"For many years, these works have inspired audiences around the world by conveying values such as courage, friendship and perseverance."

"Because of this, many fans feel concerned when images from these works appear to be used in political or military contexts that may differ from the intentions of the original creators or rights holders. This petition seeks to convey the voices of fans who, precisely because Japanese manga and anime are so widely loved around the world, hope that their cultural value and context will be respected."

Says an online petition seeking an end to the use of anime in political satire, quoted in "Trump draws anger in Japan with ‘disrespectful’ cartoon fakes/Fans of anime have called for action against the US president, who posts AI-generated clips of himself as their comic-book heroes" (London Times).

I'll just express my opinion in blog tags: "free speech" and "lawsuits I hope will fail."

This made me think of the old Walt Disney Productions v. Air Pirates case. Wikipedia:

"Great story. I especially enjoy the moving of the three palm trees."

Texted Meade after I sent him "'It’s not leaving until they pay me': sculptor holds Trump statue hostage/Alan Cottrill created an 18ft bronze capturing the moment the president survived an assassination attempt. He says his patrons aren’t paying up" (London Times).

There's a lot going on in this story, but keep reading, you'll get to the palm trees:

"American Idol" seems to think it's doing Stephen Bishop a favor.

I'd never heard of Stephen Bishop or his "On and On" song, but I found his wife's outrage interesting:

"I don't know where I'm going/But I'm on my way."

I've kept a Google alert on my name for as long as there have been Google alerts, and this morning one took me to a Wisconsin Public Radio article: "New exhibit explores Wisconsin veteran contributions after military service/'Traditions: Stories of Service of Country & Community' exhibit at the Wisconsin Veterans Museum showcases how veterans gave back after returning to civilian life."

See my name?

 

That's a photo I published back in 2006, and I'm glad I put a Creative Commons license and made it easy to use without needing to ask. I don't check my email that often, and I'm happy to see the photo getting some eyeballs. I photographed things that other people made, some of it art, some of it utilitarian, so it would be especially absurd to be possessive about what part of this is mine. It makes more sense to claim the sunrise. I didn't even have the power to arrange those items. They were arrayed in a glass case.

Anyway. This morning I focused on that "poster" with the vivid line "I don't know where I'm going/But I'm on my way." It struck me as anti-war. If you don't know where you're going, stay put. First do no harm. But I learned that the seeming poster was in fact sheet music. And I think it celebrates willingness to do whatever "Uncle Sammy" has in mind. Read the sheet music and listen:

And I'll do my duty-uty night or day/I don't know where I'm going but I'm on my way....

I still don't know what Paul Simon and Julio were doing down by the school yard, but there's that line I don't know where I'm going/But I'm on my way:

Of course, it's perfectly acceptable, speaking of copyright, for Paul to lift that line from the 1917 song, but who knows if he did? I see that in 1972, Paul Simon told Rolling Stone, he "never bothered to figure out what it was" that Mama saw him and Julio do down by the schoolyard, because it "didn't make any difference to me." And in 2010, he told the NYT the song was "a bit of inscrutable doggerel." So I'm sure he'd give an obscure answer to the question whether he was inspired by that war/anti-war song.

I like that he used it, if he used it. It's the folk music tradition, something Dylan does too. You patch things together, put them in a new context. It's vital and alive. A good thing.

Meanwhile, there are places on the internet that attribute to Carl Sandburg. I suspect that's one of those misattributions. And speaking of famous names... that really is Mickey Mantle.

"A lengthy manifesto written by Nashville school shooter Audrey Hale won’t be released to the public because its copyright now belongs to her victims’ loved ones..."

"... a judge has ruled. Families of the three children and three staffers gunned down last year by Hale, 28, at the private Christian Covenant School can block media outlets’ access to the writings, Chancery Court Judge I’Ashea Myles ruled Thursday night. 'The original writings, journals, art, photos and videos created by Hale are subject to an exception to the [Tennessee Public Records Act ] created by the federal Copyright Act,' Myles wrote in court documents.... Interest in Hales’ writings stem from the assertion by police that she was 'assigned female at birth' but may have identified as a transgender man...."

The NY Post reports.

Deborah Fisher, executive director of the Tennessee Coalition for Open Government, criticized the judge's opinion: "To say that evidence collected by police can be copyrighted by the criminal, or the surviving parent or spouse of the criminal, does not bode well for the transparency of the police or the judicial system."

But the article says the judge said the victims' families own the copyright. 

"This guy basically had his own little, you know, sweatshop of children. It’s insane. I’m still in disbelief."

Said Joel DeBellefeuille, quoted in "Teacher sued over accusations he tried to sell junior high students’ art" (WaPo).

DeBellefeuille brought suit after his 13-year-old son Jax learned that his art teacher was selling merchandise — mugs, cushions, etc. — with his students' art work printed on it.

I don't know if it affects the legal issue, but the assignment had been to do works in the style of Jean-Michel Basquiat. 

Teacher accused of selling students' art without permission https://t.co/OXQbrM6FaC #artgate #quebec #saintlazare #canada

— Joel DeBellefeuille (@DeBellefeuille_) February 13, 2024

Quite aside from the teacher's appropriation of the children's work, what do you think of the original assignment? Note that each image is titled with the student's name plus "Creepy Portrait." Would you like your children required to draw/paint creepy versions of themselves? Shouldn't children be uplifted and encouraged to see themselves in a positive way? Here, the idea is to look at yourself and see sickness, decay, ghoulishness, and despair.

Did Mickey Mouse just enter the public domain?

"An early Walt Disney movie featuring the first appearance of Mickey Mouse is among the copyrighted works from 1928 moving into the public domain on Jan. 1, 2024....  'What is going into the public domain is this particular appearance in this particular film,' [says Kembrew McLeod, a communications professor and intellectual property scholar]. That means people can creatively reuse only the Mickey Mouse from Steamboat Willie. Not the Mickey Mouse in the 1940 movie Fantasia. Nor the one on Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.... New versions of Mickey Mouse remain under copyright. Copyright applies to creative characters, movies, books, plays, songs and more. And as it happens, Mickey Mouse is also trademarked.... 'And of course, trademark law has no end, adds Harvard Law School professor Ruth Okediji.... As long as the mark remains distinctive in the supply of goods and services, the owner of the trademark gets to protect that trademark. 'It's something copyright scholars like myself have been concerned about.... This effective undermining of the public domain by allowing trademark law to effectively extend the life of a copyrighted work.....'"

From "'Steamboat Willie' is now in the public domain. What does that mean for Mickey Mouse?" (NPR).

The most NPR part of that article is telling us that in "Steamboat Willie," as opposed to later versions of Mickey, "his roots in the blackface minstrel shows of the time are more apparent."

ADDED: From a 2019 Snopes article, "Was Mickey Mouse Modeled After a Racist Caricature Named 'Jigaboo'? Mickey Mouse may have a connection to minstrel shows, but he wasn't based on a racist 'Jigaboo' character":

"Aided by the fact that McCartney is allowed to use Beatles music when almost all other podcasters are not, the appeal is in going deep into material we all know."

"McCartney explains how Eleanor Rigby, from Revolver, was about all the old ladies he knew in Liverpool, many of whom he met while knocking on doors as a boy scout on bob-a-job week. 'So I imagined this lady and I gave her a scenario....' ... She’s cleaning up after someone else’s wedding, she’s putting on cold cream at night from a jar by the door.... 'My mum’s favourite was Nivea,' McCartney says.... 'It kind of scared me.'.... For Beatles nuts this is 18 minutes of pure gold.... An episode on Back in the USSR is also released today, while future instalments — one will be released each Wednesday — will explore Let It Be, Penny Lane and even Mull of Kintyre...."

From "McCartney: A Life in Lyrics review — pure gold for Beatles nuts/In a new podcast Paul McCartney talks to the Irish poet Paul Muldoon about the stories behind 12 of his songs. First up, Eleanor Rigby...." (London Times).

Vulnerable, uncomfortable, transformative blog post.

"I am obviously very happy with the outcome of the case. At the same time, I am unbelievably frustrated that baseless claims like this are allowed to go to court at all."

"We have spent the last eight years talking about two songs with dramatically different lyrics, melodies and four chords which are also different and used by songwriters every day, all over the world. These chords are common building blocks which were used to create music long before ‘Let’s Get It On’ was written and will be used to make music long after we are all gone. I am just a guy with a guitar who loves writing music for people to enjoy. I am not and will never allow myself to be a piggy bank for anyone to shake."

Said Ed Sheeran, quoted in "Ed Sheeran Wins Copyright Case Over Marvin Gaye’s ‘Let’s Get It On’/The pop star was accused of copying the 1973 classic for his 2014 hit 'Thinking Out Loud.' He described the chords both songs use as 'common building blocks'" (NYT).

"As Elvis Costello pointed out back in 2021 when social media users accused Olivia Rodrigo of lifting elements of 'Pump It Up' for her song 'Brutal'..."

"... most songs borrow from what came before them to some degree. (After all, there are only so many chords!) 'It’s how rock and roll works,' Costello said. 'You take the broken pieces of another thrill and make a brand new toy.'"

 
From "Why We All Should Be Rooting for Ed Sheeran to Win His Plagiarism Trial/The case, which claims that Sheeran's 'Thinking Out Loud' is too similar to Marvin Gaye's 'Let's Get It On,' sets a dangerous precedent" (Inside Hook).

"The last time the Supreme Court decided whether a work produced using a machine was eligible for copyright was in 1884."

"The case involved a photograph of Oscar Wilde taken by Napoleon Sarony. Rejecting the view that photographs were simply mechanical reproductions, the court recognized that they are 'representatives of original intellectual conceptions of the author.' That is, the author of a photograph is its originator, or the person who 'represents, creates, or gives effect to the idea, fancy, or imagination.'... Had the court excluded photography from copyright, it would not have flourished as profession or art.... This isn’t to suggest that AI-prompted works should be broadly protected. To the extent that creators use common prompts to generate similar images, the scope of copyright should be very thin, to protect against verbatim copying. But there is a big difference between a thin copyright and no copyright at all. Unfortunately, the Copyright Office’s new policy hurts American creators... [who] will bear the brunt of the office’s newfound duty to disclose AI-generated works — and to expressly exclude such works from copyright...."

Writes lawprof Edward Lee, in "A terrible decision on AI-made images hurts creators" (WaPo).

Here's that photograph of Oscar Wilde:

>

From the Metropolitan Museum:

"Most pop songs can fit over most pop songs … You could go from Let it Be to No Woman, No Cry and switch back."

Testified Ed Sheeran, quoted in "Ed Sheeran testifies in Marvin Gaye plagiarism case: ‘Most pop songs can fit over most pop songs’/Appearing in New York court, singer-songwriter defends his ballad Thinking Out Loud against similarities with Gaye’s song Let’s Get It On" (The Guardian).

A musicologist for Sheeran has said the chord sequence is not unique, and gave numerous other examples of its use in songs by artists such as Donovan and the Seekers.... 

Sheeran has been accused of plagiarism numerous times before. In April 2022 he won a UK court battle over biggest hit, Shape of You.... In 2017, he added writers of the TLC song No Scrubs to the credits of Shape of You, after similarities had been spotted by fans, though no legal case was brought against him. Also in 2017, he settled out of court after songwriters of the Matt Cardle song Amazing claimed it had been copied by Sheeran for his song Photograph. Sheeran later said he regretted the settlement, as “the floodgates opened” to further plagiarism claims....

He made a target out of himself. Avoiding 2 fights early on, he attracted these new disputes, and he must fight or continually pay out money for the routine privilege of singing simple pop songs, which, as he testified, all sound alike. 

"At bottom, IA's fair use defense rests on the notion that lawfully acquiring a copyrighted print book entitles the recipient to make an unauthorized copy..."

"... and distribute it in place of the print book, so long as it does not simultaneously lend the print book. But no case or legal principle supports that notion. Every authority points the other direction."

 
Wrote Judge John G. Koeltl, of the Southern District of New York, quoted in "A judge sided with publishers in a lawsuit over the Internet Archive's online library" (NPR)(full text of case here).

It's well established that if you buy a printed book, you can share that book with as many people as you want, pass it around, lend it out, give it away, re-sell it. The book is an object that is owned, like a hat or a teddy bear. But a digital copy of that book you own is not the object. It's something else. And you've made a copy and are only lending that out. You still have the book, even though you may be keeping it, inert, on a shelf.

"Justice Kagan wondered if the Warhol case benefited from a 'certain kind of hindsight,' since 'now we know who Andy Warhol was and what he was doing and what his works have been taken to mean'...."

"At the same time, other Justices seemed more comfortable interpreting Warhol’s works. Justice Sotomayor took it for granted that Warhol’s works commented on Prince’s 'superstar status' and 'his consumer sort of life.' The idea that Warhol’s art depicted the flattening of celebrity was repeated so many times over the course of the morning that it flattened out, too. Justice Kagan recognized that Warhol 'took a bunch of photographs and he made them mean something completely different.' Even Chief Justice Roberts repeated, rather uncritically, the foundation’s view that Warhol sent a 'message about the depersonalization of modern culture and celebrity status and the iconic' and showed 'a particular perspective on the Pop era.'"

From "Controversy/In a case litigating Andy Warhol’s use of a photograph of Prince, the Supreme Court wades into the uncomfortable territory where art criticism and copyright law collide" by Liza Batkin (NYRB).

"Justice Clarence Thomas let it be known from the bench—to ribbing from Justice Elena Kagan and laughter from the audience—that he was a Prince fan in the nineteen-eighties."

"Chief Justice John Roberts name-dropped the artists Piet Mondrian and Josef Albers. But the contrast between the case, in which Warhol is accused of changing too little of Goldsmith’s [photograph of Prince], and the Court itself, which is lately accused of changing far too much, created a tense sort of levity.... The Warhol Foundation wants the Court to stick closely to those words. It asserts that Goldsmith’s naturalistic black-and-white photo depicts Prince as 'fragile and vulnerable,' and seeks to 'humanize' him. By contrast, the Foundation argues, Warhol’s silkscreen process created 'a flat, impersonal, disembodied, mask-like appearance' that comments on the dehumanizing nature of celebrity. In other words, Goldsmith depicts Prince intimately but Warhol conveys an image of an icon.... The legal narrative... is an unwitting commentary on what happens when courts decide what things mean: a flattening of human reality and experience.... Alito mused that 'maybe it’s not so simple' to determine the meaning of a work—months after eliminating abortion rights.... The question hanging over this term is how the Court, which wants to appear as unoriginal as possible, will be affected by enacting so many transformations."

From "The Supreme Court’s Self-Conscious Take on Andy Warhol/In a copyright case, the Justices revealed their own anxieties about interpreting precedents" by Jeannie Suk Gersen (The New Yorker). 

Justice Thomas wasn't randomly showing off his pop culture savvy. He had a good question. 

From the transcript:

"The OW Hook (in Oh Why) is the central part of the song and reflects the song’s slow, brooding and questioning mood. ... [T]he OI Phrase (in Shape of You) plays a very different role..."

"... something catchy to fill the bar before each repeated phrase ‘I’m in love with your body’. The use of the first four notes of the rising minor pentatonic scale for the melody is so short, simple, commonplace and obvious in the context of the rest of the song that it is not credible that Mr Sheeran sought out inspiration from other songs to come up with it. As to the combination of elements upon which the defendants rely, even if Mr Sheeran had gone looking for inspiration, then Oh Why is far from an obvious source, given the stark contrast between the dark mood created by the OW Hook in Oh Why and the upbeat, dance feel that Mr Sheeran was looking to create with Shape.” 

Wrote the judge, quoted in "Ed Sheeran wins Shape of You copyright court case" (London Times). 

Sheeran is also quoted in the article. He wants people to know how much it hurts to be sued for copyright infringement, to be portrayed as a “magpie.” He's hoping that because he took on the burden of fighting the lawsuit rather than just settling, there will be fewer claims like this in the future.

Here, I put the 2 songs together in a playlist so you can compare. Sheeran admits he understands why the writers of "Oh Why" thought he'd ripped them off, but he had not, he says, heard the song before he'd come up with the idea used in "Shape of You."

"There is no legal prohibition on Mr. Trump assembling and publishing photographs that a White House staff member took during his tenure; under federal law, those photographs are considered in the public domain..."

"... and not subject to copyright. There is a public Flickr account, now managed by the National Archives, that has 14,995 photos from the Trump White House, a third of them listing Ms. Craighead as the photographer."

And that's the main thing you need to know, squirreled away in the 16th paragraph of "She Took the White House Photos. Trump Moved to Take the Profit.The former chief White House photographer made plans to publish a book of Trump photos. The former president had other plans" (NYT).

We, the People own these photographs. Go ahead, go into that Flickr account and pick out whatever you like and make a book! It's perfectly free. It's in the public domain!

Were they really this desperate for another get-Trump story? I was almost too jaded to write this. Ridiculous!

ADDED: Why say "considered in the public domain"? They are in the public domain!

"The professor, David Berkovitz, who teaches business law... filed a lawsuit against an unnamed group of his students... to force the website, Course Hero, to identify those who uploaded the exams...."

"If successful, Professor Berkovitz plans to turn over the names to Chapman’s honor board.... Because Chapman’s business school requires grading on a curve, Professor Berkovitz is worried that students who cheated may have unfairly caused their classmates who played by the rules to receive grades lower down on the curve.... Course Hero, which is not named as a defendant in the suit, said it would comply with a subpoena...."

From "Hoping to Identify Cheaters, a Professor Sues His Own Students/David Berkovitz, who teaches business law at Chapman University in Orange, Calif., sued an unnamed group of his students — identified only as 'Does' — after he discovered that his midterm and final exams had been uploaded to a popular website" (NYT).

"Mr. Jacobs’s parody of the Great American Songbook prompted Irving Berlin and a group of song publishers representing the work of Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hammerstein and others to sue..."

"... Mad’s parent company, E.C. Publications, for copyright infringement. At issue was 'Sing Along With Mad,' a pullout section published in 1961 that consisted entirely of song parodies by Mr. Jacobs and Larry Siegel. Among them were 'Louella Schwartz Describes Her Malady' (a lampoon of Berlin’s 'A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody') and 'The First Time I Saw Maris' (a spoof of Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II’s 'The Last Time I Saw Paris'), about the commercialization of the Yankee slugger Roger Maris during the season he hit a record-breaking 61 home runs.... In his opinion, [2d Circuit] Judge Irving R. Kaufman (most famous for presiding over Julius and Ethel Rosenberg’s espionage trial) wrote, 'The fact that defendants’ parodies were written in the same meter as plaintiffs’ compositions would seem inevitable if the original was to be recognized, but such a justification is not even necessary; we doubt that even so eminent a composer as plaintiff Irving Berlin should be permitted to claim a property interest in iambic pentameter.'"

From "Frank Jacobs, Mad Magazine Writer With a Lyrical Touch, Dies at 91/He deftly mocked pop culture, politics and more for 57 years/He also wrote new lyrics for familiar songs, which led to a lawsuit from Irving Berlin and others" (NYT).

1961 — I think that's about when I discovered Mad. I was 10! It was the first thing I ever subscribed to. The writings of Frank Jacobs played such an important role in the development of my young mind.

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