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.c The Associated Press
By JOHN HORN
BURBANK, Calif. (AP) - Is Mickey Mouse about to get a new home?
The rodent’s first animated cartoon will soon enter the public domain unless Congress extends copyright terms. Once freed of copyright protection, 1928's “Steamboat Willie” could become source material for any number of curious new interpretations - just as Victor Hugo was turned inside-out for Disney’s “Hunchback of Notre Dame.”
Legal protections on a number of Disney’s earliest animated shorts - from “Puss ‘n Boots” to “Alice’s Wonderland” - are close to expiring, and the copyright on Mickey Mouse’s debut film will lapse in five years. An estimated 50 to 60 Disney cartoon shorts could enter the public domain by 2011.
A bill extending copyrights for 20 years has the support of the Hollywood studios - including Disney - but the legislation may be stalled by a dispute over music fees.
Early movies aren’t the only works whose copyrights are expiring. Music by George Gershwin, novels by Ernest Hemingway and poems by T. S. Eliot are all set to enter the public domain unless Congress acts.
Current law says copyrights to music written before 1978 expire 75 years after publication. An author’s copyright lasts for 50 years after death, and a “work made for hire” - as in a movie - has a copyright of 75 years. Under the new bill, all terms would be extended 20 years.
A number of legal experts say the extension is bad policy, bringing a windfall to the studios - “jillions of dollars,” one show business lobbyist concedes - while giving the actual creators of the works nothing.
“It’s plain greed on the part of the copyright holders,” said Dennis Karjala, an intellectual property professor at Arizona State University’s College of Law. “These people have no creative relationship to the work at all.”
Critics of the bill, sponsored by Rep. Howard Coble (R-N.C.), says its language would have forbidden public use of Uncle Sam and Santa Claus until 1972. Thomas Nast held copyrights to both widely seen image of Uncle Sam in top hat and the jolly bearded Santa Claus. Nast died in 1902.
If adopted, foes add, the bill would put everything from Gershwin songs to recently discovered Mark Twain writings under the equivalent of monopoly control: The reason you can buy Shakespeare for $5 is because no single publisher owns it.
Furthermore, expiring copyrights enhance - not limit - the nation’s creative output, the bill’s opponents say.
“If you want to create a movie out of a public domain novel, you can do that,” says Bill Patry, the former counsel to the House Subcommittee on intellectual property and judicial administration and an opponent of the bill. “But if you keep that work from the public domain for another 20 years, you can’t make that movie.”
Adds Karjala: “When people are free to use public domain works, you get a much wider and more interesting variety of new works. We are going to (harm) our current creative authors. That’s an incalculable loss.”
Indeed, public domain properties are the sources for some of the country’s most distinguished creative works. Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” was the source for “West Side Story.” The Bible was retold in “Jesus Christ Superstar.” Mozart’s music was used in “Amadeus” and the miniseries “Ulysses” owes its story to Homer. Hugo’s “Hunchback of Notre Dame” was turned into the 1939 classic starring Charles Laughton, as well as a Disney animated movie.
And without Jane Austen’s works entering the public domain, we might not have the movies “Emma”, “Sense and Sensibility” and “Clueless,” the Alicia Silverstone new comedy loosely based on “Emma.” Keeping Dickens locked up could have blocked the new “Great Expectations.”
Karjala adds he understands how Disney might be concerned that someone could create a pornographic Mickey Mouse. “But if somebody wants to make Jane Austen into pornography, her descendants should not be the thought police on what’s an appropriate use of Jane Austen,” he said.
Karjala cites as a less extreme example students who want to mount a production of Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein’s “Show Boat.”
“How many high schools would like to do ‘Show Boat’ as a school play and can’t afford to do it?” he asks. The owners of the copyright, he adds, “already have made millions from the music. Enough is enough.”
Hollywood’s three major talent unions - the Writers Guild of America, the Screen Actors Guild and the Directors Guild of America - all have endorsed the bill. “There is absolute gain for these people who are still getting residuals,” says Cheryl Rhoden, a spokeswoman for the WGA.
The WGA wants to attach language to the bill benefitting authors of movies released before 1960, the first year residuals were offered. No matter how many times 1942's “Casablanca” is show, screenwriter Julius Epstein has never received anything besides his original writing fee of $15,208.
Restaurant owners also are trying to amend the bill, seeking to lower payments for music played in their establishments.
The Motion Picture Association of America, Hollywood’s lobbying organization, opposes both amendments. Jack Valenti, the MPAA’s president, says the extension itself is critical since U.S. copyright terms are shorter than some European limits.
“The European community has increased their copyright terms by 20 years,” Valenti says. “We want to have our copyright terms coincide with the Europeans’. (The bill) is reasonable and necessary.”
Disney is a particularly interested in the bill’s passing. A fierce protector of its copyrights, much of Disney’s value is linked to its intellectual property. Last year, Disney’s political action committee gave $4,000 to Coble, the bill’s sponsor.
Said Disney in a statement: “Copyright extension is a matter that affects some of the greatest artistic and creative properties this nation has ever produced. ... It is important that the United States and its artists and talent not be disadvantaged in the worldwide market for creative properties.”
Even if “Steamboat Willie” were to enter the public domain, Disney still might be able to control the character’s use. Since Mickey Mouse is so closely associated with Disney in consumer’s minds, “Steamboat Willie” could qualify under trademark protection, which is not subject to strict term limits.
“Disney’s strategy has been to promote the mouse as an image of the company,” says John Shepard Wiley Jr., a professor of intellectual property at the law school of the University of California at Los Angeles. “The trademark theory is that people associate the mouse with Disney just as people associate the golden arches with McDonald’s.”
Copyright 1997 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without prior written authority of The Associated Press.