...Or so you would think, from their support of the Copyright Term Extension Act. Of course, it's hard to reconcile this view with how hard Disney has been fighting to avoid paying royalties to the heirs of the estate of A. A. Milne--better known as the creator of Winnie the Pooh. According to this article in the LA Times (reg. req'd):
"Walt Disney Co. on Monday asked a judge to dismiss a lawsuit seeking more than $200 million in royalties for Winnie the Pooh merchandise, charging that the heirs to the fortune have been concealing documents that were stolen from Disney."
The heirs claim that they found the documents in dumpsters on the edge of Disney's property.
Disney in fact owns most of the copyrights to Winnie the Pooh. But it only has those copyrights today because it negotiated some deals with the original copyright holders. How sad that Disney is trying so hard to avoid respecting those deals, even though they were based on a strong notion of legitimate copyright ownership that Disney (among others) has repeatedly endorsed and recently extended.