Post #174543 by freddiefreelance on Mon, Jul 25, 2005 10:46 AM

On 2005-07-24 14:11, purple jade wrote:
Yeah, why not try selling copies of these on eBay? Mice are nothing new, right? They've gotta be public domain.

Actually they should be: they should've gone into public domain in 1984 but that was extended to 2000 by the Copyright Act of 1976, then extended again to 2036 by the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (aka "The Mickey Mouse Protection Act"). The Act was given the nickname due to the Walt Disney Company's spreading hundreds of thousands of dollars in lobbying cash around Congress, and was given it's official name to take full advantage of the feelings over Sonny Bono's (then recent) death from skiing into a tree at night while stoned on legal painkillers. Sonny wanted to legally change the term of copyright to "Forever," but after finding that that violated the constitution he put forward the proposition that it be made "Forever, minus one day." His wife & Congressional successor, Mary, has been pushing for that ever since.