FRAUD! Mickey is really Steamboat Bill, Jr.

“Free Culture is about the troubles the Internet causes even after the modem is turned off.” The current lawsuit YouTube is in against production companies demonstrates this problem. The invention of the internet and the development of YouTube and video smashing is causing grief in the copyright/legal community long after you’ve finished looking at your daily videos.

YouTube’s source of intellectual property is not all that different from Disney’s. “There has never been a time in our history when more of our culture was owned as it is now.” (12) This quote from Free Culture is important because it is true. In Disney’s day this was not really an issue. From a legal perspective I would agree with Lessig’s opinion that creators like Disney are appropriate in their inventions.

In Disney’s day copyrights only last about 30 years which meant there was a large body of free information and ideas that could be further developed without permission. In that body of information was the Jazz Singer, Steamboat Bill, Jr. and the Brothers’ Grimm Fairy Tales. Disney had every right in the world to combine these great ideas into a then new form of media, which today is one of the most valuable in the world. Silent films would never have achieved that success.

Now as to the issue of whether Disney stole the intellectual property of these individuals’ creations, is the quote: “The source of confusion in protecting intellectual property is, ‘the distinction between republishing someone’s work on the one hand and building upon or transforming that work on the other.” (19) Clearly Disney wasn’t attempting to steal work because in each case he simply built upon older works and transformed them into an entirely new and unique product. Clearly, once again, Disney was not a thief, just a great story teller who understood what made a story more entertaining.

A free culture is something this country has attempted to maintain through the years of development and complication. “A successful free culture protects the rights of add-on inventors and developers, to make sure they are free as possible in their accumulation of intellectual property.” In Walt Disney’s case the free culture protected his rights in every way. Although today I imagine it would be near impossible to make an adaptation of a Disney movie and release it to the public, without being sued. This brings us to…

Rochelle Dryefuss theory of creative property rights, “if there is value, then someone must have a right to that value.” Steamboat Bill, Jr. could be considered incredibly valuable today because it was one of the original inspirations for Walt Disney’s success. So if that is true and it has value, then why is Keaton not entitled to rights within the Disney company. The constant question is whether the value added on by Disney should be credited to Keaton’s intellectual property. I would agree with Lessig that it is Disney’s intellectual property.

“Under both Japanese and American law, that “taking without permission” of the original copyright owner is illegal.” However, in Disney’s case as well as the Japanese art of Doujinshi it seems it is okay to copy if; the end result is not the same and/or the economic power of the ‘taking’ in question is great. Japan won’t get rid of Doujinshi, because it might actually negatively affect the Magna industry that copyright laws were created protect. It is the same with Disney.

Scientists often shares research to further advance their science, acting companies do different adaptations of plays, and even our founding fathers based their democracy off of former democratic systems. As Lessig says, “some things remain free for the taking within a free culture, and that freedom is good.”