Company Pooh characters brighten abandoned homes

[Tom Morrow]

Pooh characters brighten abandoned homes

From eyesores to Eeyores Flint woman paints Winnie the Pooh characters on vacant home The Flint Journal In August, Kristina Pringle, 20, began sketching Winnie the Pooh characters on the boarded-up windows of a vacant home a few doors down from her Madison Avenue house. Eeyore, the down-trodden blue donkey with the pink bow on his tail, has since been painted, and Pringle is now working on painting Tigger, the bouncy tiger from the classic children's books. "I'd like to make my street better for sure," Pringle said. "And drawing is something I like to do." Several houses along the streets are boarded up and earlier this month, the home next door to Pringle was the scene of a crime following a shooting and an explosion that destroyed the home. And while neighbors want the vacant house — one of many in the neighborhood — to be torn down, seeing Pringle's cartoons brightens the mood a little. "If I have to look at something, her pictures are better than a boarded-up home," said Kathy Kirby, who lives across the street from the vacant home. Fixing up the southside neighborhoods surrounding the International Academy of Flint charter school has been a project of the school's community relations director, Art Wenzlaff, for several years. Wenzlaff tries to combat more of that with community cleanups and murals on local buildings. He was the one who sought Pringle's help. With donations and grant money, Wenzlaff supplies Pringle and other volunteers with paint and other supplies. by Shannon Murphy complete article

Submitted by dougeebear. Edited by Ezra

[ob12]

wow this is such an amazing story.
I love it when people do things like this with there art abilities. Drawing and helping people is my number one thing in life.

[dougeebear]

It is uplifting, isn't it? It would be even moreso if it were't a violation of Disney copyright. The artist isn't painting her version of the Pooh characters, nor the original line drawings, she's stealing Disney's characters and painting them - at public expense and with the blessing of the city!

[ctdsnark]

Well,it's not like she's charging anyone to look at them!

[Sesshomaru-sama]

That's true. There are a lot of drawings and paintings of Disney characters on buildings everywhere. They're not in trouble with Disney.

Sincerely, a brother of a half-demon,
Sesshomaru-sama

[austen]

hey, its for a good reason.

Very cool idea.

[Ezra]

There are "fair use" exemptions to copyright laws. Basically, if you like someone's product, you're allowed to share it with family, friends and neighbors. It would really be a streatch call this "fair use" sharing, though. Publicly displaying somone else's art without permission is copyright infringement, clearly.

Defending the copyright in this instance would be difficult though, for several reasons:

• No money is being made directly from the use of the characters. Nobody is selling tickets to see these characters.
• No money is being made indirectly either. The characters aren't being used to make a money-making business more attractive, as in advertising.
• There's not much threat to the value of the characters. If someone were making and distributing products for free, undercutting Disney's for profit product line, that would erode the value of the characters. Why buy something from Disney when you can get it elsewhere for free? ...but a couple of characters painted on a single abandoned house isn't exactly a wide distribution.

So it might not be far enough outside those "fair use" rules to be... enforceable. And if Disney were to assert it's rights in this case, they'd come off looking like an 800lbs gorilla beating up on the disadvantaged.

I have to admit, it does bother me that the school district is involved in sponsoring this. I know all they really did was buy some paint... but as a government entity, especially one involved in education, they should know better.

[alyx92]

"Because nothing says happiness like a bear who can't afford pants, and his friend, a depressed donkey." - Seth Myers; SNL
lolz
EDIT:Spelling