PUBLIC DISPLAY OF DOMAIN
OR: LET’S GET SUED
Hello, public! Jason Adam Katzenstein here, welcome to my domain.
Wait! Public… domain… that reminds me: Winnie the Pooh is in the public domain now! Not the Disney cartoon but A. A. Milne’s book version, mind you! It’s the number one thing everybody’s been talking about —I know — but I’m here to tell you why it might not be as life-changing as you think.
If you’re reading this then you probably want a crash course in the intricacies of parody law. I’ll give you a highlight: Irving Berlin once sued MAD Magazine for parodying his song “A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody,” which they called “Louella Schwartz Describes her Malady.” MAD won the suit, and a parody precedent was set that people (dorks, me) call “The MAD Magazine Exception.”
(More on this here, nerds! It’s funny! The judge says that Irving Berlin doesn’t own iambic pentameter lol)
All of this is to say that cartoonists can actually play with intellectual property as long as it’s clear that it is a parody. Some characters I in no way own who have nonetheless cameoed in New Yorker cartoons of mine: Superman, Charlie Brown and Lucy, Smithers, The Monopoly Man, Cookie Monster and The Count.
That’s right, no beloved character is safe from our pens! So this week we’re all bringing you our own takes on intellectual property! Please, Disney, try to sue us. I want to see you try. I dare you. That last thing I said is satirical and I do not want Disney to sue us.
What’s that, A. A. Milne’s book version of Winnie the Pooh? You canonically hate Mondays now? Dang, can we even say that? YES we can.
“Canon,” for those who may not know, is a term fans of various IP’s use to differentiate characters and stories that are officially part of the universe and those that aren't, for instance fan fiction. “IP,” for those who may not know, stands for “intellectual property,” which can refer to a particular literary or cinematic universe, for instance, the MCU. The “MCU”, for those who may not know, stands for the “Marvel Cinematic Universe”, a series of interconnected movies that revolve around characters created by Marvel Entertainment. Marvel Entertainment, for those who may not know, and let's just be clear here I’m talking about you, dad, is an entertainment company that is the owner and proprietor of various superhero characters, for instance Spiderman. Come on, dad, you should know this stuff! Unrelated, I need some money to pay next week's rent.
The truth about me and Star Wars is that my father used to “make me” go see each new movie with him when it came out and I grumped about it until I was in my 20s (after the Natalie Portman years were over, which coincided with me feeling secure enough in my identity and intellect to unabashedly love Star Wars.) The truth about me and Star Trek, which I’m associating to because of the word “Star” – lest you think I feel these two series have anything in common other than Space – is that Ellis has, many times, sat me down and tried to get me to love it as much as he does, and now I’ll let Ellis wonder if this is a ruse and I really do love Star Trek and maybe we just need to wait a few years for me to be next-level secure in my identity and intellect to reveal my deep Trekkie love. Wait, this is supposed to be about intellectual property, ok. Hear me out: couldn’t you say fandom, like as a concept, is a big beautiful theft of emotional property. Can you steal a feeling? Can you steal an image? I say no to both! Put it all in the public domain! But if the answer is yes: Watch out, Ellis, you better copyright that love of Kirk.
After I posted this cartoon someone on twitter was like “I hope you’re giving the proceeds of this to his son” and I had to explain to him that cartoonists don’t make money. It was a beautiful exercise in humility.
That being said, I love Bob Ross and that documentary made me so flippin’ sad.
E.T. is a cute little dude with a history of plagiarism allegations. Satyajit Ray alleged plagiarism of his 1967 script The Alien (but never sued). Playwright Lisa Litchfield alleged plagiarism of her one-act musical Lokey From Maldemar (sued for $750 million and lost). And I just came up with those two facts by copying the Allegations of Plagiarism section of E.T.’s Wikipedia page. What do I make of all this? My dear reader, I do not know. But all of a sudden, I have an idea for a movie. It’s about an alien who finds themselves lost on Earth, where they end up befriending a child. I’ll call it...Mac and Me.
As you could maybe surmise from my intricate drawing style, everyone is always telling me my representations of real people (as seen above) are simply too realistic. So to avoid the watchful eye of both Sauron and Mark Zuckerberg, this week I planned to contribute a cartoon I made about a Dr. Frankenstein Type (TYPE) who creates a machine that tells him who is canceled. But on a dark and dreary night I remembered that I sold this cartoon to Jason (at Awry, here) and I wasn’t sure if I was allowed to reproduce it here, I never read the fine print, yet again I am foiled by my nemesis Jason. So, here we are, going Meta, with an old cartoon about how nothing is secret nor safe, least of all our data.
If your brain is as smooth as mine you have been following Elmo’s feud with a rock this week. I pitched this as a New Yorker daily this week, but they ended up going with another shameless IP grab of mine that morning.
Like many people, I have been closely following the Elizabeth Holmes saga. For those of you who don’t know Elizabeth Holmes from Sherlock Holmes (i.e. those of you with better things to do), Ms. Holmes was CEO of the now-defunct Theranos, a biotech company. After a much-publicized trial, Ms. Holmes was found guilty on four counts of infringing on Marvel’s intellectual property rights after impersonating a Marvel supervillain for years. Evidence in the trial included Ms. Holmes black turtleneck, her fake deep voice, and the company name, which bears a striking resemblance to Thanos, another baritone and steely blue-eyed supervillain in the MCU.
According to audience members, after the reading of the verdict, Ms. Holmes was overheard saying, “And I would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for you meddling kids!" Sources close to Ms. Holmes report that she is now being sued by Warner Media.
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