The Warner Brothers used to poke at Disney all the time. With their sister, Dot.
2 Likes
Yes. But I can imagine that even if they had asked a teacher if it was okay, the teacher telling them that it was fine because it was in a school. Because teachers and principals are not copyright specialists and may miss the distinction between “in classroom instructional use” and “on school grounds.”
Anyone who’s been involved in a fan convention could have told them about the legal dances required to have a video room.
—In the U.S. In other countries, your kilometerage may vary.
1 Like
Not porn.
Swank helps spread the magic of movies and TV shows beyond homes and theaters. How? We license and distribute content to non-theatrical markets like worldwide cruise lines, U.S. colleges and universities, K-12 public schools and libraries, hospitals, motor coaches, Amtrak trains, correctional facilities and other markets such as parks, art museums and businesses. In fact, we’ve been bringing movies and TV shows to more people in more places since 1937.
With one-on-one customer service, groundbreaking technology and close partnerships with the world’s best studios, we help our customers entertain, inspire and inform their audiences wherever they are. Privately owned by the Swank family and lead by Chairman Tim Swank, Swank is headquartered in St. Louis, MO, with an additional office in Paris, France.
I don’t know what you are arguing. Are you arguing that any reasonable person would have understood copyright law and known these distinctions so that they wouldn’t make this mistake? If that is your point then I think you need to adjust your idea of what a reasonable person would think.
But also, I object to the idea that they charged money to see the movie. It’s simplistic and foolish. I’ve been to public school movie nights. At those nights I gave money to the public school. On at least one of those occasions the movie we watched was currently streaming on a service that I subscribe to so we could have stayed home and watched the movie.
We went to the movie night because my kid wanted to eat popcorn and sit with their friends. I donated money to the school to go to the movie night because I wanted to give my money to the school in exchange for nothing. And I bet if a family had shown up and said, “Look, we don’t have the money but we don’t want our kids to miss out” they would have let them in for free, or easily found someone who would pay their way (I would have).
I would have paid double to not go.
Disney is claiming completely undue ownership over people’s relationship with their schools, their care for their community, and children’s enjoyment of spending time together. The law as it stands gives ownership of all of those values to the copyright holder, and that is buuuuuuulllshit.
Has anyone got a download link? I haven’t seen either of the films.
3 Likes
No one is above the law.
except the president of the US and his cronies, of course.
And just because something is the law does not make it either moral or just.
4 Likes
And nearly everyone is wrong.
Then that’s a dismal failure of the government to encourage compliance with the law by educating the public about what the law is and why it is important.
1 Like
I don’t intend to pick a fight with you (and so my question are more rhetorical than expecting answers) and I am in UK so minor differences in US copyright laws notwithstanding…
Copyright infringement is a civil issue not a criminal one. More the copyright owners’ place to educate, than the govt’s, though perhaps there is a role for govt.
But the public ARE educated. You really think whichever parents were involved in this have not seen countless examples of the pre-video warnings, the warnings on the DVD covers and other publicity about this issue and really thought it was ok? That the school staff themselves do not know about this as educators using copyright materials in their work?
They were just either careless or thought it didn’t apply to them - which would be worse because if they thought it would not apply to them then clearly they thought about it but did not actually validate their thinking.
I agree it is bad PR for the evil Disney empire. I agree that the law needs revision in some areas. I agree that charitable use ought to have some provision and such provision ought to be publicised so that public showings get the right permissions.
But still, I cannot think of anyone above a certain age who is not fully aware of what ‘public performance’ is and that it is not allowed. Of course, parents of very young children may be young enough that their media consumption has been online or streamed or - well, not via ancient DVD technology, but I find that less than completely plausible. But then, again, maybe I’m just too familiar with the topic and (too) old enough to know better.
1 Like
Was the argument that they would take business from actual Disney hospitals?
Paging Dr. Goofy. Dr. Goofy
I really don’t think so. I don’t think a splash screen that shows up on the front of every DVD you put out is an effective way to get information to people other than the information that they should ignore splash screens. People don’t read legal notices, they don’t user agreements. They rely on their sense of what is an is not acceptable to determine whether they are doing something acceptable.
Everyone knows assault is wrong, but they’ll grab someone by the arm to keep them out of traffic. Everyone knows jaywalking is against the law but they don’t know the precise definition - how far apart do the traffic lights have to be before you are legally allowed to just use your judgement about when to cross? There’s probably an answer to that and it varies based on your jurisdiction but no one knows it so they just cross when it seems fair to them. I once had someone say to me, “The cops arrested me for sexual assault just because I followed a woman to her car and grabbed her ass.”
So when people think (reasonably or unreasonably) that what they are doing is totally fine, they assume it also isn’t against the law. They assume lawmakers wrote the law in a way that would line up with what they think is sensible. A person who thinks there is no harm in a school showing a movie at a fundraiser will probably assume that the law says that’s okay.
What they didn’t assume was that the law was bullshit written by corporations, handed to politicians who didn’t understand it, and passed despite the best interests of the people they represent. That it’s full of things that would make a reasonable person say, “Wait… really?” That if these people wrote the assault laws you would go to prison for grabbing someone’s arm to stop them from walking out in front of a bus.
It’s the copyright holder’s place to let other people know what copyrights belong to them. It’s the government’s job to pass laws that represent the interests their citizens and to make sure people know how those laws affect them.
2 Likes
These were around on DVDs long before online splash screens for interminably long EULAs and other nonsense. If you’ve watched enough DVDs you’ve absorbed this by osmosis if nothing else. You can’t fast forward past them and only the terminally incurious would not wonder what that was and read it at least once. Which is why I might give a pass to parents young enough not to have watched many DVDs as adults. But not to administrators and educators at the school.
And you really think a reasonable person would think it’s ok to set up a private viewing and charge money for it, even if the intent is charitable? I guess the best I can do here is acknowledge that there are different forms of reasonable in the world.
1 Like
I don’t think what I said above landed. You can put up signs everywhere reminding people that it is wrong to grab other people without permission and everyone will still assume it is right to grab someone to pull them out from in front of a bus. Every rule has exceptions, people assume those exceptions align what their idea of reasonable.
As I said in a post above, I don’t think “charging money” is a reasonable way to interpret what happened. People were donating money to their school. The school was setting up an event for children. Do we think they would have turned away a family that couldn’t afford to pay? Do we think that the people who went to it would have paid that money to see the movie? I’ve gone to school movie nights and whether I’d pay that price to see that movie never even a question. Of course I wouldn’t.
People wanted to donate to the school, the school wanted to make a fun event for the kids and encourage a sense of community. Disney doesn’t own that.
1 Like
I’ve revisited the original story and it is unclear whether this was entirely voluntary donations at an event where a DVD happened to be playing or something where tickets were sold for a performance of the film.
I’ll grant it is more reasonable for someone to assume it is ok for the DVD to be playing at an event and donations be taken (especially if other things are going on at the event).
It is not reasonable to assume it is ok to sell tickets for a specific performance of the film.
Host an event specifically for a performance of the film and not actually ‘sell tickets’ but just ‘expect’ donations? Not on my side of the reasonable line, but I accept others may view it differently.
1 Like
I understand that Timon and Pumbaa are a child friendly version of Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson in Bottom, as well as being Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
2 Likes
And now we are getting to the reality of the situation. In most countries this is not the case.
Another example of people assuming that “everywhere” is part of the USA.
While the school doesn’t know how exactly the company discovered the movie was played…
This is the most interesting part of the story for me. Was it a teacher, a parent, even a student? Were they a Disney employee? Why did they even care, and why did they go straight to Disney instead of expressing their concerns about the legality of the screening to the school? I know it doesn’t really matter, but the mystery of it bugs me.
