Eccentric Flower:199810/copyright and mickey mouse
From Eccentric Flower
«October 1998 «Eccentric Flower
 |
fourteen october ninety eight noon Copyright and Mickey Mouse Well, so far the original correspondent has raked me over the coals privately about the copyright screed I sent him - which is not the same as the one I wrote here, below, but covers the same things. He asked me "Are you completely amoral?" I wrote back, no, I'm not amoral, I'm just poor, but leave money out of it for a moment: My creative works are my property and I should have the right to choose what becomes of them. If I choose to hog them, well, that reflects poorly on me, but it should be my choice and the government should not get a say-so. He wrote back, Ah, but you are only thinking of your creative output as "property" at all because you have been conditioned to do so, and in fact until comparatively recently such things were not legally property at all. At which point I realized we had no further basis for discussion, since we are essentially speaking from different religions. I will say that a world where my ideas are not mine is a very scary world to me. - - - I remember learning that I couldn't copyright the idea behind a board game. (True. You cannot copyright the rules and methods of play. You can copyright elements of the package design, the look of the game board, even the exact wording of the rules, but you cannot prevent someone from making another game which plays exactly the same way.) When I learned that - I was sixteen, and it would have been a really good game - I said, well, that's it. I'm not designing any more games, ever. In fact, I was so disheartened that I misplaced all the materials and I wouldn't be at all surprised to find I've lost them. I don't need to write to make a living, and I probably shouldn't have dragged money into it. Money distracts. I think this is more of a claim-staking thing. If I am the first with an idea, I want the rights. I want the recognition. Egotistical of me, isn't it? Maybe, but it's due to my underlying underconfidence: I know I will never be recognized for anything but my ideas - I am no sports hero, I am no artist. (By the by, note please that artists have it easier than writers here - nobody tries to make another Mona Lisa, even though they could, and if they did, they'd probably go to jail for forgery. Meanwhile, if someone writes a novel with the same plot as one of mine, a critic might say "Gee, that's a lot like this other book," but plagiarism at that level is an unenforceable charge. So the art is allowed to be as individualistic as handwriting - i.e. if you copy it it's forgery - but my writing style is not.) [Note, added later: I am going to clarify that last paragraph, because it's muddled. I'm conflating the idea and the style there, and what I really meant was not "if someone writes a novel with the same plot" - I could probably live with that - but if someone writes a novel which is clearly trying to be as close a duplicate of mine as possible. I steal plots all the time; there are very few "new" plots - but I don't want someone trying to copy the way I write things. OK?] - - - Meanwhile one regular reader notes that her personal take is that the copyright terms are being extended because Mickey Mouse is in danger of falling into public domain. She dislikes Disney, and I'm no fan of the money empire myself, but I'm a big fan of the cartoons, and I feel that's a damned shame. I think Disney, for all their myriad sins, owns Mickey Mouse fair and square and shouldn't have to worry about losing him. Oddly enough, the history of Mickey both reinforces and undercuts my weird ideas on this subject. Walt's original creation, Oswald the Rabbit, was stolen from him by his studio. He left in a huff, started his own studio, and created Mickey in retaliation. The reinforcing part is that idea theft is incredibly damaging. Walt loved animation more than anything, but it was a very near thing - he almost hung it up then and there, there almost was no Mickey. If it had been me, there probably wouldn't have. I wouldn't have been able to get over it. The undercutting part is that Mickey (as he looked then) and Oswald look almost exactly alike! Oswald has longer, thinner ears, and that's about it. Mickey is Oswald, with the serial numbers filed off. Walt stole back his own idea. And clearly the fact that he could get away with this (after all, Oswald was legally not his, so he was doing something Wrong) is a Good Thing. I am in favor of many of the same things my original correspondent is in favor of - free exchange of ideas and an atmosphere of intellectual openness. I want people to not be scared to toss out their ideas for other people to see. But I feel that not having strong protections in place for one's ideas creates more of a "chilling effect" on expression than the strong protections themselves do. I still don't think that the two are mutually exclusive. - - - By the by, not that I thought you were, but - shed no tears for Disney. They have a gambit available which us normal folks do not. They will simply trademark enough aspects of Mickey's distinctive visual representation that no one will dare make new movies featuring the mouse. Yes, Steamboat Willie and other such old cartoons will probably become freeware, but Disney doesn't care about those - several are already public domain, I believe, and Disney uses the others as a sort of loss leader. That's not a moneymaker for them.
© columbine |
