The term “copyright” is often associated with the idea of protecting the author and their “creative genius,” as if it were an extension of their persona. In reality, its origins are primarily economic: the invention of movable type printing in the mid-fifteenth century soon forced the powers of the time to establish rules about who could reproduce texts and under what conditions. Over time, this mechanism has become increasingly rigid, extending the duration of rights and broadening their scope.

A striking example is the so-called “Mickey Mouse Protection Act” (officially the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998), which extended copyright protection in the United States to seventy years after the author’s death. Without this legislation, iconic characters like Mickey Mouse would have entered the public domain, becoming freely reusable. This is a clear indication of how copyright has evolved from an incentive for artistic creation into a full-fledged bulwark defending commercial interests.

Yet history shows that the absence of overly strict constraints often promotes the circulation of works destined to become cultural cornerstones. This is the case with Nosferatu (1922), Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau’s famous silent film, which was unauthorizedly based on Bram Stoker’s Dracula. A legal battle led to the destruction of the film reels for copyright infringement. However, thanks to some copies distributed outside “official” channels, Nosferatu was saved from destruction and went on to become a landmark in film history. Similarly, Stoker’s Dracula owes part of its fame to a bureaucratic gap that prevented it from being copyrighted in the United States, allowing for its rapid dissemination.