The ironic thing is, most of Walt Disney's biggest hits were all based off of others' works in the public domain. A fact whose implications are sadly lost upon the people who continue to rubber-stamp copyright term extensions.

Like these classic fairy tales that were folklore until written down and of which many exist in the collective consciousness of western civilization: http://www.imdb.com/list/ls003947956/

Charles Perrault (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Perrault) and Grimm's fairy tales (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimms%27_Fairy_Tales) are better read anyway.

My daughter wanted me to read The Little Mermaid to her, so we read from HC Andersen's book. That story was brutal. I don't think either my daughter or I were expecting that bleak lesson in life.

Yes the original fairy tales are usually quite grim: a far cry from their disney version. The advantages of the compilation of tales from the Grimm brother is there are a lot of them to pick from. ;)

I'm sure when it gets close again, they'll lobby to extend copyright once again for Mickey, Donald, et. al.

Imagine all the fun stuff all people would be able to do with the Disney characters if they came out of copyright. Disney could then make new things to define themselves.

Most of our entertainment industry just latches on to the old, giving us endless remakes and sequels instead of trying to find new writers and artists that give us things that are not cliche, inspiring and new.