Making steamboat willie toys be against the use as Mickey is a trademark character. I hadn't thought much about the public domain for profit via VAR. I guess releasing Steamboat Willie as a special addition DVD or BluRay for profit would fit into that just as republishing a book like a Hugo's Les Miserables with a new translation and annotations is acceptable as well. They key would be allowing the characters to remain the property of the artist be it a studio or an individual for as long as they are using them and a chorter period beyond that time. So, Disney goes bankrupt and 20 years later Micky and Donald are eligible to be used by someone else. The problem with the Mickey Mouse Copyright is that it extended all compyrights based on the original artists life, when copyright should be transferrable such that Lucasfilm owns the Millenium Falcon as long as it is making Star Wars products and Warner Brothers owns Bugs Bunny as long as they are making WB Cartoons. The fact that the original artist passes should be irrelavent if it was his company or he transferred the copyright to the company who paid him for it. At that point, it should be for the life of the product in whatever form, be it Woody and Buzz dolls or Disney amusement parks with Mickey Mouse. Only specific artistic pieces should fall into the public domain and that should be based on a time period from their creation to give the artist his profit.
Now, onto profits...
Artists will make art because their sould cries out to do it. It tears them up inside not to. That said, they still deserve to be compensated for it should someone like it and only they and their assignees should have the right to profit from their art, no matter the form. If I record a song on a CD, I should have a significatn period in which only I and those I designate as representatives should be able to profit from it. Yes, you heard me right, I'm anti music piracy. Do I like the RIAA? No. They are organized crime as they effectively hold a monopoly of the big 5 music publishers and, quite honestly, I think that kind of power should be outlawed the same as if the oil companies all got together and decided the price of gas in an area... Oh wait! They do... I honestly think the music industry (and the big oil) needs an overhaul.But I think it needs the overhaul so the artists see more while reducing the cost of the music so their fans are encouraged to go ahead and buy it knowing it won't break the bank *and* their facorite band is getting the bulk of the profit, not some big shot CEO of BMG or Sony.