Disney’s earliest Mickey Mouse enters the public domain: Steamboat Willie made cinema history in 1928 and can now be used and watched for free after copyright expired
Cartoonists and Disney enthusiasts can celebrate the New Year with the release of Images from a cinematic classic starring Mickey and Minnie Mouse.
The copyright for Steamboat Willie expired today and media from the 1928 short film is now available in the American public domain.
The expiration means that Steamboat Willie can now legally be shared, performed, sampled and more.
Other copyrights expiring today include Minnie Mouse and Tigger from Winnie the Pooh.
While this seems like a long-awaited moment in the entertainment industry, it could lead to media ventures potentially becoming βa political lightning rod in pop culture.β
The copyright for Steamboat Willie expired today and media from the 1928 short film is now available in the US public domain.
The expiration means that Steamboat Willie can now legally be shared, performed, sampled and more
Under U.S. copyright law, rights to works like Steamboat Willie expire 95 years after the original publication is released or registered by officials if the projects were released before 1978.
One dark truth behind all of this is how seriously copyright law has been taken in the past and how it has affected the Mickey Mouse character.
Disney has a long history of battles with copyright law that have caused problems for cartoonists like Dan O'Neill.
The company sued O'Neill for copyright infringement after the artist published a 1971 comic book featuring Mickie Mouse smuggling drugs and performing oral sex on Minnie Mouse.
O'Neill agreed not to re-sign Mickey after an eight-year lawsuit and told Variety last month that if he draws the character, he will owe Walt Disney “a $190,000 fine, an additional $10,000 for legal fees and a year in prison.”
It even led to Disney supporting a bill called the Sony Bono Copyright Term Extension Act.
The law known as the Mickey Mouse Protection Act, which was implemented, saved Steamboat Willie from being in the public domain twenty years ago.
Today, copyright advocate Lawrence Lessig believes their biggest weakness is that they have “no way to know who owns what.”
βThis is something that people in Hollywood are not focused on. There is an extraordinary group of people who create purely for the love of creativity, he added.β
Winnie the Poo was made into a horror film Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey in 2023, which received negative reviews at the box office
YouTuber and DSNY Newscast host Jack Kendall provided insight into what Steamboat Willie could become due to copyright law.
He thinks that the characters that are now in the public domain due to the law via BBC could get the horror movie treatment.
An example of this was the 2023 slasher film Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey β a box office success that received poor reviews from critics.
“Take away that Pooh and Piglet stuff, and you have a ho-hum stalker thriller that treats its one-dimensional characters as punchlines for gory scenes that the budget can't fully accommodate,” wrote Nick Allen of RogerEbert.com.
Kendall also believes that Disney wants to avoid legal battles, but that “they also want to protect their two most recognizable characters.”
Despite doing well at the box office, Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey only earned $5.2 million worldwide.
Without the film's $100,000 budget, the film would have had a great chance of becoming a box office hit.
Kendall also believes that Disney wants to avoid legal battles, but that “they also want to protect their two most recognizable characters.”
Despite doing well at the box office, Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey only earned $5.2 million worldwide
Disney continues to benefit from current copyright laws.
The law states that copyright protection for works created after January 1, 1978 lasts for the life of the author plus an additional 70 years.
As a result, more recent works such as Fantasia are not in the public domain and will not be free for the public to use.