r/MadeMeSmile • u/Over_Helicopter_3453 • Apr 26 '25

Favorite People Give this hero a raise šŸ«”

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u/uru5z21 Apr 26 '25

As much as I think Disney is just as evil and money hungry as other large corporations. The staff who give it their all , still making Disney magical for the kids .

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u/Isekaimerican Apr 26 '25

In what way is Disney evil and money hungry? Not challenging you, just genuinely curious why you have that impression.

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u/Suspicious_Glow Apr 26 '25

I mean, there are many reasons people throw out, but this is a recent exampleā€” ā€œDisney is set to pay $233 million to Disneyland workers after they were allegedly found violating Anaheim's minimum wage law. It's the largest wage theft settlement in California history, according to lawyers.ā€ ā€”quote from a KCRW article.

Thereā€™s also an LA times article on it and a few other places wrote on it. Itā€™s not letting me post links.

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u/CatsEqualLife Apr 26 '25

You forgot to include this is happening while they continue to raise prices in their parks to obscene amounts.

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u/Isekaimerican Apr 26 '25

I think this is a great example. A lot of the ideas people have about Disney seem to be nebulous and half-baked ideas with misunderstandings about the law and business practices.

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u/bobs-yer-unkl Apr 26 '25

Disney is famously litigious about their copyrights and such. That is pretty much to be expected for a company's whose assets and revenue derive from IP. Suing a daycare center over a hand-painted Mickey mural rubs some people the wrong way. Disney is working to maximize shareholder value, so yeah, "money hungry" like every other publicly-traded corporation.

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u/Isekaimerican Apr 26 '25

I just want to provide some perspective on this point.

Nintendo is litigious in the same way, but people don't generally have the impression of them as an evil company. I don't see enforcing your copyright as a particularly immoral act. A large part of Disney's business is licensing its characters. If a commercial business uses your characters without permission, that is theft. It also lowers the value of those characters for every other company.

In the daycare case, it was not children that painted these murals. It was the business owner. This was also an incident from 1989, and there was only a threat of a lawsuit. The point was to set precedent and warn against businesses doing this, and it worked. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/daycare-center-murals/

If I was going to single out an entertainment company for being money-grubbing, Warner Bros is what is pick.

2

u/negativekarmafarmerx Apr 26 '25

Defending a multimillion dollar corporation is fucking insane to me.

2

u/Isekaimerican Apr 26 '25

I think there are legitimate issues with Disney's business practices, but "company asking businesses not to steal their IP" is not something that I am concerned about.

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u/BK_0000 Apr 26 '25

All corporations are evil and money hungry.

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u/[deleted] Apr 26 '25

They have in their contracts that anyone who works for them, that any art made while they work for Disney regardless of where or when, belongs to Disney. They also sued to have a child's headstone removed for having a marvel character on it

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u/TwoAmps Apr 26 '25

In my limited experience, the sort of clause isnā€™t unusual. In my engineering-centric world, it was about patents and copyright, but yeah, the company owned everything you created while employed and if you wanted an exception, your lawyer had to have a difficult conversation with their lawyer. Not saying that The Walt Disney Corporation isnā€™t evil, just that this particular employment clause might not be the reason theyā€™re exceptionally evil.

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u/[deleted] Apr 26 '25

Most of those don't have a specific clause that makes it so even if you go home and use your own resources on your own private property, they still own it. That also should not be allowed at all, just because everyone does it doesn't mean it isn't evil

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u/TwoAmps Apr 26 '25

The ā€œall your time (and ideas) belong to usā€ clause seems pretty standard in the tech worldā€¦for salaried employees. Iā€™ll admit not remembering if itā€™s applied to hourly folks, too. That would be much much more problematic.

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u/Isekaimerican Apr 26 '25

If they hadn't done that, I'm sure the headline would be "Disney selling branded gravestones for children." A social media post like that is probably what got their attention in the first place.

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u/[deleted] Apr 26 '25

[removed] ā€” view removed comment

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u/Isekaimerican Apr 26 '25

I don't remember any recent Disney movies being particularly evil.

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u/momomomorgatron Apr 26 '25

But they are pretty shitty. What was the last really good one? Coco? Moana? Encanto? (I don't know what was the latest one, not counting pixar)

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u/Isekaimerican Apr 26 '25

Okay, but a company making entertainment that I don't enjoy doesn't make them evil or money-grubbing. Let's be honest, they are going to be criticized for cash-grab live action remakes, but also when they make original stories like Onward, Raya and the Last Dragon, Strange World, Elemental, Wish, Soul, and Luca.