Disney Is Making Damn Sure That None Of You Watch An Unauthorized Version Of Samuel L. Jackson Reading 'Stay The Fuck At Home'

from the copyright-yo-psa dept

Lots of famous folks have been making (often amusing) “Stay Home” public service announcements. One great one showed up last week, in which Samuel L. Jackson read a copy of a new “poem” by Adam Mansbach, the author (a decade ago) of the infamous Go the Fuck to Sleep. This time, it was Stay the Fuck at Home. As with the original, Mansbach wrote it, and they got Samuel L. Jackson to read it — though it debuted on the Jimmy Kimmel show (filmed with everyone at home, of course). You can see it embedded below (hopefully starting at the right part):

As you can see, this was in the middle of a much longer clip from the show (an interview of Jackson by Kimmel). Many, many people snipped out just the reading and posted versions of it to Twitter and YouTube. In fact, the first version I spotted was a tweeted version that only had about half of the reading. A bunch of versions showed up on YouTube as well… and, of course, Disney had to step in and shut that shit right down with a copyright takedown (ht to Plainsite, who first spotted this).

While there was some confusion as to how Disney held the copyright on this, it’s because it was originally aired on Jimmy Kimmel’s show which is on ABC, which is owned by Disney. So, pretty straightforward, and you might argue, a legitimate use of copyright. The clip’s copyright is held by Disney, and so it’s not a bogus takedown.

But that doesn’t make it smart. After all, the whole damn point of this is to make it be seen by as many people as possible. That’s the nature of a Public Service Announcement. And the Kimmel clip buried the reading in the middle, whereas many people making clipped versions of it made it that much easier for people to see it. And, I should remind you, the whole damn reason that the original Go the Fuck to Sleep became popular in the first place was because of “piracy” sharing the original around (oh, and also, the original artwork was done without licensing some of the artwork).

But, hey, it’s the middle of a pandemic and Disney’s going to Disney everything up, I guess.

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Companies: disney

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Comments on “Disney Is Making Damn Sure That None Of You Watch An Unauthorized Version Of Samuel L. Jackson Reading 'Stay The Fuck At Home'”

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17 Comments
Anonymous Anonymous Coward (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re:

I didn’t see any 80% use-case mentioned, or demonstrated in the article. They didn’t even write it. The only claim they have is on Samuel L. Jackson’s performance of it on ‘their’ TV show.

Now if the posters gave some commentary or criticism, or compliments on the public service announcement aspect of the performance the poster’s would have a fair use claim, and it would be Disney’s (that’s the noun) responsibility to check for fair use before sending the DMCA claim.

Therefore one meaning of ‘to Disney’ (that’s the verb) could be to fail to make the fair use analysis, but to be fair, many copyright maximalists fail in the same way. Another would be the way they make use of other peoples works in their own productions (public domain, but don’t you dare try to use that same public domain). How many more can we come up with?

This comment has been deemed insightful by the community.
Anonymous Coward says:

Does this mean Disney may have violated Mr. Mansbach’s copyright on the poem? Did they get his permission to do a public performance?
But as important, it would be interesting to see the contract between Sam Jackson and Disney to see what rights HE retained in his performance of it?

This comment has been deemed insightful by the community.
Norahc (profile) says:

Re: Re:

Does this mean Disney may have violated Mr. Mansbach’s copyright on the poem? Did they get his permission to do a public performance?
But as important, it would be interesting to see the contract between Sam Jackson and Disney to see what rights HE retained in his performance of it?

Silly AC….copyright protection is only for Disney and the big studios, not for us mere peons.

ROGS says:

Where I live, Disney provides a few jobs, and subsidiary industries. That seems important, whether I agree or not with such asshattery.

But I do wonder who it was exactly that named a US military ship after a corporate media songstress:

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200407/11120644252/navy-deploys-uss-barbra-streisand-after-firing-captain-expressing-his-coronavirus-concerns.shtml

Those f@cking NAZIs! And Babwa.

nasch (profile) says:

PSA

After all, the whole damn point of this is to make it be seen by as many people as possible. That’s the nature of a Public Service Announcement.

Are you suggesting that Disney is interested in this because of the "public service" aspect of it? I’m sure they are not. They want the money, and they want the control. They want everyone watching the official Jimmy Kimmel video with ads on it that go into their pockets, and the little thing at the end with Kimmel encouraging people to watch more. Other videos don’t help their bottom line, and they don’t give a crap about spreading the message that people should stay home.

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