Chris and copyright

Chris's copyright registration certificate

“	...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. Too bad he can't do research. Or use Google.

Sonichu as a copyrightable work

Crooks!

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 while it can be copyrighted by the creator, it cannot be published without permission of the original copyright holders. 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 publishable 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 let's remember that Chris is so naive that he would accept the decision of a high-school teacher as if it has rule of law across the land.

Chris as an enforcer of rights

Don't look right into their eyes.

Chris is very paranoid regarding his 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.

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 Sonichu somehow, he could easily be sued by those who created the characters he stole.

Copyright registration

It appears that Chris has actually paid $45, 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.

Ultimately, this copyright registration is a major win for Chris as far as psychology is concerned, because it gives him the bragging rights even when he has no idea what the copyright registration actually means. In his confused state of understanding, receiving a registration from the US Copyright Office means that he has been right the whole time and now he officially has all imaginable intellectual property rights for Sonichu. In his mind, he now has the right and the power to tell everybody how Sonichu may or may not be used. The most annoying thing about this is that unless Chris actually sues someone or someone sues Chris, we can't make him shut up about it - the state of the intellectual property legislation is that people can make all sorts of weird assertions ("I patented forks and knifes when used over the Internet"), and if someone's wrong, that is up for the courts to settle.

Now, here in reality, copyright registration is not an official recognition of copyright. It is an officially registered assertion that a person or company has created a specific work at specific date. Every new work automatically has copyright whether it's registered or not. The registration of copyright is only required if you're suing people for copyright infringement: one party asserts that a work has been created at one time, another party has used the work at another time — it's then up to the judge to see who is right. If Nintendo or Sega sue Chris, they can easily demonstrate that they've had copyright on the original characters and Chris's work is derivative. Perhaps more importantly, Chris does not have a trademark on Sonichu; he has never had it, and this registration doesn't cover it either.

We know Chris messed the registration up, but the sad thing is that without complete documentation of exactly what he submitted, we may never know exactly how badly Chris messed this up. The documentation Chris published doesn't show exactly what he submitted. 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. This kind of distinctions and little details can be extremely important in court of law.

IN SHORT: Chris's copyright registration doesn't mean his comics are non-infringing.

Chris's motivations

In short, Chris doesn't really understand what his copyright registration means and what it might or might not be good for, practically speaking. To him, it's mainly just a crutch for his ego. In the aftermath of his feud with Liquid Chris, he sees it as the final and clinching proof that he himself is the TRUE and ORIGINAL creator of Sonichu. On 26 November 2009, he posted the following as part of an announcement on CWCipedia, which is quite illuminating:

Also, I have been thinking, although all Sonichu "Merchandise" sold online in the past I have labeled false; I did that, because it came as a surprise to me then, I felt outraged appropriately (most everyone can relate to that; it's comparable to if Godzilla or Clover came to YOUR Metropolis and suddenly attacked your city). I realize now that even though it is still considerably Not Official, it all still is an homage to my creation. So I will make it clear to ALL those Vendors. As long as it is NOT printed copies of my books' pages, or bootlegged copies of my "Christian Weston Chandler, Yep, I'm On T.V." DVD, AND As Long As I am quoted on ALL websites' and vendors' locations as Original Creator of Sonichu, Rosechu, Cwcville and all of such, I, Christian Weston Chandler, approve of such merchandise from Day Forward. At least to give you all, my patient, loyal Fans and Trolls, something to quell your pallets until Official Merchandise is sold in Official Stores such as Toys 'R' Us, GameStop, Best Buy, Wal-Mart, etcetera and such. I have spoken, and I wish everyone a Safe and Happy Thanksgiving. --ChrisChanSonichu 02:17, 26 November 2009 (CET)

Translated from the jackass, he's saying that he doesn't actually understand or care about the legal and economic ramifications of other people using his supposed intellectual property, so long as he's the one that gets the credit, not some impostor in brown stripes. Money isn't as important to him as his precious e-fame.

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 a certain animated sitcom, 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, 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 Pokémon; 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