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.
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.
One of our loyal readers passed along to us this logo being used by an online newspaper. I don’t know what bothers me more about this — the blatant use of Disney’s precious font in the word “daily” or the callous intermingling of Toy Story and Wizard of Oz copyright and trademarked imagery.
If we allow such things to go on, what next? Bug’s Life mixed with The Ten Commandments? The Incredibles and Gone with the Wind? Casablanca and Tron? The possibilities are just too horrible to imagine.
The Consumerist Web site has an article about requests for a prostitution Web site to be shut down, and they chose to illustrate it with this photo of what a Jungle Cruise skipper might call “the back side of Mary and Alice.”
That is not only wrong, it’s slanderous! And poor little Alice — she’s underage! Is the Consumerist’s photography being chosen by Roman Polanski these days? The shame!
Reader Heather writes:
The game, missbimbo.com (a dress up doll site) is having a pirate theme and a competition to find the best dressed pirate themed bimbo. On the ‘judging panel’ appers disney’s very own ‘Cpt Jack Sparrow’ – I’m sure disney would love the interpitation of the main man!
Heather, you are so right and Miss Bimbo is so wrong! Indeed, Captain Jack might very well want to judge a contest of this sort, but even a piratical scalawag such as he has taken a solemn vow to respect for the very trademarks and copyrights on which his existence is based!
Found in a search for names on Twitter, April 2009
Three people pretending to be Uncle Walt himself. The shame! The shame!
If you find any more blatant Twitter violations of Disney’s basic corporate rights, be sure to e-mail us the evidence!
Found in a search for names on Twitter, April 2009
Rounding out the Hundred Acre Woods, Twitter also has:
- 7 Christopher Robins
- 69 Tiggers
- 6 Kangas
- 6 Piglets
Found in a search for names on Twitter, April 2009
10 Hannah Montanas, just one Miley Stewart (as it should be), and 287 Miley Cyruses (Cyri?). I’m starting to think that Disney’s legal department needs to open a whole new department just to police Twitter for trademark thieves.
Found in a search for names on Twitter, April 2009
Just one Condorman on Twitter, so there is an outside possibility that this is not a copyright violation, but a legitimate online identity. There’s no Woodrow Wilkins, so if he’s really online, he’s just using his secret identity. (There are also 34 Michael Crawfords, but I don’t think that proves anything.)