This cartoon was inspired by a Huffington Post article by Jennifer Jenkins, in which she quoted Judge Richard Posner:
What happens if these underlying sources are copyrighted? As Judge Richard Posner pointed out, “Romeo and Juliet itself would have infringed Arthur Brooke’s The Tragicall Historye of Romeo and Juliet… which in turn would have infringed several earlier Romeo and Juliets, all of which probably would have infringed Ovid’s story of Pyramus and Thisbe.” You get the point — without a rich public domain, much of literature would be illegal.
Many thanks to Mandolin, AKA Rachel Swirsky, who co-wrote this strip. This is the second “Ampersand” strip Mandolin has co-written; the previous one was The Church of Fiscal Conservatism.
[spoiler]Panel 1
Shakespeare, at a writing table, feathery quill in hand, holding up what he has just written to read it aloud.
SHAKESPEARE: “But soft! What light through yon window breaks? It is a lightning bug, and Juliet is the bug’s ass.”
Panel 2
Shakespeare sits, slumps his head into his hands.
SHAKESPEARE (thought): Needs work.
FEDERAL AGENT (from off-panel): HALT, THIEF!
Panel 3
Shakespeare rises and speaks sharply to the Federal Agent who has just walked in. The Federal Agent wears a 20th century suit and dark glasses, and displays a badge.
SHAKESPEARE: SIR! What brings you to my chamber?
FED: This PLAY you wrote, “Romeo and Juliet.”
Panel 4
FED: You STOLE it from Arthur Brooke’s “The Tragical Historye of Romeus and Juliet!”
Panel 5
Shakespeare is using the ol’ “explaining hands” gesture, the Fed points and yells.
SHAKESPEARE: The SEED was Brooke’s, but under my care it has flourished into a DIFFERENT tree-
FED: So you ADMIT it!
Panel 6
The Fed whips off his dark glasses for a panel. He looks so mad that he might eat them.
FED: Answer THIS, smart guy: Why should BROOKE bother writing NEW WORK when second-raters like YOU swipe his stuff?
Panel 7
Shakespeare is beginning to get pissed.
SHAKESPEARE: But sir! Poor Brooke lies beneath the sod. My simple play cannot disturb him now. The ONLY work being stifled is mine own!
Panel 8
FED: YOUR work? HA! Derivative TRASH! If you had any talent, you’d write something ORIGINAL!
Panel 9
SHAKESPEARE: But Brooke’s OWN idea germinated with Matteo Bandello! We are ALL leaves from the same branch, sir! That’s how creativity works!
Panel 10
The FED, who is quite a bit larger than Shakespeare, grabs Shakespeare and shakes him back and forth.
FED: No, that’s how STEALING works! Brooke’s only been dead for THIRTY YEARS. The worms have barely finished digesting!
Panel 11
Shakespeare’s babbling is interrupted when the stern-faced Fed yanks him around to put handcuffs on him.
SHAKESPEARE: But this is MADNESS! Do we not value freedom of THOUGHT? Are IDEAS not the currency of culture? The veritable grist of progress for the social mill? Tell me sir– OW!
Panel 12
Shakespeare, dressed in jailbird’s stripes, sits in a prison cell, loking a bit wistful or confused.
CAPTION: And so Creativity was Saved from a Plagiarist Lout.[/spoiler]
Well done!
Lovely!
For people who are interested in this kind of thing, the podcast Slashcast (made by and for fanfic writers) had and interview in the second-to-last episode with two women who were involved in the fight to get DMCA exemptions for fanvids. It’s really good. (And for those who don’t know, the exemption was granted: if you are making a fanvid, you are legally allowed to crack DVD encryption to get your source material, at least until 2015 when the exemptions will be reviewed again.) Anyway, a cool story of triumph over the MPAA etc.
“It is a lightning bug, and Juliet is the bug’s ass!”
Now THAT’S writing! Billy should have left that one alone. This would have made Sophomore English way more interesting!
Yeah on the point of the cartoon, too. I’m all for the concept of IP. Surely an author should have exclusive rights to their work during their lifetime. But there’s got to be a limit to this, and what we have now is not reasonable.
Now, let’s think about education, and how you can convince people of the rightness of Judge Posner’s ruling if they barely been exposed to William Shakespeare and have no clue who Brooke (not me) or Ovid (him I knew) were and have never read anything they wrote.
Of course, Sunglasses Thug is probably more likely to be from Disney’s legal team, pointing out that they’ve purchased the rights to Brooke’s play.
Sunglasses Thug also does not have the power to unilaterally someone in prison, and prison is not usually, as far as I am aware, a consequence of copyright infringement. Although the law may include jail time as one of the possibilities Disney does not want Amp to rot in stir while he thinks about how naughty it was for him to do “Hercules Does The Little Mermaid” as a graphic (and I do mean graphic) novel; it wants him to hand over every penny he has ever had and then sell his kidneys and give them that money too and then *peddle his ass on Main Street USA to repressed homosexual fathers until he has given back 50 times what he stole from their treasurehouse of cultural wealth you mother fucker*.
Or so I’m given to understand. It’s not that they CAN’T come after you if you haven’t made any money – they will, especially if the property is valuable and they have to avoid losing the right to prosecute through letting too many people skate – it’s that the money is what they are in the game for.
Amp would know all this if he had actually READ my epochal “Copyright Law and You” blog post of 2004, instead of just blindly copying my intellectual property from the article, but either way I’m suing him, and Rachel, and everyone who reads this blog. Though I may relent if Rachel lets me fondle her Nebula sometime. (For her involvement. Amp is still going down.)
Here’s a graph.
http://www.mediainstitute.org/IPI/2011/052511.php
Looks like about 1 time in 10 they go after you in the criminal court, and the other 9 out of 10 they sue you for sweet folding moolah.
Your cartoon is therefore wrong and so it is bad and you should feel bad.
Dude, you see that gutter space between panels 11 and 12? Stuff happens in that gutter. You have to fill in the gaps with your mind. Haven’t you read McCloud, for God’s sake?
Obviously, between panel 11 and panel 12 was when Shakespeare murdered Sunglasses Thug, was arrested and tried for murder, and shoved into prison. I can’t believe you didn’t get that.
Ah. Stole that old Eisner technique, I see. I will alert his estate so that they can join my suit.
I’m pretty sure that I’m anti murderer, which must mean I’m pro glasses guy.
Two-valued logic was copyrighted AND trademarked (“it’s twice as good – it’s TWO-VALUED”) by me years ago. Lawsuit.
Robert: I already worked it out with your agent. Check mail etc.
I’ll look in the morning and if there’s currency in weight or cocaine in somewhat less weight, you may be all right. But I wouldn’t start any long books tonight.
My Nebula is available for fondling on alternate Wednesdays, 12:30-1:00, by appointment only.
A friend of mine once smeared a small amount of tunafish on it so that she could get her cat to pose with it for a photograph.
I would totally do that. You wouldn’t even need the tuna fish.
This really is a gifted cartoon from start to finish: great form, great substance. And Mandolin is 2-2; not a bad average.
Since reading this, I kept rolling around “It is a lightning bug” in my mind, trying to turn it into iams. “It is a lightning bug, and she, the luminencent bug’s backside!”
I wonder about the origins of the first line: “But soft! What light through yon window breaks?” This joins the line “Alas, poor Yoric, I knew him well,” as something Shakspeare didn’t quite say. The correct line is, “But soft! What light through yonder window breaks.” But somehow I’ve always heard the word “yon” used in this line — perhaps because it sounds more archaic?
This is relevant, the first two paragraphs from Tim Wu’s article, It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Disney World on The New Yorker’s website:
Harold Bloom, Introduction to Robert W. Burchfield, Unlocking the English Language xv (1989).
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