zlacker

The three acquisitions you mentioned all took place many years after the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998. Without the financial benefits conferred by that law (the timing and content of which benefited them more than it did their competitors), they might not have made all of those acquisitions.

A lot of people in this thread seem to be undervaluing those old school Disney characters, yes now Disney is huge and has a much larger portfolio of IP, but in 1998 they were a far bigger percentage of Disney's portfolio than they are now.

You're not wrong that consolidation is a problem. My point is that Congress changed the law in a way that helped Disney and at least partially enabled that consolidation. (In fact, it's fairly rare to come across a monopoly or any heavily entrenched corporation that isn't enabled in some way by government collusion.)

If you shoot someone, take all his money, then build a business with it, you're still a murderer. (Just now you're a rich murderer.)

>>safety+(OP)
> A lot of people in this thread seem to be undervaluing those old school Disney characters

Right? There were even competitors back then. People all but forgot the Looney Tunes.

>>safety+(OP)
They also tend to omit that at the time of the buyout Marvel was at a sales (and in many ways creative) nadir. It was hardly a media juggernaut. They actually went bankrupt in the late 90s, and it was only Carl Icahn buying much of their outstanding debt for Pennie’s on the dollar (and then firing basically all of the then-current board) that kept them from going under totally.

>>safety+(OP)
What's needed regardless of copyright or patent terms, is a similar attitude to legal predation as there is to physical stalking and threatening.

i.e. enforce egregious IP violations while criminalizing trolls.