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Does anyone remember in Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron the scene where a horse collapses from exhaustion during the train sequence? I swear I saw it as a child but it seems to be one of those things where some people have seen it and some haven’t. And nobody seems to have a clip

rotates rotates rotates

Grover: Sir 🥺🥺 we’re so sorry but we have no idea what happened to our train cabin—

Percy and Annabeth: WHAT KIND OF STUPID ARE YOU, MR. TRAIN COP?! OOOH YOU THINK SOME TWELVE YEAR OLDS DID THIS?? SO WHAT YOU’RE GONNA ARREST US??? HUH???? POST UP

Don't open ao3 before bed. that is the devil speaking

Quitting my job to be a full time discord server friend you play video games with sometimes

It all started with a mouse

For the public domain, time stopped in 1998, when the Sonny Bono Copyright Act froze copyright expirations for 20 years. In 2019, time started again, with a massive crop of works from 1923 returning to the public domain, free for all to use and adapt:

https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/2019/

No one is better at conveying the power of the public domain than Jennifer Jenkins and James Boyle, who run the Duke Center for the Study of the Public Domain. For years leading up to 2019, the pair published an annual roundup of what we would have gotten from the public domain in a universe where the 1998 Act never passed. Since 2019, they've switched to celebrating what we're actually getting each year. Last year's was a banger:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/20/free-for-2023/#oy-canada

But while there's been moderate excitement at the publicdomainification of "Yes, We Have No Bananas," AA Milne's "Now We Are Six," and Sherlock Holmes, the main event that everyone's anticipated arrives on January 1, 2024, when Mickey Mouse enters the public domain.

The first appearance of Mickey Mouse was in 1928's Steamboat Willie. Disney was critical to the lobbying efforts that extended copyright in 1976 and again in 1998, so much so that the 1998 Act is sometimes called the Mickey Mouse Protection Act. Disney and its allies were so effective at securing these regulatory gifts that many people doubted that this day would ever come. Surely Disney would secure another retrospective copyright term extension before Jan 1, 2024. I had long arguments with comrades about this – people like Project Gutenberg founder Michael S Hart (RIP) were fatalistically certain the public domain would never come back.

But they were wrong. The public outrage over copyright term extensions came too late to stave off the slow-motion arson of the 1976 and 1998 Acts, but it was sufficient to keep a third extension away from the USA. Canada wasn't so lucky: Justin Trudeau let Trump bully him into taking 20 years' worth of works out of Canada's public domain in the revised NAFTA agreement, making swathes of works by living Canadian authors illegal at the stroke of a pen, in a gift to the distant descendants of long-dead foreign authors.

Now, with Mickey's liberation bare days away, there's a mounting sense of excitement and unease. Will Mickey actually be free? The answer is a resounding YES! (albeit with a few caveats). In a prelude to this year's public domain roundup, Jennifer Jenkins has published a full and delightful guide to The Mouse and IP from Jan 1 on:

https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/mickey/

Disney loves the public domain. Its best-loved works, from The Sorcerer's Apprentice to Sleeping Beauty, Pinnocchio to The Little Mermaid, are gorgeous, thoughtful, and lively reworkings of material from the public domain. Disney loves the public domain – we just wish it would share.

Disney loves copyright's other flexibilities, too, like fair use. Walt told the papers that he took his inspiration for Steamboat Willie from Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks, making fair use of their performances to imbue Mickey with his mischief and derring do. Disney loves fair use – we just wish it would share.

Disney loves copyright's limitations. Steamboat Willie was inspired by Buster Keaton's silent film Steamboat Bill (titles aren't copyrightable). Disney loves copyright's limitations – we just wish it would share.

As Jenkins writes, Disney's relationship to copyright is wildly contradictory. It's the poster child for the public domain's power as a source of inspiration for worthy (and profitable) new works. It's also the chief villain in the impoverishment and near-extinction of the public domain. Truly, every pirate wants to be an admiral.

Disney's reliance on – and sabotage of – the public domain is ironic. Jenkins compares it to "an oil company relying on solar power to run its rigs." Come January 1, Disney will have to share.

Now, if you've heard anything about this, you've probably been told that Mickey isn't really entering the public domain. Between trademark claims and later copyrightable elements of Mickey's design, Mickey's status will be too complex to understand. That's totally wrong.

Jenkins illustrates the relationship between these three elements in (what else) a Mickey-shaped Venn diagram. Topline: you can use all the elements of Mickey that are present in Steamboat Willie, along with some elements that were added later, provided that you make it clear that your work isn't affiliated with Disney.

Let's unpack that. The copyrightable status of a character used to be vague and complex, but several high-profile cases have brought clarity to the question. The big one is Les Klinger's case against the Arthur Conan Doyle estate over Sherlock Holmes. That case established that when a character appears in both public domain and copyrighted works, the character is in the public domain, and you are "free to copy story elements from the public domain works":

https://freesherlock.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/klinger-order-on-motion-for-summary-judgment-c.pdf

This case was appealed all the way to the Supreme Court, who declined to hear it. It's settled law.

So, which parts of Mickey aren't going into the public domain? Elements that came later: white gloves, color. But that doesn't mean you can't add different gloves, or different colorways. The idea of a eyes with pupils is not copyrightable – only the specific eyes that Disney added.

Other later elements that don't qualify for copyright: a squeaky mouse voice, being adorable, doing jaunty dances, etc. These are all generic characteristics of cartoon mice, and they're free for you to use. Jenkins is more cautious on whether you can give your Mickey red shorts. She judges that "a single, bright, primary color for an article of clothing does not meet the copyrightability threshold" but without settled law, you might wanna change the colors.

But what about trademark? For years, Disney has included a clip from Steamboat Willie at the start of each of its films. Many observers characterized this as a bid to create a de facto perpetual copyright, by making Steamboat Willie inescapably associated with products from Disney, weaving an impassable web of trademark tripwires around it.

But trademark doesn't prevent you from using Steamboat Willie. It only prevents you from misleading consumers "into thinking your work is produced or sponsored by Disney." Trademarks don't expire so long as they're in use, but uses that don't create confusion are fair game under trademark.

Copyrights and trademarks can overlap. Mickey Mouse is a copyrighted character, but he's also an indicator that a product or service is associated with Disney. While Mickey's copyright expires in a couple weeks, his trademark doesn't. What happens to an out-of-copyright work that is still a trademark?

Luckily for us, this is also a thoroughly settled case. As in, this question was resolved in a unanimous 2000 Supreme Court ruling, Dastar v. Twentieth Century Fox. A live trademark does not extend an expired copyright. As the Supremes said:

[This would] create a species of mutant copyright law that limits the public’s federal right to copy and to use expired copyrights.

This elaborates on the Ninth Circuit's 1996 Maljack Prods v Goodtimes Home Video Corp:

[Trademark][ cannot be used to circumvent copyright law. If material covered by copyright law has passed into the public domain, it cannot then be protected by the Lanham Act without rendering the Copyright Act a nullity.

Despite what you might have heard, there is no ambiguity here. Copyrights can't be extended through trademark. Period. Unanimous Supreme Court Decision. Boom. End of story. Done.

But even so, there are trademark considerations in how you use Steamboat Willie after Jan 1, but these considerations are about protecting the public, not Disney shareholders. Your uses can't be misleading. People who buy or view your Steamboat Willie media or products have to be totally clear that your work comes from you, not Disney.

Avoiding confusion will be very hard for some uses, like plush toys, or short idents at the beginning of feature films. For most uses, though, a prominent disclaimer will suffice. The copyright page for my 2003 debut novel Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom contains this disclaimer:

This novel is a work of fiction, set in an imagined future. All the characters and events portrayed in this book, including the imagined future of the Magic Kingdom, are either fictitious or are used fictitiously. The Walt Disney Company has not authorized or endorsed this novel.

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250196385/downandoutinthemagickingdom

Here's the Ninth Circuit again:

When a public domain work is copied, along with its title, there is little likelihood of confusion when even the most minimal steps are taken to distinguish the publisher of the original from that of the copy. The public is receiving just what it believes it is receiving—the work with which the title has become associated. The public is not only unharmed, it is unconfused.

Trademark has many exceptions. The First Amendment protects your right to use trademarks in expressive ways, for example, to recreate famous paintings with Barbie dolls:

https://www.copyright.gov/fair-use/summaries/mattel-walkingmountain-9thcir2003.pdf

And then there's "nominative use": it's not a trademark violation to use a trademark to accurately describe a trademarked thing. "We fix iPhones" is not a trademark violation. Neither is 'Works with HP printers.' This goes double for "expressive" uses of trademarks in new works of art:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogers_v._Grimaldi

What about "dilution"? Trademark protects a small number of superbrands from uses that "impair the distinctiveness or harm the reputation of the famous mark, even when there is no consumer confusion." Jenkins says that the Mickey silhouette and the current Mickey character designs might be entitled to protection from dilution, but Steamboat Willie doesn't make the cut.

Jenkins closes with a celebration of the public domain's ability to inspire new works, like Disney's Three Musketeers, Disney's Christmas Carol, Disney's Beauty and the Beast, Disney's Around the World in 80 Days, Disney's Alice in Wonderland, Disney's Snow White, Disney's Hunchback of Notre Dame, Disney's Sleeping Beauty, Disney's Cinderella, Disney's Little Mermaid, Disney's Pinocchio, Disney's Huck Finn, Disney's Robin Hood, and Disney's Aladdin. These are some of the best-loved films of the past century, and made Disney a leading example of what talented, creative people can do with the public domain.

As of January 1, Disney will start to be an example of what talented, creative people give back to the public domain, joining Dickens, Dumas, Carroll, Verne, de Villeneuve, the Brothers Grimm, Twain, Hugo, Perrault and Collodi.

Public domain day is 17 days away. Creators of all kinds: start your engines!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/15/mouse-liberation-front/#free-mickey

Image: Doo Lee (modified) https://web.law.duke.edu/sites/default/files/images/centers/cspd/pdd2024/mickey/Steamboat-WIllie-Enters-Public-Domain.jpeg

CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en

Fyi

( x )

Happy creating folks

I am half Scottish and half Japanese- I hand-sewed this kimono from men’s dress shirts and boxer shorts.

me when the disability disables me: oh what the fuck? this sucks. what the hell man!

uh oh! seems as though your friend and mine steamboat willie has lost his voice!

Ya know, I can understand that some people who are disabled want to keep working. They don't want to apply for SSI or SSDI. And that's fine. More power to them.

What bothers me though is when they say things like "I don't want to live off the system" in a very derogatory manner.

Some of us can't work. And SSI and SSDI don't really give us enough to live on. So we need food stamps. Some of us rely on subsidized housing. We struggle to get through each month. And we don't need people being derogatory to us because of our disabilities. We don't need people acting like we're "less than" because of our disabilities. And we especially don't need this coming from other disabled people.

Tips to make showering easier when you are physically disabled:

Since every list titled something along the lines of “top 10 tips to make showering easier for disabled people” is only helpful for mental disabilities and is barely anywhere near useful when it comes to physical disabilities, allow me to introduce you to my list of “tips to make showering easier and less painful for those with physical disabilities”

Shower chair/stool: this allows you to sit in the shower without having to sit on the floor of the tub, which can be a difficult position to stand up from and can just cause more pain, especially in knees. They're relatively cheap on Amazon

Install railings and grab bars: these can help getting in and out of the shower, as well as help to stand up if you decide to sit. Alternatively, if you fall, there's a chance you can grab one and save yourself from hitting your head or otherwise seriously injuring yourself

Use the hottest water you can stand: heat is good for pain treatment, especially when it comes to muscle pain. Just remember that the hot water doesn't last forever. EDITING TO ADD, DO NOT DO THIS IF YOU HAVE POTS OR ANY OTHER CONDITION THAT INCREASES YOUR SENSITIVITY TO HEAT AND RISK OF FAINTING!!!!!

Changing tables or low shelves: having all your needed things available to you at a level that you can reach easily while sitting and also does not involve reaching up as much is always good. You can have stands placed in your shower for hair products, body wash, etc, and/or small tables just outside the shower/bath that you may need but don't want to get/ can’t get wet

Give yourself a lot of time: if you can, plan your showers for times when you will have a lot of free time, both so you can take your time in the shower and so that you can give yourself plenty of time to rest after the fact. Especially helpful for those with chronic pain and/or chronic fatigue 

Drink water!: before getting into the shower, drink lots of water! The heat will dehydrate you and make you light headed, so make sure you are properly hydrated beforehand. If you’re like me and you’re prone to dehydration, bring a cold water bottle into the shower with you. Bonus points if it's insulated so now matter how heat and steamy the bathroom gets the water stays nice and cool. Also make sure to drink cold water after getting out of the shower too

Have places to rest your arms and lean: if you can't keep your arms raised for very long, make sure you have places to rest your arms and/or elbow while washing your hair/body. Could be shelves you install, the edge of the showers built in shelves, the faucet or tap, etc. Alternatively, if you sit on the floor of the bathtub you can lean your head back and rest your elbow on the sides of the tub

Keep a dry cloth just outside the shower: it's often easier to use aids like handrails with dry hands, so keep a small dry cloth or two just outside the shower, easily in reach but where it will stay dry. Use it to dry off your hands so you have a better grip. Can also be helpful if you have soap dripping towards your eyes lol

Mindfulness: I KNOW, I KNOW! Trust me, I know. I despised the idea when it was brought up to me. First heard about it in my DBT group and figured it would be no help, especially for my chronic pain. But honestly, allowing yourself to focus on anything outside of your body is great. Focus on the sound of the water. Focus on the feeling of the water raining down on you. The feeling of the water on your skin. It can even be helpful to focus on and allow yourself to feel the pain rather than trying to distract from it or hide it

Lie down right after your shower: as soon as you get out of the shower and dry off just a little, lie down. I personally find this especially helpful for my back and shoulder pain, as after sitting or standing the muscles and bones can feel tight and compacted; lying down gives your body time to decompress.

Time your shower with your pain meds: time it so that you go into your shower right around when your pain meds are kicking in. For example, Advil typically takes 30 minutes to kick in, so plan to shower 30-45 minutes after taking some. Same with any other pain meds you take

Please reblog and add your own!!!!!!! lets compile a whole long list of tips and tricks to make our lives easier!

trying your best does not mean putting an unbearable amount of strain on yourself.

I've been watching a ton of pokemon challenge videos on youtube and it made me wanna try draw pokemon girls - I've never actually tried making gijinka before, I wanna do more…. and just draw more in general!

Rejection

Well..

“To be loved is to be changed”

But it’s just a gory ripping mindflayer transformation

Bard

ADHD is so silly because you can think about wanting to do something for like 2 weeks but nothing happens then all of a sudden you’re chilling and minding your own business and you get a freaking Inspiration Jumpscare

Waiting for BG3 but it’s going to take 8+ hours of babysitting a download

Idk man it’s so easy to get bogged down in all the bullshit online but when my then-6 year old cousin found out I was trans he said “ok” then corrected my grandma when she misgendered me. I was once the third between a gay man and a lesbian. Two lesbians once invited me back to their place when I presented as a man. I met an AMAB nb butch who looked strikingly to outsiders like a cis man and it was one of the more sapphic experiences I’ve had. I nervously wore a boydyke shirt to pride and got 3 different cis-looking femme folks tell me they loved my shirt. I once told a trans group at a protest that any pronouns were fine for me and one person said “wow, I’m impressed and intimidated by people like that. I don’t know that I could be that chill with pronouns.” I once told a GNC friend I wished I could wear a type of “opposite” gender clothing after I had already transitioned and so it would be associated with my AGAB and he said “You could just do it.” I’ve had cishet men fight cops for me before. The first time I had a doctor ask me if my name was different than what was on my forms I had to try not to cry. Last week, a phone call with a doctor’s office where I am generally cis passing asked unprompted if my name listed is what I want to be called. It touched me then too. I told a lesbian friend once I felt like my attraction to men AND women both felt gay. She said “makes sense.” And we moved on. I go by different pronouns in different circles. I’ve had gay women love my facial hair. I’ve had gay men like my tits. It’s all out there, I promise. It can be hard to find it but I promise there is community like you and community who likes you. And it’s more messy and beautiful than tumblr discourse makes it out to be.

without American politics changing after 9/11 we wouldn’t have seen michael sheen in good omens