At the House of Mouse, the mouse reigns supreme – and the house is hugely litigious. Disney, which once chased a Florida childcare centre to remove an unofficial Minnie Mouse mural and told a stonemason that carving Winnie-the-Pooh into a child’s gravestone would violate their copyright, has lost control over the earliest iteration of Mickey Mouse after their 1928 short Steamboat Willie entered the public domain on 1 January.
Within hours, people were having fun remixing Steamboat Willie’s whistle into dubstep, turning him into NFTs, and having him swear, shoot people and crash the Titanic.
