I agree about starting today on a different note. I'm going to refer back to a post by the guy from Greece, not to argue with him, but to point out something interesting about his post. Along with some name calling, he committed an act of civil disobedience.
It is deleted now, but our friend posted an image of Mickey Mouse®.
Of course, as we all know, Mickey® is a registered trademark of the Disney Corporation. In fact, Mickey®'s protected status is the result of an extraordinary campaign by the Disney Corporation to promote the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. In 1998, after Disney spent over $6 million lobbying, this law was passed by a voice vote intended to hide the identities of the representatives who voted for it.
The Bono Act had one major purpose: it extended Disney's copyright on Mickey Mouse® and his friends. See, Mickey® first appeared in "Steamboat Willie" in 1928, and therefore Disney's copyright would have expired in 2003, 75 years after his first appearance. But the Bono act increases Disney's copyright on Mickey® until 2023.
Disney is happy to use public-domain material: Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and a lot of other Disney characters were created without Disney paying one cent of licensing fees. But even though they've profited from the public domain, they don't want to extend the same privilege to others. That's something worthy of protest.
So, guy from Greece, though I might not agree with anything else you say, I appreciate and endorse your copyright protest. You don't need to delete posts that make important points like that.
