I wonder if the creators of this Mickey Mouse Pirate T-shirt “get” how many levels this works on. Anyone that has seen Lawrence Lessig, the famed copyright crusader, speak about Disney. Let me just quote the professor here:
But I hadn’t realized just how true that was until I opened my very cool set of Disney “Treasures” - a special DVD release of the early Black and White Mickey Mouse films that Disney is now selling (comes in a cool tin case, with a serial number pressed into the tin). The DVD is a great collection of the early cartoons, with some “bonus” features including the script for Steamboat Willie. Here’s a screen shot of the first page of the script. Notice the direction from Walt: “Orchestra starts playing opening verses of ‘Steamboat Bill.’” Try doing a cartoon take-off of one of Disney, Inc.’s latest films with an opening that copies the music, and see how far your Walt Empire gets.
I highly recommend you go and watch Proffesor Lessig’s speech at oscon, it has been called one of the 10 best presentations ever.
Now I wonder what would happen if we took a creative commons approach to t-shirt design, would there be less pissing and moaning about rip off t-shirts if “attribution” was required? Sure I think some instances of companies coming in and ripping off designers is a horrible practice, but surely there is a happy medium between trying to control where designs show up, and the concept of inspiration with attribution?
Update:
Wow, I can’t believe BoingBoing posted this this afternoon, 8 hours after I posted it and I didn’t get a link back
I agree. I’ve noticed Boing Boing does a lot of ‘thanking’ without giving a link back to the original source.
I would bet that someone submitted the link to Boing Boing, directly. They have their nice little email submission form, which would explain the lack of link backs.
Jesse’s probably right, they said thanks to ‘integer poet’ (IIRC), so that person probably sent them the link without mentioning you.
I posted about it too after I saw it on Boing Boing.
Clutch
~tshirtwebsites.com
Yeah; it was my fault, not Cory’s. I bookmarked the shirt site for later perusal, and by the time I realized Cory would love it I had lost the link lineage. I’d feel much worse if I had gotten something out of this, but I’m still sorry.
LOL, no worries Integer, I feel vindicated that I was the source
I can’t complain, those guys sent me one of the shirts so I did all right.