Elon Musk backs a Republican proposal to end Disney’s monopoly on Mickey Mouse
In a recent tweet, Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, criticised Disney’s copyright restrictions, saying that they shielded the company’s expansion of ownership of Mickey Mouse.
CEO Elon Musk tweeted that “Current copyright law, in general, goes absurdly far beyond protecting the original creator,” using his newly bought Twitter network.
As a result, he is presently in support of a bill sponsored by US Senator Josh Hawley that would limit the company’s ability to utilise the Mickey Mouse mascot without permission.
He also said that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act “is a plague on humanity” however he did not elaborate on why he is backing the Republican Senator.
To ensure that their work cannot be redistributed without the consent of the people who control the intellectual property rights to it, the DMCA was passed into law in 1998.
This has been criticised as hampering internet freedom by permitting intellectual property owners to compel the removal of content even if no copyright breaches have occurred.
The Republican Senator’s counter-proposal is to have the Copyright Clause Restoration Act, which can retroactively activate Disney’s original copyright of the first introduction of the mascot nearly a century ago, in 1928, on the Steamboat Willie animation, which had the first protection of 56 years and has been renewed ever since.
