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The UK laws granted a sole case of perpetual rights to 'Peter Pan', which J.M.Barrie had given to the Great Ormond Children's hospital. This isn't quite copyright that 'never grows up' ( see http://www.gosh.org/gen/peterpan/copyright/faq ), but it comes pretty close. I think the UK legislation could be a bit flexible to a time traveller too.

So it would be allowable for a corporation to trademark peter pan and prevent works containing him long after the copyright expires?

Ah, bad example. Peter Pan is a special case.

a footnote: The rights to Peter Pan are under a unique - perpetual - copyright in the U.K. The European copyright on Peter Pan expires this year, 2023 in the U.S. Great Ormond Street Hospital Children's Charity: Peter Pan Copyright

But Sony Computer Entertainment America stole your money from Sony Computer Entertainment Europe.

Still, PSP and PS3 are largely region-free for gaming.

It's funny that you mention Peter Pan, there's a little bit of a discrepency there. Disney has been trying to put Peter Pan into the public domain, and deny the children at Great Ormond Street Hospital (who owns the rights), of money that is rightly their's. They are publishing a sequel because the original work is going out of copyright (already out of copyright in certain places), and they need another way to make money. I think it's a noble thing to do. Since copyright lasts must longer than any person could bother to use the money, they donate the work to charity, and have them make the royalties. I wonder if J.K. Rowling would be willing to do something similar with the Harry Potter series. I mean, she already has a billion dollars, not like she needs much more.

Place your iPod in your hand. Get on trin. Sit. Turn on iPod. Select show. Watch.

Like the other poster said, the rights to Peter Pan belongto the Children's Hospital. Here's some info.

The animators you mentioned may be not be able to use Mickey Mouse, but that just means that they have to create their own character. That's actually forcing innovation.

That's forcing invention, and invention is not required for innovation. For a technical example, Apple did not invent the mp3 player, but they innovated it by using a hard drive and a much faster connection interface.

First of all, characters like Cinderella are public domain, and have been used in productions such as "Into the Woods" without reprecussions as far as I know.

Yes, you can do stories based off the old fabels, but you can't do stories based off additions to the fabels. For example, you could write your own book or make your own movie on Dorothy Gale and her adventures in OZ, because the copyrights on the books have expired. But if you want to use the Ruby Slippers, which MGM added to the 1939 movie to show off the new technicolor process, you have to walk over to MGM's office to get permission, and you better be carrying a fat checkbook.

Another reason to be concerned about perpetual copyrights is because one already exists: Peter Pan. The profits go to a children's hospital, and there isn't a politician in the world who would go against funding it. It looks like the only thing that's going to stop Disney, a purely commercial interest, from having copyrights as long as the GOSH hospital is a ruling by the Supreme Court. But the current court has already ruled in favor of extentions, and with two business friendly nominees on the way, I wouldn't count on these ludicrous extentions to end for a few decades.

there are quite a few cases where foreign copyrights were not respected across the international border, particularly in the United States up to about 1960

What's funny is that the major "intellectual property" industries were themselves founded on ripping people off. Aside from the nice weather, Hollywood ended up in California to get away from Thomas Edison's patents on cameras. The radio and recording industries used loopholes to avoid paying royalties to musicians and song writers. The real problem with P2P isn't that it fails to pay out royalties, it's that it puts control in the hand of the end user, rather than a giant corporation out to make insane amounts of money.

I once saw a sensible suggestion from a Slashdot poster. Go ahead and have endless copyrights, but start charging the copyright holder fees after a certain period, let's say 50 years for an individual, and 25 for a corporation. The fee would probably have to start off flat to avoid Hollywood accounting, and it would increase by a percentage every year. Say the fee starts at $500, and increases by 5% a year, all the way up to 100%. After 5 years you'd be paying $800, in 20 it would be $80,000 a year, and at 30 years, $80 million. This would give the public something back for having to put up with long copyrights, while the holder could maintain his monopoly, though it would be unfeasible to do it forever.

This special copyright provision also applies to the song "Happy Birthday".

Not true. That's just a prefectly normal copyright which will run out eventually. In theory. Unless certain US politicians bought by Disney manage to get their way.

Peter Pan, on the other hand, is in fact already protected by copyright FOREVER, at least in the UK. But there's a good reason for this: the royalty fees go to a children's hospital.

Bambi was released in 1942. The Bambi copyright was not secured until 1926. Disney fought and won on the issue of a "timely renewal" of the coyright in 1954. Amelia Translation Project

Well, Peter Pan is copyright in the UK *forever*.

As to their case against Disney: Peter Pan is currently copyright in the US (where one presumes that the prequel was made) and the EU (where the original work was created), so the only real defence would be a question of timing issues relating to the expiry of the original copyright and extension thereof by EU and US law.

And that this was just a measure to bring US law in synch with the EU.

And that this will be the loophole used to get the next term extension passed in the States.

Several of the European Union states do not have constitutional prohibitions on perpetual copyrights. If Rep. Mary Bono teams up with MPs and lobbyists in the EU, we'll see a bill introduced in the EU Parliament in 2005 that extends EU copyrights to life plus 100 years, and then Bono will claim that a corresponding "Chastity Bono Act of 2008" is necessary in the United States.

In fact, perpetual copyright has already happened in Britain. A children's hospital called GOSH receives a royalty every time "Peter Pan" or a derivative thereof is copied or performed in the UK, even by Eisner's company. The British Parliament could get away with this because the UK doesn't have a monolithic constitution with a provision prohibiting perpetual copyrights.

I find Marybono no less harmful to the public than Marlboro.

Pinocchio - Grim

The Adventures of Pinocchio is not by the Grimm Bros. but rather by Carlo "Collodi" Lorenzini. You can read about Collodi, or read an English translation of Pinocchio .

books in the Public Domain that have been hijacked by Disney, and are aggressively defended by them.

The Walt Disney Company does not own the rights to the novel Pinocchio or to the name "Pinocchio". DisneyCo owns only the copyright on its film adaptation[1], including the likenesses of the characters as drawn by Disney animators, and has no grounds to prevent other publishers' film adaptations of the original novel. DisneyCo most definitely does not own the rights to "Noddy", a character created by Enid Blyton that may have been inspired by Pinocchio.

The Jungle Book - Kipling

Which exemplifies . No less than one year after The Jungle Book went PD in a major market, DisneyCo published a film adaptation. The company was obviously waiting for the copyright to run out. Now DisneyCo has closed the door behind itself by pushing copyright term extensions through Congress.

Peter Pan

NOT IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN WORLDWIDE! The European Union recognizes a monopoly on literary works for the life of the last surviving author, plus the remainder of the calendar year, plus 70 years. Because J. M. Barrie, the author of Peter Pan, died in 1937, copyright in Peter Pan does not expire in the European Union until 2007, and DisneyCo has to pay GOSH a royalty for every Peter Pan and Return to Never Land disc sold in the EU. In fact, the United Kingdom has granted a statutory perpetual copyright on the work, with royalties going to a children's hospital.

[1] DisneyCo may lose even that if the Supreme Court in Eldred v. Ashcroft happens to strike down the 1976 extension along with the Bono Act.

Why didn't they just make both the GBA AND the GameCube region free?

Because it's much more difficult or sometimes impossible to secure "worldwide" rights to trademarked and copyrighted worlds and characters, or the royalty situation varies widely from country to country. For instance, if Disney commissions a game based on "Return to Never Land", Disney will have to pay royalties to Great Ormond Street Hospital (the copyright owner of Peter Pan, which is PD in USA but under perpetual copyright in the UK) for every region P (Europe) disc sold, just as it has to for the DVD of the movie.

Peter Pan from J.M. Barrie

No, Peter Pan was probably licensed. GOSH, a hospital in London, holds a statutory perpetual copyright on Peter Pan throughout the UK (I'm not sure about the EU). Either Disney licenses Peter Pan, or Disney can't sell Peter Pan in DVD region 2.

After all, just who did Disney pay and ask permission from to use the characters in Mu-Lan, or the Lion King

DisneyCo pirated two movies from Japan. "The Lion King" is "Kimba the White Lion". "Atlantis" is "Nadia: Secret of Blue Water".

or any of the other non-Western cultural figures that they freely profit from?

Actually, some of the Western characters that Disney uses are still under copyright. Take Peter Pan for instance. Peter Pan is still under a limited form of copyright in the United Kingdom and will be forever, or at least until the hospital that owns the copyright goes out of business. No, this isn't Bono Act pseudo-perpetual copyright; it's the real thing. DisneyCo will get a dose of its own medicine when it tries to bring Return to Never Land into DVD Region 2.

Shouldn't Peter Pan have become public domain? I think it's been long enough. Instead every production of Peter Pan pays royalties to an English Children's hospital.

Here's some more information on the perpetual copyright on J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan. This copyright is subject to compulsory licensing; royalties go to Great Ormond Street Hospital. Disney will get a dose of its own medicine when it tries to release Return to Never Land on DVD in Region 2.

This applies only in the United Kingdom. Such a literal perpetual copyright cannot happen in the United States because of the "limited times" clause in the Constitution, Article I, section 8, clause 8. However, this does not stop Congress from declaring: "Resolved, That it is the policy of the Congress of the United States to enact a twenty (20)-year copyright term extension every twenty (20) years," unless Eldred convinces the Supremes otherwise.