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"Steal an apple and you're a thief. Steal a kingdom and you're a statesman." - Literal Disney villain
by deaton 5mo ago
"Steal an apple and you're a thief. Steal a kingdom and you're a statesman."
- Literal Disney villain
- pluc 5mo ago"AI should be more ethically like Stalin" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_death_of_one_man_is_a_tragedy,_the_death_of_millions_is_a_statistic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_death_of_one_man_is_a_trag...
- fisheuler 5mo agoZhuang Zhou(BC 369-BC 286) have said the similar things "窃钩者诛,窃国者侯" This phrase comes from the chapter Ransacking Coffers (Qu Qie, 胠箧) in the Daoist text Zhuangzi (4th century BC).
- falcor84 5mo agoIronically this phrase was said by Jafar in Disney's 2019 live action remake of Aladdin, but wasn't part of the original 1992 version. And I personally would argue that this corporate remake is a worse creative "theft" than what random people are doing with GenAI.
- runarberg 5mo agoI would call it cultural theft. But a better word is cultural appropriation, and the original cartoon—though iconic—did it worse. Aladdin was first written sometime in the 9th or the 10th century (oldest surviving complete manuscript of 1001 nights is from the 15th century). It was translated into English in the 18th century. Disney made a cartoon of the story without understanding the culture it comes from with the main purpose of selling it to an audience with an even less understanding. And the results was a horrible misrepresentation of somebody else’s cultural heritage.
- khuey 5mo agoDisney owns the 1992 production of Aladdin so who exactly are they "stealing" from?
- wgjordan 5mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aladdin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aladdin The argument, as I understand it is that the "theft" is in quotes because it's not literally copyright infringement, but fair use of an old public-domain folk tale that ends up consuming the latter. Today, when kids know "Aladdin" they know the copyrighted/trademarked Disney character, not the traditional folk tale- that's the "theft" that happened.
- khuey 5mo agoIf you subscribe to any concept of the public domain this is surely in it.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- cortesoft 5mo agoDoesn't this mean that anyone can make a competing Aladdin story, though? Since they don't own the source IP?
- bigfishrunning 5mo agoIt does! but you can't use anything Disney added (the tiger, the talking bird, etc..) and your production values would have to be super high to avoid looking like a store-brand knockoff. It's hard to deny that the Disney version does damage the original story in some way
- altmanaltman 5mo agoWould most kids around the world even know Aladdin if it wasn't for the Disney copyrighted movie?
- the_af 5mo agoVery likely yes. I was very familiar with this story, and other "Arabian" tales, well before Disney made the original animated version. We also had Grimm's fairy tales, which I loved reading, and nowadays am reading to my daughter, to her delight. Yes, with beheadings and child-eating monsters and witches.
- JonathanMerklin 5mo agoI'll bite. What's your argument, or at least the comment-sized gist of it?
- rib3ye 5mo agoIf you agree with this, then you have to question the validity of international "law"
- nonethewiser 5mo agoDo you not question the validity of international law? How can something be a law over sovereign countries without some overarching governing body and enforcement mechanisms? How can it be a law if the parties it supposedly governs can just recognize or not recognize it at will?
- nonethewiser 5mo agoYeah but isn't the claim that it's not stealing? You're presupposing the thing that is in question. The argument is that a human will gather information from all over the place and compile it, all without doing anything wrong. That's the base claim. Not that stealing a little is OK. That's extremely easy to disprove and also entirely irrelevant.