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Digital Culture Legal Issues Master's Paper

Copyright and Willy Wonka…

Just watching one of my favorite movies of all time, Willy Wonka and Chocolate Factory. I’ve looked over the ‘net for a list of the literary references that Wonka uses during the film, and not found any complete lists. I’m a bit curious as to whether they only used public domain quotes, or whether they had to jump through the hoops that a modern producer would need to in order to clear the copyright on so many quotes. Many of them (Shakespeare is used a few times) are clearly public domain, but others are not so clear (O’Shaugnessy and others). Anyone know of such a resource? I’ll put on my reference librarian hat and find one if no one knows of one.

Just another great example where borrowing works from others made the movie more interesting, and raised it above the norm. Hopefully the remake won’t have to drop the sort of playful quotations for fear of lawsuits.

By griffey

Jason Griffey was most recently the Director of Strategic Initiatives at NISO, where he worked to identify new areas of the information ecosystem where standards expertise was useful and needed. Prior to joining NISO in 2019, Jason ran his own technology consulting company for libraries, has been both an Affiliate at metaLAB and a Fellow and Affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, and was an academic librarian in roles ranging from reference and instruction to Head of Library IT and a tenured professor at the University of TN at Chattanooga.

Jason has written extensively on technology and libraries, including multiple books and a series of full-periodical issues on technology topics, most recently a chapter in Library 2035 - Imagining the Next Generation of Libraries by Rowman & Littlefield. His latest full-length work Standards - Essential Knowledge, co-authored with Jeffery Pomerantz, was published by MIT Press in March 2025.

He has spoken internationally on topics such as artificial intelligence & machine learning, the future of technology and libraries, decentralization and the Blockchain, privacy, copyright, and intellectual property. A full list of his publications and presentations can be found on his CV.
He is one of eight winners of the Knight Foundation News Challenge for Libraries for the Measure the Future project (http://measurethefuture.net), an open hardware project designed to provide actionable use metrics for library spaces. He is also the creator and director of The LibraryBox Project (http://librarybox.us), an open source portable digital file distribution system.

One reply on “Copyright and Willy Wonka…”

Hey, Jason! We did Willy Wonka this fall here in Madison.
I’m hoping the new flick is good, too. Loved Gene Wilder,
though–and all the quotes from Oscar Wilde.

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