Disney's Rent-Seeking: A Singularity of Suck

According to Alex Weprin at mediabistro.com, Disney has recently trademarked the phrase "Seal Team 6".  Seal Team 6 happens to be the name of the Navy Seal team that took down Osama bin Laden:

The trademark applications came on May 3rd, two days after the operation that killed Bin Laden… and two days after “Seal Team 6″  was included in thousands of news articles and TV programs focusing on the operation.

Disney’s trademark applications for “Seal Team 6″ cover clothing, footwear, headwear, toys, games and “entertainment and education services,” among other things...

...Of course, for all we know Disney has been working on an animated feature about a team of anthropomorphic seals in search of adventure, but given the timing of the application that seems… unlikely.

I'm not quite sure how to interpret this, but I know it needs interpreting.  The part of me that wants to be charitable doubts what this story implies - that Disney has bought the rights to the next FDNY hat in an effort to capitalize on and exploit suffering - as just too disgusting to possibly be real.  Another part of me is too shocked to be disgusted.  A third part of me sees this as affirming all the unsubstantiated horror stories I've heard about Disney from acquaintances who work in the film world.  A fourth part of me sees the burden as falling on the American people for creating a system that tolerates and even encourages this kind of (entirely predictable and inevitable) corporate behavior in the first place.  Finally, a last part of me perceives this as all of the major problems with modern America rolled into one event: the eponymous Singularity of Suck - an event that sucks so much that what kinds of things will suck in the future becomes qualitatively and fundamentally unpredictable.  

Disney clearly sucks the most here.  As Joe said in his recent tweet of the news, "Mickey the rent seeker reminds us why intellectual property law is such a joke."  This is well-put.  My own position on intellectual property law is not well articulated yet; but I lean heavily towards average citizens not being held liable to massive corporations for trying to unwind with a nice pirated movie after a stressful day of wage slavery.

It is clear that the existence of the government-issued monopolies that we call patents, copyrights, and trademarks strongly violates free-market principles.  As traditional production of goods and services continues to move offshore and under the purview of the highly-managed trade agreements that we usually label "free trade agreements", the leveraged production of technologies and information comes more and more to dominate the American economy.  This leads to an ever more restricted suite of economic possibilities for individuals and an ever more expansive realm of the economically possible for legally or politically-favored corporate entities.  In a world where Disney is allowed to own a national event, we should consider whether we have anything resembling a "free market" at all.  

If we really want the best ideas to rise to the top, we should at least make the King's Charter more difficult to obtain if not eliminate intellectual property law entirely.  Strong laws against fraud and slander should continue to safeguard longterm investments.  Good ideas, know-how, and the ability to deliver products that people want - rather than skill at paperwork - should come to define successful companies.  (In the meantime, we at the Inductive welcome you to steal our material as long as you credit us by providing a link.)

Of course, I also hope deeply that Disney is wrong about the phrase "Seal Team 6" being a cash cow.  As I concluded in my long article last week on the death of bin Laden:

(T)he way the United States killed bin Laden was cowardly and pathetic; the way we lied about it does nothing but reaffirm my fears that we are living in an era marked by widespread weakness and collective stupidity; the way we celebrated the death of a criminal fugitive after ten years of nothing but own-goals was childish and embarrassing.  The assassination of Osama bin Laden is only significant in a symbolic light: it allows us to see with unusual clarity the nature of our civilization.

Again, this is not to diminish the Navy Seal team that did the dirty work of raiding bin Laden's compound; but, making the soldiers into demigods is misguided.  The Obama Administration is right in downplaying the event.  Celebrating the death of Osama bin Laden indicates incredibly low standards for celebration. Huckstering merchandise celebrating that death is just wrong.

This clarity that the death of Osama bin Laden provided is only matched by the clarity of Disney's cheap opportunism: "A company notorious for shortchanging its workers and exploiting the ideas of others buys the exclusive rights to a phrase which no one should be able to own anyways in hopes that citizens will vomit hard-earned cash in exchange for the privilege of displaying said phrase on their bodies" would be a great premise for a dark, dystopian novel if it weren't a true description of real events.