the internet, copyright, and what's right...

john garvin jgarvin at bendcable.com
Thu Oct 12 17:55:23 CEST 2000


I have a very simple philosophy in regards to what I am willing to upload onto the net:  Am I depriving a living creator of any financial reward by posting their creation on the net?  If the answer is yes, I won't post it.  In other words, if I post a comic story, am I
making it so that someone does not have to buy that story to read it?  For this reason, I would never scan and post a "Bone" story by Jeff Smith.  If you want to read a full Bone story, you can buy the comic.  The money goes to Mr. Smith and he deserves it.

I personally do not put corporations in the category of "creator". The corporation may legally own the characters, and could certainly stop someone from illegally profiting from them, but the corporation does not earn my loyalty and respect.  I save that for the person who
sweats over his drawing table.  Furthermore, Disney, especially, I think, is one of the biggest violators of the spirit of copyright law in the history of media.  As Don Rosa has pointed out numerous times to this list, he creates (and gets paid for) a story ONCE, then
Disney takes that story and uses it in its media machinery all across the world without further remuneration to the him, the creator.  You post a foreign Don Rosa story here, and you don't cost Don Rosa a cent.  I frankly don't care what it "costs" the Disney corporation.
If Disney treated its creators better, I might feel differently.

On a related note, I think we are on the verge of an information revolution.  I've seen it coming ever since I started to think about the true information-sharing power of the internet.  The bottom line is that greedy corporations, or anyone else,  have little power to
stop us from doing whatever we want in this new on-line world, right or wrong.

And is it wrong?  I think the concept of "ownership" is considerably more blurred than Disney would have us believe.  As an example, take the paintings of Carl Barks.  Yes they contain characters to which Disney holds the copyright.  But in some sense, doesn't "art" belong
to the world and everyone in it?  Could the curators of the Louvre copyright the image of the Mona Lisa and make everyone on the internet stop using it?  Could they force everyone in the world who wants to see a reproduction of the image pay for the privilege?  No, I don't
think so.  I'm in the process of building a website which showcases the paintings of Carl Barks, just as another might build a website devoted to the works of Leonardo.  These images do not belong to Disney, they belong to all of us.  There is beauty in those images, and a
playful tranformative power in the juxtaposition of cartoon characters and realistic renderings.  Carl is the one who spent weeks of time and buckets of sweat turning an empty sheet of masonite into a work of art, not Disney.  I owe it to Carl to see to it that his work is
seen and enjoyed by anyone who wants to.  I owe Disney very little.  The internet is going to make Disney's rantings to the contrary, moot.






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