In 5 Years You Can Sell a Mickey Mouse T-Shirt

Well, according to current law. 15 years ago, a copyright extension was passed. It seems like this extension was largely at the request of Disney and the Gershwin estate. It was a 20 year extension.

So five years from now, if nothing changes, you will be legally able to print a T-Shirt with Mickey Mouse on it and sell it. Disney will not be able to send you nasty legal letters.

Or perhaps the political establishment will balance organizations who can contribute huge sums of cash against regular people and extend the copyright.

Normally I would assume Disney wins this. They will tell senators that not extending this will cause a proliferation of t-shirts of Mickey giving people the finger. Or whatever crazy thing people will come up with. And frankly, that’s true. But so what. Walt died over 45 years ago. Granting copyright for life plus 50 years is surely sufficient to promote innovation. I’m frankly not sure what the +50 is for. Not like the author can innovate once dead.

The one hope I have for this to not be extended is Google. Google has their Google Books project. Copyright is a huge issue for this project. For books, in many cases the author is dead and there’s no one to ask, “hey, can we use this?”. So works that no one really cares about are still restricted.

If I were betting, I’d say Disney gets the extension. But I’m rooting for Google.