Congress takes Grimm fairy tales out of the public domain

Congress has removed Sleeping Beauty and her fellow damsels in distress from the public domain. Photo courtesy of caseywest’s photostream on Flickr.com.On the heels of the Supreme Court’s decision in Golan v. Holder Congress removed the Grimm Brothers fairytales from public domain. Citing incentives to new, young artists planning on writing classics that will be read for centuries, Speaker of the House John Boehner said, “Now they know their work won’t be bastardized whenever a studio can’t think of an idea for a summer blockbuster.”

The move was mostly about saving the world from two and a half hours of Kristen Stewart biting her lower lip in “Snow White and the Huntsman.” President Obama’s signing statement reads, “We’ve all dodged a bullet with this one. Unlike bin Laden, right guys?!” When asked for other methods the government might use to protect the public from future Kristen Stewart movies, Obama was circumspect. “I think we’ll probably use the Takings Clause at some point. No one could argue that it wouldn’t be ‘public use,’” he said, “And if Stewart ever makes an un-credited cameo, I can always tap some emergency Commander-in-Chief powers.”

Lawmakers hope the change will spur creativity in Hollywood. “We might finally get to see something new at the box office,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. “Since 1998 we’ve seen ‘Ever After,’ ‘Ella Enchanted,’ ‘The Prince and Me,’ ‘Cinderella Story,’ and ‘Happily N’Ever After,’ and that’s only ‘Cinderella’ movies.”

Senate Majority leader Harry Reid had a different take: “My main goal was to get ‘Once Upon A Time’ off the air. Have you seen that thing? Good God. It’s a threat to national security.” Asked if the Senate was also concerned about NBC’s “Grimm,” Reid replied “NBC?”

Relativity Media, who this weekend released “Mirror, Mirror,” was excited by the news. “It gives us something to blame for those anemic weekend box office numbers,” said an executive who asked to remain nameless out of fear of losing his job for stating the obvious. He continued, “We got crushed by ‘Hunger Games,’ and we had to pay Julia Roberts. ‘Mirror’ is a total disaster, but now I can convince my boss it wasn’t my fault.”

Asked if the new rule would require Disney to pay royalties, Nancy Pelosi laughed. “Of course not,” she said, “we’ll create an animation exception or something. Do you have any idea how much those guys donate to our campaigns?”

It turns out the Grimm’s last living relative, who now stands to make exactly seven bajillion dollars in royalties, is Bastian Schweinsteiger. Schweinsteiger couldn’t be reached for comment, since he is too busy playing fantastic central midfield for the German national soccer team. Teammate Lukas Podolski said of the pig-climber, “I honestly don’t think he’ll notice the money. He lives on the top bunk of a cot with Phillip Lahm on the bottom. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen Bastian do anything except make bone-crushing tackles and send beautiful through-balls.”

A little-known provision of the law is that Congress must “trade” one copyright for another. Thus, whenever Congress takes a copyright out of the public domain to give it back to the heir of the original holder, it must take another copyright from an original holder and put it in the public domain.

The “trade” copyright for the Grimm fairytales was “Star Wars.” Boehner said, “We would have liked to get to it earlier, but sometimes we pay the price of expediency in order to preserve individual rights. In a case like this, sure, everyone can get on board with getting ‘Star Wars’ as far away from George Lucas as possible, but this is the exception, not the rule.” As he walked away, Boehner could be heard muttering, “[inaudible]-ing Jar-JarBinks… Jar-Jar Binks.”

Lucas issued a statement saying, “Oota goota, Solo?” Attached was a beautifully rendered Blu-ray of an animated Jar-Jar defeating Darth Vader in a light saber battle. The video was punctuated by a never-ending loop of James Earl Jones screaming, “Nooooo!”

President Obama said, “While we all regret that we could not prevent ‘The Phantom Menace,’ we look today to the battles we have won: the world will be spared from wooden-dialogue versions of Episodes 7, 8, and 9. We will be able to remaster and release theatrical cuts of the original trilogy on DVD and Blu-ray. Perhaps most of all, talented artists are now free to produce Jedi inspired fiction of all kinds without Lucas standing over their shoulders and ruining their work.”

Other observers were less enthusiastic about sending “Star Wars” to the public domain. “I’m pretty sure FX will just play all six movies on a loop in a kind of eternal marathon,” said MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow. “I’m going to miss ‘Justified,’ ‘Wilfred,’ and ‘Louie.’”