March, 29, 2002 archives

in the tussle over the rights to the big pot o' money being generated by disney from winnie-the-pooh, it turns out that disney destroyed documents. oops.

it's a shame that the article doesn't point that the original winnie-the-pooh books would be in the public domain if it weren't for the corporate welfare handed out in the form of retroactive copyright extensions. the “disney pooh” from the movies and other spinoffs would still be copyrighted, of course. and probably trademarked, too. (the copyright on the books, with the original illustrations by ernest shepard, would have expired in 1984, under the terms in place when the books were originally published.)