One of the drawbacks of our increasingly globalised market is how one significant subset can hold back everyone else - because what's the point of investing significant money in this or that production (tv, movies etc) if I cannot sell it everywhere?
And so, nobody can do what Disney did to bootstrap themselves.
Part of the synopsis: "... that developed countries are attempting to 'kick away the ladder' with which they have climbed to the top, thereby preventing developing countries from adopting policies and institutions that they themselves have used."
Just a tangential comment since I've read the book and often (very carefully) recommend it: the summary you gave of it could be interpreted in contexts like "if country XYZ polluted the environment this much to get developed so can we!" and such. In Brazil this is a pretty dirty and frequent argument to favor over-industrialist policies, so when I tell people about this book I explain its title/purpose a bit more. Great book anyways, thanks for bringing it up :-)
Specially interesting those from works made in the 1800s: Most of those would have been copyrighted under the current law if it applied at the time they made the movies!
And these are only the direct adaptations. Disney's very first work, "Alice's Wonderland" (not the movie, just a dreamlike short), was a riff on Carroll's work. It was published less than 30 years from Carroll's death and about 50 years from publication.
I don't know if this is what he meant, but Hollywood was basically invented by a bunch of pirates/patent infringers.
Without that, there might not be a Hollywood industry today.
It's interesting to think about the term "existing cultural icons". On first glance it seems like the term weekens the issue because it makes it sound like these are folk tale like things that somehow magically manifested. What happened though is that someone actually invented a story, it got retold over and over and evolved into what we have now. This would have been prevented by modern copyright. The original author wouldn't have allowed others to reproduce their work. The work wouldn't have evolved and probably even been forgotten.
And so, nobody can do what Disney did to bootstrap themselves.