Stefan replies to the dangerous man

[Stefan Diös]

John Garvin:

Obviously, I don't agree with everything you say. With some of it, yes, but
looking through your recent posts, it actually seems I more or less
strongly disagree with most of your ideas. Even so, I still can't predict
the future. It may very well be that you are right and I am wrong. Which is
what scares me. Not the fact that I'm wrong... I'm certainly used to
that... but some of the consequences of such a future, with all copyright
law abolished as well as other things, do bother me. Well, well. Time will
tell.

Many of these issues will drift off-topic if we beat them too long and
hard. Let's see if I can repeat or clarify my views on the stuff that's
most pertinent to the Disney Comics discussion. I still definitely maintain
that there should be a distinction between art and information, and I might
add another important distinction that shows much of the core of the
copyright laws: that between private use and public. That's why it is OK to
lend comics to your friends in the schoolyard. And I don't think many music
companies will react if I tape a copy of some favorite record to a friend,
but they will if I advertise it in the papers. I believe the law has two
important points in cases such as these: you can't make money from it AND
you can't make it public. Again, there will always be cases where the
boundaries are fuzzy - private or public? For example, I might host a poker
game in my home for some friends in an area where public gambling is
illegal. That might be fine, but if I rent a room somewhere especially for
this, letting in more people and charging them to join the game, I might be
breaking the law.

Gee, I got off-topic again. Fancy that. Anyway, basically, you can tape
music, play poker, lend out comics and probably even scan them in private
IF and ONLY IF you don't make money from it. In public, you can't do it at
all. I think that's a very reasonable law, and something we all should
honor. That's the way it works in the democratic society in which I live.
Now, I've been fortunate enough never to have had to live under another
system. If I had, I can't tell whether I might see things differently, but
as it is, I'm happy and proud that I don't.

So to me, it's still common sense that putting a complete story, to which
you don't own the rights, to the public eye is an obvious misdeed. Then
again, I'm an old-fashioned guy... maybe common sense isn't that common
anymore...

I'll also repeat that I haven't said anything to defend Disney's methods,
legally or morally. I'm not particularly interested in that company, and it
does many things that annoy me. I vividly remember the case you mention of
American Disney fanzines like The Barks Collector, and it strongly upset me
how Disney could enforce the prohibition of the fair use of
illustration/quotations rights. That was outrageous to me! I remember how
we told ourselves it could never happen in our country... we hoped, at least.

>Try this experiment: make a fanzine and liberally illustrate it with
Disney copyrighted chracters and images, then mail a copy of
>>it to Disney and see what they say.


We did just that in the late 70's (before the Barks Collector incident). My
friends and I were starting a fanzine and wanted to respect the law, so we
walked up to Disney, who had an office in Stockholm at the time. Of course
they wouldn't give us written permission to use any illustrations, but they
also made it clear "between the lines" that they wouldn't mess with us as
long as we didn't do anything really wrong. The fanzine is bigger now, and
I'm not as much involved in it as I used to be, but we still try to make a
point of not abusing the illustration right that the law does allow us...
much like The Barks Collector, although it got unjustly busted.

At times, someone asks us, "Why couldn't you print this or that story in
the fanzine so everyone can read it?" And the answer is easy: "Because we
are not allowed to." The Disney Archives in Burbank has copies of all our
issues, and we gladly keep sending the new ones, irregularly as they might
appear. We wouldn't want anyone over there get the idea that we abuse their
rights. They could tell us to cease and desist at any time, and if we did
things like publish whole stories, they would be quite right in doing so.

So even though I may not agree with everything Disney does, I see no point
in trying to make enemies with it. And once again I advise any keepers of
serious fan sites to adopt a similar view. If Disney tries to stop one fan
site, it might want to stop them all. We are all in jeopardy here. Getting
banned and keeping appearing somewhere else doesn't solve anything. In a
way, I hope that Disney's people actually read this list and check out the
sites, and come to the obvious conclusion that they are a good thing for
everybody and don't need to be intervened against.

And, John, I really don't want to hold anything personal against you,
either. You are a Duck lover! You can't be all that bad! With few
exceptions, the Donaldists I've met are warm, funny, intelligent, sociable,
peaceful people, a breed from which the vast majority of my closest friends
have emerged. In fact, the qualities of the people involved is one of the
main reasons I still want to be an active Duck fan. I don't want to think
that you are any different, and you certainly express your ideas well.

When you say:

>Perhaps you are afraid because you don't trust people to know the
difference between bad laws and good ones.

you are obviously correct. If I knew you better, I might be more convinced
that you can make this distinction more or less along the same lines as me.
But I would hardly ever encourage you to break any laws, and I sure
wouldn't trust just about anyone in the world to decide for me when to
break a law because they think the law is "bad". Spreading and encouraging
this notion is repulsive to me. It can lead to... well, as I said, not only
is it off-topic, but I also don't want to discuss it. If I did, someone
might end up thinking I've called you a terrorist, which is far from what I
think of you personally or anyone else on this list.

So maybe it's not you I'm scared of, but of some of the people that might
listen to you. Also, if I didn't think so much about it, maybe I wouldn't
be so scared of the future either.

    I've seen the future, brother
    And it's murder!
          --- Leonard Cohen


Peace, Ducks and happiness,



Stefan Dios
Malmo, Sweden