Welcome to the Public Domain, Mickey!
By Eric Grigs | January 1, 2024
Happy Public Domain Day! Each year, on January 1, the U.S. copyright for many written works, art, music, and other creative materials expire, granting free license to anyone who wants to use them. But why is this growing library of our cultural past important? On this particular red-letter day, I’ll attempt to answer a few frequently asked questions about this critical resource that truly belongs to all of us.
Why should I care about the public domain?
Music sampling and remixing that exploded in the 1980s, meme culture of today, sharing of content on social media, and other modern means of exchanging ideas all demonstrate how building upon each other’s creativity and knowledge is deeply embedded in American culture. It’s easy to see the value and benefit to people’s lives when we act intentionally to foster collaboration. Libraries flourish by offering more unrestricted access to a wider array of materials, local orchestras can perform musical pieces at lower costs, communities can hold free public showings of movies, young singers can produce new interpretations of classic compositions without emptying their wallets on licensing fees, and so on.
Copies of items in the public domain can be legally shared and used by anyone, without permission for free. So let’s celebrate the way this tool of copyright law reinforces good outcomes that increase public enjoyment! How can you show your appreciation for this important resource? Continue advocating for laws that limit mega-corporations moving to extend copyright lengths and stop any future attempts to wall off the public’s access to our shared history.
Having a rich public domain promotes scholarship, education, and a better understanding of the past and our ancestors. Creators are compensated for a reasonable period of time, and afterward the public can enjoy future free access to information, art, and music. The ability to build upon what has come before us spurs new ideas and innovation, instead of locking up ownership of pop culture forever. Additionally, since government works are automatically in the public domain, it gives its citizens access to materials, research, and data we are already paying for through our taxes.
When do copyrighted works fall into the public domain?
The founding fathers of the Constitution made provisions for people to benefit from their creativity and hard work, but set a time limit. It originally spanned only 14 to 28 years. Clearly, they intended a system that benefitted the greater good over enriching a select few! But throughout the years, Congress has changed the timeframe of copyrights by passing laws in 1831, 1909, 1976, and 1998 that moved the goalpost further forward in time—allowing owners to maintain control over the works for the life of the creator and five decades more. (Click here for a handy chart of the complex laws that have been passed to determine when something falls into the public domain.)
An American masterpiece and favorite book of mine—Thornton Wilder’s The Bridge of San Luis Rey—entered the public domain last year.
For example, as of this year, works published in 1928 and prior are free to use. Those from 1929 through 1963 will enter the public domain 95 years from its date of publication. Interestingly, most copyright researchers criticize the current protection terms as unnecessarily long. Their data show that lengthy terms actually often harm our cultural heritage and hamper creativity.
Fragile films disintegrate in their canisters waiting to be scanned and preserved. Fear of potential litigation by copyright owners who currently see no value in the works results in tons of “vaulted” works being lost, abandoned, or allowed to decay—instead of releasing them to the public to enjoy. In addition, because of the difficulty in tracking down copyright renewals, many works are already in the public domain, but their status remains unknown. These “orphaned” materials are collateral damage in a restrictive system that was meant to spur more creativity and enable access to our cultural heritage after an artist has already profited from their work in their lifetime.
Jennifer Jenkins, Director of the Duke University Center for Study of the Public Domain, notes that for the vast majority of works entering the public domain this year “no copyright holder financially benefitted from continued copyright. Yet they remained off limits, for no good reason.”
Is Mickey Mouse now in the public domain?
The big news this Public Domain Day is that included among all works from 1928 which are free to use was a well-known mouse named Mickey owned by the Walt Disney company. The animated short of his debut, Steamboat Willie, and others produced that year are now legally owned by the public and new creative works can be made with that version of the character. (Yes, Minnie too!)
The caveat is the future iterations of Mickey Mouse (such as Sorcerer’s Apprentice Mickey from Fantasia) are not in the public domain and still under copyright. Mickey is also trademarked (which is a different legal protection) as an identifying mark of Disney’s business, and can be owned indefinitely as long as they still use it for business purposes. So even though creators can use the “Steamboat Wille version” of Mickey now, they cannot produce content that would confuse people into thinking their versions were sponsored or made by Disney.
It’s clear that the way the public now uses 1928 public domain Mickey will influence the legal parameters of building upon still famous characters like Superman and Batman, who will also arrive into the public domain in the near future.
But will this mean the public domain will “ruin” Mickey?
There’s no love lost for a company (along with many others like Universal and Warner Brothers) who lobbied hard in 1998 to extend copyright terms an additional twenty years to keep the public from benefitting from our cultural heritage. (In fact, at the time the law was derisively referred to as the “Mickey Mouse Protection Act.”) And there’s not a small amount of irony that a company like Disney has amassed fortunes from utilizing public domain works themselves. However, the positive takeaway is that they’ve also shown how the world is enriched when new works are created upon the public domain—Cinderella, The Little Mermaid, Hunchback of Notre Dame—even Frozen—and more, are all due to creating new and wonderful visions from public domain source material.
In the same way, Mickey (who is now nearly 100 years old) should not be immune from public domain use at his appointed time because someone might make an obscure version of him that a subset of people won’t like. (Of course, the horror folks are already planning adaptations.) But the beauty of the public domain is that the marketplace of ideas will show what newly created works will stand the test of time. The adaptations of Sherlock Holmes stories and The Wizard of Oz are prime examples of this.
Besides the famous mouse, many other important works entered the public domain in 2024! Books include Orlando by Virginia Woolf and Lady Chatterly’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence. Films like Charlie Chaplin’s The Circus and dozens of songs from Cole Porter are free for you to reinterpret. The Library of Congress has begun maintaining a collection of sound recordings in the public domain called the National Jukebox. How cool is that?
So, have a Happy Public Domain Day, and let your creativity run wild!
Eric Grigs is a pop culture writer, artist, and co-host of the Pop Trash Podcast.