Greetings board.
First off, this *may* only be visible to you MySpazzers, but please do have a look-see.
Below is a link to the adventures of Eric the Happy Stormtrooper, a quality little web comic I stumbled on a few weeks back. However, it seems emporer Lucas has got wind of it and is now trying to take Eric's creator to court over copyright infringement or somesuch. Hopefully, as Eric bears little resemblance to your actual Stormtrooper, all will be well but this has got me upset. Like the Lucas monster actually needs the cash! Anyways, if anyone knows much about these kind of legal issues please let me know, or message the man direct from here. This strip's the nicest bit of fan-fic I've seen in a long while and I'm really hoping there's a way to keep it going.
Help me 2kAD boarders, you're my only hope... sort of.
Tanky x
Link: http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=73433154
Looks very kewl. But I haven't got time to read it.
I'll give my knee-jerk reaction, though. I think that as a not-for-profit web comic, this must be covered by 'fair use': it's clearly making a humorous or satirical point in affectionate homage to Star Wars, which is a perfectly legitimate thing to do for the sake or art and fair comment.
BUT, creating merchandising (t-shirts, coasters, badges, whatever) off the back of it looks very much like copyright infringement. Indeed, it looks decidedly like unofficial Star Wars merchandise to me.
Why don't we all do this? I think I'll go and start my own Cedric the Happy Cylon web comic, and sell a few t-shirts off the back of it, and maybe even start knocking out some 'Happy Cylon' action figures while I'm at it. Because no-one would imagine that they were actually intended to infringe any Battlestar Galactica copyright, because it would clearly be homage/satire, and any money I made out of it would clearly be just comedy/satirical money, rather than real money, so no-one could really be offended by it...
"Hey there! This shop is for products relating to the Star Wars spin-off web comic, "Eric The Happy Stormtrooper". These designs are all universally nerd-friendly, and not purely for the readers. If you're yet to hear of the comic, it's currently hosted at www.myspace.com/ericthehappystormtrooper"
If this was my online shop, I'd be very worried indeed about what I'd got myself into. Calling it the Star Wars spin-off web comic makes it sound somewhat official and endorsed by George Lucas. That's just asking for trouble, isn't it?
You're absolutely right, Ush and I think all this started because of the merchandise. But I do think it's excessive to threaten to shut down the whole operation when a simple 'take that shop offline please' would have been sufficient to keep the lawyers happy (as I understand copyright law) and would probably have done the trick. The guy's obviously a fan after all. Looking at the site, he's got 500 subscribers, which is less than most small band pages have - it all just seems so petty
I remember tooth having to print an apology/retraction to George Lucas/Lucasfilm for something but can't remember what.
Anybody know?
It was a cover featuring rogue trooper. It had "Star Wars" as a caption.
"I remember tooth having to print an apology/retraction to George Lucas/Lucasfilm for something but can't remember what.
Anybody know?"
Link: http://www.2000adonline.com/functions/cover.php?choice=946&Comic=2000ad
A quick update - Eric is now safe thanks to some very clever people, fair usage policy and a quick re-write of his shop front. Hurrah!
For anyone who's interested, here's the latest episode by means of a small celebration
Link: The Price of Friendship
That's a very nice cover!
Presumably Eric the Copyright Dodging Stomtrooper is normally better than that. If not, George was probably just trying to give it a mercy killing with his pillow of justice.