The Sad Tale of Buttons' Adventures: Or How Copyright Cartels Crush Creativity · 1:07am Aug 18th, 2021
Disney Does the Darndest Things
Hello, my fellow bronies,
If you read media-related news, you've about Disney's new low: they've apparently tried to turn the Norse God Loki into their own trademark.And that's...not exactly accurate.
What is true is that Disney is trademarking its version of Loki, the Marvel one.
However, it is understandable why people might think Disney would do something so outrageous; while producing the smash hit Coco, Disney tried to trademark the Spanish name for the Day of the Dead, an important holiday in which Mexican families honor their deceased ancestors. Disney withdrew from the effort after a vicious backlash in both the online social media and In Mexico itself. Because why should a Mexican holiday be controlled by a large American corporation?
But then again, Disney does control a lot of our culture. Disney's intense desire to control its intellectual property has turned copyright from a tool of creativity to its very bane. Fan creators can find themselves under the threat of litigation for any attempt to recreate an already produced work, and it has taken almost a century for things like the Great Gatsby and George Gerswhin's music to fall into the public domain, and why anything produced this century can be copyrighted 70 years AFTER the life of the author!
The Short Life and Death of Button's Adventures.
In the brony community, this extreme level corporate control led to the downfall of one of the most anticipated pony web series, Buttons' Adventures.
Someone had put enormous time, dedication, and effort into turning a side character of MLP into of the most hilarious colts ever put into animated form: Button Mash. Somebody saw MLP and decided to give it the most touching tribute possible....
And all of it went down in flames because of a cease and desist letter that probably wasn't even from Hasbro. But nevertheless, the creator was forced to pull the plug on a promising pony project.
But how did we get to this point? Why should creating a fan-based animation lead to the threat of litigation from a major corporation? How can a corporation potentially have the power to control the name of a holiday itself? And why might creators have to wait possibly over a CENTURY to be able to make Buttons' Adventures.
And how does this affect those who don't make their own content.
The Origins of Copyright
If you're a fanfic writer, you might already know the history. But in case you don't, this section is for you.
Like many of America's issues, copyright is something that dates back to America's very beginning. Copyright, or the principle of copyright, appears in Section 8 of the Constitution itself: The Congress shall have Power To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries. Copyright was, at the time, seen as way of both ensuring authors would be incentivized to produce while also preventing the creation of book publishing cartels, which had been a reality in England before their copyright laws had been enacted in 1710.
In 1790, America officially enacted a copyright law, giving creators exclusive rights to their own books for up to 28 years if you asked for a renewal. The laws at the time had very strict conditions that had to met in order to be granted a copyright. If they were not met, the work would fall into the public domain.
In 1831, another copyright act passed, extending the length of copyright for up to 42 years, again with a requirement that you file for renewal.
The 1909 law extended copyright laws to up to 56 years, again with renewal, and came to include motion pictures.
But it would be under the influence of one notable creator that copyright would go from being the boon of creativity to its very bane.
Disney: The Story of Too Much Success
In the 1920s, one piece of property would gain not only success, but effectively play a key role in Americana itself: Mickey Mouse.
The colorful mouse, from its first appearance in Steamboat Willie, would soar to become one of the most beloved icons in American culture by the 1960s, with Disney itself becoming another organization that was synonymous with America's cultural might.
But by the 1970s, the Disney corporation was faced with a problem: Mickey Mouse would fall into the public domain within the next decade. But Mickey Mouse was an asset worth billions of dollars at the time, and if Disney lost control of this character then....they would have to try and make more stuff.
But Disney did not want to let go of this profitable icon, and so they lobbied Congress for an unbelievable extension of copyright. The new copyright law extended the copyright to life of the author plus 50 years, and retroactively extended anything already under copyright to 75 years. It also made her process of copyright automatic. "Automatic" being a key word, which I'll get too later.
The Rise of Copyright Cartels
It is no surprise that the author of the above law was the Disney Corporation. But it was not just Disney's fingerprints in this law: the estate of George Gershwin wanted to continue to profit from the late composer's work decades after his untimely demise. Even if you played the music of Gershwin in public to friends, you'd have to pay Gershwin's very estate. But other companies like Time Warner also back this law, since it would give them a steady cash flow for their creative works that would last decades.
But this goes well beyond simply making a counterfeit book.
A father wanted to put Spider-Man logo on his deceased son's gravestone, but Disney barred that because it considered a father's gift to a dead child to be an attack on its "magic."
And of course, there is Hasbro dismantling a fan-cartoon just as it began to get off the ground.
Major corporations can take a giant sledgehammer to any creative effort based off of works they control.
Unless you can claim fair use, but that is legally tricky.
Stunting Creativity and Orphan Works
But this is where this gets very unfair and hypocritical: Disney itself would not have been able to make the movies it has made if the copyright laws that exist now had been put in place a century ago.
The Little Mermaid, the Jungle Book, and the Hunchback of Notre Dame are all works based off public domain work. If the copyright to Hunchback of Notre Dame were still around, there would be no Claude Frollo shouting Hellfire at the top of his lungs.
You heard that right: Disney made fanfictions of already popular work to make their movies. This Claude Frollo is the Ron the Death Eater version of Hugo's original Frollo. And now they have kept us from doing the same for stuff they produce.
Which means we can't make a movie about female Frollo.
The truth is this: all works are derivative of something else, and we all need the freedom to rework and remix something to make it better.
A good example of this is Mr. Freeze. Mr. Freeze started out as one of the cheesiest villains in comic book history, but because the writers for Batman: The Animated Series had been given permission to redo his character, he was rewritten into one of the darkest and most tragic characters in Batman lore. But let's say the writers had not given him a chance: then there wouldn't have been the Mr. Freeze we know and pity. If someone wanted to make their own Mr. Freeze story, DC could stop them, and he would've remained a boring goofball.
Had the copyright laws not been extended so much, it would've possible for people to experiment with works made in the 1950s and 1960s around this time. We could've had a Leave it to Beaver TV movie, or a sequel to Dr. Strangelove, or even a crossover movie between the two.
So one of the reasons why culture has become stale is that artists have lost a lot of freedom to use the work from the recent past. Again, the most recent works to fall into the public domain date back to 1925, a time that has little cultural resonance to the present.
Unless one of the corporations give us permission, and we pay them a fee, we can't make the Beaver Blows up the World storyline we all want, dammit!
But there is also another problem too: a work could languish in obscurity or vanish from existence.
The ability to reproduce and recreate work is not just good for culture in the present, but it allows past culture to be preserved. But remember when I said above that copyrights are now automatic after the 1976 law: it means any and all work produced around the time of Mickey Mouse and after is now under copyright, whether the author agrees or not.
This means there are countless works under copyright protection, but since they are not profitable, nobody has bothered to preserve them. And since their authors can't be located, nobody can risk making them without being sued. The result is that countless works are vanishing because no one is bothering to develop them.
So yes, copyright law has led to the destruction of a lot of culture that the big copyright cartels don't care about.
A Ray of Hope
Underneath all this despair, this is some good news: since the 1990s, we've become a lot more aware of these abuses of creative power. As of 2021, Disney has not bothered to extend the copyright, which means slowly but surely, more and more work is beginning to trickle into the public domain for the past few years. Now we can make the Great Gatsby stories we want.
But don't allow ourselves to rest on our laurels: we must continue to fight against these copyright controlling corporations. Because of the laws written, creativity itself is being held hostage, and works made today will require a century or more to be able to remake and remix. If Disney could, they would control not just our movies, but our holidays too.
Let us continue to fight for the original goal of copyright: to allow the advancement of culture itself.
Sincerely,
Redandready45.
Sound argument. Though I wish you hadn't brought up Judge Frollo.
Well Disney is little by little suffering with their own decisions, since the problems they are having with Marvel series and from Scarjo sue its making a lot of people opening their eyes. And Disney will not learn from their mistakes if people didn't attack their money.
Laughably, one can still create derivative works of the things already in the public domain, that Disney has works similar to, and technically are free to do so. Disney does not own the copyright to ancient mythos, the original Little Mermaid, etc.
No one can copyright the actual Loki, jotunn and god of trickery and fire. THAT Loki is firmly entrenched in cultural identity of the Norse peoples. That'd be like some fat, greasy, pasty white guy trying to copyright the very idea of Osiris, Anansi, or even the great Hero-King Gilgamesh... NOT HAPPENING.
Buck Disney I swear
5570309
But can Disney, with its enormous size, really be seriously challenged by one actress.
5570435
Yes, but the issue is this: Disney's incarnations are incredibly well known because of the company's reach and scope.
So those are the ones people imagine them to be, which creates a problem for people wanting to do derivative works.
If copyright worked the way it was supposed to, those versions would enter the public domain and inspire a wave of creative flourishing.
5570509
Yep.
5570766
One? No... But THE? Yes... Because Scarlet Johanson is the one who SJW loves most and worship her as diva and would try cancell everything from Disney from now on... While Disney can win some battles, they will have a lot of headaches for a LOOOOOONG TIME, That's for sure.
5570772
Define headaches.
5570776
Disney cannot make publication of future Marvel Movies or series related of girl power since all the SWJ will make so many comments that the Disney will have to block the comments, Instagram and Facebook will have to be censured since they will be on their necks all the time.
And many movies that Disney will try to do, it will have the cancel movement since from the case... Yep. It will be annoying to deal with it.
5570766
While the Disney versions are well-known, they take liberties and change key details from the original idea. Basing it off the public domain-accessible storybooks or myths carefully enough would stand up in court easily, especially if you ensure that you avoid overlap with the copywritten pop-culture version.
Congratulations, your a idiot. So people should just be allowed to do whatever they want with a work for the sake of "creativity" even if it's legitimately offensive and obscene? Even if the "experimention" betrays the spirit of the original work and doesn't understand why it was so beloved in the first place?
Sorry, but you can just as easily PERVERT culture and turn it into a cesspool of bad ideas without some form of control over IP'S. Going "big company bad" and attacking it over every small thing that gets taken down is not the answer. Look at the Star Wars prequels, there was no oversight, nobody telling George Lucas "no," that's a perfect example of what happens with your precious creativity goes completely unchecked.
We NEED some firm of regulation in media so that the spirit of the works we enjoy and are inspired by doesn't get lost or perverted by people who want to be "creative" with them. Culture hasn't "gone stale" it's become more rich then it's ever been, your just to focused on "big company bad" to see it.
5577204
I'm not opposed to copyright.
I am opposed to the unreasonable and detrimental length and severity of copyright.