Ironically this phrase was said by Jafar in Disney's 2019 live action remake of Aladdin, but wasn't part of the original 1992 version. And I personally would argue that this corporate remake is a worse creative "theft" than what random people are doing with GenAI.
replyDisney owns the 1992 production of Aladdin so who exactly are they "stealing" from?
replyhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aladdin
replyThe argument, as I understand it is that the "theft" is in quotes because it's not literally copyright infringement, but fair use of an old public-domain folk tale that ends up consuming the latter.
Today, when kids know "Aladdin" they know the copyrighted/trademarked Disney character, not the traditional folk tale- that's the "theft" that happened.
Doesn't this mean that anyone can make a competing Aladdin story, though? Since they don't own the source IP?
replydeleted
replyIf you subscribe to any concept of the public domain this is surely in it.
replyI assume he's saying Disney owns the 1992 film so the 1999 film is not theft, but he wants it to be because he doesn't like the 1999 film. Thus the quotes.
replyI'll bite. What's your argument, or at least the comment-sized gist of it?
replyI would call it cultural theft. But a better word is cultural appropriation, and the original cartoon—though iconic—did it worse. Aladdin was first written sometime in the 9th or the 10th century (oldest surviving complete manuscript of 1001 nights is from the 15th century). It was translated into English in the 18th century.
replyDisney made a cartoon of the story without understanding the culture it comes from with the main purpose of selling it to an audience with an even less understanding. And the results was a horrible misrepresentation of somebody else’s cultural heritage.
Zhuang Zhou(BC 369-BC 286) have said the similar things "窃钩者诛,窃国者侯" This phrase comes from the chapter Ransacking Coffers (Qu Qie, 胠箧) in the Daoist text Zhuangzi (4th century BC).
reply"AI should be more ethically like Stalin"
replyhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_death_of_one_man_is_a_trag...