Senator faces down Mickey Mouse
Missouri’s Hawley wants to strip Disney copyright
Florida Republicans may be in a political and regulatory feud with the Walt Disney Co., but they are as quiet as a mouse about the latest attack on the state’s largest private employer.
U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, a Republican from Missouri and potential rival to Gov. Ron Desantis for the party’s 2024 presidential nomination, wants to strip Disney of its copyright of Mickey Mouse, the cartoon character whose popularity Walt Disney used to build a Florida empire.
“The age of Republican handouts to Big Business is over,” said Hawley in a statement introducing his bill in the U.S. Senate. “Thanks to special copyright protections from Congress, woke corporations like Disney have earned billions while increasingly pandering to woke activists. It’s time to take away Disney’s special privileges and open up a new era of creativity and innovation.”
Commentators in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Variety played the release of Hawley’s proposed Copyright Restoration Act of 2022 as the opening round of a Desantis-hawley match up for the GOP nomination – if former President Donald Trump chooses not to run.
The British publication, The Independent, said Hawley, “wanted to show that he hates Disney too.”
Hawley’s Senate colleagues from Florida were mum on the proposed action against Disney.
Neither Sen. Marco Rubio, who is running for reelection this November, nor Sen. Rick Scott commented on the bill.
Desantis’s office said the governor does not weigh in on federal proposals “early in the legislative process.”
Disney officials have not made any
public comments about any legislation directed against the company.
Law expert: ‘It isn’t about copyright policy’
Gregory Magarian, a constitutional law expert at Washington University in St. Louis, dismisses Hawley’s bill as an attempt to “prove he hates the First Amendment and LGBTQ Americans as much as Desantis.”
Desantis had moved against Disney in April, after the company’s CEO criticized a Desantis education initiative critics said was hostile to gay students.
He called for legislation to revoke the Reedy Creek Improvement District, which provides Disney self-governing authority for its Florida property. The company has held such authority for more than 50 years.
Magarian said a compelling argument can be made for copyright reform, but Hawley isn’t making it and called the Senate proposal, “The Removing Copyright Protection to Help Josh Hawley Win Republican Primaries Act.”
“The problem is it isn’t about copyright policy. It’s about punishing what Hawley calls ‘woke corporations,’ particularly Disney, for their political views
that LGBTQ Americans are human beings,” said Magarian.
Hawley would allow current copyrights of 95 years to remain on the books, but it singles out a new 56-year limit to apply retroactively to any company with a market capitalization of more than $150 billion.
That would apply to at least four media companies: Apple, Walt Disney, Comcast and Netflix, according to the investment website Investopedia.
Disney has held copyrights to the Mickey Mouse Steamboat Willie character since 1928, decades before Apple (1976), Comcast (1963), and Netflix (1997) were incorporated.
Magarian views Hawley’s proposal as a response to Desantis pushing for SB 4, the bill signed into law that repeals Disney’s special district. It does not go into effect next June.
Florida Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, a Democratic candidate for governor, said the attacks by Hawley and Desantis represent a threat to the state’s economic and political health.
“The governor realized he jumped before he looked and now we’ve got a significant situation on our hands and there is no plan,” said Fried, about the Reedy Creek dissolution.
“You’re seeing international bond rating authorities looking at reducing our triple A bond rating. You’re seeing CEOS across the country and across the state who are raising alarms about a hostile business environment in Florida,” said Fried.
The elimination of the Reedy Creek district has raised financial questions about which government entity will pick up more than $1 billion in district debt and costs to provide public services.
Disney “will be responsible for paying the debts,” Desantis said Monday when speaking to reporters in Seminole County. Adding that the state may take over the special district, Desantis said his staff will have a Disney plan ready after the fall election and in time for the January 2023 session for lawmakers.
Fried said she heard a similar promise from Desantis with the COVID-19 vaccine rollout, but it became clear “there was no plan.
“Every day he’s shooting from the hip and this is going to have severe ramifications,” said Fried. “Now, they’re going after Disney, who is next on their path to trying to get to the presidency.”
The Disney attacks reveals a systemic problem within the “radical right of the Republican Party,” said Fried.
To employ the state’s regulatory powers to silence political critics, said Fried is “communism. That’s fascism. That’s a dictatorship.”
Added Fried: “They are going after a corporation for standing up for the internal morals and ethics and guidelines they have set for their own employees and for the people who work for them.”
Fried spoke about the Disney disputes after a roundtable discussion with Tallahassee residents about the state of politics in Florida.
Among the group was retired U.S. Army Colonel Wilson Barnes, 83 years old and a Vietnam Purple Heart Recipient.
He turned to Fried and said, “we’re becoming what they sent me off to war to fight. We’re becoming Vietnam.”