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Question: How do fairgrounds get away with this!?
Every time I visit a fairground, there are rides covered in images from disney and children's programmes (for example, winnie the pooh, mickey mouse, all kinds of popular themes)!.
Surely these images are copyrighted by disney or the bbc or whoever and I'm sure the ride owners don't have a licence to reproduce these characters!? How are they able to get away with it!?
It's also very common to see ice cream vans with images like this!. How can they do this, and do the actual owners of the artwork know about it!? Www@QuestionHome@Com
Best Answer - Chosen by Asker:
disney has bigger fish to fry!. i'm sure they could care less!. they can't catch every single ice cream truck and fair ride in the world!.Www@QuestionHome@Com
Course they know about it, why else do you think the fairground rides and ice cream are sooooo expensive!. To pay for the licence!.
Its a big world and everyone knows whats going on!. you couldn't use a big name like disney 'on the quiet' and get away with it!.Www@QuestionHome@Com
as long as they are calling them winnie the pooh and mickey mouse it is fine - it is illegal for them to call them something different as it is under copyright rulesWww@QuestionHome@Com
Maybe they pay a license fee of some descriptionWww@QuestionHome@Com
copy rights are within the licence fee paidWww@QuestionHome@Com
Images from Movie companies like Disney and Hanna barbarra are very old and after a certain period of time they become "Public Domain" ( the laws on this change each 6 or 7 months but they never get published in that fashion ) Public Domain means that anyone can use the images because they have become all too common in the form of cartoons or re-run movies or as a part of a string of programs such as You might see on a saturday morning cartoon show!. Remember Tom and Jerry!?!.!.Mickey Mouse!?!.!.!.Mighty Mouse!?!.!.!.!. speedy Gonzales!?!.!.!.!.!.all those guys!?!.!.!.!.!.they are so old and are so common in public simply by word of mouth among children even that they cannot be controlled and so the government made a law!.!.long ago!.!.!.!.that sez a company or an artist cannot seek damages "after placing a character or movie or whatever in the public view" because the courts would be flooded with artists seeking money for all sorts of reasons and it would end up being senseless to try and tally up the book keeping and final balances and so forth and all the lawyer's fees and court fees and so forth!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.Once something like a cartoon is syndicated "the Simpson's for instance" or King of the Hill"!.!.!.!.!.!.or whatever it is,!.!.!.!.!.then it's basically either trashed and it goes in the filing cabinet for 80 years or it gets on TV and it stays forever and there's the re-runs and so forth and before too long, it's just too much trouble to try and decipher all the viewers who saw the TV program and how much it was worth to the artists and movie companies or whatever!. So basically you're looking at a matter of worth to an audience as pposed ot a television station ( who initially buys the shows to broadcast from the companies who make them )!.!.!.air is free and everyhting in the air that can be captured in the air is also free,!.!.!.!.If you can grab onto a cloud, rope it or whatever, then it's yours!.!.!.!.!.This pertains to air and the electro-magnetic fields it conducts but not to air travel!. For some reason there is a difference!.!.!.I guewss it's like registering your car or something when it comes to a plane but for some reason you don't have to register an electron that you capture or send!.
So,!.!.!.!.you see, after a certain period ot time, everything that has been broadcats at some point becomes yours and mine!. So ffel free to copy any cartoons that are in the public domain but don't be copying another artist's artwork because it isn't reaidly available for the public unless it's on public display in some public forum like a libray or in town hall!.!.!.!.!.I hope this explains the minor details to you, I'm sure I could relate alot of other stuff but it doesn't matter at this point cuz I gave you the basics!.!.Oh yeah,!.ome other thing, "most registered copyrights are filed in the Libray of congress along wiht about a trillion other un-neccessary things!.Www@QuestionHome@Com