I can see a bunch of toy companies salivating, but how will it improve the public good?
Unfortunately, IP companies are devising ever draconian laws that impact liberties, legal due process and privacy. IP companies have made themselves into one of the great enemy of civil liberties; if that is the logical consequence of having to enforce IP, perhaps the whole system has to be scrapped.
Still, framing everything in the context of 'public good' is a slippery slope. Some things are right or wrong without utilitarian calculus.
P.S. Mickey Mouse is a Disney trademark, which makes it theirs in perpetuity. Arguably, trademarks are the weakest and least intrusive category of IP.
> Arguably, trademarks are the weakest and least intrusive category of IP.
They aren't really IP; they're consumer protection. Trademarks are meant to allow people to know who makes what they're buying by giving companies a way to definitively mark their wares without having to worry that someone else is going to rip off that mark in a confusing fashion. 'Confusing' works out to meaning a given trademark only applies to a specific field of endeavor; look at United Airlines vs United Van Lines, the moving company, or Cisco the networking hardware maker vs Sysco the restaurant supply company.
I think it's fairly clear that whatever 'property' interpretation you can put on those laws, it's subservient to the consumer protection aspects.
Unfortunately, IP companies are devising ever draconian laws that impact liberties, legal due process and privacy. IP companies have made themselves into one of the great enemy of civil liberties; if that is the logical consequence of having to enforce IP, perhaps the whole system has to be scrapped.
Still, framing everything in the context of 'public good' is a slippery slope. Some things are right or wrong without utilitarian calculus.
P.S. Mickey Mouse is a Disney trademark, which makes it theirs in perpetuity. Arguably, trademarks are the weakest and least intrusive category of IP.