When will Mickey Mouse enter the public domain?

If Disney doesn't keep illegally extending the copyright dates, continuing to ruin the way copyrights are supposed to actually work, I will legitimately be surprised.

(sigh) Just a little bit longer and I'll finally be able to release my Steamboat Willy tentacle hentai comic.

Even with the character in Public Domain, I doubt Disney would be particularly happy with anyone using it.

They can send cease and desist letter left and right, claiming that "the use of the mouse is fine, but the elements X, Y and Z were introduced in a later work of ours that's still protected", even if it's a plain lie.

Trying to take Disney to court is suicide.

The have enough money to hire half the lawyers in the world and make them come up with a lawsuit even if there's no basis for one. They can stretch the lawsuit process to last years, and yet the fees would be but a fraction of a fraction of a percent in their yearly spending. Almost any defendant, meanwhile, would be financially ruined by it, even if they end up winning.

Donald Duck’s copyright expires in 2029 and we’ll finally be able to walk around pantsless in a sailor hat/shirt without being harassed by Walt Disney’s widow.

EXPECT legislative-shenanigans, people...

EITHER they'll extend copyright again,

XOR they'll just "conveniently" have copyright apply in court, even-though it doesn't apply on-paper.

Never believe a career-criminal, or Dark Triad entity, has changed, unless you see robust, consistent, years-long, actual, objective proof of that change having-happened.

Extraordinary-claims require extraordinary backing/evidence.

_ /\ _

I recall an article on Ars Technica, I think from 2017?, talking about how Disney and other big corpos weren't moving pieces to give copyright law yet another push into infinity. The main reasoning was that, unlike the previous times it did (the last one being early 90s), the resistance would be real and vocal, with a possible side effect being a lawmaker reaching the conclusion that "no piece of shit deserves or needs this much time protected by copyright", starting to work in reducing copyright protection

Keep in mind, folks, that we'll only have public access to Mickey and Minnie as they're displayed on Steamboat Willie. Any other versions are still no-go.

. Later forms of the mouse, including the iconic white-gloved version with red shorts, will still be protected by copyright, according to The New York Times.

WTF is this shitty loophole? "Well, we changed his clothes, that's a whole new different character!" This makes no sense. Copyright should be abolished.

I guarantee that on January 1st there will be a ton of Mickey videos on the internet and it will be glorious

Over Walt’s cold dead body.

…

uhhhhh… wait, hang on I didn’t mean that

I didn't see here the obvious answer: never.

Now I can finally colorize the one cartoon that counts.