Disney.gov

I hate to see Disney trademarked characters appear on the kids' pages for government websites, given that the Disney corporation has been at war with the concept of the public domain for decades, as the company supports draconic legislation that may preserve for perpetuity their lucrative copyrights on their fairy tale material -- much of which ironically originated in folktales that were appropriated for free.

First the Department of Homeland Security plugged the Muppets, which have been licensed by the Disney corporation for many years. Now the webpage for energy.gov/tink gives the company more free advertising at taxpayer expense, as those at the Energy department use Tinkerbell as a spokesperson for energy conservation in the home.

Slipping Them a Mickey

Virtualpolitik pal Joseph Menn has a good piece about copyright in this week's Los Angeles Times. "Disney's rights to young Mickey Mouse may be wrong" argues that the early incarnations of this highly recognizable brand in films like "Steamboat Willie" have been around long enough to have entered the public domain. It's Menn's swan song from the city's "gray whale," which has become more like a sinking ship of late, as he swims off into the sunset for a book-writing leave.

Update: Menn pointed out my sloppy paraphrase that equated his argument with Lawrence Lessig's and the fact that I focused exclusively on the clock running out on the rights. To correct the record, Menn is actually making a more subtle legal argument in his piece. He notes that Disney "apparently blew the extremely strict requirements for copyright notice that were in place at the time -- so that in theory, they've never had the rights to the original Mickey at all."

Principles of Escalation

A few months ago lawyer Fred von Lohmann of the Electronic Frontier Fountain discussed how the Sad Kermit online videos had been the subject of intellectual property litigation. Unhappy copyright holders were unhappy with depictions of a dissolute version of the familiar green muppet engaging in intravenous drug use, oral sex, and prodigious bouts of vomiting.

The creator's current page contains the disclaimer that "Sad Kermit is in no way affiliated with Disney or The Jim Henson Company. Sad Kermit is an adult parody and is NOT suitable for children. Discretion is advised." The site solicits PayPal donations for bandwidth costs and legal fees, while also taking requests for possible sad songs for the famous frog to perform. It explains the narrative behind Kermit's much-watched renditions of "Hurt" or "Needle in the Hay" as follows: "Soon after the death of Jim Henson, Sad Kermit spiraled downward into a life full of addiction, romance and pain. The songs and videos on this webpage shed light on Sad Kermit's descent into his dark, hurting world." What's particularly interesting about the send-up of "Hurt" is that it is as much an homage to Johnny Cash's version of the song, which transforms it into a tale of mourning, as it is a parody of the nihilistic indie rock original.

Of course, trying to shut down the site has only made it more of an Internet meme. More technically crude videos have been made with still images and other depressing songs sung in Kermit's voice, such as "Hallelujah," which is also described as a cover-of-a-cover (Leonard Cohen via Jeff Buckley). And anyone familiar with this meme will recognize the references in "Kermit the Frog reacts to 2 girls one cup" and "Kermit shows Rowlf the Dog '2 girls 1 cup'," which have received almost five million views combined.

Some might argue that it is better to just ignore Internet parody rather than engage with it litigiously, as George Lucas does by allowing viral videos like "Darth Vader in Love." But with Jim Henson having been such a revered figure and so closely linked to his ping-pong ball eyed creation, it may be difficult for stakeholders to do.

Professor Product Testing

As someone on the waiting list to read Parenting, Inc., I have to say that many of my fears about the entertainment-academic complex were confirmed by today's announcement that "Disney opens new media lab."

Under the guidance of professor Duane Varan, a global authority on the future of TV and advertising, the facility will conduct year-round tests to evaluate viewer engagement and emotional responses to advertising across media platforms.

A 3,000-square-foot lab is being built in Austin, Texas to test a variety of advertising modes, including interactivity, split screens, brand integration, sponsorships, addressable advertising, broadband video and mobile devices. The facility will also feature a small theatre and an adjacent observation lounge.

I know that people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones, but based on Vuaran's web page at the University of Hawaii or his corporate site, I'm not sure he has much understanding of visual culture, audience. or interactive content.

Death of a Saleswoman

Given the coverage of institutional rhetoric in this blog, it seems important to say something about the departure of yet another Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy at the State Department, who is skewered in the video above.

Karen Hughes will be leaving office with perhaps her only accomplishment being a collaboration between the federal government and the Walt Disney corporation to create a film to be shown in airports about the most appealing aspects of our great nation. In her absence, you can keep your channel tuned to Discover America, where her themed-entertainment view of the country will live on through stock footage of a multi-racial cast of jolly natives and a dizzying array of trucking, zooming, dollying, and panning shots in national parks at "Welcome: Portraits of America." Visitors can tap their toes to a predictable and sappy soundtrack.

For more background, you can read some of my not terribly gentle rhetorical analysis of one of her predecessors, Charlotte Beers, in this hypertext for an online journal or read entries on this blog about public diplomacy efforts on the Internet.

The Immaterial Has Become Immaterial

This line comes from the latest Pirates of the Caribbean movie, which I went to see tonight. It's ironic to see a movie from the Disney company that heroizes culturally subversive pirates and tells a story about taking on a giant monopoly, the East India Company. The initial sequence, which shows a range of citizens of different races, ages, and genders being persecuted for their sympathy with piracy becomes particularly ironic, given the company's history. If you haven't already seen it, check out this mash-up of Disney films made into a tutorial on copyright and fair use by Bucknell professor Eric Faden.

I thought that the depiction of Asia as a place for disordered and lawless sociality puppeted Orientalist stereotypes and that the Yellow Peril-style caricature of sexual danger to white women from Asian men played right into racist ideologies. Personally, I'd pick Chow Yun Fat over Orlando Bloom any day. I wonder how much of this China-bashing was seen as permissible, given the region's well publicized disregard for Disney's intellectual property claims.

I know that some free culture advocates are using the release of the movie as an opportunity to educate the public. Free Culture and Defective By Design held an event at one of the theatres showing the film in Boston to highlight parallels with net activist interests. You can see photos here.

In this week's Los Angeles Times cartoonist Berkeley Breathed explains how his joke about the director of Pirates went unintentionally viral thanks to a blogger at a book signing in "Is Gore Verbinski really 'sick of pirates'?"

Update: There's also another great Disney mash-up that has been made up to argue for the stance of documentary filmmakers, who often need clips from popular movies to illustrate essential points in their visual arguments.

Small Fries

Vidmeter's Copyright Report, which shows that user-generated content is much more watched on YouTube than copyrighted big studio material is apparently already being disputed by media giant Viacom, according to Reuters. Despite their accusations, one chart in the Vidmeter report shows that the intellectual property of conglomerate companies like Viacom, Disney, Sony, and Time-Warner make up only 9.23% of content and a mere 5.93% of all views.

Throughout the Universe

Gref Victoroff of the law firm Rohde & Victoroff gave a workshop on "Intellectual Property Law for Digital Freelancers" today, which I heard about through LA Flash, a group for professionals and students that offers free and low-cost services to developers. The firm represents a range of properties, from the speeches of Jesse Jackson to the art from the estate of Alberto Vargus, and it also represents the collective bargaining interests of the Los Angeles chapter of the Graphic Artists Guild. Victoroff's practice has also defended clients against copyright infringement suits on free speech or artistic merit grounds. For example, the firm was involved in lining up expert witnesses to attest that brands have been incorporated into pop art for over a half decade, after Hiro Yamagata, with whom my husband has worked, was sued because he incorporated the logo of the Hard Rock Café into one of his works of art. Victoroff is also a prolific writer for media industry how-to manuals and wrote the chapter on sampling for the business handbook for musicians from Prentice-Hall.

Sadly, Victoroff was advising freelancers who wanted to protect their copyright claims against using any open source software or material from the creative commons in creating digital works, two causes dear to my free culture media philosophy. Victoroff's rationale for relying on existing intellectual property practices rested on the grounds that 1) the standard "derivative work and compilation" disclosure on the copyright form might become clouded without unambiguously licensed software and 2) creative commons licenses represented a "parallel universe" or "alternative universe" without a history of copyright and trademark decisions behind them in established case law and thus represent an unacceptable risk.

(The title of this posting reflects the fact that the Disney corporation not only claims rights "throughout the world" but also "throughout the universe" on its contracts.)

Of Mice and Men

The mascots on a number of the "kids" websites for the federal government have been updated in the past year, despite the fact that most children who go to official pages are seeking information for assigned school reports not fun and game with cartoon characters. Here's a rundown on the new faces in the Beltway that are being offered in lieu of more useful information literacy pages.

1) You can check out the mountain lion family from the kids' page at Ready.gov, who can help you prepare for all your Homeland Security needs.

Rex the dad is an explorer who loves taking his family on adventures. Purrcilla is the energetic and wise mom. And Rory is the strong-willed daughter who loves helping her parents plan for the family's many adventures.

Well, I'm from Southern California, and I like to hike in the local mountains, so when I think safety and security for my tasty young children, I don't think "mountain lion."

To have a government website assure me that something that is -- in fact -- dangerous isn't is a somewhat disquieting experience, particularly when the agency has been responsible for raising the fear level in response to paper tigers in the past. For example, we're told by the website that mountain lions aren't like lions, because they "don't roar ... they purr, just like house cats!" Now I've seen a mountain lion at a wildlife refuge; it looks a lot more like a lion than a house cat or even a bobcat for that matter. Not surprisingly, it seems that the State of California Department of Fish and Game disagrees and characterizes them as wild animals.

Ready.gov designer Betsy Baytos is a Disney veteran, who also crafted the corporate image for the Coca Cola polar bears. I'll admit that I'm impressed that they managed to come up with something even worse than their now defunct madlibs page for a terrorist attack.

2) The CIA's website for children includes many howlers, including a paper doll disguises section. Harry and Aerial, the adorable spy pigeons, are lower down on the page, now that tots can enjoy a newer mascot in Ginger's CIA Adventure, which features a blue bear with a wistful expression. (I hate to give away the plot line, but the climax is Ginger's visit to the paper shredder.)


3) The National Security Administration's CryptoKids are old hands at entertaining the youngsters by now. Their crew includes a whole cast of characters from Aesop's fables: an eagle, a turtle, a cat, a rabbit . . . you name it. I like the fact that one character declares, "When a secret needs to be kept, you have to find a way to protect it!" while another says, "Carpe Diem!" I suppose that's typical of the mixed messages from the intelligence community. Notice also that a number of the characters now are ostentatiously trademarked. I don't know how that jibes with their claim that they present "public information" that can be "distributed or copied."

4) Robots seem to be a popular choice for representing government agencies, which is perhaps an unfortunate pick, since that would suggest to children that civic institutions are -- well -- robotic. The Centers for Disease Control has "KQ, the Techno-Health Wizard," the National Reconnaissance Organization Jr. Page features Corey Corona, the lovable spy satellite, and NASA has an entire turning-the-pages robot storybook.




At least the 9-11 commission web pages don't have a kids' mascot, and now that their work has been halted, and their website is frozen in time at the National Archive, we won't be seeing one any time soon.

Personally, I'd like to design a lovable character for my favorite federal office, the Government Printing Office? Any suggestions?

I'm Going to Disneyland!

This Justin revealed that this New Orleans mayorial candidate was posed on her website in front of New Orleans Square in Disneyland, not the actual city of New Orleans that she hoped to govern. (Tip to would-be politicians in the Big Easy: remember to edit out tell-tale Disney garbage cans!)

This story about Photoshopped relocation was subsequently picked up in Wonkette, who linked it to a parallel Republican website prevarication that was covered in Daily Koz about a congressional candidate who tried to use a shot of a peaceful "Iraq" street as political ammunition, claiming it had been taken in U.S. occupied territory during a fact-finding mission, despite the fact that the street shown actually was in Turkey.