A confession, and some thoughts on copyright law.

[queen_of_kithia]

You may have noticed that lately my "Year of Bert & Ernie" project has become more of an Ernie-and-Cookie-Monster project, and I must confess that that was entirely by design. There is a precedent of Bert-and-Ernie material being misinterpreted in the context of Pride Week, and while I try to respect everyone's right to an individual

Comments

[bluealoe]

This entry was really thought-provoking. I have a lot of thoughts running through my head, and I'm not sure I can organize them in any coherent way, so I'm just going to throw them out there

[queen_of_kithia]

I know you've explained this before, but I know the Muppets' copyright is now owned by Disney. That doesn't include the Sesame characters? What about characters that appear on both, like Kermit?

It gets really confusing, and I'm probably not the best at explaining it but ... In a nutshell, Disney owns the characters from The Muppet Show and the subsequent movies. Sesame Workshop owns the Muppet characters created specifically for Sesame Street. Kermit is really the only one who had a significant presence on both shows, and since he's now owned by Disney, the Workshop can't make new Sesame Street material with Kermit anymore, although they can still show vintage Sesame Street material featuring Kermit, who shows up a lot in the Sesame Street Old School DVD collections. In the first three Muppet movies, the Sesame Street characters make cameos, and I don't know if Sesame Workshop gets a cut of the royalties from those movies or not, but my guess would be not. Sesame Workshop is still allowed to use the word "Muppet" to describe its

[bluealoe]

Thanks for the explanation. :)

[queen_of_kithia]

You're welcome. :) There's one more point that I forgot to make: Hill doesn't seem to be aware of it, but Davis reports that Michael Eisner wanted the rights to the Sesame Street characters as part of the original attempted Disney/Henson merger back in 1989-1990, but Jim Henson put his foot down and said it was out of the question. Both Hill and Davis agree that the status of the Sesame Street characters was the final straw that caused the deal to fall apart after Henson's death (although they disagree over who pulled out first), but Davis argues that it was a sticking point that slowed down the deal considerably even while Henson was still alive.