for the invoice. But some argue that its function within the laws has been exaggerated, noting that many different copyright holders — together with songwriters and the George Gershwin property — additionally pushed for it.
“Disney’s fearsome repute was at all times a bit of overstated. They make a handy bogeyman,” stated Zvi Rosen, a legislation professor at Southern Illinois University who argues that Disney’s lobbying was not a significant factor. “It grew to become actually about Mickey Mouse when it comes to the general public debate as soon as the legislation was handed.”
Lessig fought the extension all the way in which to the Supreme Court. He argued that Congress would possibly preserve granting extensions, thwarting the constitutional mandate that copyrights be “for restricted occasions.” He misplaced, 7-2, however the debate helped advance the motion for Creative Commons and an appreciation for the advantages of “remix tradition.”
“That motion awoke folks to the important want for stability on this,” Lessig stated. “At the start of this battle, it was a easy battle between the pirates and the property house owners. And by the top of that interval, folks acknowledged that there’s a a lot wider vary of pursuits that have been concerned right here, like schooling and entry to data.”
As the clock started to wind down on the extension within the 2010s, some anticipated that Disney and different copyright holders would push for one more one. But that by no means materialized.
Some argue that copyright holders acknowledged that one other extension would face a storm of protest, and they also didn’t strive. At some level, it grew to become clear that Mickey Mouse actually would fall into the general public area.
“It’s important,” Lessig stated. “Let’s hope it’s the opening of a brand new chapter.”
He continues to help reforms that will unencumber an enormous physique of cultural output that is still inaccessible as a result of it lacks business worth and its possession can’t be decided.
“The largest weak point in copyright is that we’ve got no method to know who owns what,” Lessig stated. “It’s probably the most inefficient property system identified to man.”
Walt Disney with Mickey and Minnie Mouse
Courtesy of PBS © Condé Nast Archive/Corbis
Disney will nonetheless have methods to guard Mickey Mouse after Jan. 1. The firm will retain copyrights within the character’s extra trendy variations for just a few extra years. And it has stated that it’ll proceed to defend its logos, which might restrict what creators are capable of do.
“This may be very totally different than Winnie the Pooh,” stated Justin Hughes, a professor who makes a speciality of mental property at Loyola Law School. “When Winnie the Pooh fell into the general public area, you would have ‘Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey.’”
He argued there may be much less leeway with Mickey Mouse as a result of it’s such a powerful trademark. In 2007, Walt Disney Animation Studios tailored a clip from “Steamboat Willie” as its brand, strengthening its declare to the earliest model of Mickey.
“There will probably be some official public area makes use of,” Hughes stated. “But folks should be very cautious that they don’t set off a official trademark declare by Disney.”
Jenkins, nonetheless, rejects the concept that Disney can use trademark legislation to close down inventive expression. Trademarks are supposed to guard manufacturers. So lengthy as artists don’t attempt to move off their work as coming from Disney, she stated, they need to not have a trademark challenge.
“Do not go begin promoting Disney merchandise,” she added.
Rosen stated it could take litigation to settle the difficulty.
“Someone goes to make one thing Disney has to sue over,” he stated. “It’s nearly inevitable.”
Disney’s repute for zealous copyright enforcement goes again many years, no less than to the “Air Pirates” case. It was cemented by two incidents in 1989. First, Disney sued the Academy Awards for an unauthorized portrayal of Snow White. Then, it demanded the elimination of murals that includes Disney characters from the partitions of three day care facilities in Hallandale, Fla.
But in recent times, Disney’s copyright fits have slowed to a trickle.
Studios have turn out to be extra involved with on-line piracy, which they sometimes don’t battle in courtroom. Instead, underneath the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, studios submit takedown notices — thousands and thousands of them — to on-line platforms.
Copyright holders want that course of have been higher at stamping out piracy. According to Rosen, they’re much more targeted on getting Congress to reform that system than they’re on extending copyright phrases.
“That’s clearly a better precedence,” he stated.
“Steamboat Willie” has been accessible at no cost on YouTube for greater than a decade, so Disney could not have a lot to lose from others’ reuse of it. And with out the fun of the forbidden, Mickey could not maintain that a lot attraction for parodists both.
“I doubt modern different cartoonists would see a lot gratification in satirizing Mickey,” stated Bob Levin, writer of “The Pirates and the Mouse: Disney’s War Against the Counterculture.”
O’Neill stated he focused Mickey as a result of he related the mouse with Walt Disney’s conservative politics and with President Nixon. For others, he represents consumerism, cultural imperialism, or childhood nostalgia. Starting on Jan. 1, he will probably be free for all to reinterpret.
“We’re caught with Mickey Mouse,” O’Neill stated. “He belongs to all people.”
