Keskustelujen arkisto

>From: "Donald D. Markstein" <(Email removed)>
>
>B. MARTIN --
> The way people often get around the licensing problems of
> showing videotape at, say, comic book conventions, is to open
> the showings to the public, so that technically, they're not
> part of a package anyone pays for. That is, if someone walks
> through the door of the video room without wearing a convention
> badge, nobody stops him. It's not necessary to advertise very
> widely that this is a policy -- just the fact that anybody is
> allowed to walk in and watch is considered enough.

I don't believe anyone can do this. The license agreement generally
stipulate that purchase is for private home use only. Opening up the
viewing to a larger public, even if no fee is charged, is not likely to
satisfy Disney.

I do agree with your sentiment that Disney would be better off with having
more generations of kids with easy access to the stories.

B. Martin

Stefan Dios:

Several weeks ago, a member of this mailing list kindly contacted me and told
me about the Swedish version of my story, "The Grouch Kings of Duckburg."
This person had read my original script and thought that you had done a very
faithful (and wonderful) job of translating the story.

This is the first time anyone's ever let me know how a translation has turned
out. I always wonder how well my scripts transfer over to another language. I
know it can't be easy to translate these stories and so I'm very glad to hear
that this one turned out so well.

Stefan, I meant to write you weeks ago and thank you for your efforts. I was
going to do it in a private message, but it occurred to me that translators
rarely get any public praise. (For that matter, writers rarely do either. But
it's got to be even worse for translators.) So, here goes: Thank you!

--John Lustig

From: (Email removed)

>barrie's peter pan become walt disney's peter pan; travis' mary poppins become
>wlt disney's mary pollins; verne's 20,000 leagues ... become disney's 20,000
>leagues...; milne's winnie the pooh become disney's winnie the pooh; etc.? the
>company's position always was take it or leave it.

Yes, and I was saying that only the public can really change these
sorts of policies which I don't think really hurt Disney (to change).

>personally, i think professionals should be paid fairly for the work
>they do.

Right.

>i disagree about not purchasing disney stock because you don't want to support
>the company any more than necessary, but you'll buy it's products when you
>like them. just the opposite is true. the products make money for the company.
>the stock makes money for the people who own it. the value of disney stock has
>tripled in the last 5 years. it also pays a dividend. owning it would have
>enabled you to make money from disney as disney made money from all of us.

Ah, but not buying stock in this case is a statement that you don't
want any part of the company's monetary profits. I don't care that
Disney makes money from me and it's completely fine that it does, but
what is problematic is that its policies border on the oppressive as
far as creators are concerned. And then some of its policies re:
homosexual partners are positive. So whatever you do against (or for)
Disney, you have to balance the two. I've chosen one way, and others
may choose other ways, but as long as we make it clear to Disney one
way or another, it may result in a change (well, in the long run I
think Disney is fighting a losing battle in certain areas given the
digital age).

I'm a big believer of taxes and even pay usually more than necessary
(more because I'm lazy) but that doesn't mean I don't think it can be
doled out more efficiently. So while I pay my taxes and enjoy the
services provided to me by those taxes (just what the National Park
Service alone does for me would easily compensate me for my payments),
I do complain about certain aspects and I make my displeasure known in
ways that don't affect my payments or the enjoyment of the services.

--Ram

(Email removed) || http://www.ram.org || http://www.twisted-helices.com/th
TOTAL CRIMINALIZATION was the greatest idea of its time and was vastly
popular except with those people who didn't want to be crooks or outlaws.
So, of course, they had to be TRICKED INTO IT... which is one of the
reasons why MUSIC was eventually made ILLEGAL. ---Frank Zappa

Jakob Soederbaum

>In Sweden this week, Don Rosa's "The Black Knight" (24 p) was published as a
>1-parter (!). But has it been published as 2-parter anywhere (yet)?

It will be published in Norway as a two parter on the
2nd and 9th of June. As a subscriber I have got both already.

Trygve

Free web-based email, Forever, From anywhere!
http://www.mailexcite.com

DAVE O' CONNELL:
>By the way, are there any Barks stories that haven't been reprinted in
>comic book form since Gladstone resurrected the Duck comic franchise in

>1986? Did they finally make it through all 500-odd stories?
Nope. Some early 1940s and later 1960s Duck ten-pagers, a few
very late Scrooge adventures, and some Daisy and Grandma solo stories
have either been reprinted in albums alone or (in the case of a few)
ONLY in the hardback CBL.

David Gerstein
<(Email removed)>

I haven't been able to post in a while, thanks mainly to a two-week vacation
away from my home computer.

ON THE ALBUM GLUT:
Five albums in one week -- sheesh! My choice of what to purchase was easy:
the two Van Horn albums. WVH has deserved this sort of treatment for a good
long while. While I was sorry to note the absence of a page or two of written
commentary on Bill's development during "Gladstone I," I did appreciate the
reprinting of the Van Horn Index.

ON DISNEY COPYRIGHT:
It's amazing what small entities can('t) get away with when it comes to "use"
of the Disney characters. There is a small laundromat that has used the
character of Merryweather from "Sleeping Beauty" as its symbol for a number of
years, and to the best of my knowledge, Disney has never jumped on them. Some
day-care centers have actually advertised their "wide selection of Disney
videos" as a drawing card. Meanwhile, other day-care centers get bushwhacked
for posting a few pictures of Disney characters. Guess it all depends upon
what side of the bed the infamous "Disney lawyers" got up on that day...

Christopher E. Barat
(Email removed)
http://members.aol.com/cebarat/home.htm

DON ROSA:

... but I see one sound-effect that was not
>correct... however, the joke would have been lost on Swedes, I guess, and I
>should just make sure they use it at Gladstone when the time comes. But the
>scene where the master-thief is handing the stolen watch back to the
>red-haired, bow-tied, freckled cub-reporter he swiped it from, the watch
>isn't supposed to be going "tick tick" as I suspect that Swedish
>sound-effect suggests... it's supposed to be going "zeeeeeee zeeeeee".
Also,
>near the end, the stunned Knight is supposed to be saying "ni", not "gni".
>Why did they add that 'g' I wonder?
>

Ah, I'm kind of lost on the watch bit, but I think I can shed some light on
the "gni"-question....
I'm sure the Monty Python gag would have reached out to quite a few swedish
comedy lovers, but, "ni" in Swedish means "you" (plural), so most readers
would see it as that I guess...

But Stefan Dios HAS done a good translation, and hes has "kind of" rescued
the gag by transforming it into a new one. "Gny", in swedish, is an
expression of pain (in the comic book world, I haven't heard anyone say it
in real life...) "Gni", in swedish, is like "swedish with a french twist"
like the rest of the knight's dialogue in the story. (well done, Stefan, if
that was your intention...)

/Martin Berglund

KATIE:

Congratulations on graduating! I've got one year left, so I envy you...

>and in the
>other instance a rival day-care center weasel (or no tellin' who or why)
>possibly called Disney and reported the violation, and it therefore HAD to
>be terminated with extreme prejudice.

It was my undestanding that once it had "officially" been brought to their attention, all they had to do to protect the copyright was to "officially" recognize it in some way. That is, instead of sending the lawyer gang over to demand the characters be sandblasted off the wall, they could have sent a letter giving the daycare official permission to continue to display the mural (perhaps with "Copyright Disney" added).

To put it more generally, to protect a copyright only requires that you recognize in some manner every usage of the material. It should be perfectly reasonable to allow someone to use your material freely if you give them permission and still keep the copyright. That's how freeware works, right?

Perhaps I'm getting confused and what I discuss in the first paragraph is really a trademark issue and the second paragraph is a copyright issue. But in either case it should be as simple as officially giving permission for free use once the usage is brought to their attention with no need for "extreme prejudice". It seems rather extreme (in the cases sited) to demand immediate removal. And more expensive legally also, I would guess, due to more paperwork and followups.

--
--Steve Crooks
(Email removed)