Kidnapped Toys and Copyright Law (Blog Post 5)

If you’re sensitive to weirdness, I suggest you leave this page now. If not, brace yourself.

Around this time last year, several beloved toys began disappearing from their owners… all of whom, suspiciously, were among my group of friends. As if each loss weren’t painful enough, the toy-owner would then receive a ransom note and pictures detailing the fate of their stuffed friend. I, reputable Facebook journalist that I am, sought to record each of these disappearances.

And thus goes the strange little story of how my friends and I created a book together. One day, I made a stupid joke about pretending to kidnap a toy and demanding chocolate for ransom, the next, I’d started a trend as toys were abducted by aliens, stolen by fairies and even stuck in a vending machine.  What began as a truly silly idea evolved into a fun, collaborative project, and finally into a photo book.

Now what, besides entertainment value, is the point this story? Well our self-published book contained material that we should, technically have gotten permission to use; that is, copyrighted pictures from various TV shows and a ‘Toy Story’ logo.

From the Boldrin & Levine reading, I think Walt Disney would have enjoyed our parody of the Toy Story poster. Like Steamboat Willie’s parody of Buster Keaton’s film; we borrowed and copied part of a well-known creation; both to poke fun and to pay homage to the original, and also to tell our own story. Unfortunately, the Disney company of today understands very little of that creative spirit; and in fact, is one of the most militant in hunting down those who breach copyright.

 If our book became an underground success… through, I don’t know, sneaky plugs in someone’s DIGC202 blog; and Disney were to hear about it, I think we’d probably find ourselves head-hunted on the grounds that connecting their logo with kidnapping is detrimental to their reputation.

However, if this were to stop the hypothetical publishing and selling of our book, then Disney would have, like Watt, simply stifled further creativity in the name of money.  I’m willing to bet that most of you have never come across a book quite like ours, and it is fairly clear that it was an original idea. But, as is anything worth reading, watching or listening to, it was supplemented by and built upon past creations.

Although this is a hypothetical situation, the abuse of so-called ‘intellectual property rights’ is certainly real, and loved by large corporations such as Disney. I think that it’s about time that these corporations were challenged, and laws were changed. Fair use should be expanded and more sharply defined, and the ridiculous extensions upon extensions of copyright after the creator’s death should be stopped. As Lessig says, free cultures ‘leave a great deal open for others to build upon’. If these companies want to be respected for their own creativity, which builds on the past, they must also respect ours.