How Mickey Mouse Spied: Exposing the Trap of Perpetual Copyrights in the Streaming Era.

-- By YanisAliouche - 20 Nov 2023

In my classes at Columbia Law School, one professor noted “you guys don’t own your music anymore. You stream, but you don’t own the copy. Isn’t that weird?”. Two weeks later, Professor Moglen made the same remark, in a much more somber tone. The transition from physical to digital media led by the rise of streaming platforms has altered our intimate connection with art and media, opening it up for the world to see.

This essay unfolds how streaming companies like Disney and Netflix utilize their perpetual copyrights as the key to unlock your home and capitalize your private life. Mickey Mouse is no ordinary mouse: he isn’t the victim of any mousetrap: he is the trap, and he’s here to stay, forever, if you let him.

"My, what big eyes you have!"

“All the better to see you with”.

Opting for subscriptions to stream services instead of buying or renting a copy elsewhere seems like a given. The service isn’t expensive, and these platforms offer a somewhat expansive catalogue. Why engage in these services? The answer every student seems to have when Professor Moglen asks such a question is "it's convenient”.

Services make it so easy too. Subscribing is designed to keep prospective customers’ attention. Some companies ‘generously’ offer discounts on these services – Verizon, for example, promised to offer a free year of Disney Plus for some of its customers. You’re ushered into subscribing because it seems absurd not to.

“If you’re not paying for the product; you are the product”. If the price is low, it’s that you’re giving something else away. By hitting the subscribe button, you sign a consent form to let Mickey into your home to spy on everything you do.

What’s he after? Your privacy. That’s what’s valuable to these companies.

These streaming companies aren’t even trying to hide it anymore, as they’ve all started upping their prices for ad-free subscriptions and are now starting to introduce ads on their websites, personalized based on your interests. Hulu tells its advertisers that it can help them target consumers based on age, sex, location and “interests and real-world actions – both on and off Hulu. Netflix claims that it only offers extremely limited targeting abilities (based on geographic location, or most popular shows), but it is reported and evident that this will change over time as advertising becomes a more important part of Netflix’ business model .

Mickey has set the trap, and you’ve let him in with open arms.

Who's responsible?

You are.

Now that Mickey’s here, the Mouse isn’t going anywhere. Your home is comfortable, and he likes it here. And you like him here too.

The hook for these streaming platforms is showing you things you know you like. Disney+ uses that to make lackluster Star Wars spinoff shows and countless ugly remakes of movies because they know you’ll watch. Paramount has announced its intent to halt production of original animated movies in favor of remakes – it doesn’t matter how bad they are, they know viewers will be seated. These platforms use the IPs you know and love and wave in front of you like car keys – it’s the cheese in the trap. You aren’t alone in letting this happen.

No one took this digitalization shift seriously. Companies refused to take the threat seriously. Blockbuster closed because it resisted adapting to the changing market conditions. When it was offered to buy Netflix, Blockbuster “laughed (Netflix) out of their office”. Borders, the second largest bookstore chain, killed itself by refusing to engage in the digitalization of the industry. The road was open, and streaming platforms like Netflix cruised on it.

The comforting familiarity to Mickey, Lion King and Darth Vader that lure you in allow to conceal the attack on your privacy. But question remains: how are these guys still around to draw us in?

Mickey Mouse Forever

Long copyrights enabled by extensive legislation allowing for renewal of copyrights, have killed the idea of protecting author’s rights, which is one of the honorable principles ‘of copyright law’. The constant extension of renewals of copyrights can’t be in the interests of authors, not when these rights have been extended to 80 years after their deaths. It’s all for businesses to exploit the works of others. Unsurprisingly, the latest extension has been coined ‘The Mickey Mouse Protection Act’.

Even now, as Mickey Mouse is preparing to enter public domain, Disney keeps a strong hold over its friend, using trademark law to ensure a perpetual grasp on the mouse and by extension, on you. Mickey Mouse, forever.

To add to this, the Supreme Court decision Eldred v Ashcroft held that there was no limit to how many times the term of copyright may be extended by Congress, and Golan v Holder ruled that Congress could release works from the public domain to bring them subject to copyright protection without violation of the Constitution.

In other words, Mickey Mouse isn’t leaving you alone anytime soon.

Time to evict the Mouse™

This part doesn’t aim to reform all intellectual property law to combat the invasiveness of streaming platforms. The Copyright system is all I’ve ever known, and in the state of things it is true that the system no longer aims to protect authors’ rights, but instead serves corporate interests.

For now, it’s time to call the exterminator. Remove the Mouse from your house by buying physical used copies of medias. Support local cinemas. See original works that aim to be something more than a shot at your wallet.

The problem is that they’ve got your attention. They’re good at it. They’re good at business because business is getting your attention.

In the word of Andy Warhol, “making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art”. Perhaps, in the face of the mouse’s perpetual presence, it’s time to redefine what we consider the best art.

I'm not sure how to understand the argument here. One axis of the view is the nature of the culture in which we participate: what kinds of music we listen to, what we watch and read and think about, which in the current world might be called "what we consume," or "on what we bestow our attention." Another axis of the view is by means of what software, or through interaction over the network with which services we participate in our chosen aspects of our culture. They're utterly independent, but as the draft moves along, they seem to be linked in a fashion I don't understand.

My books, music, cinema, etc. aren't "streamed" to me by someone else. They're sitting in storage I own, arriving at my eyeball or eardrum over a secure network that prevents anyone in the middle from knowing what I read, listen to, or watch, ever. All that's happening because the software I use in all the devices that store, show, record, scan, or otherwise help me to be the person I want to be in the culture in which I want to live was made by sharing for sharing, for limiting or preventing other people from turning power over computers into power over me. All that technology is like, except better, than all the same technology being used in the ways you describe. But what's that got to do with culture? It doesn't matter whether you're watching Jerry Lewis or Francois Truffaut, or even something French people don't like, What you hear or read isn't really relevant, and copyright isn't really relevant either anymore. The streamers may have appeared to look things up, but instead they have simply imposed stupidity taxes on those who can't save and share streams. Software is all. Perhaps that's the culture in which you want to be more literate....