RE: Pee-wee's Playhouse Ended Badly
They generally try to ban the bigger people first. So, I guess you are still swimming under the radar of the big white sun. Not the big white Justin The Whale of a Tale.
Pee Wee Herman
So, the people that owned the rights to Pee Wee decided to forbid their intellectual property to be licensed out to shows, movies, etc, during the 1990's, or was it like ordered by a judge? I hate copyright and if I was older, growing up in the 1990's, I would have been tempted to be Weird Al or to make videos as Pee Wee. I would try to get banned in real life in contrast with getting banned by Justin Sun.
Johnny Depp
Why would they want to have Jack Sparrow play Pee Wee as opposed to Paul Reuben? Did Paul die or would Jack do a better job at it or what? I would love to see either one. That video above is kind of funny. I like that the globe said he could do two things at once. I use a laptop because I can multitask better than if I was using an iPad.
Moved to the Hive platform.
Private vs Public:
But since when does a person's private life relate to the public aspect, to the character itself within the aspect of whether or not something should be or is moral or not moral?
Drawing Lines
My argument would be where one might draw the line, either legally or morally, moral clause or not, I wonder who is perfect. In other words, I see it as hypocrisy for what they did to Charlie Sheen for example, kicking him off his own show.
Specifically
If Paul Reuben broke a contract in a specific way as opposed to something perhaps too vague in the wording in the contract itself, if Paul knew about it before he broke the contract, then I would understand. If Paul did retire the character at that time, then I guess that was his decision that he was free to make. He did make a few cameos many years later like as we saw in that video you shared.
Compartmentalization
I would separate the character and the actor to say that one does not affect the other. From my perspective, if I like Michael Jackson music for example, then I don't care if Jacko the Wacko did have sex with children. Well, I assume and I want to believe MJ did not. But even if he did, I would still like his music. Same thing in regards Michael Jordan, Kobe, Tiger Woods, Charlie Sheen, the Trail Jail Blazers, etc. To me, a character is a character. In other words, a character is not the actor that plays the actor outside of the actual performance in the actual movie, show, etc.
Normality
But I know some people do conflate actors with the characters they play and off-screen matters do affect public perception of the characters. For some people, possibly most people, that is how things are, that is how people see things. Many people can in fact conflate things. But I am just saying the two should be separated and not combined. Is Paul Reuben a weirdo? Maybe. But if he wasn't, then would his Pee Wee Herman character really work? Maybe not. We as humans have weaknesses and addictions. But we all got secrets. But celebrities live in the limelight and people can see the skeletons in their closets. Of course, its bad to be bad. But people are bad. We are all bad. So, yeah, there are consequences for action. If you do bad, you should be appropriately punished, disciplined. I believe in justice.
But Freedom
So, if you have to punish Paul Reuben, then don't also punish Pee Wee Herman as a character, is my argument. In other words, don't conflate and combine and correlate and connect and condemn both as the two should be independent of each other. Don't throw out the baby with the bath water. Pee Wee is that baby.
Independent
So, I would let people use that Pee Wee character. Well, I mean, specifically, that I would not try to stop people because of Fair Use. So, I would go to court and argue for Fair Use. Weird Al would call up the artists to ask for permission to make parodies of their songs. But even Weird Al has said that he didn't have to ask for permission. He could have just done it but did it anyway.
Private Property
I believe in private property rights. So, if you steal and use my car, I want to call that theft. A car or a house is physical, tangible, in real life. However, things on the Internet, and especially intellectual property, patents, trademarks, copyrights, etc, are not physical. They do not exist outside of your brain. It is an idea. But it is neither here nor there. Copyrighting an idea is in fact a slippery slope towards copyrighting our own thoughts via brain phones. Copyright has been abused and is extremely up to interpretation. For example, Walt Disney stole cartoon characters from his partner and went on to copyright it. So, it becomes dangerous as rich people can try to copyright everything. For example, there was a rumor that the YouTube channel called REACT were trying to copyright or somehow forbid other people from putting the word "REACT" in video titles. I can talk all day about this. Copyright is hypothetically cool but practically dangerous.
Moved to the Hive platform.