Althouse: "Ted, do cartoon animals have rights?

December 29, 2009

"Ted, do cartoon animals have rights?

"They’re the ones that should have rights. Bambi and Thumper are just adorable and you can’t eat celluloid. I am pro-cartoon animal rights. I think they should all be colorized and that the Road Runner cartoons should be shown in school to teach students violence from Acme. Support the Acme Violence Jihad!!"

27 comments:

Brent said...: My question is, will "Steamboat Willie" from 1928 ever fall out of copyright? Why should the Disney corporation continue to profit on something that should have fallen into the public domain by now>; 12/29/09, 8:27 PM
Rick Lee said...: Was that satire?... as opposed to an actual interview with Ted Nugent? I can't tell.; 12/29/09, 8:59 PM
vbspurs said...: I’m the luckiest son of a bitch to ever scare white people with an electric guitar.

Little Richard is dead?

Cheers,
Victoria; 12/29/09, 9:03 PM
Brian Hancock said...: This was covered in the Coyote Gospel in Animal Man #5 twenty years ago by Grant Morrison.; 12/29/09, 9:03 PM
Automatic_Wing said...: Little Richard mostly scared people with his hairdo, makeup and pencil-thin mustache.; 12/29/09, 9:12 PM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: Animals dont have rights .. they dont even pay taxes commensurate with their carbon footprint.; 12/29/09, 9:21 PM
Wince said...: Little Richard is dead?

Little Richard played the piano, when he wasn't playing with himself.

Contrary to my Botch Crotch Bomber (Cat Scratch Fever) allusion, it appears that Nuge is no longer the Motor City Madman.

I left Michigan and I moved to Texas, where they don’t rape and pillage my paycheck. And where I can keep a machine gun in the front seat of my vehicle.

Hey, if you ever want to get back at Ted Nugent, just play this 1980s video Little Miss Dangerous, obviously recorded when his record company thought Don Johnson was the future of music.

What dreck!; 12/29/09, 9:30 PM
jeff said...: Hey, just watched Ted guest on Miami Vice. He was a bad guy, but the rest of the story was so convoluted, not sure what was going on. Man that show was bad.; 12/29/09, 9:36 PM
chickelit said...: Ted's second stage incarnation hit the national circuit just in time for part of my misspent youth; I don't regret one second I spent listening to him.; 12/29/09, 9:42 PM
David said...: Little Richard never scared me.

Hank Ballard--I was scared of Hank Ballard.; 12/29/09, 9:51 PM
David said...: "Why should the Disney corporation continue to profit on something that should have fallen into the public domain by now"

Why should anyone else profit on Disney's invention? You think you should own a piece of Mickey Mouse? Communist tool.; 12/29/09, 9:53 PM
Paul said...: "My brain is gonna squirt through the phone lines and stain your face."

He sure has a way with words.

What I'd give to watch him tear the execrable Bill Maher a new asshole.; 12/29/09, 9:56 PM
Ray said...: My question is, will "Steamboat Willie" from 1928 ever fall out of copyright? Why should the Disney corporation continue to profit on something that should have fallen into the public domain by now...

No time soon, thanks to Sonny Bono.; 12/29/09, 9:58 PM
Wince said...: He was a bad guy, but the rest of the story was so convoluted, not sure what was going on. Man that show was bad.

And how did all the sand fall out of the sky?; 12/29/09, 10:02 PM
Skyler said...: That was too surreal even for Nugent, who usually is radical but coherent. I suspect that was satire.; 12/29/09, 10:02 PM
Michael Haz said...: Of course cartoon animals have rights. They are cartoon rights.

At least until Cass Sunstein gets involved.; 12/29/09, 10:32 PM
Chip Ahoy said...: Speaking of food derived from plants and not animals, I just now invented a coffee vanilla latte with Kahlúa and blended with a banana.; 12/30/09, 1:00 AM
Penny said...: Hey Ted. Have you met Althouse?

Very cool lady, yet not one word about cartoon animal rights?

What's up with that?; 12/30/09, 1:45 AM
Old RPM Daddy said...: I just wish old Ted wasn't so ambivalent...; 12/30/09, 7:04 AM
Fred4Pres said...: Sometimes I think Ted would benefit from some recreational drug use.; 12/30/09, 7:25 AM
Anonymous said...: Does anyone else watch "Better Off Ted"? Until I got to the Ted Nugent tag, I thought that was a line from it, and completely imagined it being spoken by Veronica. It fit perfectly.; 12/30/09, 7:26 AM
Arturius said...: Why should the Disney corporation continue to profit on something that should have fallen into the public domain by now

Indeed. I know this keeps me awake at night.; 12/30/09, 8:30 AM
Brian said...: David said:

Why should anyone else profit on Disney's invention? You think you should own a piece of Mickey Mouse? Communist tool.

Then the founding fathers were "Communist tools." They created copyright protection, but the original act of 1790 limited it to 14 years, with a 14 year renewal. After that, written works passed into the public domain.

Also, Walt Disney doesn't profit from Mickey Mouse any more. He's dead. Unless they really do have his head frozen in the Disney vault and plan to revive him.

Copyright law has been extended many times, and now borders on the ridiculous. Since a corporation doesn't die, it can essentially keep written works out of public domain for generations, long after the original author has died and even his/her children have died. A work can be protected for up to the life of the author, plus 70 years. This was done by Rep. Sonny Bono in the 90's, essentially so "Steamboat Willie" wouldn't pass into the public domain. But for an individual author, a boot written in his 20's who lives into his 80's, this means a book could stay out of the public domain for 130 years! Or worse, it could stay out of print for 100+ years because the author's family can't agree to whom to sell the rights.

You can argue that a trademark for an existing corporation shouldn't be infringed, but a book written in the 1920's is still protected?

I know other intellectual property, such as patents, have the same protections, but it's a bit different. You can patent a drug, but that doesn't stop another drug company from coming up with a very similar drug that does the same thing. But if you write a story that borrows elements from another book written 80 years ago, you can be sued.

It's not as if corporations like Disney are above revising old stories now in the public domain, like the "Three Musketeers," or other film studios doing adaptations of H.G. Wells or Jules Verne.

I'm not a lawyer, so I can't claim to be an expert on this, but it occurs to me that while property rights are necessary for liberty to flourish, property rights are still limited, and can be terminated under certain circumstances. If the state wants to build a road through your property, it has the power of eminent domain to do so. If a person tries to hold up construction and "hold out" indefinitely, it won't work. If you own a decrepit run-down house in a bad neighborhood, the city can condemn it and tear it down (and bill you for it).

The key phrase here was authors were to retain ownership of their written works for a "limited" time. Anyone want to venture a guess that in a few years that Congress will simply extend the copyright act again another 20 years, so Disney can keep "Steamboat Willie" out of the public domain? Doesn't that make a mockery of the original language of the constitution, that ownership of the original works are for a "limited" time?; 12/30/09, 9:00 AM
Richard Fagin said...: Kids should be shown the entire Warner Bros. cartoon library, including the banned ones. They should also be shown MGM's cartoon library as well as Harvey Films. I'm hard pressed to tell who distributed Walter Lantz's works (Woody Woodpecker), but they should be shown those as well. Kids might learn America once had a sense of humor, or as Carlos Mencia says, "Take a joke, America."; 12/30/09, 9:11 AM
Fred4Pres said...: The Stupid, it burns... A cartoon and a motivational poster!

H/T: LMA; 12/30/09, 9:40 AM
Kirby Olson said...: Tweety had rights but only because they were backed up by the mother. Sylvester always got the frying pan on the head. Didn't he have the right to eat?

I think that toon called into question rights discourse and how it was legitimated by the superpowers (in this case, the mom, that you only ever saw from the waist down).; 12/30/09, 9:56 AM
William said...: For too long cartoon character were judged by the fluffiness of their tails or the floppiness of their ears. Sponge Bob was the character who broke down the pro-mammalian stereotypes that too many of our cartoons are based on. As the first invertebrate to achieve world wide fame and success, he did much to open the door for Obama.; 12/30/09, 10:57 AM