Yeah has he issued an apology for that? There was that book, Coders at Work, I think, where the feeling I got was "I was given a few days and forced to come up with something that looked superficially like Java so..."
Amazon has a patent on 1 click to buy, and I am supposed to believe that mickey mouse remixes are stifling competition? Are you a child or do you write for children?
It's not mickey mouse, the extension of copyright that resulted. The point he's making is that a big business (Disney) can sway legislature for their own benefit.
If you're not aware, the copyright period has been extended several times up to the point of ridiculousness based mostly on Disney's lobbying.
Patents are a massive problem in tech, but copyright is a problem for innovators in the arts - especially authors.
The insult at the end is entirely unneeded. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if a child saw the issues presented more clearly for not having had to deal with reality nearly so often.
It's also a problem if you're an artist that makes something 'close enough' to Mickey Mouse, and you don't have the resources to both fight the legal battle, and support yourself while your income stream is shut off due to the legal battle.
It's also a problem if you'd like to preserve old art or repurpose it for the modern era. The tragedy isn't Mickey cartoons, it's all the less-famous art that is being lost forever with the passage of time. Which could have been reissued by whoever came across it, were it not for perpetual copyrights making that impossible to do legally.
