Chris and copyright

“	...anyone using my characters and all Without My Consent are Criminals, and such people should be reported to the Police immediately.	”
Chris, CWCipedia's Copyright page

Like with many things, Christian Weston Chandler has a very obscure idea of what copyright entails. He believes that all copyrighting something involves is [putting] a little C-In-A-Circle and [his] John Hancock.

Chris doesn't even know what a copyright is, legally speaking. He can't copyright Sonichu, but he could trademark Sonichu. He could copyright individual works using Sonichu, in theory, but given his characters' illustrious pedigree, he might have a hard time of it. Too bad he can't do research. Or use Google.

Sonichu as a copyrightable work

In Chris's mind, it's perfectly reasonable to take two very popular fictitious characters and mash them both together in a failtastic rainbow of incestous electric rodents. This means you've created a completely new thing, and therefore are entitled to the rights of said "Original Characters" regardless of how crappy, unoriginal and disgusting they may be.

Here in real life, however, any work that uses previously copyrighted work as a basis is a derivative work; this means that it is not copyrighted by the creator, and instead the creator must acquire an explicit permission from the copyright holders of the other works. There are very specific exceptions to this rule. One way to avoid this is to simply not use too much of the previous work's material to begin with: complete works or significant portions of them are copyrightable, but you can steal general vague ideas as much as you want (and Chris is stealing way too much to qualify for this). Another would be Fair Use: use the copyrighted work to provide criticism, journalistic or educational information, or parody (of which more later). In short, Chris has no excuse.

Moreover, any attempt to argue that Sonichu is not a derivative work would be entirely self-demolishing. Sonichu is explicitly stated to be a fusion of two existing characters, both by Chris as its creator and in the comic story itself. Chris has worked the fact that the two original characters were merged into Sonichu's backstory and the Sonichuverse in general. His process of incorporating copyrighted properties into his works is both unabashed and deep-rooted. He can't talk his way out of this.

Apparently, the idea of Sonichu being a copyrightable work stems way back into the character's creation. According to Chris's "autobiography", when Chris ended up backed into a corner as to what to put onto a CD cover, he decided to fuse Sonic and Pikachu, whom he couldn't use because of they were copyrighted characters, and turn them into Sonichu. When his teacher accepted the portmanteau character, Chris automatically assumed that he was free to create his multimedia empire from them. In call with Kacey's father, he also says his father said he had been in the clear with the beginning as far as copyright is concerned.

So remember, kids! If a teacher lets you use an edited character on your project? It's automatically acceptable to get money off of it!

Chris as an enforcer of rights

Don't look right into their eyes.

Chris is very paranoid regarding his pseudo-copyright, and will frequently hand out all of his personal information to complete strangers if he is contested about it. This has backfired in a plethora of astounding ways.

Chris has encouraged people to report copyright infringements to the police. The police, unfortunately, can't do much in case random citizens report civil offenses such as copyright infringements; in case Chris had the rights to the works, then suing people for copyright infringement would be Chris's job and his job alone, or someone whom he has specifically appointed to that specific task.

Also, in the United States, under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, you can tell an Internet service provider to take down offending material, but you have to state under penalty of perjury that you actually have rights to the material in question. So, if Chris craters your YouTube videos, by all means, file a counterclaim - that ought to turn out interesting.

Unsurprisingly, Chris is a total and complete hypocrite when it comes to someone else's rights towards their work. In the span of nine issues, Chris pulls characters and concepts from numerous franchises and even goes so far as to steal "original" characters from fans and sweethearts without an ounce of due respect to their creators. It's easy to say that, if Chris were to make money off of Sonichu SOMEHOW, he could easily be sued by those who created the characters he stole.

Copyright registration

It appears Chris has actually paid 45 bucks, and somehow got Sonichu approved by The United States Copyright Office. In 12 November 2009, he also posted a scan of the confirmation letter he received to CWCipedia and posted a highly predictable my-heart-level-just-went-to-100%-again video.

Even with this documentation, however, it's likely that without more information, it's impossible to tell exactly what he has registered. The application appears to be for "digital files", which is probably to say specific image files, created in 2000. (We'd need actual documents, because Chris will probably say that he has official copyright on a character he created in 2000 and babble some more confused nonsense.) It's also possible that he has submitted files that weren't created in 2000, and he's just insisting that the character was created at that time. Hence, without complete documentation, we may never know exactly how badly Chris messed this up.

This might turn out Chris's biggest footbullet yet, since Sega and Nintendo now have even more justification for suing him.

Chris's views

Main article: Parody

Chris is VERY protective of his characters. Well, as protective as an autistic manchild could be to such unoriginal monstrosities. Chris believes that his characters are officially parodies, thus, he is allowed to create his multimedia empire on a legal loophole. What Chris fails to realize that is that parodies are essentially just mockeries of something they're based off of, done for laughs or as a commentary on the original work.

Some examples: "Weird Al" Yankovic's songs are considered parodies--note, however, that he obtains permission from artists whose songs he covers, going through the necessary legal process to make his work. He also does his own work, including pastiche of artists' styles--and impressively so, with a Devo frontman commenting that Weird Al's "Dare to be Stupid" encompassed his entire body of works in one gag tune. It's a known fact that Yankovic actually has one of the tightest, most competent legal team in music to make sure his parodies don't get him in legal trouble down the road. Mel Brooks's works are considered parodies, but his most famous parodies either use works from the public domain (such as Young Frankenstein, based on the novel and done in the style of classic Frankenstein films) or cover similar plot points without actually lifting characters. Likewise, the creators of another famous parody, Airplane!, acquired the rights to a film they were very closely parodying so there would be no legal trouble. Works that "parody" scenes by copying them verbatim, like Scary Movie or perhaps a theoretical animated sitcom of some sort, are usually looked down upon for simply relying on constant references in lieu of actually parodying the original work.

Sonichu and Rosechu are NOT parodies - they are just shitty recolors. As mentioned on the "parody" page, Chris doesn't mean to make fun of the characters they're based on, he slavishly imitates the kind of adventures they have in an attempt to tell his own stories. The stories he makes aren't commentaries on the style or message or story of Sonic or Pokemon; he simply lifts elements and characters wholesale in lieu of creating his own world. Even his most original characters are either based on someone he knows or are cribbed extensively from existing characters. He might be able to claim a trademark on Flame the Sunbird, of all characters, because he's merely relentlessly derivative as opposed to stolen wholesale. The non-Chris-Chan core of the comics, though, most certainly cannot.

Regardless of how much claim he's really entitled to, Chris will make a great deal of noise about protecting his work when he feels it is being threatened. Whenever he finds his work being used elsewhere without his permission, he ends up demanding that the offending work be taken down within 14 days or he will pursue legal action, sometimes accompanied by a picture of Chris and Sonichu glaring at the offender as if they can actually do something. Thus far, there is no evidence of Chris actually pursuing legal action against anyone.

See also

• CChanSonichuCWC
• Jimmy Hill
• Parody