Yes, in lobbying costs. And their lobbying efforts hurt the rest of the industry. I really think Mickey, Donald and Goofy should be allowed to enter the public domain. Companies need to grow and old things need to be shared in the commons.
They'll lose some initial money of course, if everyone could produce Mickey Mouse shirts, but Disney et. al. would have to come up with new tricks, new icons and try to make new things instead of the constant barrage of rehashed garbage media we get today.
It's not the shirts that are the problem, it's a massive I Flux of random Mickey Mouse media that would saturate the market and dilute the media. Do any of us really doubt that there would be a bunch of Mickey Mouse porn?
I'm not in favor of long copyrights, but I think in the case there would be a real cultural loss if there was unfettered access to this particular icon. Does that justify full control by Disney at this late stage? Probably not, but some middle ground with increasing costs (maybe an increasing percentage of profit from that brand?) might be worth trying.
The whole system is pretty messed up at this point, so why not test out some interesting ideas? As a side benefit, maybe Disney and others like them won't fight it quite so hard, as it would be costly but not the existential threat to their core brand they see come up every couple evades.
> cultural loss if there was unfettered access to this particular icon
As a counter argument look at Snow White. That story is in the public domain. I think you’d be hard pressed to make a case that that has harmed society.
Regardless Disney will continue to have a trademark on the Mouse. So, it will continue to be a cultural icon for the company. We’ll just also have steamboat Willie generics in the marketplace as well.
> Do any of us really doubt that there would be a bunch of Mickey Mouse porn?
Look: sight unseen, having no prior knowledge, I would put money down that I could find a thousand unique images of Mickey Mouse created in 2017 or earlier.
That's just how the internet works, and copyright doesn't hold much sway on that front.
There already are lots of random Mickey Mouse media, they just aren't legal to sell in any place that respects Disney's copyright. But Rule 34 says that Mickey Mouse porn is out there, and some of it is probably legal (e.g. using a costume purchased in a Disney-licensed store as a fetish item).
Mickey Mouse porn is probably legal in the US too; if you wanted to try and argue that it's protected as parody or satire. I mean we have porn versions of Pirates of the Caribbean as well as Rick and Morty (Dick and Morty .. it's actually pretty hilarious)
The porn version of pirates of the caribbean, as far as I remember, doesn't use the name "Pirates of the Caribbean". Also doesn't use the name of important characters.
> a massive influx of random Mickey Mouse media that would saturate the market and dilute the media
this is full of hypothetical, while we exactly know what would happen because we have concrete case studies to work from, like the old star wars expanded universe.
