And they probably will remain profitable even as their copyrights end.Ĭhristopher Robin’s first published appearance as a character, for instance, was in the poem “Vespers” (whose most famous line is “Christopher Robin is saying his prayers”). By some accounts they are as profitable as Mickey, possibly more so. Milne characters that Disney now owns (after some earlier legal battles were resolved): Winnie-the-Pooh, and his friends Christopher Robin, Piglet, Owl, and the other inhabitants of the Hundred Acre Wood. Moreover, copyrights to some of their most profitable characters are already starting to expire, and so far they have neither pushed hard to extend them, nor to my knowledge seen a loss in their profitably. While Disney has indeed been one of the companies that has lobbied for longer copyrights, they’re far from the only group that has done so, and their role is often exaggerated relative to other entertainment and publishing industry groups. Personally, I think that’s a myth that makes despair too easy. Some public domain fans will tell you that Disney had been responsible for preventing valuable characters like Mickey Mouse from entering the public domain for decades, and that they’ll force more copyright extensions through before his copyright is scheduled to expire in a few years. I’ve sometimes heard cynicism expressed that this would ever happen. This coming January 1, we’ll have the second large expiration of copyrights in the US since 1998 (the first being the most recent January 1).
I mentioned in my previous post that I was looking forward to works entering the public domain in the US as a routine annual event.
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