I'll bite. I don't care if WB makes a Mickey Mouse movie. Walt is dead. We're not talking about the state stealing "Rearden Metal" shortly after its invention. Generations have grown up with this character and it seems just as outrageous as state-based exploitation to hold this character captive forever.
How does inifinite copyright extension do anything but favor the sad corporatism you oppose? Entire generations will never re-sow the seeds of these cultural works. If you're on this planet to tell the next great Mickey Mouse story then you better be lucky enough to get the right spot inside Disney.
So I don't see any compelling Randsian arguments here. Each generation should get a shot at profiting (or simply engaging publicly) with the cultural fruits of a prior generation. Creators will be fine.
I wouldn't even consider Mickey Mouse to be a character - he hasn't been used that way by Disney for at least 50 years, and never had much character development to begin with even when he 'starred' in minstrel cartoons.
Mickey Mouse is a logo, deserving of trademark protection and nothing more.
Mickey is an actively used character in European-drawn Disney comics. He's usually either a serious detective protagonist, or just a friend of Donald or Goofy.
For all his detective skills, he somehow has never figured out that Goofy is the same person as Super-Goofy (there is a peanut plant in Goofy's backyard that turns him into a Superman-style hero).
One thing I don't agree with here is the concept of generations. Immortality is coming and the idea of generations, and the expectation that authors will die, will become outmoded. The philosophically correct view has to be able to deal with that, not be based on parochial, temporary conditions.
That said, I don't see that Micky is "captive". No one has a right to Micky. Micky's creator created him and he would not exist otherwise. This isn't like a math formula, or a medicine, that if one guy didn't invent it then someone else would have invented it later. It would never exist at all without its creator, so even if the creator has full rights over it forever the world hasn't lost anything that it would have had otherwise.
How does inifinite copyright extension do anything but favor the sad corporatism you oppose? Entire generations will never re-sow the seeds of these cultural works. If you're on this planet to tell the next great Mickey Mouse story then you better be lucky enough to get the right spot inside Disney.
So I don't see any compelling Randsian arguments here. Each generation should get a shot at profiting (or simply engaging publicly) with the cultural fruits of a prior generation. Creators will be fine.