Why am I posting at 3:00 a.m.? Well, for one, if you're ever tempted to watch Jumanji with a five-year-old, you might soon end up with a child who wails your name in the middle of the night because the child has had a nightmare about a) wild animals coming out of his closet, or b) dice that roll and never let him stop playing the game!
That's two nights ago we watched the movie, and two nights of nachtmares. Yes, if you're ever tempted to watch that exciting, family-oriented, Robin Williams-filled movie with a young child, you might want to reconsider. Especially since it also seems to cause Jackson to wake up at three ay-em with a painfully dead arm or leg that needs to be massaged back into circulation while he whimpers and you are so tired you want to kill yourself. Unless this is some new, unexpected developmental milestone that I didn't see in the books?
So, it's the middle of the night and I'm wide awake, and what do I do when I'm wide awake in the middle of the night? Think about Dutch lawyers, of course!
Herewith, the entire correspondance between me and a Dutch lawyer, presented in chronologic-O-vision, with a new exciting ending, so you might want to go get yourself a refreshing beverage before you settle in for the rest of this monument to Internet nonsense.
Ready?
(If you're just joining us, you might want to quickly peruse part the first (a.k.a. the original, though now edited, post, and part the second, which will explain how we got to where we are.)
E-mail #1, sent March 6, 2007:
Dear Madam,I am writing to you in my capacity as the attorney of Mercis B.V., established in Amsterdam, and Mr. Dick Bruna, domiciled in Utrecht, the Netherlands.
Dick Bruna is the maker of the Miffy (in Dutch "Nijntje") figure, among other characters. Dick Bruna's drawings are protected by copyright. Dick Bruna has transferred his copyrights to Mercis B.V. For further information about Mercis B.V. and the works of Dick Bruna, please visit
www.mercis.com and www.nijntje.nl or www.miffy.com . It is unlawful to use those rights without the permission of the copyright proprietor. Mercis B.V., however, has established that without its permission a figure of Dick Bruna is exposed at the following website; http://www.fussy.org/2002_10_01_archive.html ( "This is a picture of my innermost deepest most inner soul")
The Miffy-figure distributed among the general public by means of the above URL is a reproduction and/or modification of protected work of Dick Bruna. Thus infringement is committed of Mercis B.V’s copyrights.
Against that background I kindly ask you to remove all Miffy related content from the concerned website before 8 March next.
We look forward to your affirmative response.
Sincerely,
A Dutch lawyer
I ignored e-mail #1.
So then on March 12, 2007 I received e-mail #2:
Dear Sir, Madam,Please note the correspondence below. [The first e-mail was re-sent in the second.]
I request you to go in to the matter in that order that the infringing content will be removed before Wednesday 14 March next.
In case you need any other information from me in order to do so, please do not hesitate to contact me.Kind regards,
A Dutch lawyer
To which I immediately replied:
Would it satisfy you if I took down the Miffy image? I'm not sure how writing my thoughts about Miffy on a personal web site is an infringement.Eden
This response caused me to receive, on March 13, 2007, e-mail #3:
Dear Mrs. Kennedy,Thank you for your reply.
You are indeed allowed to write your thoughts about Miffy as long as you do not use the name Miffy in a way that is detrimental to the distinctive character or the repute of Mercis B.V.'s trade mark. The current text on your website is acceptable.However, after just visiting the website concerned, I have seen that the former Miffy picture has been replaced with another picture of Miffy. This picture is infringing too, since this picture is a modification of protected work of Dick Bruna. I kindly ask you to remove all Miffy related illustrations from the concerned website before 14 March next.
Kind regards,
A Dutch lawyer
To which I immediately, dick-suckingly replied:
Okay, then, let me ask you this: is there any acceptable version of Miffy or small portion of an image of Miffy that Dick Bruna Enterprises would give me permission to use on this post? Since it's so far back in my archives I don't think many people see it anyway, but I would very much like to maintain some visual representation of Miffy, if possible, to show anyone who reads my site and who doesn't know who she is how unbelievably adorable she is.Thank you!
This was mulled over/politely ignored/shelved while my Dutch lawyer took a refreshing holiday to Greece for ten days.
Then, on March 28, 2007, I got e-mail #4:
Dear Ms. Kennedy,Reference is made to our former correspondence. Regrettably, there still is an infringing Miffy picture on the website in question. I kindly request you to remove the infringing content before Friday 30 March next.
Kind regards,
A Dutch lawyer
To which I immediately, piss-offedly replied:
Please direct me to a non-infringing image of Miffy that I would be allowed to use on my web site. Or is no one allowed to post a picture of Miffy anywhere on the Internet? Because there are a ton of people out there doing it. Are you asking them all to take down their images?Eden
And because I was starting to see that this Dutch lawyer of mine was going to keep setting deadlines until I either went mad or hired a lawyer or my own -- and let's face it, my husband was in the background going, "That's all we need right now, to have a bunch of Dutch lawyers sue us because you won't take a picture of a goddamn rabbit off your site" -- I fired off this addendum to my previous e-mail the following day:
And just to clarify, the Miffy picture you're seeing on my site right now was drawn by me and my son and is not a stolen or modified work of Dick Bruna's.
And so you might well understand that I was delighted to receive this in the mail today, which I lovingly and infringingly reproduce for you here:
So that's it, I'm done. It's now 4:03 a.m. and I'm going to rewrite the original post and take down the image, because I'm tired and this whole thing is fucking ridiculous.