Today, the animation figure Mickey Mouse finally was released from the corporate copyright prison, as the 1928 movie Steamboat Willie entered the public domain in USA. This movie was the first public appearance of Mickey Mouse. Sadly the figure is still on probation, thanks to trademark laws and a the Disney corporations powerful pack of lawyers, as described in the 2017 article in "How Mickey Mouse Evades the Public Domain" from Priceonomics. On the positive side, the primary driver for repeated extentions of the duration of copyright has been Disney thanks to Mickey Mouse and the 2028 movie, and as it now in the public domain I hope it will cause less urge to extend the already unreasonable long copyright duration.
The first book I published, the 2004 book "Free Culture" by Lawrence Lessig, published 2015 in English, French and Norwegian Bokmål, touch on the story of Disney pushed for extending the copyright duration in USA. It is a great book explaining problems with the current copyright regime and why we need Creative Commons movement, and I strongly recommend everyone to read it.
This movie (with IMDB ID tt0019422) is now available from the Internet Archive. Two copies have been uploaded so far, one uploaded 2015-11-04 (torrent) and the other 2023-01-01 (torrent) - see VLC bittorrent plugin for streaming the video using the torrent link. I am very happy to see the number of public domain movies increasing. I look forward to when those are the majority. Perhaps it will reduce the urge of the copyright industry to control its customers.
A more comprehensive list of works entering the public domain in 2024 is available from the Public Domain Review.
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