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Disney have stolen my artwork

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Re: Disney have stolen my artwork

#131

Post by alanfalcon »

mark-r wrote: post #90
davemel37 wrote: post #36

Disney has a reputation for doing everything in their power to deliver exceptional customer service and epic experiences. They even run a company that teaches other companies how to treat customers right. http://disneyinstitute.com/ Personally, I think this is a perfect opportunity for Disney to make a HUGE PR WIN, by apologizing, and paying out a nice and fair royalty without a fight. I would be very disappointed if…

I can vouch for their service. I once lost my rental car keys while at one of the Disneyworld hotels, and I got no help from the rental company aside from the key code. The Disney folks sent one of their locksmiths to help me and he tried about half a day to make a key that would start the car. His dedication and attitude were remarkable.

Wow. Lost my keys at Universal Studios once and it was just a very long, very expensive night (given my budgetary realities at the time).

Re: Disney have stolen my artwork

#132

Post by mayneack »

clarkevans wrote: post #63
austenallred wrote: post #17

I have worked with Disney's intellectual property teams in the past, and I'm blown away that this slipped under the radar. They are very up-tight about protecting their own IP and the brand of their princesses. If this were somebody selling a T-Shirt on eBay I would say, "Don't worry about it," but this is Disney. They know better. Their entire business model is based on intellectual property. Time to lawyer up.

Why assume the worst? Wouldn't it be a bit easier to just find the relevant group and ask them how they'd like to resolve it? If they want to be jerks, sure, lawyer up. However, it might be a very simple conversation with a much more positive outcome.

Because by this time they have already seen this and are lawyered up.

Re: Disney have stolen my artwork

#133

Post by noonespecial »

My advice is to do something. Disney doesn't know they infringed, some sub-sub contractor did this. But eventually, they will find the image and assume that the original author is the infringer, and they're sticklers about this.

If the author does nothing, she may find herself in the unfortunate position of spending lots of money in court to prove that she didn't "steal" her own picture.

Re: Disney have stolen my artwork

#134

Post by robryan »

cjbprime wrote: post #45
jamesaguilar wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how one prices out a worldwide license like this. Obviously if she put the prices at $1000/use, neither would Disney pay it nor would she recover that much from a court. But it's worth more than $0.01/use as well.

It's not my field, but by "worldwide license" I meant a single lump sum that covers everything they might want to do or already have done -- i.e. "this is the amount that you can pay to make this go away and avoid bringing in your expensive legal team". My naive guess would be that somewhere USD $5k-$10k is that amount: small enough to be within budgetary authority, large enough to make it worth the artist's time to…

If there was any kind of ballpark figure on how many bags they have sold, that would be a good starting point.

Re: Disney have stolen my artwork

#135

Post by yew »

leephillips wrote: post #110
yew wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not seeing how "it would be nice to live in a world without the current incarnation of intellectual property law" is incompatible with "but we don't, so we're going to hold you to the standards you've created". They seem imminently consistent to me.

I wish I could share your optimism, but, alas, I fear that it will take a bit more time before consistency is achieved.

I wouldn't call it optimism. Both of the 'infringers' you linked to paid plenty of money for it.

I can't say that article of yours makes your point nearly as well as you might like, either. I hope it doesn't represent your general attitude towards derivative works (or just derivative works you don't appreciate aesthetically, whichever).

Re: Disney have stolen my artwork

#136

Post by gregcohn »

stevewilhelm wrote: post #121
gregcohn wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first thing that occurred to me is that the Disney artists (or contractors) probably came across the image on Tumblr or Pinterest or some similar social image-sharing network, stripped entirely of its original attribution. It's entirely plausible that someone would have thought it was a Disney-owned image originally, and in circulation in violation of copyright. If that's true, it's not an excuse for using someon…

Disney's consumer merchandise is sourced by third party suppliers (see below). It is most likely one of these suppliers claimed to have created or licensed the image. The artist will probably end up negotiating with the handbag maker. https://www.disneyconsumerproducts.com/Home/display.jsp?cont...

I'm sure their licensing contract requires the 3rd parties to warrant intellectual property ownership and indemnify vs. any claims related to it.

So the artist may end up negotiating with the handbag maker, but they might benefit from starting out making a claim against Disney.

Re: Disney have stolen my artwork

#137

Post by [deleted] »

ANTSANTS wrote: post #129
leephillips wrote: post #62

So far "the internet" seems to be on this artist's side, apparently because her work was stolen by a corporation. Recent history suggests, however, that if Andy Baio[0] or Shepard Fairey[1] had ripped her off, she would be excoriated for asserting her rights and lectured about the wonders of remix culture. [0] http://lee-phillips.org/music/whoIsTheDick/ [1] http://articles.latimes.com/2012/sep/08/entertainment/la-et-…

I've got little to add to the larger discussion, but you know, this is kind of funny: I can ignore all kinds of crap that people on the internet get riled up over, and even the occasional personal insult, no sweat, but your assessment of Kind of Bloop and the chiptune scene in general actually made me angry. There's an interesting (albeit tired -- we've been having the same conversation since at least the dawn of the…

[deleted]

Re: Disney have stolen my artwork

#138

Post by jerf »

weareconvo wrote: post #126
jerf wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't matter; all works of Lewis Carroll's are in the public domain. As far as I know, this is true in all jurisdictions. The traditional Tennyson illustrations are also public domain. Compare with https://www.google.com/search?q=tennyson+illustrations+alice... .

I didn't mean legally, I meant morally. Don't her complaints about having her work co-opted by Disney when that work co-opted Alice wholesale ring a little false to anybody else?

I think that if you took the time to try to carefully define "co-opted" you'd have a hard time really nailing down what exactly is so wrong that no further explanation is necessary by the mere invocation of the word. "Co-opting" happens all the time, every which way. There's no new ideas under the sun.

There's a perfectly clear line here; assuming her account is correct, what she did was legal, and what Disney did is not legal. Legal is not always equal to moral, but with the particulars of this case I'm not feeling the need to draw some sort of complicated distinction. Legality is the entire point here.

Re: Disney have stolen my artwork

#139

Post by will_brown »

leephillips wrote: post #62

So far "the internet" seems to be on this artist's side, apparently because her work was stolen by a corporation. Recent history suggests, however, that if Andy Baio[0] or Shepard Fairey[1] had ripped her off, she would be excoriated for asserting her rights and lectured about the wonders of remix culture. [0] http://lee-phillips.org/music/whoIsTheDick/ [1] http://articles.latimes.com/2012/sep/08/entertainment/la-et-…

"Fairey settled his civil case with the AP out of court."

Looks like Fairey paid up, and I imagine AP gets a royalty (and past royalties) for every sale of the image, not just a lump sum for damages.

"...Fairey maintain his work fell under fair-use laws."

It would have been interesting had the civil case actually gone to verdict - I tend to think a Judge or Jury would have ruled in Fairey's favor, like you allude to in your post.

In ETW v. Jireh, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit rejected a right of publicity claim brought by Tiger Woods against an artist who depicted Woods and other golf legends, holding that the transformative nature of the work exempted it from right of publicity liability under the First Amendment. Thus, this is not even a fair-use defense, but a first amendment defense, and the first amendment should be even more protective in the case of political speech where Fairey's work was of the leading candidate for POTUS at the time.

Re: Disney have stolen my artwork

#140

Post by jerf »

nknighthb wrote: post #99
jerf wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's give Disney qua Disney (as opposed to one artist somewhere, which is all we know for sure at this point) some time to respond before we unleash the mob. Past history certainly gives a non-zero probability that Disney will just try to throw their weight around, but let's give them the chance to do the right thing before we bury them. It makes the moral outrage that much more moral.

> Let's give Disney [...] some time to respond Why should anyone give Disney more leeway than Disney gives natural persons they accuse of copyright infringement?

Because letting loose the Great Internet Mob is always something that should be done with a bit of due consideration, despite the fact that it is essentially impossible to do so. Mobs aren't made more intelligent by being on the Internet, and while they are physically defanged (well... mostly, anyhow) they can make up for the destructiveness in their scope.
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