What's the first thing you think of when you see the image of Mickey Mouse or Bugs Bunny? Chances are it's not: "Look, there's the copyright-protected property of the Walt Disney Company and Warner Bros." These pop icons have been popular for so long you no more think of them as being property as you wonder about who owns Santa Claus. The problem is that while St. Nick is a symbol for Christmas, Mickey is more than a symbol for the Walt Disney Corporation. The mouse is a fantasy with which many have a personal relationship. But Mickey lovers had best keep unauthorized relationships to themselves. Artists, however, have a hard time keeping fantasies private.

Last summer, cartoonist and animator Rich Koslowski extended the Toon tradition of Roger Rabbit by publishing the provocative graphic novel "Three Fingers." In Koslowski's alternative history of Hollywood and animation, cartoon characters are real creatures who talk about their lives in showbiz by way of a series of interviews and flashbacks done in the manner of VH1's "Behind the Music" or the Entertainment Channel's "E! True Hollywood Stories." As in these shady tell-alls, fame for Toons comes with its share of dark secrets and seedy hard knocks.

The approach is not a complete success, because Koslowski never manages to enlarge the concept enough to engage those who are not already obsessed with cartoons. But, at its most fascinating, "Three Fingers" shows how deeply the images, and often the specific personalities, of classic cartoon characters have entered the public imagination. We have the washed-up superstar Mickey Mouse, imperious Bugs Bunny, gabby whistle-blower Foghorn Leghorn, bitter burn-outs Pork Pig and Pluto Pup, and even pathetic, crippled Toon shell Daffy Duck.

Nowadays, Koslowski's appropriation of famous cartoon images raises no eyebrows. We think of these characters as intellectual public property. But a Supreme Court decision on January 15, 2003 in the Eldred vs. Ashcroft case, which sought to strike down the 20-year extension of copyright control in the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act, is a thunderous reminder that this is not so. The anti-extension coalition, led by Internet publisher Eric Eldred, argued that since copyright protection has been repeatedly extended in recent decades, most recently from 75 to 95 years, Congress was exceeding its constitutional mandate to hold protection to a "limited time." The Court concluded that any sort of time limit was still a limit. The payoff for the entertainment and publishing industries could be billions of dollars.

The conclusion of Eldred vs. Ashcroft hardly means an end to the copyright-extension issue or the public debate about it. In a "New York Times" article on the decision, Amy Harmon noted "in its 7-to-2 opinion, the court ruled that since Congress had not extended the copyright term forever, it had not exceeded its authority. But the opinion was silent on whether the justices thought Congress had acted in the public's best interest -- and several of them had suggested during the oral arguments that it had not." Indeed, there was widespread disdain for the copyright-clingers.

Consider satirist Andrew Baio's perfect, modified-art response to the Supreme Court's decision. On his blog website, Baio adds the following note: "The source image comes from issue #103 of Gold Key Mickey Mouse, a Disney comic book from October 1965. It was posted to Usenet in alt.binaries.pictures.comics.reposts: unavailable print media, scanned and permanently archived by and for comic book enthusiasts. And, thanks to our brutal copyright law, entirely illegal."

Especially with Disney creations, this is an old battle, with the free-access side gradually winning more ground, gaining support, and enlisting more mainstream opinion. The fight began in earnest back in 1971, when Dan O'Neill and a group of fellow underground comic-book artists who called themselves the Air Pirates published a satire of Mickey Mouse in which he and Minnie get stoned, have sex and generally act like daredevil hippies with big ears. The two issues of "Air Pirate Funnies" were legally suppressed, though it's hard not to notice, if you can get a look at one of the rare copies, that they are no more subversive than, well, "Three Fingers."

Of course, there are many "scandalous" images of classic Toons out in Cyberspace Land, particularly Mickey. To keep up rigid, consistent control of the images, and a shred of public sympathy, the Disney lawyers have had to resort to arguments other than "this use is depriving us of licensing fees."

One of the most amusing clashes occurred several years ago when the Disney legal team learned that a certain T-shirt was being sold at the drug-laced, all-night dance parties known as Raves. The T-shirt showed a bizarre Mickey with three ears, four eyes, two tails, six fingers and one leg with the line "The Rat on Acid" written underneath. The argument was that this was an obnoxious and damaging mutilation of a beloved figure. But it turned out that the image had been drawn by none other than Ward Kimball, one of the venerated Nine Old Men considered to be founding artists of the Disney animation school. Kimball had been playing around with the image of Mickey, and a whole page of his oddball versions of the Mouse was even reprinted in "The Art of Mickey Mouse."

So the unauthorized T-shirt was really guilty of a mind crime - encouraging somebody to think of Mickey as a rave-goer, the Rat on Acid. But by now, everybody is imagining Mickey however they wish in their own minds. And some, like Dan O'Neill and Rich Koslowski, have had the skills and the will to put their imaginings down on paper. Someday soon, they will be able to do it without looking nervously over their shoulder.

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