This issue — documented in great detail in a BuzzFeed post — is a difficult one for us to handle. On one hand, no Disney properties are (technically) being illegally reproduced or copied (aside from the altering, mutilating, and destroying of a doll, which may be highly immoral but isn’t — so far as we can make stick — illegal, and the publishing of photographs of a Disney property, which readers of this blog know we consider to be a horrible violation of Disney’s rights and is the reason we don’t take pictures on Disney vacations), but on the other hand, they are horrible, disgusting, perverted examples of the most audacious form of innocent-cowboy abuse possible or even imaginable.
We recommend that anyone who is a child, who is a child at heart, or who does not want what little innocence remains in them to be ripped out like so many fuzzy chicks from a wolf’s pantry not follow the link we posted above. It has already permanently scarred our psyches, and we must warn you that even glancing at these images can ruin your enjoyment of the Toy Story(TM) films as thoroughly as a volcano can ruin an ice cream sundae.
Please, can’t someone send us a Disney copyright violation that won’t damage us for life? Please??
Can someone explain this post on rpg-directory to us?
This looks like a want ad for people to pretend to be Disney characters as part of some kind of fantasy role-playing game. That part we aren’t too sure about, since we haven’t been involved in fantasy role playing since we played a bit of Dungeons and Dragons in high school and we’re long over that (except for the fact that Steve never did apologize for making us take a stupid saving throw against constitution after drinking a beer even though we were a huge, hulking fighter and it was just one drink an hour earlier, but we rolled a one and ended up falling off that ledge and plunging to our death, which was total BS).
What we are sure about is that this ad is just full of potential Disney copyright violations. First of all, the person seems to be using a copyrighted image of Jasmine as a personal photo, which is not only definitely a massive, actionable copyright violation, but is also a huge case of false advertising unless the poster just happens to look exactly, precisely like a princess drawing.
Second, this is a call for people to pretend to be Disney characters, which is a trademark violation, defamation of character, identity theft, and fibbing. What if someone pretending to be a Disney princess slew a dragon, said a curse word, littered, or robbed a bank? Think of the implications! And the scandal!
Why can’t people learn to leave poor, defenseless Disney characters alone and just be themselves?
We were looking at a page of fan art collected on Buzzfeed — always a potential source of massive, sorrow-inducing copyright violations — when we came upon this…
That’s not just just wrong, but also quite disturbing. We though we were getting close to our daily tolerance limit when, on the same page, we found…
That’s awful. Sure it’s Scar, and he’s evil, but Hitler? Really? That was plenty for us to post about, but then, a little more glancing about the page brought us to…
I … We … I … Uh … (faint)
It has been called to our attention that at some point last year the Real Women in Trucking Blog used an image of beloved Disney character Jiminy Cricket to illustrate one of their blog posts, as evidenced in this semi-stealthily obtained actual screen shot of the blog post in question:
Now we have nothing against women truckers — some of our best friends are trucker women — but this just seems way out of line. Poor Jiminy doesn’t drive and he isn’t a woman, so we don’t see why he should be used as art in such a post. Even more important, as a symbol of the conscience, Jiminy Cricket is the one Disney character that nobody can copyrightally violate without unintentionally being heavily ironic.
To make matters even worse, when this blog post is looked at on its own page, Jiminy appears to be gazing up the page to where a line of women is standing, as if he is trying to look up their dresses, which he wouldn’t do, and which he couldn’t do anyway because they’re all wearing jeans. Please, please, if you want to read about current issues in the world of women in trucking, do it in text-only mode so that you can avoid exposing yourself to this travesty.
An interesting Facebook thread listed a paragraph from a magazine called Cooks Source:
Traditional thoughts about weddings have changed. Nine out of 10 brides say they are open to non-traditional wedding gowns, and more than half say they would wear white to their second wedding. But the wedding dress is not the only part of this ceremony that’s changing.
Now here’s the beginning of an article from the DisneyFamily site Recipes Today:
Traditional thoughts about weddings have changed. Nine out of 10 brides say they are open to non-traditional wedding gowns, and nearly half say they would wear white to their second wedding, according to the study, “What’s on a Bride’s Mind,” by David’s Bridal. The wedding dress is not the only part of this ceremony that’s changing.
Now, it could be argued that this is mere coincidence — different people writing about the same subject might well come up with similar thoughts. But we had our official statistician up all night last night calculating the odds of the similarities between these paragraphs being accidental, and he concluded that the odds were similar to the odds of Disneyland having an annual Shrek Appreciation Day.
One of our awesome, observant readers sent the following message:
Hi, I have been searching on ebay UK for Mickey Mouse merchandise and came across this ‘cd clock’ in a sellers ‘Animated clocks’ section, which I like, but feel it is possibly not official merchandise ? Please can you confirm or not, if it is, I shall purchase one.
Item no : 260651807916
Seller id : *o*krazydaisy*o*
Seller shop : Krazy Daisy
The Disney Copyright Violations crack research team (me) intensely investigated this item (we spent a couple minutes looking at UK eBay and a couple pages on the Krazy Daisy web site), and saw no evidence that this was an official Disney product. Rather, it appears to us to be a depressing abuse of our beloved Mickey Mouse, a creature so kind, caring, and loving that he would never do anything to harm even a single hair on another living being (except for in some of his early black-and-white work, but he was young then and needed the money).
So what is the tragedy here? That Mickey’s chest has been perforated by clockwork? That he is depicted without his beloved “©Disney” text? Or that the green kind of makes us think of seasickness? That is not for us to say.
What is for us to say is that if we’re totally wrong and this is indeed official Disney merchandise, we’re sorry. (It’s still ugly, though.)
On The Soup on July 2, 2010, they were discussing some television show about artists, and one of the artists presented this as his latest work:
What kind of horrible twisting of purity is this? It’s like an H.R. Giger Disneyland acid-flashback nightmare! I tell you this, when the time comes that my official portrait must be made, I’m certainly not letting this nut paint it!
We all know — and love! — mater, the simple tow truck from Disney/Pixar’s Cars with the funny accent and the “Git ‘er done!” attitude. That is why when one of our readers spotted this copyright-violating painting on a roll-up garage door in her neighborhood, she just had to warn us about it. “This is found on the side of a building in my city of Winder, Ga.,” she said, her words practically dripping with the despair I can only imagine she felt. Working up the strength to go on she continued, “I think it’s some kind of car shop.”
And, if that were not enough, she also wrote a long, heart-felt blog post about the horrible, horrible situation. I suggest you get a warm cup of tea and a china plate of comforting cookies before sitting in a comfy chair and reading her post in its entirety.
Despite what this Web site would have you believe, tales of Winnie the Pooh meeting up with the alien from Alien are completely epocriphal apoohcrafil false. Creating this hybrid “entertainment” is clearly a violation of copious copyrights, and we have no more time for it than we had for Beauty and the Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, Fantasia 2001, or Snow White and the 12 Angry Men.
Here’s another one found by our fabulous readers, a cake shop in some far-off foreign land that specializes in creating photorealistic reproductions of licensed characters. It looks gorgeous, but right off you know there’s something wrong. Sure Tigger’s color and general shape and proportions are approximately correct, but where is the “© Disney” that always lovingly adorns this precious symbol of youth? Nowhere to be found, that’s where!
Adding to the insult, I hate to think of the horrible use to which this (probably delicious) product will be put. Can you just imagine the party when this creation is unboxed? There would be a gaggle of children cheering at the appearance of their beloved friend from the Hundred Acre Woods, but their cheers would turn to horrified screams when it was revealed that Tigger was there not to frolic and play, but to be grotesquely carved into chunks and served upon paper plates with ice cream and a side of callous disregard for all that is decent!