Real Calvin and Hobbes

[ysabetwordsmith]

... is no more.  Now this was clearly fair use, in the category of satire (though not with the snarky tone usually applied to that), but those rights are useless if you don't have the money and energy to defend them.  Copyright owners rely on that.  So now nobody gets to enjoy those fanworks anymore.  This is where copyright stops being an asset (by protecting creators' right to profit from their work) and becomes a liability (by stifling creativity and cultural growth).  There was no profit being made.  It was just for fun.

Think about how much of modern culture is a reprise of things that have been done before, a way to take apart and re-imagine what we already have.  Except a handful of people keep taking things away, so there is less for everyone to work with.  That's a problem.

I am becoming increasingly fond of creators who show up and go, "I made a thingie.  Let's everyone play."  If it's a cool thingie and I like watching other folks play with it or I play with it myself, I'm morely likely to want to support it and fund more of it.  I am less and less inclined to spend my very limited funds on conventionally copyrighted material.  I still buy some of it.  But I'm buying less, and the bar is rising, and most of what I buy is stuff that I got hooked on a long time ago.  It's just less likely to feel worthy of my attention.

Comments

[chordatesrock.livejournal.com]

Join me in boycotting authors who dislike fanfic. (http://chordatesrock.dreamwidth.org/16564.html)

[datalore.livejournal.com]

What really confuses me is that I heard the reason there are so many "Calvin pees on... whatever" pictures on vehicles is because they didn't defend the copyright. So I thought that ship had sailed. That's frustrating to see. (Frustrating that the cars can get away with it but an actual, thoughtful rendition of Calvin and Hobbes gets shut down.)