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Disney has a long history of screwing other copyright holders over. The song "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" was stolen from Zulu musician Solomon Linda. His estate

Disney has a long history of screwing other copyright holders over. The song "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" was stolen from Zulu musician Solomon Linda. His estate fought Disney for years for compensation. Most of their stories are based on public domain fairy tales from the Brothers Grimm.

jacquesm 8y ago
The brothers Grimm just wrote them down, old ladies told the stories. So they were in the public domain long before the Grimm brothers got involved. I still have the original German edition of the book somewhere in storage, the engravings with some of the stories gave me the shudders as a young child, and the stories are pretty grisly too.
- GW150914 8y ago
  Incredibly grim stories... the harshest one I recall is Wie Kinder Schlachtens miteinander gespielt haben or “Children Played Butcher Together” and it’s exactly as it sounds. From the second part of the tale... A man once slaughtered a pig while his children were looking on. When they started playing in the afternoon, one child said to the other: "You be the little pig, and I'll be the butcher," whereupon he took an open blade and thrust it into his brother's neck. Their mother, who was upstairs in a room bathing the youngest child in a tub, heard the cries of her other child, quickly ran downstairs, and when she saw what had happened, drew the knife out of the child's neck, and in a rage, thrust it into the heart of the child who had been the butcher. She then rushed back to the house to see what her other child was doing in the tub, but in the meantime it had drowned in the bath. The woman was so horrified that she fell into a state of utter despair, refused to be consoled by the servants, and hanged herself. When her husband returned home from the fields and saw this, he was so distraught that he died shortly thereafter.
  - jacquesm 8y ago
    Nice coincidence that we use the word 'grim' in English in that particular way.
- thirdsun 8y ago
  > the engravings with some of the stories gave me the shudders as a young child, and the stories are pretty grisly too. That reminds me of Struwwelpeter, another rather gruesome and explicit german children's book that was used during my childhood: - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struwwelpeter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struwwelpeter - https://archive.org/stream/englishstruwwelp00hoffrich#page/n0 https://archive.org/stream/englishstruwwelp00hoffrich#page/n...
  - davvolun 8y ago
    I love these stories... One kid is a sociopath terrorizing animals, and the moral is a dog will steal your sausage. Another kid won't eat soup so he. fucking. dies. What the hell, Germany?
zczc 8y ago
And The Lion King was partly based on Kimba anime
olavk 8y ago
It is a bit unfair to blame Disney for stealing "the Lion Sleeps Tonight". I it really Peter Seeger who is the guilty party (or at least his record company). He made the song famous in the US in the 1950's but he thought it was a traditional, so didn't credit the original songwriter. It has been covered a million times since then without the original songwriter getting royalties.

jacquesm 8y ago

The brothers Grimm just wrote them down, old ladies told the stories. So they were in the public domain long before the Grimm brothers got involved. I still have the original German edition of the book somewhere in storage, the engravings with some of the stories gave me the shudders as a young child, and the stories are pretty grisly too.

GW150914 8y ago
Incredibly grim stories... the harshest one I recall is Wie Kinder Schlachtens miteinander gespielt haben or “Children Played Butcher Together” and it’s exactly as it sounds. From the second part of the tale... A man once slaughtered a pig while his children were looking on. When they started playing in the afternoon, one child said to the other: "You be the little pig, and I'll be the butcher," whereupon he took an open blade and thrust it into his brother's neck. Their mother, who was upstairs in a room bathing the youngest child in a tub, heard the cries of her other child, quickly ran downstairs, and when she saw what had happened, drew the knife out of the child's neck, and in a rage, thrust it into the heart of the child who had been the butcher. She then rushed back to the house to see what her other child was doing in the tub, but in the meantime it had drowned in the bath. The woman was so horrified that she fell into a state of utter despair, refused to be consoled by the servants, and hanged herself. When her husband returned home from the fields and saw this, he was so distraught that he died shortly thereafter.
- jacquesm 8y ago
  Nice coincidence that we use the word 'grim' in English in that particular way.
thirdsun 8y ago
> the engravings with some of the stories gave me the shudders as a young child, and the stories are pretty grisly too. That reminds me of Struwwelpeter, another rather gruesome and explicit german children's book that was used during my childhood: - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struwwelpeter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struwwelpeter - https://archive.org/stream/englishstruwwelp00hoffrich#page/n0 https://archive.org/stream/englishstruwwelp00hoffrich#page/n...
- davvolun 8y ago
  I love these stories... One kid is a sociopath terrorizing animals, and the moral is a dog will steal your sausage. Another kid won't eat soup so he. fucking. dies. What the hell, Germany?

zczc 8y ago

And The Lion King was partly based on Kimba anime

olavk 8y ago

It is a bit unfair to blame Disney for stealing "the Lion Sleeps Tonight". I it really Peter Seeger who is the guilty party (or at least his record company). He made the song famous in the US in the 1950's but he thought it was a traditional, so didn't credit the original songwriter. It has been covered a million times since then without the original songwriter getting royalties.