Tonight on GeekNights we review the old Alea Big Box game The Princes of Florence. In the news, after we talk about xenon lightbulbs, River City Ransom: Underground has finally come out and a member of the Swedish parliament is livestreaming Hearthstone (itself seeing big changes).
We'll be live at PAX East, Rym is in London the rest of this week, the GeekNights Patreon continues, and we're trying to get all of our tabletop reviews on youtube!
Things of the Day
Episode Links
The first three lines of the Lion King’s Hakuna Matata are:
Hakuna Matata! What a wonderful phrase
Hakuna Matata! Ain’t no passing craze
It means no worries for the rest of your days
And when you look up Hakuna Matata on wikipedia it begins: “Hakuna matata” is a Swahili phrase; roughly translated, it means “no worries”. It is formed by the words hakuna (there is not here) and matata (plural form of problem).
When traveling in East Africa a few years ago, I heard locals saying “hakuna matata” all the time, much as you hear people say “sure” or “okay” or, of course, “no problem” in English. Disney doesn’t own a common Swahili phrase, just because it used it as a song title. No more than it owns the phrase Circle of Life or Do You Feel The Love Tonight.
Yes. Everyone knows that. But if you see a YouTube video of a musical performance from a country that does not speak Swahili, and is obsessed with Disney, you are not wrong to expect a Lion King cover.
But you talked about it very clearly as though Disney owns the words and is going to sue or something.
I was talking about how in Korea they basically ignore copyright completely, unless it’s internal to their own country. They constantly use Hollywood soundtracks for background music on broadcast television. That’s the kind of thing that gets you sued in the US, or taken off of YouTube. Thus, it would not be surprising if someone was performing the Lion King song, which Disney does own. I never said anything about Disney owning the words themselves.