Tag: disney

Disney Shamed into Retracting Phony ‘Steamboat Willie’ Copyright Claim After Film Enters Public Domain

The Disney Grooming Syndicate has been forced to back down from bullying a private citizen who legally used Steamboat Willie in a YouTube video.

YouTuber and voice actor Brock Baker published all eight minutes of Steamboat Willie on his popular YouTube channel (1.1 million subscribers). That alone would normally be considered a copyright violation. On top of that, Brock added his own audio to the classic cartoon that introduced Mickey and Minnie Mouse to the public in 1928.

But.

Steamboat Willie has been in the public domain since the beginning of the year, and Brock published his video a few days after that. Nevertheless, Disney still slapped him with two copyright claims. First, Disney filed a copyright claim on the cartoon itself. The result was that YouTube demonetized the video. After Disney backed off that, the Grooming Syndicate filed a second copyright claim for Steamboat Willie’s soundtrack — which is also in public domain. The whole thing is public domain. Nevertheless, Brock’s video got demonetized — until they earned enough negative media attention to reverse course.

In a way, you can see Disney’s point… The disgraced company is losing billions on its lousy streaming service and theatrical releases, so every dollar does count. But public domain is still public domain, and this bullying campaign is obviously meant to scare off anyone else who would dare do what Disney can no longer do: make money by entertaining the public.

This vile multinational corporation has enjoyed so much special treatment over the years with copyright protection and legislation, and it’s still harassing a private citizen on YouTube who is only guilty of having a few laughs about a cartoon that no longer enjoys copyright protection.

Overall, unless no one files for copyright protection, I’m opposed to the idea of public domain. As evil as Disney is, it is still in business, and its property should be protected for as long as it stands. That’s Good John’s thinking…

Bad John loves seeing Disney lose, fail, and drown in its own greed and perversions.

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Mickey Mouse Is Now In the Public Domain. Well, Sort Of.

The copyright on Mickey Mouse expires today, meaning The Walt Disney Company no longer has the exclusive rights to the character. Does this mean you can put Mickey in your own cartoon? Not exactly.

Under current law, works released between 1924 and 1978 are copyrighted for 95 years. As a result, the thousands of works copyrighted in 1928 enter the public domain today, meaning anyone can use or reprint them without permission. That includes books like D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover and films like Charlie Chaplin’s The Circus. But the most high-profile addition is Steamboat Willie, the animated short that marked the debuts of both Mickey and his longtime paramour, Minnie.

The cartoon depicted Mickey Mouse working aboard a steamboat, making music, and vexing the boat’s captain, a large cat named Pete. The slapstick humor, anthropomorphized animals, and objects of later Disney works are present, although Mickey is much more mischievous—the antagonistic dynamic with a giant cat is more reminiscent of Tom & Jerry cartoons than the Mickey Mouse familiar to modern audiences.

The seven-minute film was revolutionary: It was the first cartoon to feature synchronized sound—rather than just a silent film with background music—and audiences loved it. Mickey Mouse spawned a franchise that over the following century would earn more than $80 billion and make Disney one of the most powerful media companies on the planet.

Losing out on its rodential cash cow would be a huge blow, and Disney jealously guarded its creation. When Steamboat Willie premiered in November 1928, U.S. law dictated that it would enter the public domain no later than 1984. But two different laws, one passed in 1976 and another in 1998, extended the maximum copyright term, each by twenty years. Each law passed after strenuous lobbying by Disney: The latter statute, the Copyright Term Extension Act, has been derisively referred to as the Mickey Mouse Protection Act.

Today’s expiration implies that Disney was either unable to secure another extension or unwilling to try. In recent years, Republican lawmakers have signaled their unwillingness to extend copyright law any further on Disney’s behalf. Sen. Josh Hawley (R–Mo.) even introduced the Copyright Clause Restoration Act of 2022, which would cap copyright terms at a maximum of 56 years—notably, the same term in effect when Walt Disney first released Steamboat Willie.

But this doesn’t mean that Mickey is completely free. The copyright that expires today only applies to Mickey Mouse as he first appeared: rat-like and mischievous, with pupil-less eyes and no gloves. All other interpretations, introduced later—including the magnanimous Mickey who greets visitors to Disney theme parks dressed in a bow tie and tails, with white gloves and human-like eyes and facial features—remain under lock and key.

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DeSantis vs. Disney: Florida’s Fight Over Private Governance

On April 22, 2022, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill dissolving the Reedy Creek Improvement District, ending perhaps the most successful experiment in private governance in U.S. history. The bill ended an arrangement that turned a swamp on the edges of Orlando into the home of Walt Disney World, one of the busiest tourist destinations on Earth. The governor’s victory is not yet final—while the district was formally dissolved earlier this year, Disney attorneys quickly outfoxed DeSantis, delegating many of the district’s powers back to the company. The company is now suing to reverse the change altogether.

For all the media sound and fury over the duel between the would-be president and the Mouse, experts seem to agree that Disney will retain most of its longstanding autonomy when all the lawsuits are through.

Whatever your views of the “Don’t Say Gay” law that kicked off the DeSantis-Disney feud, or of the increasingly regrettable quality of the live-action Disney feature film reboots of its animated classics, DeSantis’ attempt to dissolve the district is a blatant effort to bully a private company because he disapproved of its constitutionally protected speech. At best, it reveals DeSantis as a culture warrior rather than a small-government conservative. At worst, it exposes DeSantis as a politician willing to toss out the rule of law and free markets to score cheap political points, in the lead-up to a Republican presidential primary in which he’s struggling to meet expectations.

For the most frivolous reasons imaginable, the fate of “the happiest place on Earth” now hangs in the balance.

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Disney+ Cartoon Demands Reparations And More With ‘Slaves Built This Country’ Song

Disney has gone for woke yet again with a recent episode of the cartoon series “Proud Family” — which featured kids singing a song about reparations that America “owes” to black Americans and about how “slaves built this country.”

The recent episode that aired on Disney+, titled “Louder and Prouder,” reviews the history of Juneteenth when the kids discover their town’s founder was a slave-owner. The song opens with the line, “This country was built on slavery — which means slaves built this country” — and that line was repeated over and over throughout.

“We the descendants of slaves in America have earned reparations for their suffering,” the song continued. “And continue to earn reparations every moment we spend submerged in a systemic prejudice, racism and white supremacy that America was founded with and still has not atoned for.”

In the cartoon, that last line was punctuated by four black students glaring while the only white student on the stage with them held a sign that read “still has not atoned for.”

“Slaves built this country,” they shouted again, claiming, “We made your families rich,” as they listed plantation owners, northern bankers, New England ship-owners, the Founding Fathers, and current senators among those who had profited on the backs of slaves.

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Jon Stewart and the Pentagon honor Ukrainian Nazi at Disney World

Defense Department-sponsored “Warrior Games” featured liberal comedian Jon Stewart awarding a member of Ukraine’s neo-Nazi Azov Battalion at Disney World. The Pentagon refused to tell The Grayzone whether US taxpayers funded the foreign competitors’ travel.

This August, during the Department of Defense’s annual Warrior Games at Disney World in Orlando, Florida this August 19-28, liberal comedian Jon Stewart awarded a Ukrainian military veteran named Ihor Halushka the “Heart of the Team” award for “inspiring his team” with his “personal example.”

Halushka happens to have been a member of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, which has been armed by the US and integrated into the Ukrainian National Guard. The award-winning ultra-nationalist wore a sleeve over his left arm as he accepted the prize, presumably to cover up his tattoo of the Nazi Sonnenrad, or Black Sun.

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Cryptocurrency’s own ‘Bernie Madoff’? Inside WILD world of former Disney child star-turned-crypto billionaire who founded controversial Tether coin – which experts have dubbed a ‘ponzi scheme’ that could bring down the industry once and for all

It’s been described by experts as the great ‘crypto winter.’ In a matter of six months during the early half of 2022, a dramatic downward spiral shook up the market, wiping out $2 trillion in value, plunging retail investors into financial ruin, causing companies to lay-off thousands of employees, and bankrupting some of the industry’s biggest heavyweights.

Amid mounting fear over the future of digital currency, scrutiny is being placed on a new weak point in the cryptosphere: Tether. 

Even in crypto’s freakish world of joke coins, overnight billionaires and scam artists, Tether stands out thanks to its incredibly curious origin. 

It’s not the scheme of a savvy financial expert but rather the brainchild of an eccentric Disney child actor-turned-Bitcoin billionaire who loves EDM music and Pokemon, snorts Peruvian psychedelics — and — as one person described, ‘looks like Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean and speaks in riddles, like Johnny Depp in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.’

His name is Brock Pierce. By the time he was in his 20s, the former kid star, now 41, had reinvented himself multiple times over and emerged as a crypto cult leader in the gonzo world of digital currency.

In the process, he’s played footsie with a wide range of unsavory characters, convicted felons, and D-list celebrities including Jeffrey Epstein, Steve Bannon, the rapper Akon, as well as the current Mayor of New York, Eric Adams (who controversially flew on Pierce’s private jet at the beginning of his term).

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Hypocrites! Disney adopts “don’t say gay” policy in order to appease Middle East censors

Disney, which famously went to battle with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis over that state’s Child Protection Act, hilariously named the “Don’t Say Gay” bill may have a little bit of explaining to do over its blatant virtue-signaling hypocrisy.

The decision to throw down with the radical alphabet mafia cost the entertainment titan a ton of money in canceled Disney+ subscriptions and canceled Disney World vacations by parents who think their children don’t need to be groomed by what used to be a wholesome entertainment company.

Now, they may have some ‘splainin’ to do with the alphabet community.

According to RedState, the House of Mouse has decided to remove all LGBTQXYZ content from Disney+, the company’s streaming service. Oh, not for the West but for Middle Eastern countries as a means to pacify censors there.

Bounding Into Comics writes that after several Disney films were banned in the Middle East for alphabet community-friendly content, such as Thor: Love and Thunder and The Eternals, Disney has caved to censors in Middle Eastern countries and will remove LGBTQ content from Disney+ there.

According to a release, a Disney spokesperson said:

“Content offerings differ across our many Disney+ markets, based upon a number of factors. Content available should align with local regulatory requirements,” while also stressing the platform has parental controls which allows parents to decide what their family members are able to view.

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Disney World employee among 12 alleged sexual predators busted in undercover operation

A Disney World employee was among 12 men nabbed by Florida law enforcement for allegedly soliciting children for sex online, officials said.

The suspects, between the ages of 20 and 67, are facing a total of 49 felony charges following a two-week-long undercover investigation dubbed “Operation Child Protector II,” the Polk County Sheriff’s Office announced Friday. 

Among those arrested is 30-year-old Zachary Hudson, who was employed as a bus driver at Disney World, cops said.

Between June 4 and 5, Hudson allegedly exchanged online messages with an undercover detective posing as a 15-year-old girl.

The detective asked Hudson if he had a problem with her only being 15, to which he replied as long as “my being older doesn’t bother you,” according to authorities. He later reportedly told her “age is just a number.”

The conversation moved to text messaging, where police say Hudson described the sexual acts he desired to do to her. He also sent a nude photo to the girl, cops said. 

“What would an operation be — either a pornography investigation or predator operation or human trafficking operation — without a Disney employee? We always have a Disney employee,” Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd told WKMG-TV.

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Disney Actor Who Played Grandfather On ‘Andy Mack’ Jailed For Trying To Have Sex With Minor

A former Disney actor will spend two years in federal prison for allegedly enticing a minor to have sex. 

Stoney Westmoreland communicated with an undercover officer using Grindr, a gay dating app. He was later arrested in 2018 after trying to meet the investigator who was posing as a 13-year-old teenager.

Authorities said Westmoreland tried to meet the apparent underage boy for sex by using a ride-sharing app to order the boy a car to the Little America Hotel. 

After ordering the ride share for the minor, he was taken into custody by the Salt Lake City Police Department and FBI Child Exploitation Task Force.

According to police, he admitted to sending nude photos, and the victim he was speaking with told him he was 13 years old.

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How the CIA Helped Disney Conquer Florida

Starting in the mid-1960s when Disney set out to establish the Disney World Theme Park, they were determined to get land at below market prices and Disney operatives engaged in a far-ranging conspiracy to make sure sellers had no idea who was buying their Central Florida property. By resorting to such tactics Disney acquired more than 40 square miles of land for less than $200 an acre, but how to maintain control once Disney’s empire had been acquired? The solution turned out to be cartoon-simple, thanks to the CIA.

Disney’s key contact was the consummate cloak-and-dagger operator, William “Wild Bill” Donovan. Sometimes called the “Father of the C.I.A,” he was also the founding partner of Donovan, Leisure, Newton & Irvine, a New York law firm whose attorneys included future C.I.A. director William Casey. Donovan’s attorneys provided fake identities for Disney agents; they also set up a secret communications center, and orchestrated a disinformation campaign. In order to maintain “control over the overall development,” Disney and his advisers realized, “the company would have to find a way to limit the voting power of the private residents” even though, they acknowledged, their efforts “violated the Equal Protection Clause” of the U.S. Constitution. Here again the CIA was there to help. Disney’s principal legal strategist for Florida was a senior clandestine operative named Paul Helliwell. Having helped launch the C.I.A. secret war in Indochina, Helliwell relocated to Miami in 1960 in order to coordinate dirty tricks against Castro. At a secret “seminar” Disney convened in May 1965 Helliwell came up with the approach that to this day allows the Disney organization to avoid taxation and environmental regulation as well as maintain immunity from the U.S. Constitution. It was the same strategy the C.I.A. pursued in the foreign countries. Set up a puppet government; then use that regime to do your bidding.

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