A good primer on copyright, trademark, and Disney.

I saw this via Facebook: Mickey, Disney, and the Public Domain: a 95-year Love Triangle. It should walk you through what people can and cannot do with the Steamboat Willie Mickey Mouse, starting Monday. Short version: copyright (which will expire for that Mickey) regulates if you can use something; trademark (which will not) prevents others from using material misleadingly. To use an example from the text: you can’t slap a Nike swoosh on your shoes and make people think your shoes are from Adidas, but Adidas can’t stop you from using or referencing the word ‘Nike.’ Also, the courts are actually pretty strict about not letting trademark law do end runs around copyright law. Because people have tried to do exactly that.

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The Jonathan Majors verdict is an excellent excuse for Marvel to… stop the MCU.

I know what Marvel and Disney thinking. They’re thinking, We can still power through. To which I reply: I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken.

In a not so shocking turn of events for Marvel Studios has fired Jonathan Majors, who has been playing the mega MCU villain Kang the Conqueror. The decision comes following Majors’ recent guilty verdict in a domestic violence trial where he was charged with reckless assault and harassment.

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Welp. I GUESS that’s an improvement for the Snow White movie?

I mean, at least they no longer look like Snow White And The Top Seven Focus-Grouped Choices.

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The Apple and the Mouse.

This… intrigues me: “A few weeks before Bob Iger sat down for that CNBC interview in which he said Disney’s linear TV networks, like ABC and FX, “may not be core” to the company’s business, a veteran Hollywood executive mused to The Hollywood Reporter on the possibility of a deal that would rock the industry: Apple buying Disney. It’s an idea that keeps being discussed, even though many top executives have scoffed at it and many still do. Apple doesn’t want to buy a studio, they say, and there’s no way the feds would allow a huge deal like that to go through.”

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The LOKI Season 2 trailer.

I didn’t finish SECRET INASION – heck, I barely started it – and that’s a bad sign for Marvel. I mean, I’m sure they’re not panicking over my specific disappointment, but what if I’m just representative of the trend? That being said, the new season of LOKI looks pretty sweet. Let’s see if it holds up.

The ‘Running out of steam?’ THE MARVELS trailer.

Very possibly. And I won’t lie; I’ll miss the ride, if it’s over. It was fun*. They are claiming that THE MARVELS is supposed to be silly, though. That might be enough.

*My opinion on what they should have done, post-ENDGAME, would have been: dial it all back. One MCU movie a year, low-stakes that stuff, and used Disney+ to prepare the way for the X-Men and the Fantastic Four. Oh, and THOR: LOVE AND ROCKETS should have been a TV show, too.

Disney (and everybody else) going to pare down streaming services further.

Well, this sounds… fraught: “Disney is likely preparing to remove more content from Disney+ as part of the company’s cost-cutting measures. Last month, Disney removed a handful of shows from Disney+ and Hulu, including Willow, The Mysterious Benedict Society, The World According To Jeff Goldblum, and a lot more. Now, in a new SEC filing from May 26, The Walt Disney Company said it is continuing to review content because of its new “strategic change” and “as a result is removing certain content from its platforms.””

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