Copyright problems?

Mike Sax posted that "The Creative Commons License may ruin your life"and linked to my previous post about wanting a different copyright notice on my blog. Frankly, I didn't see what the big deal was. Then I read his link to Dan Bricklin's post about these "warrant" issues, and Yikes!

It got even closer to home when I followed Dan's link to the Lawrence Lessig keynote from OSCON 2002. This talks about how aggressive the lawyers with "The Simpsons" were about 2 seconds of film from a documentary about education. They wanted $25K!

I actually had a substantial discussion with these same people exactly two years ago. In the PNW, the start of yachting season is the first Saturday in May, when the Seattle Yacht Club hosts the Opening Day ceremonies. I was in charge of the decorated boat from Meydenbauer Bay Yacht Club and we wanted to do a Simpson's theme. You would not believe the legal restrictions. Of course, we had to license the right to use the likenesses. That was something like $10K. And then we had to use costumes that they had approved, which (big surprise) they also rent out at something like $2K each. Plus shipping. And cleaning. And these were professional costumes, which means that they only fit healthy adult males between 5'10" and 6'. And the wearers could only use them for a 45 minute stretch before taking a break. And they had to enter a closed area to remove the mask, since seeing a mask removed would destroy the "reality". And the characters could not speak - since they could only have the "correct" voices. So they could wave. But only in a manner appropriate to each character (there were written descriptions of this too). Of course, they _could_ have thought baloons with character-appropriate sayings. Which we would have to engage one of their editors (at $2K/day) to work on with our "creative team". And, of course, they would need to see every piece of communications that was put put for the event. So we were probably going to have to hire a media consultant.

A bigger bunch of greedy anal fuckwads I have never encountered. I just turned down a speaking opportunity in El Salvador because the State Department warned of "random banditry, carjackings, kidnappings, criminal assaults". Fill in the blank.

The "rest of the story"? Well, we decided on a theme called "A Mir Miss" where dummied up a rocket crashed into the boat. We towed the boat itself, and towed a landing "target" behind the boat. We had firemen and astronauts, fire hoses, and I even hooked up a smoke generator I had lying around (don't ask <g>). We won three awards, including:
- Best Yacht Club Sponsored Decorated (SYC Commodore's Cup)
- Grand Sweepstakes, Best Overall Decorated Yacht (Admiral's Trophy)
We were on local television and even (briefly) on the national news. The trophies were nice, but just thinking of the publicity "The Simpson" lost warms the cockles of my heart.