sdelmonte | On The Occasion of Mickey Mouse's 75th Birthday

November is a month of birthdays in my world. I turn - gasp!- 35 on the 15th, and I share my birthday with a good friend. Two days later, another close friend has a birtday, and in between, my nephew in Israel turns six. My sister-in-law's grandfather, God willing, will be turning 95. And then there is the birthday on November 18.

(The following is a bit odd and quixotic, even for me. Be warned.)On November 18, 1928, "Steamboat Willie" made its debut. Mickey Mouse was unveiled to the world, and the Disney empire was launched in earnest. I've never been a big fan of innocuous little Mickey - I doubt any adult is, not when Bugs Bunny is around - but no one can deny his role in the growth of the animation industry. And how is he being rewarded for lasting 75 years when Bosco and Oswald the Lucky Rabbit and so many other characters of that time are long gone?

He's being chained up for another 20 years.

Many of us know the details. The "Sonny Bono Copyright Protection Act" or some such nonsense extended corporate-held coyrights to last 95 years instead of 75 years. By an astonishing coincidence, this law was passed not long before Mickey Mouse would become the first major corporate-owned cash cow to enter the public domain. It's very clear who lobbied for this law.

So we face what should have been the day Mickey went free. The day that anyone could use or abuse him, same as Sherlock Holmes and King Arthur and the Mikado and Madame Bovary and centuries' worth of famous fictional characters. Lord knows, given how poorly Disney has used Mickey for the past decades, the poor little guy has earned his freedom. But that day has been delayed, and will probably be delayed again and again by future copyright acts of Congress.

So I pondered the idea of doing something to protest this. I have my own opinions about how copyright laws should work in the Internet age, some contrarian, some mainstream. In this case, though, I am a radical. No copyright should be allowed to run this long. And any action taken to infringe on the copyright of Mickey Mouse after November 18, 2003 is an act of civil disobedience against a rotten, corporate-driven law.

Thus I wanted to push the idea of a "Free Mickey Day" where everyone I know is encouraged to infringe on this illegitimate copyright. Lord knows, I have little interest in writing Mickey fanfic. And I don't want to see any of the Mickey slash that must be out there. But this law is wrong, and will soon be used to further "enslave" the rest of the Disney canon, and then the Looney Tunes (who deserve better than what they've been getting) and then the original DC and Marvel super-heroes (and I've seen what horrors are being done to Superman and Captain America in the comics).

The idea drifted to the back of my head, a quixotic notion that I didn't find the time to pursue. Then today, with the notion of the Disney getting out of the 2D animated business in my mind, I took note of the calendar. Only two weeks and three days till the day, and I had done nothing. "Well, maybe someone else has," I thought, and I did a Googlesearch. Alas, no new "free Mickey" movement had been launched. But that's when something else struck me, as I looked at a couple of Disney-related boards.

Disney is not celebrating Mickey's birthday! Apparently, the new corporate policy is to ignore such things, in favor of things like the centennial celebration for Mickey's creator, Uncle Walt himself.

I remember the big deal Disney made of Mickey's 50th birthday and 60th birthday. And yet the 75th birthday the ignore. And now I ponder this and conclude...

Disney is trying very hard to make sure no one remembered what was supposed to happen on that day! Disney wants to avoid any controversy at all, evne if it means not turning Mickey's remarkable success into a marketing tool.

Far-fetched? Yes, but how else to explain ignoring such a milestone?

So here we are, with Mickey in chains and hidden away, and with no major Mickey-related party to rally the forces of anti-corporate greed around.

So now I will make my statement. On November 18, 2003, send a message to Disney and to the megacorporations like them, and to Congress and the Supreme Court. Ignore the copyright on Mickey Mouse. Write a fic. Draw a picture. It can be anything you want (but please don't share the Tijuana Bible version with me). And tell friends about this. Disney doesn't want noise? Too bad.

I would even go so far as to suggest e-mailing your fics and pics to Disney with a note declaring that they have infringed on the rights of the public with this ill-conceived law, and that we refuse to accept it. Honestly, though, I don't want to start up with Disney's lawyers that blatantly, but I suppose if somehow I created a worldwide groundswell in two weeks, we could bombard them with one million e-mails. (That deluded I am not.)

Will this really make a difference? Probably not. But if there has even been a day crying out for us to raise our voices, it is the day Mickey's parole will be denied.

OK, I've said my piece. Sounds crazy, no? But I just can't but feel like this is the right moment to do something, no matter how small.