Dichotomy

by Jon Sullivan - 2021-07-02 - Jonism

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I've famously always been a champion of public domain over endless copyright extensions. Thus, Disney is evil. I also love comics and the recent resurrection of a united Marvel IP. I'm a hypocrite.

Maybe I'm a hypocrite. I hate Disney for redefining copyright as a perpetual license. For profiting from the public domain, but then sucking it dry before finally killing it. But I also like how the MCU is developing. Bringing the X-Men and FF back together with the rest of the Marvel universe brings me real joy. Dr Doom? Oh yell yes, take my money. So..... Yay Disney? But at the same time they keep bribing an intrinsically spineless Congress to extend copyright indefinitely. So Sherlock Holmes, Cthulhu and Dracula are in the public domain, but nothing under Disney's control, now or in the future, ever will be.

I would argue that both fans and the world in general are better off for all of the new Sherlock Holmes, Cthulhu and Dracula material that has come out after those works entered the public domain. Same for Cinderella, Snow White, Beauty and the Beast, Alice in Wonderland, The Little Mermaid, etc (right Disney??). And I think that if Captain America or Luke Skywalker ever entered the public domain we'd see similar creativity and new character explorations. But we won't. Because Disney is evil.

I'm not anti-copyright. I'm very pro-copyright. Just not the greedy version Disney has rammed through Congress. I like the original intent of copyright law - To encourage and monetize creativity. Seems like a very good thing to me. But copyright in 2021 has nothing at all to do with that original intent. Perpetual copyright shuts down such creativity.

So.... Disney is evil. But I love what they do. It's a problem for me. I have a few Captain America t-shirts. So I literally wear my hypocrisy on my chest. (And don't get me started on Team Cap vs Team Tony. Tony Stark isn't Elon Musk, he's the Koch brothers. Of course I'm team Cap.) But it's unavoidable. I'm not giving up my lifetime love of Marvel.

Also, of course I have a hypocritical account for Disney+, because I'm a bad person. I'm loving the new MCU series. Wandavision was brilliant. Loving Loki. No spoilers, but please be Kang, please be Kang, please be Kang.

"The essence of good is a certain kind of reasoned choice; just as the essence of evil is another kind. What about externals, then? They are only the raw material for our reasoned choice, which finds its own good or evil in working with them. How will it find the good? Not by marveling at the material! For if judgments about the material are straight, that makes our choices good, but if those judgments are twisted, our choices turn bad." - Epictetus

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