Don't get me wrong, I'm all in favor of freeing Mickey Mouse into the public domain and having a robust fair use of his image. But if Disney is going to insist on bribing Congress to extend copyright terms in order to keep Mickey under copyright, and if they are going to bully casual Internet users over the unauthorized use of Mickey's image, why are they not suing Hamas over their own use of Mickey?

If I were to make my own video using Donald Duck to convince people to divest themselves from organizations connected to Hamas, am I to assume now that Disney would have nothing to say about that either??

I generally agree with what you post here, but I think it's fairly ingenous to intentionally imply (without actually stating) that Disney supports anti-semitism because they don't target Hamas for copyright violations.

Hamas is a terrorist group who straps bombs onto people and has them kill Israelis, who publically calls for the destruction of Israel, is under worldwide sanctions for violating international law and the list goes on and on. After all this, and going up against the mighty Israeli army without backing down, do you really think they are going to care if they receive a cease-and-desist from an American corporation? They'd probably laugh at it, just like Disney's lawyers would laugh if you suggested to them to send a C&D to Hamas.

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Watching Eyes

Hamas is indeed a terrorist organization. But at the moment, they also happen to represent the actual government of the Palestinians. Disney has no problem in speaking up against China for its IP stances, so why would the hesitate when the current Palestinian government also adopts similar stances? Do you think that Disney thinks that China will back down simply because it writes a few letters in protest? Of course not.

The point here isn't about what the foreign governments will do when they receive a protest letter from a corporation, it is to point out the hypocrisy of selective copyright/trademark enforcement - and how that selective enforcement may reflect back upon the copyright/trademark holder. Forget cease and desist letters for a moment. The fact that Disney had 'no comment' at all on this story thus far speaks volumes in my opinion.