Ironic considering Disney is famous for making films based on other people's stories.

Did you know that Disney is asserting their trademark on Snow White? They believe that they're the only studio allowed to make a film of the Snow White story, even though the Snow White fairy tale is in the public domain?

They are not successful though, are they? There is a low-budget snow-white based TV series that run a year ago (Once Upon A Time).

Also, it is ridiculous considering that character is way older than Disney itself and provably comes from outside US jurisdiction.

> They are not successful though, are they? There is a low-budget snow-white based TV series that run a year ago (Once Upon A Time)

Once Upon a Time is a (still active) series produced by ABC Studios, which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Disney-ABC Television Group, which is in turn a wholly-owned subsidiary of Disney. The show incorporates dozens of Disney franchises (or, rather, the Disney versions of classic stories) entirely because of its ownership.

If it's the ABC "Once Upon A Time", that's Disney owned.

I'm looking forward to them asserting copyright over the Jungle Book characters. Sure, Disnet made their movie the year after Kipling's copyright expired, but it's the Disney movie versions that people know and love, not the versions from some old book that nobody reads any more.

That reminds me, I should download Jungle Book from librivox, I need more books to listen to.

I've thought about this, and I kinda wonder if there's more to it than the bad ol' media cartels flexing their muscle. Doesn't the government have an interest in maximizing its revenues? If so, is revenue maximized by limiting copyright, or by expanding it?

Overall government revenue worldwide is maximised by balanced copyright - that promotes the more efficient creation of taxable creative works, and use of copyrighted works in business, by allowing reuse of public domain works, but still incentivises forward progress to further enlarge the pie of which the government gets a slice. I suspect that at the moment, balance means shortening copyright terms drastically.

Overall campaign finance revenues, however, are maximised by supporting copyright expansion, because copyright holders who already own substantial collections of copyrighted works are willing to back politicians who support their interests, but there is no equally big pot of money for politicians in favour of balancing copyright.

It is one of those cases where what is essentially legally sanctioned corruption allows for regulatory capture of the political process against the interests of the government and public.