Yes - this is what companies do.  I don't care how the industry works.  It's  dumb and maybe they should change their corporate culture. I've worked in the music industry since I was 15.  There's a difference between appropriation (what good artists do) and plagiarism (what bad artists do) - and we should be telling these companies "NO." They tell you to say no if you're raped.  This is musical rape so stop flinging your arms in the air and giving up.

Marty's at it again.

By the way, I read all of this "if Disney this, if Disney that"... This was more than probably outsourced in part or in full and not created in-house at Disney.
When you provide "creative" work like this, you sign off your client from any legal responsibility regarding the originality of the content provided. This always goes on your contract or rights waiver.
So even if you were following a brief you, as the maker of that piece and ultimately the "rip off", will be held legally responsible and not your client.

[Politics]
This is more evidence that copyright laws must be reformed as they were designed to protect the weak from the strong, not the other way around.

Consider causes such as http://www.rootstrikers.org/

[/Politics]

io9 is pretty ok, as long as you switch to blog view.

Who designs webpages these days anyways? Who thinks reading zig-zag is a good idea? And who let that same guy do the Facebook timeline? And how can we stop him from getting his fingers on twitter? Why am I stil talking? Is this thing on? Hello?

Lol I guess that's what I get for sticking to mostly social media when I'm online.

Whatever their intentions were (and I'll remind you that as a publicly shared corporation, they have a legal obligation to maximize profit), copyright law AFAIK does not distinguish between derivatives that are free and derivatives that are making profit. In a very limited scope I can see how you think that this app isn't making any profit, much like you aren't directly paying to see advertisement posters or TV commercials.

Dunno, maybe not like an awful ripoff of a song I've already heard.

Yes, but there isn't a single reference to Anamanaguchi (?), and the ripoff is utterly awful. Can't say that I'm much of a fan of Anamanaguchi to begin with (no offense) but at least the original song doesn't make me want to jump off a bridge.

Yeah, "Hey, this awful song was by us originally! TRUST US!!!" 200 twitter followers agree, the rest of the world couldn't care less.

If you disagree that a legal settlement isn't the best way to handle this kind of obvious rip-off, I really don't know what to say. The only reason anything good can ever come out of it is that the legal system is already quite fucked up when it comes to copyright. Most likely nothing good will come out of it, because these issues usually amount to what kind of money you can pay for legal protection.

^This.

While I'm not in the biz, it's hard to NOT notice how common this is. It's in movie soundtracks, commercials, trailers, jingles, elevators..
If you want a list: Here. (Warning: TVTropes)

I don't like it either. It's like ripping off your song and adding insult to injury by changing just enough to make it hold up in court. Dick move.

Yes that is true, but I see this as a bastardization of trademark law as trade marks are named such because technically they only apply to marks (ie logos insignia and slogans used by a business and not a character design, for example MY CHARACTERS would only be protected by individual copyright but the title and logo would be protected by TM). In short the mickey ears and the castle should be covered, donald duck not so much.

also, sorry to be OT. I find the disney stuff fascinating. I'm not a troll just a guy with a daily life/job that sometimes makes me ANGRY and that comes off bad here sometimes. I gotta learn to STFU.

back on topic, I wonder how many c and ds disney gets as opposed to how many they send out. As they're worth a fortune they should have just paid anamanaguchi and used the real song.

Nope. They did keep some of the individual cartoons out of the public domain by lobbying for copyright extensions. The charactrers are trademarked however, and will continue to be protected as long as Disney are using the characters commercially, and renew the licenses.

an0va is spot on.

disney changed copyright to keep their characters from going public domain. I'm not sure even with lawyers you can win a game where your adversary can just change the rules.

also, akira8gb is totally right about the creative industry. I can't tell you how many times I've been told to ape something.

I'm pretty sure anyone who watches the video now with know its an Anamanaguchi song now, and as of now I believe that's the only place this song is posted so their getting recognized for it lol. I don't think anything can be done legally without tons of $$$

Check out this guy, not realising anyone who regularly reads anything on the Gawker network is a complete and utter tosser.

No, sorry, I work in the creative industry (this isn't an industry right here in chipmusic.org) for about 12 years now and this IS common, every day fare. You get it sold every day on varied channels. Is it right? I didn't say it was right. But it's a reality.

I didn't come at this as pro-sample or pro-collage (both things I don't do much of), I came to it with a real perspective in mind, knowing that I have actually worked in a multimedia giant akin to Disney for a considerable amount of time and have as such first-hand knowledge of how these things get made and the legal implications (or lack thereof) of doing something like this and, as such, believe that the healthiest move is not to do anything.

He understand what is going on, too.