Not everyone gets their fairytale ending

The little girl inside of me died a little after reading Lessig discussing my much loved Disney as the big bad guys. It was like finding out Santa isn’t real all over again.

I hadn’t critically thought about where Disney got their ideas from, I guess I knew that a lot of them were historical fairytales or stories from other cultures but beyond that I didn’t think past who originally owned these ideas. It surprised me to find out that Disney the idea of Steamboat Willie from an already existing silent film, but how I looked at it was that Disney was re-creating parts, ideas, stories and myths from other cultures to create not only entertainment but to pass on and shares these aspects in a way that can be understood.

While it took me a while to get my head around creative rights, copyright and intellectual property rights .I did come to the conclusion that when dealing with large corporations like Disney not everyone gets their fairytale ending. Lawrence Lessig makes a good point when he says:

"Creators here and everywhere are always and at all times building upon the creativity that went before and that surrounds them now"

 It is defiantly clear to me that its time that these laws were changed. Fair use should be increased and extensions upon extensions of copyright after the creator’s death should be stopped.

Lessig L, 2005, ‘Free Culture: The nature and future of creativity’, Penguin, Sydney