The Funniest Ways People Got Around Copyright
Stealing is bad, and stealing from people who have no bankable skills besides art is doubly so, but sometimes, a little intellectual property crime is necessary. In those cases, people have to get creative, hopefully hilariously.
Maurice LeBlanc (Barely) Renamed Sherlock Holmes
In 1907, Maurice LeBlanc, author of the acclaimed Arsène Lupin series of crime stories (itself a naked knockoff of Sherlock Holmes), found himself in a bit of a bind. He was in the middle of a multi-story series that pitted his own detective against Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s when he was legally informed by Doyle that he’d crossed the line. Readers were still expecting a conclusion of the storyline, however, so in future volumes, LeBlanc simply renamed the character Herlock Sholmès. Bonus: He had a sidekick named Wilson.
YouTubers Entered Their Karaoke Era
If you so much as look at a song owned by one of the major record labels during a YouTube video, you’ll get hit with a takedown notice literally faster than you can say “fair use.” That’s a problem for a platform that does big business in content that relies on other content — i.e., reaction videos. So when those YouTubers wanted to use a clip that featured a popular song, they began muting it and singing the song themselves to preserve some semblance of authenticity. It may not be music to their viewers’ ears, but it beats demonetization.
EA Turned Jadon Sancho’s Tattoos Into Nightmare Fuel
When soccer player Jadon Sancho first appeared in the FIFA video game series in 2019, he was disappointed that his many colorful tattoos were missing from his character design. It wasn’t Victorian outrage on anyone’s part at Electronic Arts; his tattoos included, for example, a sleeve of copyrighted cartoon characters, such as Sonic the Hedgehog, Spider-Man and the Simpsons. For EA Sports FC 25, EA attempted to appease Sancho by including these tattoos — in a manner of speaking. Spider-Man became a faceless dark figure looming in the foreground, Sonic was blurred into some kind of sleep paralysis demon that may or may not be dripping and the Simpsons are an orgy of silhouettes. It’s better than nothing? Maybe?
We’ve All Agreed on a New Word for the Super Bowl
The NFL has owned the rights to the name “Super Bowl” since 1969, but unless you’re a dedicated Colbert Report viewer, you’ve probably never noticed that other businesses don’t tend to use the name to advertise related sales and events. That’s because, at some point in the intervening decades, we all agreed to a different name: “The Big Game.” You know what it means. They know what it means. It’s the farcical little dance we do to preserve legal fiction. Technically, there’s some leeway and a lot of businesses probably could legally use “Super Bowl,” but who wants to fight a corporation that goes after little Indiana churches?
Dan Brown Walked Free By Being a Hack
No one, including Dan Brown, would deny that The Da Vinci Code borrowed heavily from a 1982 pseudo-history book called The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, which first posited the theory that Jesus Christ married and had children with Mary Magdalene whose descendants have survived to this day. That led its authors to believe they had a pretty good copyright claim against him, but in 2006, a judge ruled that history — or rather, “historical speculation” — can’t be copyrighted the way that fiction can. Basically, by refusing to admit their theory was bullshit and they made it all up (which is the larger historical community’s consensus), they had to concede to Brown, who was willing to admit it.
Moral of the story: Don’t let ego and desire for credibility get in the way of a payday.
