AW: On Gottfredson's Mickey Mouse Strips

[Cord Wiljes]

Rich Bellacera wrote (about the complete MM reprint):

> Page rate is fine if paid for over a period of time, but 
> paying for all 26  volumes in one shot is not easy for 
> those of us who do not have $1000.00 laying 
> around just waiting to be spent on something that does not 
> include daily survival requirements (bills, mortgage, 
> loans, food, gasoline, etc.).

Yes, it was a theoretical calculation, I admit that.
And I did not want to persuade anybody to buy the set.
I believe it is much too expensive. In fact I believe nearly
all current comics are much too expensive. (Just break it down
to money per reading time!) In contrast I believe that old
masterpieces like the Gottfredson MMs, like Krazy Kat, like
Prince Valiant, like Popeye should be public domain. This is the
only way to ensure their survival, especially if the old copyright
holders deny reprints. They belong to our common cultural heritage
just like the works of Homer and Dickens. And I see no justification 
why any company should be allowed to keep the public from it's own
culture - just to profit from something which was created by people
long gone from the eartly plane? I believe that copyright laws were
meant exactly to ensure this: After a certain time (depending on
the date of creation) a work of art falls into the public domain
and can be shared by everyone for free. Should I pay anybody to 
print an image of the Mona Lisa? Or playing music by Bach? Or 
reprinting Plato? Definitely not! Even more so: Should anybody be
allowed to forbid ANY depiction of Michelangelo's "David"? Or
any printing of "The Divine Comedy"? No, of course not. In this
case a rich tycon or a big company could buy a lots and lots of 
old masterpieces and deny the public any access. Or demand astronomical
sums which just the rich could afford. So my answer is this:
When will I be allowed to scan my edition of Gottfredson's complete MM
works (which I bought, even though I couldn't afford it) and share it
with everbody for free on the internet? There has to be some answer to this!

According to this table http://www.unc.edu/~unclng/public-d.htm 
everything which has been published more than 67 years ago should be. 
So at least the first six years of MM cartoons should be public domain 
by now and it should be possible to reprint them without asking or 
paying Disney any licence fee. Im no lawyer, though, so please do not 
pin me down to this and I won't risk the wrath of Disney's legal
department.   
 
> For most of us, I would assume, the ideal way to purchase 
> these reprints is via the comics we buy monthly where we 
> can shoehorn them into our budget (somehow) and 
> hopefully, eventually, collect the entire series of reprints.

BUT you could put $ 2.99 into a box each month instead of buying the 
current issue of the Amazing Spider-Man. You could then buy the 
complete Gottfredson set in August 2030. By a strange coincidence you
would then have saved the money at just about the same rate the strips 
originally appeared: over a span of 26 years!

Cord