More or less off-topic question. How to not get sued by overzealous copyrights holders?
I have an idea for an informal Chemistry 101 notebook. I might end up making comparissons between cartoon characters and periodic table elements: Hydrogen ~= Tinkerbell, Hellium ~= Master Yoda, Lithium ~= Philoctetes (from Hercules movie), etc.
It is not reassuring that most references in that list are owned by Disney Co.
>How to not get sued by overzealous copyrights holders?
I might be misunderstanding, but why is it unreasonable for the holder of a copyright to object to an author using their work without licensing it? This in particular seems like a pretty clear-cut example of actual infringement.
Because I would not be writing a new story about Tinkerbell, I would be trying to convey the idea that Hydrogen is "tiny and hot tempered", just like Tinkerbell, while Helium is "quite small, but not as tiny as Hydrogen, and very peaceful and self reliant"... just like Master Yoda.
Of course I could use GenericFairy#274, or MidgetZenMaster (my appologies to any Little People reading this, but I am not going to risk to use the word Dwarf and jump from Disney's frying pan into Tolkien's firestove), but that kind of defies to purpose of using visual imagery the kids already are familiar with.
Call me a sore looser, but I am not particularly happy with Disney having called dibs on the human herritage of the last 3,000 years and claim it was their own purpose. The only original work from old Walt was their horrible looking antropomorphic animals, everything else was taken from the public domain, repackaged, and ear marked as their own.
Oh, I'd readily admit mentioning a cartoon character is fair use, but it seems like using the actual image of a cartoon character is infringement—what else IS a cartoon character? Where's the line? If one person can put Tinkerbell in a science book, why can't I publish a "Disney characters coloring book" without a license?
I'm admittedly not an expert, but there have been many rulings stating that characters themselves can be covered by copyright,[0] and fair use is supposed to allow for commentary and criticism, not just "oh, that's nice, I'll use that." It's not very different from just putting people's photographs in a science book, is it?
> Oh, I'd readily admit mentioning a cartoon character is fair use
It's probably not even an otherwise-infringing activity that would require fair-use analysis. At least if we are talking about copyright; if the character name is also a trademark, that may be a different story.
I have an idea for an informal Chemistry 101 notebook. I might end up making comparissons between cartoon characters and periodic table elements: Hydrogen ~= Tinkerbell, Hellium ~= Master Yoda, Lithium ~= Philoctetes (from Hercules movie), etc.
It is not reassuring that most references in that list are owned by Disney Co.