Hacker News Reader

Comment by deaton | Hacker News Reader

"Steal an apple and you're a thief. Steal a kingdom and you're a statesman." - Literal Disney villain

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.

I 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.

Disney 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.

Disney owns the 1992 production of Aladdin so who exactly are they "stealing" from?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aladdin

The 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.

If you subscribe to any concept of the public domain this is surely in it.

Doesn't this mean that anyone can make a competing Aladdin story, though? Since they don't own the source IP?

It does! but you can't use anything Disney added (the tiger, the talking bird, etc..) and your production values would have to be super high to avoid looking like a store-brand knockoff. It's hard to deny that the Disney version does damage the original story in some way

Would most kids around the world even know Aladdin if it wasn't for the Disney copyrighted movie?

Very likely yes. I was very familiar with this story, and other "Arabian" tales, well before Disney made the original animated version.

We also had Grimm's fairy tales, which I loved reading, and nowadays am reading to my daughter, to her delight. Yes, with beheadings and child-eating monsters and witches.

Aladdin, Ali Baba and Sinbad the Sailor were well-known long before Disney.

There's even a major Chinese company named after one!

I know very well before the movie. It's a classic folk tale.

I 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.

That's not a charitable reading of the comment, and furthermore, it's not even a reasonable assumption. Other comments clarify that the "theft" is in quotes because it's a figurative theft, not from Disney to themselves, but from Disney to the earlier, non-copyrighted folk tales it drew inspiration from. And the "theft" is that the Disney IP supplanted (via ubiquity) the public domain versions to the point lots of people aren't even aware they exist. Nobody is arguing it's literal theft, hence the quotes.

I don't think it's "uncharitable"? Seems perfectly reasonable to not like a remake.

He says:

> ... this corporate remake is a worse creative "theft" than ...

Context is that "this" is the 1999 film.

A sibling comment makes a separate point that even the 1992 film is not original content but nowhere in falcor84's comment does he refer to the franchise as a whole being "theft".

Regardless, it's clear from the post that the context is the 1999 film being `creative "theft"` which I inferred meant they changed the story in ways he didn't like but... he can weigh in if he feels like it.

> Seems perfectly reasonable to not like a remake

That's not the uncharitable part of your comment.

> [...] but he wants it to be because he doesn't like the 1999 film

This is the uncharitable part.

Nothing charitable or uncharitable in the sentiment. Just interpretation.

Keeping context confined to the 1999 and 1992 films... What meaning do you infer?

I still can't find an alternative.

I'll bite. What's your argument, or at least the comment-sized gist of it?

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).

Yeah but isn't the claim that it's not stealing? You're presupposing the thing that is in question.

The argument is that a human will gather information from all over the place and compile it, all without doing anything wrong. That's the base claim. Not that stealing a little is OK. That's extremely easy to disprove and also entirely irrelevant.

If you agree with this, then you have to question the validity of international "law"

Do you not question the validity of international law? How can something be a law over sovereign countries without some overarching governing body and enforcement mechanisms? How can it be a law if the parties it supposedly governs can just recognize or not recognize it at will?

"AI should be more ethically like Stalin"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_death_of_one_man_is_a_trag...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com