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if Copyright Law had never changed this would be in Public Domain?


is this true? was it Disney that messed this up?

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Can you elaborate some?
As I understand copyright, every time they issued a new film in the series, the original copyright would be reset under the improvement/revision clause.

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For an overview of Disney's influence on copyright law, including very recent lobbying, see this article:
https://www.highlandernews.org/34672/disney-lobbies-congress-change-copyright-laws/

I am not an expert, but from what I've read, the original US copyright law from 1790 specified that a registered work would have copyright protection for fourteen years. But then the author (or copyright holder, whoever it might be) could apply to renew the copyright for another fourteen years, but not again after that.

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