4 ms·

The whole "Mickey Mouse is why we have the DMCA" thing is overstated to the point where I'm tempted to call it an urban legend. There were a lot of forces alig

by Kadin 8y ago

The whole "Mickey Mouse is why we have the DMCA" thing is overstated to the point where I'm tempted to call it an urban legend. There were a lot of forces aligned in the 90s to extend copyright. Disney was one of them, but it was a lot more than just Mickey. It was more about laying the groundwork for an intellectual property driven global economy, in which the U.S.'s major export would be IP. Keep in mind in the 90s, that's where people thought the world was going; we were deindustrializing and there was a (false) sense that everyone in the first world was going to become a "knowledge worker" while all the unpleasant jobs could be offshored. (But, somehow, the countries we were offshoring to were never going to develop IP industries of their own; it always seemed to be a one-way circuit.)

TeMPOraL 8y ago
> The whole "Mickey Mouse is why we have the DMCA" thing is overstated to the point where I'm tempted to call it an urban legend. I always thought it's more like: Disney are just greedy assholes with the Mickey Mouse thing; MAFIAA is the reason we have (and have to have) DMCA.
amyjess 8y ago
I've said this before, and I'll say it again: the DMCA does more to protect the little guy than it does to protect big companies. If you're a big company, and you find that someone is infringing on your copyright, you've always just been able to throw lawyers at the problem until it goes away, DMCA or no. Individuals, especially those who aren't rich, don't have that option. Until the DMCA, individuals had basically no recourse for copyright infringement that didn't involve paying for a lawyer they couldn't afford. Here's something that came up recently that involved a group I'm part of. On Facebook, I'm part of a private women-only group for a particular fandom. Some members of the group are also mods and admins of one of the largest (mixed-gender) Facebook groups for that fandom, and there are a handful of toxic banned people who really have it out for them. One of them runs a meme page. So, one day, one of the members of the women's group, who's also the lead admin of the larger group, posts pictures of a cosplay photoshoot she had done at a con to the group. The photographer, by the way, was the admin of the women's group. Turns out that one of these toxic banned assholes had a mole in the women's group, and he posted her pictures all over the meme page along with a bunch of sexually harassing comments and insults about her weight. Thanks to the DMCA, that problem went away fast. The photographer, who was livid that people would use her photos to harass her friend like this, filed DMCA complaints on every photo the meme page posted. Facebook took them down in about an hour. Toxic asshole posts them again, another DMCA complaint, another swift takedown. I'm assuming, by the way, that this got the meme page guy a 24-hour ban from Facebook, because that's usually what happens on a second offense. 24 hours later, the whole meme page went down... I'm guessing the owner took it down right after he got back from his ban.

by Kadin 8y ago

TeMPOraL 8y ago

> The whole "Mickey Mouse is why we have the DMCA" thing is overstated to the point where I'm tempted to call it an urban legend. I always thought it's more like: Disney are just greedy assholes with the Mickey Mouse thing; MAFIAA is the reason we have (and have to have) DMCA.

amyjess 8y ago

I've said this before, and I'll say it again: the DMCA does more to protect the little guy than it does to protect big companies. If you're a big company, and you find that someone is infringing on your copyright, you've always just been able to throw lawyers at the problem until it goes away, DMCA or no. Individuals, especially those who aren't rich, don't have that option. Until the DMCA, individuals had basically no recourse for copyright infringement that didn't involve paying for a lawyer they couldn't afford. Here's something that came up recently that involved a group I'm part of. On Facebook, I'm part of a private women-only group for a particular fandom. Some members of the group are also mods and admins of one of the largest (mixed-gender) Facebook groups for that fandom, and there are a handful of toxic banned people who really have it out for them. One of them runs a meme page. So, one day, one of the members of the women's group, who's also the lead admin of the larger group, posts pictures of a cosplay photoshoot she had done at a con to the group. The photographer, by the way, was the admin of the women's group. Turns out that one of these toxic banned assholes had a mole in the women's group, and he posted her pictures all over the meme page along with a bunch of sexually harassing comments and insults about her weight. Thanks to the DMCA, that problem went away fast. The photographer, who was livid that people would use her photos to harass her friend like this, filed DMCA complaints on every photo the meme page posted. Facebook took them down in about an hour. Toxic asshole posts them again, another DMCA complaint, another swift takedown. I'm assuming, by the way, that this got the meme page guy a 24-hour ban from Facebook, because that's usually what happens on a second offense. 24 hours later, the whole meme page went down... I'm guessing the owner took it down right after he got back from his ban.