With this reinterpretation of their famous (non) Disney mouse, I’d like to pay tribute to Dan O’Neill & the Air Pirates and their sadly long forgotten David-vs.-Goliath-like battle for free-speech and fairness, and against double standards and greed.
Their case is a clear example of how corporations often wrongly impose copyright restrictions on products and trademarks.
Mickey Mouse is one of the characters created by Walt Disney, one of the founder of what is now known as The Walt Disney Corporation. The character was inspired by other movie characters Walt Disney watched as a child. He even uses entire elements of those movies in some of Mickey’s episodes.
After his death The Walt Disney Corporation indefinitely trademark protected the mouse and many other characters that the founder obviously borrowed from the Public Domain.
This, and many cases like it, are not just wrong, they limit progress.
These practices seem normal, harmless and even justified at first, but if you think about it in the broader sense, you'll come to understand how dangerous this actually is.
For example, the cure for cancer or any other disease may be just a step ahead of us, but those who could find it may not be able to because a patent or a similar restriction on a product or material makes further research impossible. And almost always the entities blocking access to them were able to develop or find these products through research or knowledge they found in the public domain.
Think about it.
The artwork is entirely created in Illustrator, and of course Copyleft. You can get it here. Keep fighting!
