If only there were a way to find out whether a voice artist had sued anybody and won before claiming infringement of the voice they created.

Oh, wait, there is.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.c...

Yes, but the rest of your post was rendered irrelevant by the fact that if you'd looked for the answer yourself, you wouldn't have tried to make a point that was flat-out wrong. He was getting $14m because if they'd sacked him and paid somebody else to copy his voices for less money, he'd have sued and ended up costing them much more money. If he quits, though, he has no (or at least, much less) recourse when they hire somebody else to do the same voices for less.

They're not a charity, but they're well aware that if they sacked someone and replaced them with a cheaper copycat, they could end up in court spending a whole lot more money for the "cheap" option. It has nothing to do with how easy (or not) it is to mimic the voices. Listen to Bugs Bunny throughout the years and you'll find there's more variation in Blanc's own performances than there is between Blanc and some of those who came after him.

You do know you could just look this up yourself, right?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J...

And that's as much of the legwork as I'm willing to do for you. You want answers to blindingly obvious questions? Go do the research -- it's not difficult.

tl;dr: Yes, multiple voice actors were individually able to parrot many or most of Blanc's creations

It has NOTHING to do with convenience, and everything to do with another C-word: Consumables. (Or if you prefer, brand lock-in.) Devices like the Keurig are aimed at the same idiots that buy things like Swiffers instead of a regular duster / mop that does the job just as well for infinitely less money in the long term.

Frankly, I wouldn't care myself, and would consider it no more than a tax on the mortally stupid -- except that it affects me and everybody else on this planet because of all the waste from these consumables that goes straight into landfills, plus all of the energy wasted making them in the first place.

We need to start educating consumers as to why products like these are a bad, bad thing, and boycotting companies who make proprietary consumables when a reusable alternative would suffice.

No, they didn't replace a single role of his. They replaced more or less every single role, and the average person wouldn't be able to tell the difference. Heck, listen to Bugs Bunny throughout the years and there's more variation in Mel Blanc's own delivery than there is between Mel Blanc and some of his successors.

Talented voice actors have been replaced quickly by equally talented voice actors in the past, and they will be again. After Mel Blanc died, it took only six months to the first broadcast of a work in which one of his best-known characters was voiced by another actor. And that's the broadcast, not the start of production -- chances are it was a few months at most to replace probably the most iconic voice actor in history, and many others have gone on to voice his characters since then.

Only one person on earth can be Mr. Burns, and a lot of people want to see Mr. Burns. So if you want Mr. Burns on your show, you had better pay that person a lot of money.

I'd be willing to bet the opposite is true -- there are a LOT of people out there who can do a completely convincing Mr. Burns. I doubt his main characters will even be retired -- they'll just have somebody else voice them.

When Mel Blanc died, did Warner retire Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Tweety Bird, Sylvester the Cat, Yosemite Sam, Foghorn Leghorn, Marvin the Martian, Pepe Le Pew, Speedy Gonzales, Wile E. Coyote or the Tasmanian Devil? Nope. Take a look at Wiki and you'll find that even the legendary Blanc's characters were able to be mimicked by a raft of other voiceover artists, and some of those artists were able to cover not just a few but many of his characters.

The fact is that like any other job, voiceovers are something that can be done very well by a whole lot of people.

Mod parent up, this perfectly sums up the reason anything but in-person voting is a bad idea. Hell, even with in-person voting we have employers trying to coerce votes without punishment. David Siegel, anybody?

You'd think that, but the websites he made were all on GeoCities.

No, they're not. Why, you ask? Because they're heavier than windows, and so will increase fuel costs. "Windowless" first class section, maybe. Same screens used in cattle class to play non-stop ads, possibly if it offsets the cost of the fuel and increases overall profits. But wall screens like these being used merely to provide an outside view in the entire passenger section of regularly scheduled commercial flights? You'll get your flying car before you see that happen.

Sorry, but you don't go far enough here. As arbiters of the law, the police should be held to a higher standard than the rest of us, precisely because their career is ripe for abuse.

All investigations of the police should be handled by an impartial third party, and if at any point you or a family member have served in the police force, that should automatically bar you from working for that third party. And if you are found guilty of any misdemeanor as a member of the police force, you should automatically receive the highest possible penalty with no opportunity for appeal and (if jail time is involved) parole.

This, this, a million times this.

Ever fly a commercial airliner which programs itself, chooses its own route, and makes its own decisions throughout the flight, almost completely unmonitored while the pilot reads Playboy or snoozes? No, you say? (At least, you do if you're truthful.) So you'd like to make the leap to that future, would you? Yeah, I didn't think so. The autopilot thing is a fallacy: We're talking about journeys that are almost entirely free of things near you to crash into, along routes that were determined by a human rather than a computer, with a human paying attention at all times and with the only real risk coming during takeoff and landing where the computer is given significant external assistance in terms of its flight path and the actions of surrounding aircraft, and where it's even more closely-monitored by the crew (or simply disabled and the crew flies the approach and landing manually.) This is in no way comparable to a situation where there is almost no external indications the computer can rely on, other vehicles driving unpredictably all around it, and the computer is expected to make its own routing decisions. Apples to airships, my friend.

This. And doubly so when you consider that the human has to be paying attention all the time, or when the computer gives up / fails gracelessly and control has to be taken over by the human, it will take too long to assess the situation and take action. The only way to avoid the accident will be to pay attention the whole time, at which point you might as well occupy youself by simply switching off the computer and driving. Otherwise you're going to get bored and your attention will drift.

Of course, that won't happen. What will happen is that the drivers won't pay attention, and will also fail to salvage the situation most of the time when the computer has failed, simply because they weren't prepared and situationally aware. And that is one of the main reasons why driverless vehicles are a really, really bad idea. What we're doing is to create a vehicle that makes it less likely the human will be able to prevent a crash when (not if) the computer doesn't know what to do in the big, bad, dirty real world.