Public Domain Character: Difference between revisions
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A character that nobody owns anymore, or was never owned in the first place, that everybody wants to take a shot at writing.
Under U.S. law, works<ref>Except for audio and sound recordings which are handled differently.</ref> first published in
Thanks to the trend of various changes in legislation, copyright terms can sometimes be cynically described as lasting at least X+20 years, where X is the number of years since the release of ''[[Steamboat Willie]]'', the first Mickey Mouse cartoon (this is not strictly correct as it was actually the ''third'' Mickey Mouse cartoon, but it was the first talkie and the first to be widely released). It is generally agreed that the most recent extension of American copyright duration—the [[wikipedia:Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act|Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act]]—was enacted at the behest of the [[Walt Disney]] Company solely to keep Mickey Mouse cartoons from entering the public domain.
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