Copyright Joy

[krpalmer]

On one of the comics weblogs I visit, there was recently a post about a creator who's made some Star Wars T-shirts for sale... and got a cease-and-desist letter from Lucasfilm. (I saw one of those shirts once in a comics store that's close enough to visit; the only problem was that it immediately made me uneasy about all the other less flattering slogans that just might be for sale alongside it.)

Whenever something like this happens, I start worrying about people trying to make Lucasfilm seem like a rich yet uncaring company with an inexhaustible army of lawyer droids... and yet, while I can be cautious of "slippery slope" arguments, in this case I can imagine larger and larger companies turning out products and pocketing every cent they get from them, freeloading off the property. That's not quite all, though. In the ensuing reactions, somebody turned up a page pointing out parallels (some, perhaps, a little stronger than others) between some French-language comics from the 1970s and the Star Wars saga, leaving me with ambiguous thoughts that somebody is trying to argue "two wrongs make a right," which for the moment I can best counter with the equally vague comment "Steal from one person and you're a plagarist, draw from a hundred and you're an artist."

Comments

[lazypadawan.livejournal.com]

There's a difference between drawing inspiration from a comic and flat out using character names and logos uniquely associated with a movie. The fact there's nothing completely original does not mean there's nothing distinct or unique either. This guy was obviously riffing off SW to sell his shirts for a profit and you can't do that. There are protections under U.S. caselaw for intellectual property infringement, satire and parody among them, but I wonder what the limits are when you're making a product for profit.

Lucasfilm could be doing a lot more to make fans' lives difficult but it is much more fair than a lot of other studios and production companies. People think George wakes up every morning, stretches his arms, and ponders which lowly fan he's going to persecute that day. It's ridiculous.