Shiri Bailem

2024-01-04 03:48:51

I think I feel confident enough that people may actually read this now:

First of all is to throw out just about everything you've seen. Extremely few things are even mostly accurate, and the few I've seen of those bury the facts deep under fearmongering...

Public domain means you can use that version however you like... so long as you're not violating some other law (such as trademark) in the process. Copyright no longer applies and it's much the same as the works of Shakespeare, or the Brothers Grimm (which notably Disney used to build much of it's empire...)

Since Public Domain is as simple as it can get, that part is fairly clean and hard to distort... Trademark on the other hand goes way over many peoples' heads.

First, basic idea of trademark: it's specifically narrow in scope, does not prohibit others from using the trademarked property in general, only prohibits it's use in ways that would confuse people or would dilute the trademark.

Simply put, if a reasonable person would get confused looking at that usage of Mickey and could think it was something official from Disney... then it's a violation of their trademark.

Notably the trademark they have applies to the name Mickey Mouse (and names have no copyright) as well as the depiction of Mickey Mouse (in all versions, both copyrighted and public domain).

The reality is there's only really two things you can't do:
* Use Mickey in any way that's not clearly separate from Disney (and including things like a big bold "Unofficial" or "Not Licensed By Disney" or similar does cover that, just so long as they're not hidden).
* Use Mickey or a mouse reasonably confused for Mickey in your branding (this constitutes dilution, which means while people may not be confused it does make it so Mickey stops being associated with Disney)

Notable odd details not usually covered:
* If you make a significantly different version based on this version. (For instance if you were to re-animate Steamboat Willie with entirely new art.) You own the copyright on that version, though your copyright only extends so far as the significant contributions you've made or the exact depiction (ie. if someone tries to sell your rendition of Mickey without significant changes to it... ie. you can't grab someone's fan art and sell it, but you can make your own similar fan art and sell that)
* This actually applies to Disney's own copyright on Mickey as well, all later versions retain only the copyright on their significant contributions. For instance depicting Mickey in color is a grey area (pun intended), but precident says it is allowable as "adding color" is not considered to be a meaningful contribution to the work. (The Fantasia Mickey of course is a prime example of a meaningful contribution as that depiction is very distinctive).

Shiri Bailem

2023-07-29 05:31:30

99% of the time "Judeo-Christian" is antisemitic. And yes, I will absolutely elaborate on this if asked.

Credit: @Rabbit Cohen

Edit because this blew up far more than I expected and multiple people have asked for me to elaborate, here's a copy of my elaboration with follow up questions encouraged:

It's a messy topic and it's late here (I'm a bit sleepy), so feel free to ask follow up questions.

The short version of it is that Judeo-Christian is almost always used in one of two harmful ways:

1) To try and give more credibility and weight to something that is purely Christian by claiming that it's part of Judaism as well when it's not (like the above example, because Judaism explicitly permits abortions)
2) To try and talk about broader groupings of related faiths while ignoring the many other Abrahamic faiths (the proper term, though that one more often hurts the lesser known groups, don't use it unless you also know it applies to groups like the Baháʼí, which I'll admit even I know next to nothing about, but it's valid here because all I'm doing is naming their religious family)

Because many (cough most cough) teach a bastardized form of Judaism through the lens of Christianity, and because that's the only exposure many get to our faith... they get skewed harmful and hurtful ideas about us.

Some highlight examples:
* We don't have an established afterlife (we don't say there isn't one, we just have zero information on it if there is)
* We don't seek "eternal reward", the reward for our faith is being a better person than we were the day before
* We have forgiveness baked into our faith, and no it doesn't require animal sacrifice (it requires you to actually ask the person you wronged...)
* We thoroughly encourage arguing any topic with anyone (right time and place of course), and that includes picking a fight with God if you think they're wrong about something (you have a 99.9% chance of being wrong... but we commend the effort and every once in a while someone wins the argument)
* We have a rule, Pikuach Nefesh, roughly meaning that life is the highest commandment. Your well being takes precedence over your faith, if it would hurt you or others to be observant than you are exempt from that requirement. It's unacceptable to hurt others for your faith, and for yourself it's frowned upon
* We actively discourage conversion, it's allowed but it's not a trivial process. We don't want people to become Jews, we just want people to be better.