Much ado about Tariffs

 A cartoon about tariffs from Puck magazine in 1908. History doesn't repeat, but it does rhyme sometimes. I remember learning about Tariff reforms in History class. In the 1900s, the British Empire was concerned over increased competition from other industrialised rivals and cheaper imports within the Imperial and domestic markets. One solution favoured by the Conservative party and some Liberal Imperialists* favoured a regime of tariffs on foreign goods.

Anonymous pro-Tariff Reform League image produced around 1911

 

The issue? Well aside from aiming at preserving national dominance and a literal Empire running there were very real dangers of mass starvation. 

Anti Tariff reform poster produced by the Liberal Party in 1905

 

Malnutrition was a major blight of the British population, with unimaginable levels of poverty. And this was with the cheap imported foods the poor could obtain. A price increase on these food stuffs would turn malnutrition into fatal starvation. I remember one statistic relating to the Second Boer War, malnutrition was so severe that in Manchester during one call up for volunteers the majority of men who answered had to be turned away on medical grounds, and three quarters of the men they did take were too weak to pass the bare minimum of official physical standards. The Liberals and the Labour Party eventually won the struggle over tariff reforms, a dispute that lead to a constitutional crisis and pushed the Liberals into an alliance with Labour and to shift away from laissez-faire economics to accept limited welfare provisions including the introduction of the first state pensions.

I like this pro-Tariff poster by the Tariff Reform League, published in 1909. It makes free trade sound great.

 

 

*This was how the split defined themselves, the rest of the Liberal Party and the young Labour Party were equally in favour of preserving the British Empire along with the Conservatives.

 

Cheap pump and dumps - About Horror Cash ins

 

It finally happened, I finally watched the Winnie the Pooh murder flick. The public domain has a reputation issue, especially in the United States of America, the registration and renewals system meant that a large proportion of the content in public domain were the works that were no longer commercially viable and forgotten. While that included some fantastic pieces of art like It's a Wonderful Life, it also included its fair share of cash ins and low budget-low effort schlock. Of course, the copyrighted material also included its fair share of rubbish too. 

Well, recent news hasn't done much to improve that reputation.

When Winnie the Pooh went public domain it was big news, and then news of a horror movie coming out, capitalising on the publicity and the lack of need to go past Disney for approval. I am of course speaking of Winnie the Pooh, Blood and Honey (BH). BH premiered in 2023, I've only just gotten around to watching it. The reason for the delay? It looks interesting enough to pay for and Whinnie the Pooh wasn't a big part of my childhood, I had one of the books, and I'd seen and been bored by some of the Disney cartoons. I wasn't offended by the idea of a homicidal yellow bear, I just wasn't that interested.

In fact, I'm not that interested in the film on its own merits, so I'll use BH as a springboard to a wider discussion on the film industry. A common question on film forums is simply, "why are only getting exploitation horror movies of characters that come into the public domain?" And the answer is simply capitalism. Film is art, but it is art created within a business, the reason we're getting so many horror movies is the same reason the Friday the 13th et al. are in their double digits. Movies cost money and investors expect that money back and with profit, horror is a genre that can be done quickly and cheaply and has a good track record of returning the invested funds and at least some profit. There are exceptions of course, there are horror movies that flop hard and movies that are expensive and take time to craft, but there is a blueprint for a quick return on investment. 

BH is just an excellent example of that blueprint with the added bonus of timeliness, lots of people were talking about Pooh Bear and friends and a solid marketing hook. It was quite controversial when it was announced and released, that raise attention and improved the odds of financial success dramatically. The film did so well it has a sequel and led to the greenlight of several other projects and the copying of the formula by other filmmakers. 

Reliable information on movie financials are hard to find, but the figures I did find are that BH had a $100,000 budget and made $7.3 million in profit so far. That's an excellent ratio and after watching I'm a little surprised the budget was that low. Technically speaking, BH is a perfectly competently made movie and doesn't look particularly cheap. It doesn't look expensive either, you can see the shortcuts, but I've seen movies with more budget look worse. There's location shooting, some practical effects work, the scenes have multiple angles to make them more interesting, the night scenes are well lit etc. There's even a short sketchbook style animated introduction that is genuinely creepy and does a good job of establishing the Why of the film. The actors aren't anything special, but they're all competently working with what little material they have before being beaten to death by two big thugs in masks. 

The fish rots from the head down

The main issue with BH is that it was created solely for making some money and exploiting a favourable market environment. Everyone is doing a fine job, but that's the problem, it's clearly just a job. If you've watched much horror, then you'll know where each scene will end shortly after starting. Once the creepy animation ends, it's a series of character encounters the murderers for some reason and will either be killed or chased a bit first and then killed. Repeat a few times until the credits roll. In principle this isn't an inherent issue, there are location slashers that are fun, creative and chilling, the issue again in the lack of interest beyond making a complete product. I'll give a spoiler free example of the problem here: the opening establishes that the reason Pooh and friends do not talk is so they can pay the actors a lesser rate is because they have sworn to cut off all vestiges of there humanity and become truly animal. That is an interesting premise and could make for an inventive film. Sadly, the execution is just that they don't talk. They wear clothes, use weapons and power tools and cars, they are just bad guys in masks. Retool the introduction to Christopher Robin was imagining his friends and years later a gang of sadistic killers escape to the woods and find the masks and other toys and you'd only have to change one flashback scene to get the same film.

The cast is fine, but it's quite clear that they're just doing their jobs, this is a pay cheque, a credit and something for their reels, nothing more. The nuts and bolts of filming is competent, everything that needs to be in frame is in frame, but there's a lifeless efficiency that never disappears, it feels like an assembly line production.

The only sparks of something beyond a business plan, this movie displays, are the aforementioned animation at the start and a repeated streak of meanness. That may sound strange, and It's difficult to describe without watching the film, but this film has multiple sequences where the killer has the victims at its mercy and then takes their time enjoying their helplessness before violently dispatching them. For the Christopher Robin character, this makes a certain narrative sense as the premise of the film is that Pooh and Piglett hold him personally responsible for their bad fortune and have deep personal grievances, but for the rest it's just violent cruelty for the sake of violent cruelty. I'm not sure if that's a hint at a darker theme, or just another marketing ploy to generate further controversy. 

I've seen cheaper films, I've seen less technically competent films, and enjoyed them a lot more than what BH is offering. Still, at least now the dam has been broken maybe we can get better material using Milne's creations, I'm not opposed to another horror movie so long as that movie has something actually worth making a movie about.

Part II - The Banana Splits Horror movie

No, the Banana Splits movie isn't in the public domain, nor to my knowledge are the original Banana Splits. The reason I'm discussing them here is:

1. It's the best example I can think of at present of a Blood and Honeyesque movie made out of a copyrighted franchise
2. It also exposes the failings of Blood and Honey in comparison

In 2019 the world was graced by frankly extremely odd news. The Banana Splits were back! You remember the Splits, right? Well, I did remember the Splits, a cable channel I sometimes watched in the 90s re-ran that show during its kids block. So I knew for a fact I was in the minority who remembered that show, and I was in the even smaller minority who was interested in seeing the movie based on the premise, they go crazy and attack people. It was such a strange sequence of events and frankly quite a rare and bold usage of an IP.

Despite remembering roughly who the Splits were like Pooh they weren't a cornerstone of my youth, I remembered the song, La la la, la la la lah, One Banana Two Banana Three Banana Four, etc. But that was just a fresh enough idea to intrigue me. If this seems hypocritical regarding what I've been saying about BH, well I'll admit that there are similarities especially around the desire to use controversy and media buzz to promote both movies, but, the Banana Splits were a completely dead and forgotten IP so the decision to move forward with the project wasn't a cash grab, though of course money was a goal. 

More importantly, it also had more going on than just exploiting marketing trends and reactive social media. The movie had things to say about fame and the entertainment industry and the disconnect between the image of media and the reality. By no means is it earth-shattering, but it was enough material to give the characters something to work on and conflict and tension at some points. I think the best way to explain the differences between the two movies is in this way; the killers of BH are animal/human hybrids who act like souless machines, the killers in the Splits are robots who act like animal/human hybrids.

They found a way to make a movie about the goofy Banana Splits costumed animals interesting to watch, Blood and Honey was just tediously mean.

UK News - Prohibit publishers irrevocably disabling video games they have already sold

 

 

 You may remember the EU wide initiative to expand consumer protections for video games, the Stop Killing Games initiative. Well, the same network of activists is working in other areas and has launched or re-launched a similar initiative in the United Kingdom.

Currently, the British campaign is at the petition stage. If you're a UK citizen, you can sign the petition here. The text of the petition reads as follows.

The government should update consumer law to prohibit publishers from disabling video games (and related game assets / features) they have already sold without recourse for customers to retain or repair them. We seek this as a statutory consumer right.

 Most video games sold can work indefinitely, but some have design elements that render the product non-functional at a time which the publisher controls, with no date provided at sale. We see this as a form of planned obsolescence, as customers can be deprived of their purchase and cannot retain or repair the game. We think this practice is hostile to consumers, entirely preventable, and have concerns existing laws do not address the problem. Thus, we believe government intervention is needed.

The deadline is 14th of July 2025. UK government petitions have to pass through a committee to get published online to collect signatures and there are two thresholds, the first is 10,000 verified signatures which triggers a response from the government regarding whatever the petition is about. Then at 100,000 or more signatures, the issue raised in the petition must be debated in parliament. So far the number of signatures is over 12,000, so a formal response is guaranteed, though the show of support on the issue would be strengthened if it hit that second threshold. Incidentally the EU wide initiative has stalled somewhat so if you're an EU citizen better sign before its too late.

My Regards to Black Jack - Manga in the Public Domain

 

 

I've just learnt of a Manga series that was created in the 2000s that is in the public domain. Initially I was very sceptical, as covered before, Japan is a nation with copyright automatically given from creation and follows the life plus model, but they moved to that system in phases during the 20th century, so there are some exceptions and loopholes from when new laws were passed. Still, though, a serialised Manga published by Kodansha in the 2000s did not seem like one of those examples. 

The Manga is called ブラックジャックによろしくSay Hello to Black Jack. Created by Shūhō Satō (whose still alive) and ran from 2002-5. The series is a drama focussed on the Japanese healthcare system and its darker aspects, overworked interns, pressure to perform at all costs, health insurance etc. It seemed interesting to me, but I wasn't seeing how it qualified as public domain, it had after all been licensed for a television series and theatrical production. Well it seems this stems from a dispute with the publisher and the success of the property. 

Manga author Shuho Sato reported via his Twitter on Thursday that he had cancelled his publishing contract for his Say Hello to Black Jack medical manga with Kodansha, and that he had received a certificate from them confirming that the two parties no longer had a contract.

Sato expressed his dissatisfaction with Kodansha, saying that the publisher were "making light of him." He explained that the certificate was stamped with the seal of the editor-in-chief of Morning, the magazine that Say Hello to Black Jack was serialized in, rather than the Kodansha company seal; the certificate is technically for an agreement between Kodansha and Sato's own company. In a follow-up post, he stated that as a result of the contract being cancelled, the book is immediately considered as out of print, and that readers who find any unreturned copies of the title in bookstores should report them as "illegal publications."

 From ANN

And later Shūhō Satō disclosed that the series had made him over 100 million yen and that he was allowing secondary usage of his work in any form, including commercial activities and waiving his right to royalty payments. 

Sato now allows people to use the original Say Hello to Black Jack work to create editions in foreign languages, films, applications, anime, and more without any royalty payments.

From ANN

So, from what I can gather, the author has effectively given his work to the public domain by publicly consenting to its usage in all manner of forms and waived his rights to control and compensation. As far as public domain entries go this is a rare way of adding to it, but it's not without precedent, the 96-year-old Tom Lehrer placed his entire music library into the public domain and Bill Willingham has done something similar with his Fables creations. That case also followed an acrimonious dispute with the publishing company Warner Brothers. 

So, how good is Black Jack? Well, I've only started reading it so can't give a full review, but I like what I've read so far, a word of warning for the curious, since the setting is about hospitals and Doctors the artwork includes very graphic depictions of injury. 

I will say that I am planning to continue reading it in my spare time and may well have a review of it in the future. 

Until then.

The Company Sign (1930s)

 

I present to you Jacobus Belsen's Das Firmenshild (The Company Sign), documenting Adolph Hitler's actions in Germany while campaigning for support.

The text on the sign is the official name of the Nazi Party Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei National Socialist German Worker's Party. The top reads "For the Proletarians [workers]" and the bottom part reads something like "For the well-to-do circles" who are represented by businessmen.

My German is Schlecht but that's the spirit of the text. Of course the point of the cartoon is the sign Hitler is holding, for each audience different parts of the name are emphasised. Belsen is skewering the Nazis for their opportunistic propaganda and lack of commitment. Jacobus Belsen was born in the Russian Empire, in the aftermath of the First World War he immigrated to Germany where he found work as an illustrator and cartoonist. He wasn't a fan of the Nazi party and left Germany for the United States of America, he died in 1937. 

A New Curated Public Domain Image Catalogue Goes Live

 

Chart of the Hand, by Dr Alesha Sivartha, published in 1898.

 

Good news everyone! The good people at the Public Domain Review, have released a brand-new project, a database of thousands of public domain images, in high quality and best of all it's curated by their team of researchers so you can trust their work and the information provided by them. 

I've been spending sometime looking through its tags and marvelling at the results. The Archive can be accessed directly here, and I will be adding it to my list of resources on the blog sidebar. In addition to being a cool resource, this has personally been a useful and much appreciated service. I'm a historian and one of the barriers I find to making historical material available is the monopolisation of historical photographs, sketches and paintings by a handful of massive stock footage companies who flood search engine results with previews of materials centuries old covered in watermarks offering to let you access a scene of peasants storming the Russian Army lines in Vienna in 1848 for a fee or annual subscription.

It's not the fees I object to, it's the paywalling of public information, art and history while they already have access to licensed material for revenue.  I know it costs money to run a service, the main reason this blog and its associated platforms are infrequently updated is because I can't afford to devout my full time to them. But there are ways to earn revenue while making commonly owned materials publicly available. 

The archive is an excellent example of how to do that. If you appreciate the time and effort the folks at the Review put into these projects, you can donate if you're in a financial position to do so. And if you see an image you really like and would like to display somewhere physical, then you can purchase a high quality print from them. Or you can download the image and print it yourself. The choice is yours, and nothing is being withheld for profit or reasons of control.

Perseus and the Head of Medusa, by Stuart Hall, published in 1824

 

TM Marks the Spot: Some Notes on trade marks

 

Knowledge of copyright is slowly improving year by year as more iconic elements of pop culture fall out of its grasp. On the other hand, the equally common method of intellectual property limitation trademarks is still grossly misunderstood. I've noticed a tendency to treat trademarks like copyright with a different name, and that just isn't the case.

Disclaimer: This is not legal advice, I cannot assist you in a legal dispute or query this is just educational material and is to my knowledge correct at time of production. Direct all legal queries elsewhere.

A quick primer, Intellectual Property (IP) has three kinds of protections that limit what others can do with IP, they are as follows:

1. Patents: These concern protecting physical things such as designs and medicinal or edible recipes. In the United States of America, the United Kingdom and everywhere else I've checked, these last for a maximum of 20 years and have to be applied for via your nation's Patent Office. 
2. Copyright: This covers the idea or "Intellectual" part of IP. It generally exists at the point of creation, though registration is sometimes advisable to establish an easy way to prove creation and when in the event of a dispute. In most of the world, the terms last after the death of the creator, though there are exceptions depending on region. 
3. Trademarks: These don't protect IP so much as they protect the business entity (owner, company etc.) and their business activity on the market. They have to be applied for and approved, but can last as long as the product or service is active on the market.
   

Generally speaking, the strongest of these three IP types is Copyright, it gives the owner or possessor the greatest control over their product and has the weakest scope to challenge it. Patents are also firm but their short timespan relatively speaking mean that eventually copies and inspired products and designs will appear eventually, that's how generic versions of branded products can be sold legally, often right next to the product they're close to. 

Trademarks are the weakest of all three types, because they don't protect the IP, they protect a trademark holder from what's deemed to be unfair competition, usually via misleading and impersonation by competitors. Trademarks have to be attached to specific products, which is how you can have trademarks for public domain imagery and characters, it doesn't affect the character or the image it concerns financial activity. Now the bar on what does and does not count as unfair impersonation is arbitrary and has to be determined by court cases, but the bar for burden of proof is extremely high.

As an example, the image at the top, on the left is the original branded and trademarked soft drink Irn Bru (its pronounced Iron Brew or Urn Broo), produced by Barr, it's extremely popular in the UK, especially its native Scotland, I enjoy it and its diet version, despite its strong colour its flavour is not remotely Orange based, I don't know how to describe its flavour and the company has run advertising campaigns on how difficult to pin down its taste is. On the right is a store brand cheaper knock off called Iron Brew (it'd be funny if it were pronounced Irn Bru, but, sadly it's just called Iron Brew) I bought from either Aldi or Lidl, I forget which exactly. In addition to looking like Irn Bru it does taste like it as well. 

Now, given all the misinformation about trademarks out there, you might be wondering how on earth the stores are getting away with this, did Barr somehow let Irn Bru's trademark lapse? Well no, as an old company it has withdrawn some trademarks on designs and products over the years, but it still maintains several active trademarks.

So, then, what's the trick? Well, it isn't a trademark violation. It's clear to everyone that Aldi/Lidl are pushing their drink as an Irn Bru type soft drink, but the name is different and trust me Irn Bru is iconic here, it's like the distinction between Coke meaning Coca-Cola, and Cola meaning any black fizzy drink. And it does prominently display its brewery mark Vive which isn't Barr the owners of Irn Bru. The trademarks that are still valid include the name and its spelling and specific designs, Iron Brew while close to both is different. If they had also called their version Irn Bru or copied that design exactly or claimed to be an official Barr product, that would be a trademark violation, since there would be no way for an honest consumer to tell.

I'm not saying Barr doesn't have grounds to get a case to court to be looked at, I don't know and can't know what a corporation's legal department thinks about its chances. That it hasn't suggests (key word) that they don't fancy their chances even if they wanted to use the court to act against a competitor.

I could've also chosen The Asylum studio and its "Mockbuster" business model, where it churns out cheap movies that bare superficial resemblances to big Hollywood releases around the time of those releases. I think the most well known example is Transmorphers released in 2007 shortly after the first of the Michael Bey Transformers movies came out. 

If you're curious, this poster is better than anything in the movie

Again, it is obvious what the marketing strategy is here, but it manages to be a viable business model for them and the worst they've suffered is reputational damage as purveyors of cheap crap.

So, trademarks not only do not apply to content outside their narrow scope of business, they also don't give you the power to monopolise usage of IP within its narrow scope of business.

So, then, can we conclude that trademarks largely have no teeth? Well, trademarks have to be actively defended to be maintained, so it depends on what is the potential issue and who holds the trademarks. Last November I was visiting Dublin and toured the famous Guinness brewery, among the many interesting displays there was an information tablet dedicated to the famous brewery logo the right facing Harp. The Harp as an instrument and a symbol are closely tied to Ireland, so it's not a surprise that the image is used often for Irish products and institutions. However, one fact about the Harps I had not noticed, but the tablet explained was that all Irish government usages of the Harp are reversed, that they are all left facing. The reason? Well, Guinness trademarked their right facing Harp 50 years before the Irish state was established, and there was concern that using a right facing Harp would provoke the Guinness brewery into a trademark dispute, so to nip that in the bud the Irish government reversed the Harp. Whether Guinness would feel it had to take action and whether that action would've succeeded we'll never know.

Another interesting example of trademarking potentially causing an issue is the case of public domain Mickey Mouse comics.

You can watch the full discussion online here.

I'll summarise the key points.

• Despite Disney's firm control of IP, several pieces had fallen into the public domain. Including some of the early comic strips.
• Eternity Comics (EC) decided to collect these strips and publish them.
• EC predicted Disney would try to strong-arm them into stopping, and anticipated trademark dispute challenges.
• EC decided to pre-empt Disney by releasing the most trademark compliant comic collection imaginable, the comics were called The Uncensored Mouse, the covers were black, no Disney logos or marks past or present were used, only the artists of the strips were acknowledged and credited.
• Disney still went after them multiple times with their legal department to get them to stop after two issues were produced. Unfortunately for EC, while this was going on it was discovered that one or two of the strips in The Uncensored Mouse had been reprinted in another collection that was still copyrighted, and it looked like the public domain status of the collection was in dispute so EC stop printing them.
  

For clarification, here's the un trade markable cover for The Uncensored Mouse.

In this case it did not go to legal action, but it was heading that way if EC didn't stop. It's highly likely that a trademark suit would fail given the absurd lengths EC went to pre-empt such action, but they were a small publisher and Disney is, well, Disney. Just tying something up in court to exhaust the other side's time and money is a viable tactic that big corporations can and do resort to.

So to summarise.

• Trademarks are weaker than copyright if your goal is to prevent others from using something you've trademarked.
• Trademarks are a form of commercial protection of the business, not the trademarked thing itself.

 

WOMEN ANARCHISTS HAVE BECOME THE TERROR OF WORLD'S POLICE

 

1908 New York newspaper clipping, text reads:

WOMEN ANARCHISTS HAVE BECOME THE TERROR OF WORLD'S POLICE

Their Daring Crimes Are Said to Have Outstripped the Deeds of Brothers of the Red

Search for the Woman is Becoming a Safe Rule in Crimes Proceeding From Anarchistic Violence - The Guardians of the World Nearly Always Find a Woman Implicated When a Ruler is Stricken Down - Emotional Women Lose Sense of Fear.