Following on from their legal kicking from Nike MSCHF have decided to take things easy and create a new drop featuring someone’s very famous mouse.
MSCHF’s new drop features a famous mouse which you can buy today & realise in 2024. So you have the chance to buy the first official unofficial ‘Famous Mouse’ artwork. A public domain mouse collectable ‘Conceptualised 3 years early available now but not released until Jan 1st 2024. *Not affiliated with Disney in any way
Right now you get an MSCHF X “Famous” Mouse coin and on January 1st 2024 you can redeem for the MSCF X “Famous” Mouse collectable.
We caught up with MSCHF to talk all things mouse, copyright, creative freedom & more :
So you’ve decided to leave the god of speed alone for now?
Do you mean the god of victory? If so let me say
“Nike is a great company and we love them. We’re very grateful that they taught us about how big companies really operate and now we follow the law always. <3”
Copyright helps creative people make money from their creations – that’s a good thing – right?
That’s the spirit of copyright law, perhaps, but definitely not the letter. Copyright is a loophole game – as shown by the existence of IP trolling as an industry, but it all seems to go one direction. Famous Mouse is looking for loopholes that are less favourable to corporations, instead of more. We do tend to take a pretty cynical view of copyright and fair use; if you can’t afford a legal fight then you have already lost. There’s a reason that corporations win infringement suits in court, and ‘creative people’ tend to resort to Instagram shame campaigns over stolen designs.
Three years! We might not have a planet to live on by then?
Fair point, but hell, if an unlicensed Mickey Mouse sculpture is our Ozymandias, I’ll take it.
If it’s Art you can appropriate now, can’t you?
See my answer to question 2 – that’s arguably true on paper, but not in reality. Artistic fair use is more limited than you’d expect and confused by all sorts of factors, the big one being wanting to sell the thing you made.
So is this a NFT?
By definition no – it’s a fungible token. Not to mention it’s entirely physical. But calling it a fully analogue equivalent to something like Unisocks wouldn’t be necessarily inaccurate.
Is Mickey fine? & Does he blow your mind?
Clearly!
Isn’t Donald Duck the cool one?
Hmmm I can’t really comment on the relative coolness of the various Disney characters, but from a purely practical perspective Donald won’t hit the public domain until 5 years after Mickey. The mouse is the target of opportunity.