Bent Corner

Dan Simmons, a reporter with the BBC, interviews Fredrik Neij and Peter Sunde from The Pirate Bay. It’s an interesting read:

Those behind the site say they do not fall foul of those laws because it acts as a search engine and does not directly host any of the content

But although it may not break Swedish laws that has not prevented the authorities from trying to close it down. Last year police raided the building and seized its servers.But what the authorities did not expect were the public protests that followed.

In the main the protesters were angry about the US film industry telling their parliament what to do. They believed that senior US politicians forced their government to shut The Pirate Bay down, even though it was not doing anything illegal under Swedish law. And that really sparked public debate.

I think part of the problem with copyright law is that not only is it different from one country to the next, it’s a line in the sand that is constantly moving. What’s in the public domain and what isn’t? Take Disney. They have earned billions of dollars through the years making movies based on stories and characters in the public domain. They didn’t create Snow White, Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, etc. They were characters created by other people a long time ago. These characters now reside in the public domain.

When it was about time for one of Disney’s own creations, Micky Mouse, to finally fall into the public domain, they successfully got the law changed by lining the pockets of the politicians that sponsored the 1998 Copyright Term Extension Act.

Where would Disney be today without stories and characters in the public domain?

The Disney Corporation which owns the ABC network is producing “The Path to 9/11″, a docudrama that recounts in dramatic fashion the many events that lead up to the terror attacks of 9/11. The six hour docudrama will be aired on ABC Sunday September 10 and Monday September 11. Oddly enough, Monday happens to be the five year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.Evidently the 9/11 docudrama’s producers simply made a lot of the story up, even though they are claiming the docudrama is based on the 9/11 Report. Not that I’m against making stuff up and passing it off as fact. It’s just that they are trying to put much of the blame for 9/11 on former President Bill Clinton. There is a scene in the docudrama showing a crack team of CIA ninja assassins lead by Donnie Wahlberg about to spring into action and kill bin Laden. Before they can act, they get a collect call from someone in the Clinton Administration telling them to stop. To not kill bin Laden. The problem with this scene is that never happened. Nobody in the Clinton administration ever stopped the CIA from killing bin Laden.

Hasn’t Bill Clinton been blamed enough for things he had absolutely nothing to do with?

If Disney is going to make shit up about 9/11, why not be a little more creative then to simply blame Bill Clinton? It’s old. Why not go all out and blame the 9/11 attacks on Adolf Hitler. They could show that Adolf Hitler traveled to the future in a Nazi time machine and created the Al Qaeda terrorist network. The rightwing has been using the made up word Islamofascism quite a bit lately. Though Hitler was not Islamic, he was a hardcore old school fascist. It even says so on Wikipedia. Plus, Adolf Hitler hated Jews.

Now this would be a kick ass docudrama. They could show Donnie Wahlberg and his crack team of CIA ninjas racing to locate the Nazi time machine and Islamofascist Adolf Hitler. One of the Austin Powers movies featured time travel. Same goes with a couple of the Star Trek movies. The one with the whales was exceptionally good. Remember the Back to the Future movies?

The precedent of traveling in time has already been set.

Disney is missing the mark with this 9/11 docudrama. I applaud them though for having the courage to make shit up. Too many times, documentary film makers adhere to facts when it comes to telling a story. Most of them are beholding to the all powerful historian lobby. A bunch of stuffy know-it-alls assholes that wear tweed jackets with leather patches on the elbows. They smoke pipes and like to talk about Winston Churchill.

It’s refreshing to see a company like Disney have the courage to be a different. To spice things up. To think outside the box. I only wish they had been more original in their fabrications. A little bit more creative. Simply blaming the Clinton administration for everything is worn out.