Os artigos academicos pirateados são mais citados?

Sci-Hub Downloads Boost Article Citations -- And Help Academic Publishers, por Glyn Moody, no TechDirt:

Techdirt readers know that Sci-Hub is a site offering free online access to a large proportion of all the scientific research papers that have been published -- at the time of writing, it claims to hold 82,605,245 of them. It's an incredible resource, used by millions around the world. Those include students whose institutions can't afford the often pricey journal subscriptions, but also many academics in well-funded universities, who do have institutional access to the papers. (...)

So irrespective of the legal situation, an interesting question is: what effect do Sci-Hub downloads have on article citations? That's precisely what a new preprint, published on arXiv, seeks to answer. (...)

Assuming that those are representative, and that the statistical calculations are correct, the end result is important. It suggests that articles that are downloaded from Sci-Hub are nearly twice as likely to be cited as those that aren't -- a big boost that will doubtless be of great interest to academics, whose careers are greatly affected by how widely they are cited. It seems to confirm that Sci-Hub does indeed help spread knowledge, not just in terms of the free downloads it offers, but also by virtue of leading to more citations for downloaded papers, and thus a wider audience for them.

The Sci-hub Effect: Sci-hub downloads lead to more article citations, por J.C. Correa, H. Laverde-Rojas, F. Marmolejo-Ramos, J. Tejada e Š. Bahník (arXiv):

Citations are often used as a metric of the impact of scientific publications. Here, we examine how the number of downloads from Sci-hub as well as various characteristics of publications and their authors predicts future citations. Using data from 12 leading journals in economics, consumer research, neuroscience, and multidisciplinary research, we found that articles downloaded from Sci-hub were cited 1.72 times more than papers not downloaded from Sci-hub and that the number of downloads from Sci-hub was a robust predictor of future citations. Among other characteristics of publications, the number of figures in a manuscript consistently predicts its future citations. The results suggest that limited access to publications may limit some scientific research from achieving its full impact.

Interrogo-me se não poderá haver outra relação causal - os artigos potencialmente mais interessantes serem simultaneamente os mais pirateados e os mais citados.

"E Tudo o Vento Levou"

A censura imaginária a "E tudo o vento levou" - uma entre o zilião de empresas que alugam e/ou vendem filmes deixou de o ter em catálogo (se querem um filme - ambientado no mesmo tempo e local - que consta que é mesmo quase impossível de arranjar, faria mais sentido falarem de "censura" a propósito de A Canção do Sul, p.ex.).

A censura real a "E tudo o vento levou" - um filme que era para ter entrado no domínio público em 2014 (75 anos após ter sido feito), o que significaria que qualquer pessoa poderia fazer cópias dele, exibi-lo quando e como quisesse, etc [não é que já não se possa...], continua a estar coberto por direitos de autor devido a alterações retroativas da lei dos direitos de autor (e aí nem vale o argumento que prolongar os direitos de autor incentiva os criadores - isso não funciona para obras que já foram feitas).

[Post publicado no Vias de Facto; podem comentar lá]

Snowflakes mandam prender as gêmeas marotas?

ASAE apreende livro “As Gémeas Marotas” na biblioteca dos Olivais (Observador), e tantarem também prendê-las na livraria Ler Devagar.

Aparentemente é uma queixa por violação de direitos de autor (ver aqui para uma história do livro), mas duvido muito que tenham sido os herdeiros de Dick Bruna a apresentar a queixa (até porque a empresa que distribui as obras dele - a ASA - desconhecia a história); palpita-me que terá a ver com as polémicas e pseudo-polémicas que o livro tem causado (além da questão de que até que ponto um autor tem direitos sobre sátiras das suas personagens).

Sobre estas questões, ver também esta entrevista, de 2003, com o Rato Mickey, onde são discutidas questões como a liberdade sexual das personagens de banda desenhada e o estatuto legal (ainda que nos contexto dos EUA) das sátiras; aliás, a entrevista terminou exatamente quando o entrevistador percebeu que mesmo sátiras legais são frequentemente alvo de processos (que custam dinheiro e chatices aos autores, mesmo que no fim sejam absolvidos).

[Post publicado no Vias de Facto; podem comentar lá]

A Elsevier versus o Sci-Hub

Elsevier: "It's illegal to Sci-Hub." Also Elsevier: "We link to Sci-Hub all the time", por Cory Doctorow (Boing Boing):

Yesterday, I wrote about science publishing profiteer Elsevier's legal threats against Citationsy, in which the company claimed that the mere act of linking to Sci-Hub (an illegal open-access portal) was itself illegal.

You'll never guess what happens next.

Elsevier's own journals turn out to be full of links to Sci-Hub.

Estimular a criatividade dos mortos?

Copyright Protectionism, por Alex Tabarrok:

The latest case in point is last week’sextension of copyright in the European Union for design:

Mid-century design classics, such as Charles Eames chairs, Eileen Gray tables and Arco lamps are set to rocket in price, following EU regulations which came into force this week that extend the copyright on furniture from 25 years to 70 years after the death of a designer. (...)

Dead people tend not to be very creative so I suspect that the retroactive extension of copyright will not spur much innovation from Eames. The point, of course, is not to spur creativity but to protect the rents of the handful of people whose past designs turned out to have lasting value.
Retroactive extensions of copyright throw the entire reasoning behind copyright into reverse. 

O apocalipse cultural que não aconteceu

The Creative Apocalypse That Wasn’t, por Steven Johnson (New York Times), via Tyler Cowen:

On July 11, 2000, in one of the more unlikely moments in the history of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Orrin Hatch handed the microphone to Metallica’s drummer, Lars Ulrich, to hear his thoughts on art in the age of digital reproduction. Ulrich’s primary concern was a new online service called Napster, which had debuted a little more than a year before. (...)

But in retrospect, we can also see Ulrich’s appearance as an intellectual milestone of sorts, in that he articulated a critique of the Internet-­era creative economy that became increasingly commonplace over time. ‘‘We typically employ a record producer, recording engineers, programmers, assistants and, occasionally, other musicians,’’ Ulrich told the Senate committee. ‘‘We rent time for months at recording studios, which are owned by small-­business men who have risked their own capital to buy, maintain and constantly upgrade very expensive equipment and facilities. Our record releases are supported by hundreds of record companies’ employees and provide programming for numerous radio and television stations. ... It’s clear, then, that if music is free for downloading, the music industry is not viable. All the jobs I just talked about will be lost, and the diverse voices of the artists will disappear.’’ (...)

The intersection between commerce, technology and culture has long been a place of anxiety and foreboding. Marxist critics in the 1940s denounced the assembly-line approach to filmmaking that Hollywood had pioneered; (...) in the ’90s, critics accused bookstore chains and Walmart of undermining the subtle curations of independent bookshops and record stores.

But starting with Ulrich’s testimony, a new complaint has taken center stage, one that flips those older objections on their heads. The problem with the culture industry is no longer its rapacious pursuit of consumer dollars. The problem with the culture industry is that it’s not profitable enough.(...) In the 15 years since, many artists and commentators have come to believe that Ulrich’s promised apocalypse is now upon us — that the digital economy, in which information not only wants to be free but for all practical purposes is free, ultimately means that ‘‘the diverse voices of the artists will disappear,’’ because musicians and writers and filmmakers can no longer make a living. (...)

The trouble with this argument is that it has been based largely on anecdote, on depressing stories about moderately successful bands that are still sharing an apartment or filmmakers who can’t get their pictures made because they refuse to pander to a teenage sensibility. (...)

What do these data sets have to tell us about musicians in particular? According to the O.E.S., in 1999 there were nearly 53,000 Americans who considered their primary occupation to be that of a musician, a music director or a composer; in 2014, more than 60,000 people were employed writing, singing or playing music. That’s a rise of 15 percent, compared with overall job-­market growth during that period of about 6 percent. The number of self-­employed musicians grew at an even faster rate: There were 45 percent more independent musicians in 2014 than in 2001. (Self-­employed writers, by contrast, grew by 20 percent over that period.)

Of course, Baudelaire would have filed his tax forms as self-­employed, too; that doesn’t mean he wasn’t also destitute. Could the surge in musicians be accompanied by a parallel expansion in the number of broke musicians? The income data suggests that this just isn’t true. According to the O.E.S., songwriters and music directors saw their average income rise by nearly 60 percent since 1999. The census version of the story, which includes self-­employed musicians, is less stellar: In 2012, musical groups and artists reported only 25 percent more in revenue than they did in 2002, which is basically treading water when you factor in inflation. And yet collectively, the figures seem to suggest that music, the creative field that has been most threatened by technological change, has become more
profitable in the post-­Napster era — not for the music industry, of course, but for musicians themselves. Somehow the turbulence of the last 15 years seems to have created an economy in which more people than ever are writing and performing songs for a living.

Patentes inúteis?

Unproductive patents, por Charlotte Boyer (Adam Smith Institute):

Patents are a state-granted property rights, designed to promote innovation and the transfer of knowledge. They grant the holder a time-limited, exclusive right to make, use and sell the patented work, in exchange for the public disclosure of the invention. This, so the theory goes, allows creators to utilise and commercially exploit their invention, whilst disclosing its technical details allows for the effective public dissemination of knowledge.

However, complaints that the patent system is broken and fails to deliver are common. (...)

There are plenty of ways we can tinker with the patent system to make it more robust and less expensive. However, they all assume that patents do actually foster innovation, and are societally beneficial tool.

A number argue that even on a theoretical level this is false; the control rights a patent grant actually hamper innovation instead of promoting it. Patents create an artificial monopoly, which results, as with other monopolies, in higher prices, the misallocation of resources, and welfare loss. Economists Boldrin and Levine advocate the abolition of patents entirely on grounds the that there is no empirical evidence that they increase innovation and productivity, and in fact have negative effects on innovation and growth.

A new paper by Laboratoire d’Economie Appliquee de Grenoble, authored by Brueggemann, Crosetto, Meub and Bizer backs this claim, by offering experimental evidence that patents harm follow-on innovation.

"Pirataria" prejudica indústria cinematográfica?

Se calhar não:

Um economista analisou os downloads ilegais e as receitas de 150 blockbusters lançados no período de sete anos e concluiu que a pirataria não é prejudicial a Hollywood.

Koleman Strumpf é o autor de um estudo que promete ser polémico. O economista afirma que a pirataria não prejudica os interesses do cinema. «Não há evidências nos meus dados empíricos que mostrem que a partilha de ficheiros tenha um impacto significativo nas receitas dos cinemas», explica Strumpf. A partilha de ficheiros pirata reduziu as receitas de primeiro mês dos filmes em 200 milhões de dólares, entre 2003 e 2009. Este valor corresponde a menos de 1% do que os filmes na realidade faturaram, explica o BGR [Exame Informática]

.

Aqui pode-se aceder a uma versão preliminar em PDF do estudo - Using Markets to Measure the Impact of File Sharing on Movie Revenues; o autor aliás tem também um estudo sobre o assunto parecido - The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales: An Empirical Analysis, publicado em 2007.

Uma nota final - parece-me que o ordenado do autor é pago por um donativo da família Koch à Universidade do Kansas, ou coisa parecida (mais provavelmente, pelos rendimentos do donativo, feito anos antes de ele ser contratado); atendendo ao historial de envolvimento dos irmãos Koch em ativismo político ultra-liberal, admito que isso possa levantar algumas dúvidas sobre a credibilidade do estudo; no entanto, como o autor fundamenta a sua posição com base em dados e cálculos que imagino sejam facilmente replicáveis, acho que se não aparecer ninguém a dizer que os cálculos estão errados poderemos assumir que estão certos (e de qualquer maneira nem sei qual a posição dos irmãos Koch sobre a propriedade intelectual).

Prometeu robou o fogo dos deuses?

Acerca disso, um comentário de um dos leitores de Brad DeLong:

Actually, it would seem to qualify as technology theft unless Stickman independently developed a practical appliation of said fire.

Prémio póstumo para Aaron Swartz

A American Library Association atribuiu o James Madison Award a Aaron Swartz (a primeira pessoa a receber postumamente o prémio):

About the James Madison Award The award named for President James Madison was established in 1986 and is presented annually on the anniversary of his birth to honor individuals or groups who have championed, protected and promoted public access to government information and the public’s right to know at the national level.

 2013 Winner(s)

Aaron Swartz

Before his untimely death in January, Swartz was an outspoken advocate for public participation in government and unrestricted access to peer-reviewed scholarly articles. Swartz was a co-founder of Demand Progress, an advocacy group that organizes people to take action on civil liberties and government reform issues. Swartz was also a leader in the national campaign to prevent the passing of the Stop Online Piracy Act, a bill that would have diminished critical online legal protections.

Pirate Bay muda-se para a Coreia do Norte?

A organização assim o afirma, mas será verdade ou uma brincadeira?

As consequências políticas dos "paywalls" académicos

The political consequences of academic paywalls, por Sarah Kendzior (Al-Jazeera):

The suicide of Aaron Swartz, the activist committed to making scholarly research accessible to everyone, has renewed debate about the ethics of academic publishing. Under the current system, academic research is housed in scholarly databases, which charge as much as $50 per article to those without a university affiliation.

The only people who profit from this system are academic publishers. Scholars receive no money from the sale of their articles, and are marginalized by a public who cannot afford to read their work. Ordinary people are denied access to information and prohibited from engaging in scholarly debate.

Academic paywalls are often presented as a moral or financial issue. How can one justify profiting off unpaid labour while denying the public access to research frequently funded through taxpayer dollars? But paywalls also have broader political consequences. Whether or not an article is accessible affects more than just the author or reader. It affects anyone who could potentially benefit from scholarly insight, information or expertise – that is, everyone.

The impact of the paywall is most significant in places where censorship and propaganda reign. When information is power, the paywall privileges the powerful. Dictatorships are the paywall’s unwitting beneficiary. (...)

In 2006, I wrote an article proving that the government of Uzbekistan had fabricated a terrorist group in order to justify shooting hundreds of Uzbek civilians gathered at a protest in the city of Andijon. Like all peer-reviewed academic articles, “Inventing Akromiya: The Role of Uzbek Propagandists in the Andijon Massacre” was published in a journal and sequestered from public view. In 2008, I published the article on http://www.academia.edu/, a website where scholars can upload their works as pdfs on individual homepages. This had consequences beyond what I had anticipated. (...)

Over the next few years, many Uzbeks linked to the “Akromiya” controversy began petitioning for political asylum. Because they had been labeled Islamic terrorists by the Uzbek government, they faced an uphill battle in the Western legal system. My academic article became a piece of evidence in many of these asylum cases, including this one from the United Nations Refugee Agency, which cites the copy available at academia.edu. Because I made my work open, it helped keep innocent people from being deported to a country where they would be jailed or killed. (...)

After the suicide of Aaron Swartz, many academics published their papers online and linked to them on Twitter under the hashtag #pdftribute. They did this to honour Swartz’s fight to make information available to more than the academic elite. Critics have argued that this action is essentially meaningless, as it fails to address the career incentive of the professoriate, whose ability to advance professionally rests on their willingness to publish in journals inaccessible to the public.


This is a valid point – for Western academics. For the rest of the world, it is irrelevant. When an activist needs information about the political conditions of her country, she should be able to read it. When a lawyer needs ammunition against a corrupt regime, she should be able to find it. When a journalist is struggling to cover a foreign conflict, she should have access to research on that country.

One could argue that non-academics sources suffice, but that is not necessarily the case. The specialisation that makes academic work seem obscure or boring to a general audience is also what makes it uniquely valuable. Academics cover topics in depth that few cover at all. Unfortunately, their expertise is shielded from the people who need it most.

Sobre isso, ver também este artigo de George Moonbiot, "Academic publishers make Murdoch look like a socialist", no Comment is Free / The Guardian.

O caso Aaron Swartz

[Via Esquerda Republicana]

Rounded Corners

Robots com excesso de zelo

No mês passado, a transmissão do Hugo Awards (uma cerimónia de prémios para as melhores obras de fantasia e ficção científica) foi interrompida - quando cenas das séries premiadas começaram a ser transmitidas, a transmissão (via internet, creio) foi automaticamente suspensa; os robots de protecção de copyright detectarem que as seríes estavam a ser transmitidas e activaram automaticamente um mecanismo para suspender a transmissão (apesar das cenas a transmitir terem sido fornecidas pelos estúdios de propósito para a cerimónia).

O que se pode dizer é que o argumento geral ("robot que leva a suas instruções à letra, ao ponto de até se revoltar contra o seu criador para assegurar o cumprimento das regras") talvez não fosse descabido para receber um dos prémios.

Quem herda as nossas músicas no iTunes (II)?

Bruce Willis to fight Apple over rights to music collection after his death (The Sun):

BRUCE Willis is preparing to take Apple to court over who owns his huge digital music collection after he dies.

The Die Hard actor, 57, wants to leave the haul to his daughters Rumer, Scout and Tallulah.

But under iTunes' current terms and conditions, customers essentially only 'borrow' tracks rather than owning them outright.

So any music library amassed like that would be worthless when the owner dies.

Willis has asked advisers to set up a trust that holds his downloads, which reportedly include classics from the Beatles to Led Zeppelin, to get around this rule.

The action star is also backing legal moves to increase the rights of downloaders.

Apple can freeze users’ accounts if they suspect them of sharing tunes with others.

Chris Walton, an estate specialist at Irwin Mitchell, told a newspaper: “Lots of people will be surprised on learning all those tracks and books they have bought over the years don’t actually belong to them.

“It’s only natural you would want to pass them on to a loved one.”

Quem herda as nossas músicas no iTunes?

Who Owns Your iTunes Library When You Die?, por Doug Mataconis:

If your answer is that your estate will, you have guessed incorrectly:

Many of us will accumulate vast libraries of digital books and music over the course of our lifetimes. But when we die, our collections of words and music may expire with us.

Someone who owned 10,000 hardcover books and the same number of vinyl records could bequeath them to descendants, but legal experts say passing on iTunes and Kindle libraries would be much more complicated.

Apple (US:AAPL) and Amazon.com (US:AMZN) grant “nontransferable” rights to use content, so if you buy the complete works of the Beatles on iTunes, you cannot give the “White Album” to your son and “Abbey Road” to your daughter.

There is apparently some discussion by estate lawyers to try to get around this problem by creating legal trusts that would be the owner of the online content, but I can’t see how that’s going to work. If, under the terms of your agreement with Amazon and Apple, the digital files are non-transferable, then I don’t see how an individual could transfer their digital content to the trust to begin with. From the perspective of Amazon and Apple, any agreement that tried to do that would be a legal nullity, and based on their respective terms of service, they would be right.


In reality, this is just another effect of the way that we treat copyrights and digital content under the law here in the United States. Technically, you’ve never actually owned any of the musical content on any of the media you’ve purchased, whether it’s a vinyl record, a compact disc, or a digital file. Before the digital era, though, you did own the physical medium on which the content was recorded. So, while you didn’t have the legal right to make copies of, say,that Led Zepplin album you bought in the 70′s, you did have the right to sell the physical record itself. The same rules applied to cassettes, 8-track tapes, and compact discs. Now, though, there is no physical medium to speak of that you can sell to a Used Records store, there’s just the digital content and the “no copying” rule still applies. Similarly, since a copyright holder has the right to set the terms of whatever license they grant to you when you purchase that digital file, they can set terms that say that what they are really selling you is the non-transferable right to possess a copy of the digital music file, not a property right in the music file itself. That’s why you cannot legally transfer it to your heirs when you die, because you never owned it to begin with.

Obviously, this is not a practical situation for the modern era. At some point, people are going to start realizing that they have less rights to their music than they used to and people will call for the laws to be changed. Of course, we’ve heard calls to change these laws many times in the past and they’ve mostly gone nowhere because the media companies and copyright holders have far more clout in Congress than ordinary Americans do and, for most people, this is an off-the-radar issue. So, the prospect for change isn’t very good unfortunate.

Steve Wozniak contra a "guerra das patentes"

Co-fundador da Apple declara guerra à guerra das patentes (Público):

"Não acredito que a decisão da Califórnia se mantenha”, disse Steve Wozniak, em declarações ao site da Bloomberg, referindo-se ao veredicto de um tribunal de San José, no estado norte-americano da Califórnia, que obrigou a Samsung a pagar mais de mil milhões de dólares à Apple por violação de patentes. A empresa sul-coreana anunciou que iria apresentar recurso.

Para além de dizer que não acredita numa vitória final da Apple contra a Samsung, Steve Wozniak faz questão de sublinhar que não concorda com os argumentos da empresa que ele próprio ajudou a fundar, nem com a decisão do tribunal da Califórnia: “São coisas insignificantes, nem sequer considero que sejam inovações.”

A posição de Wozniak não podia estar mais distante da vontade expressa por Steve Jobs na sua biografia oficial. Numa das conversas com o autor do livro, Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs afirmou que estava disposto a declarar “uma guerra termonuclear” contra a Google por causa do sistema operativo Android.

Steve Jobs: Good artists copy great artists steal

Entrevista do Rato Mickey à Reason

Este artigo é capaz de continuar actual embora já seja velhinho - de 2003, na sequência da sentença[pdf] do Supremo Tribunal dos EUA que considerou válida a "Lei Sonny Bono", que prolongou por mais algumas décadas os direitos de propriedade intelectual que estavam para cair no domínio público

A respeito dessa decisão, o Rato Mickey (que viu a sua clausula de exclusividade com a Disney prolongada por mais 20 anos) foi entrevistado pela revista Reason:

Telling his keepers that he was going on an "ice run for the boss," the mouse made his way to a dive bar a few miles outside Disneyland, where he gave reason an exclusive interview.

Q: How does it feel to have your sentence extended by two decades?

A: How do you think it feels? For almost 70 years, I've only been allowed to do what the Disney people say I can do. Sometimes someone comes up with a new idea, and I think to myself, "Great! Here's a chance to stretch myself!" But of course they won't let me leave the reservation. If I do, they send out their lawyers to bring me home.

In 1971, for instance, Dan O'Neill got me a part in something called Air Pirates Funnies. It was great: I got to have sex, I got to use drugs, I got to explore the whole underground comix scene. It was liberating.

Well, of course Disney complained. They said—this is a direct quote—that O'Neill's parody was tarnishing my "image of innocent delight." After two issues of the comic book, they issued a summons and took us all to court for trademark violation and copyright infringement.

Q: And they never published another issue?

A: Of course not.

I don't think you realize how tight the clamps on me are. If I so much as flicker on a TV screen in the background of a documentary, Disney can tell the filmmakers, "Either scramble that image or pay us for permission to use it." And the courts will allow it.

Q: Some might say that it's perfectly legitimate for Disney to own you—not just now, but in perpetuity. After all, they created you.

A: Created me? [An enormous cartoon spit-take follows.]

Did you like that? It's my Daffy Duck imitation.

Q: Very nice. I didn't know you were familiar with the Warner Brothers characters.

A: Poor bastards. They're gonna be locked up even longer than I am. I guess if Chuck Jones were still around to direct their cartoons, they might not mind it on their plantation. Instead, they have to do those stupid commercials with Michael Jordan.

Anyway. Yeah, Walt Disney created me, but he didn't create me out of nothing. Look at my skin. Look at my face. Look at this glove. I'm straight out of the minstrel show tradition—which makes this whole "ownership" business stick in my craw even more.

I'm also Buster Keaton.

Q: Sorry?

A: My first cartoon short, Steamboat Willie, was a direct parody of Keaton's movie Steamboat Bill, Jr. On the very first page of the script, it says, "Orchestra starts playing opening verses of Steamboat Bill." I remember what Eldred's lawyer Lawrence Lessig said when he read that: "Try doing a cartoon take-off of one of Disney, Inc.'s latest films with an opening that copies the music."

So yeah, they created me. But they don't want to let other people build on me when they make their own creations, the way they did when I was born. And now I'm locked up for another stinking 20 years! Do you have any idea what it's like to have to greet kids at Disneyland every single day, always smiling, never slipping off for a cigarette?

Q: So what comes next?

A: If the courts won't help us, we can always go back to Congress and try to repeal the Bono Act outright. Doesn't seem likely to happen, but I suppose we should try it.

Beyond that, all I can think of is civil disobedience. Disney says I'm its property, and that any unauthorized use of me is infringement, theft, plagiarism. I say, Don't mourn, plagiarize! Work me into every creative act that you can, and damn the legal consequences! You know, like you're doing right now.

Q: Come again?

A: This interview. It's an unauthorized use of Mickey Mouse, a copyrighted character owned by the Disney Corporation.

Q: This is a parody, Mickey. It's protected by the Fair Use doctrine.

A: So was Air Pirates Funnies, and they still dragged them into court. And it's only gotten worse since then. It's so easy to create and distribute things digitally these days, so the big entertainment combines are in a panic, sending out cease-and-desist letters left and right. Doesn't matter if it's an open-and-shut case of Fair Use—the cost of a court case is disincentive enough.

Q: Hey. This isn't really Mickey Mouse, people. His name is—uh, I think it's Bruce.

A: Sometimes they make a threat, and sometimes they let something slide. You never know what they're gonna go after. But don't let that stop you! Civil disobedience requires courage.

Q: He's not even a mouse. He's some sort of marsupial.

A: [Sighs.] You're a sellout, Walker.

Q: I've got responsibilities, Mick—um, Bruce.

A: God, you disgust me. I'm looking at another 20 years on the inside, and you can't throw one little pebble at the company that's keeping me out of the public domain?

At this point, three Disney bounty hunters entered the bar and seized Mickey. An intense struggle reportedly ensued, but our correspondent missed it, opting instead to crawl out the men's room window.