• Disney retracts copyright claim on a YouTuber’s “Steamboat Willie” video, allowing it to be monetizable and shareable worldwide.
• The claim had previously demonetized the video and restricted its visibility and embedding options.
• This move by Disney may signal its recognition of “Steamboat Willie” being in the public domain.
Since it says “worldwide”, I want to point out that Steamboat Willie is in the public domain in the United States, but that doesn’t mean that it is elsewhere. For example, in Europe the law sets a copyright term of author death + 70 years so Steamboat Willie won’t be in the public domain there until 2036. So Disney is free to copyright strike Steamboat Willie outside the US however they want.
Many jurisdictions have exceptions that if a work is out of copyright in it’s original jurisdiction, it is out of copyright
It is called the principle of the lesser term