| Thanks for posting your response. This makes a little more sense. Of course, my point was about distribution of original works, not inspiration or even creative appropriation. Maybe I needed to specify that? Or maybe this was well implied by the wider conversation around Spotify’s distribution of original works. Either way, it’s a separate discussion. To be clear, Disney did not publish and distribute copies of Grimm’s Fairy Tales. And let’s consider what Disney would have done if prevented from using the Snow White tale for his animation project? Would he have just given up?? Let’s not kid ourselves. He would have done what great artists tend to do: be creative and find another solution. There were mountains of hurdles in making this film and that would have been a mole hill. It would have been a different film, sure. It may have been better. We do not know. The modern Disney corporation is a separate entity, to be sure. You open up a new basket of issues here. For example, films are commonly produced from narrative works in other domains, personal accounts, etc. The royalty system allows for more than simply profit. In films, it also protects from the original authors, or storytellers and their families from what can be something like libel. It allows them to deny permission when accounts are exaggerated for audience appeal, when it may unjustly disgrace their reputation. This is only a basic example of why these things exist. It does sort of sometimes suck for artists but artists but they tend to better understand the issues at hand. |