What sort of Mickey Mouse operation do you think this is?

[Arm]

Amusingly enough, when I was getting some batch printing done a few weeks ago, only one of the three locations I visited actually thought to ask if I had the artist's permission / owned the rights to produce X thousand units of the imagery. Though the others may have simply been more subtle about it, by asking questions about my company and what we do.

It was a nice touch, but they also wanted 3 times the money to produce half the quality. I went with someone else

[DGoddessChardonnay]

How Goofy of her...

*ducks to avoid rotten vegetables*

Naaaaah . . .

She's fg Goofy.

*arms herself with orange Jello to fend off the rotten veggies*

[Dave1982]

please tell me captain jellico didn't try to punish you for it...

It wasn't me; it was the Copy Center Girl who turned this woman away. And no, to the best of my knowledge Captain Jellico didn't punish her.

[jjllbb]

Another example of how telling any customer "no" for any reason suddenly equals = person not doing their job/ rude.

[EricKei]

. And no, to the best of my knowledge Captain Jellico didn't punish her.

Cap'n' Jello grew a spine?

[sms001]

Heavens. Disney is so rabid about this very issue that they've been satirized on "The Simpsons" about it. How could anyone NOT know this?

[Dave1982]

Cap'n' Jello grew a spine?

Less that and more the fact that 1) he actually has a fairly accurate bullshit o'meter, and 2) he's lazy, and probably didn't want to be bothered with that woman, so it was easier just to ignore her.

[Enjis]

I always do hand-drawn art on my holiday cards, then get the original art copied onto cardstock. I went to my actual printing company (not a copy shop) and gave them the original art to make cards.

They called me a while later to tell me they could not do the job. The reason? The card was an original drawing of Darkwing Duck and his crew, and I had 'Characters copyright Disney, original art copyright *me*'' on the back of the card.

I totally understood why they couldn't do it, and took my art to Kinko's...after removing the 'copyright' info from the back.
Not only did they make my copies, the guy who did it said his kids loved Darkwing Duck!
He certainly had no issue with it, despite the laws posted everywhere.

[EricKei]

Doesn't fanart, in this case, fall under Fair Use? It's being done for items that you are giving away, not charging for, so I would think that it's OK as long as your artwork just "strongly resembles" the DWD crew, and is not a true copy.

[Dave1982]

Disney, Lucasfilm, and Paramount Pictures are notorious for their efforts to protect their copyrights.

Universal, too....

Doesn't fanart, in this case, fall under Fair Use?

For one of my college course, I was assigned to create either a book cover or a DVD cover, and a theatrical poster. It was more a technical exercise (showing you knew how to use the software) than a creative one, but I went all out on mine. This was shortly after Back to the Future was finally released on DVD back in 2002. At the time, I was an active member on bttf.com (technically I'm still a member there, but haven't visited the forum in years after getting into a public argument with the webmaster in 2006), and the consensus was that the US DVD cover sucked, so I endeavored to make a better one.

And I did. I based on the gold-banded "Collector's Edition" DVD covers that many Universal films had at the time, meticulously adding all the same details those covers had (including region code warnings, etc), plus my own creative touches. I even had my own original tag line for the poster. ("Imagine...if you could travel through time....where would you go?.....What would you do?.....and how would you get home?")

I was really happy with the results (which I got an A on), and wanted badly to publish the results on BTTF.com for the other fans, and to mail copies to Bob Gale and Robert Zemekis. Not wanting to get in trouble, I wrote to Universal for permission and was flatly denied, despite a written promise that this was not being done for money. Not even via form letter, but with a personal response from their legal department.

I can understand why they said no, but I still think they were being jerks. They ought to take a page from George Lucas's playbook when it comes to fan productions.

However, about a year later, I had an opportunity to meet Bob Gale and hand carried printouts of my project to show to him. His only comment was to joke that now he knew who was responsible for the covers on all the pirated copies of the movie coming out of Asia.

Oh, and those same printouts won me a ride in a fan-made DeLorean time machine, which was AWESOME!!!! I even got to play around with the buttons and switches that controlled the time circuits.

[protege]

Damn, and I thought we railroad modelers had it tough! I'm referring to the Union Pacific "we'll sue everyone if you even *think* of using our logo" mess of a few years back. Basically, they were trying to strong-arm model and decal manufacturers into paying for licensing fees. Never mind that all of that was once *free*, and UP simply got greedy. UP actually tried to make the copyright retroactive, and wanted to force companies who already had decals or models, to tack on an additional percentage as a "licensing fee." They didn't learn from what CSX did over their Chessie "cat" logo in the 1980s--they tried the same thing. But, it went horribly wrong. CSX backed down because it proved to be a public-relations nightmare! People said "fuck CSX" and refused to buy the items

At least with the Penn Central, nobody wants to admit to owning the "mating worm" logo--it seems to be the bastard of railroading. Even so, I got permission from the former parent company (APU) before I plastered it on my webpages.

[lordlundar]

Copyright is one of those odd things. If you are copying something for "fair use", it is okay.

Not or much longer, the ACTA treaty is going to abolish fair use. But that's a discussion for Fratching.

[Rapscallion]

Not or much longer, the ACTA treaty is going to abolish fair use. But that's a discussion for Fratching.

I'd be interested in you raising a thread there, along with the issues and links, as I don't recall having heard about this before.

Rapscallion

[lordlundar]

I'd be interested in you raising a thread there, along with the issues and links, as I don't recall having heard about this before.

Rapscallion

Done Raps. Located in Politics.

[tropicsgoddess]

Yeah! The customer's always right, especially about federal law!

So, this woman came into the copy center looking to have a job printed.

Just one problem.....

She had a picture of Mickey Mouse in it.

Mickey Mouse is copyrighted, therefore we can not legally do the job.

Well, this woman would have none of that, and even tried to claim that Mickey Mouse wasn't copyrighted!

Yeah.....let's call up Roy E. Disney and see if he agrees with that statement. After all, the Copyright Term Extension Act isn't nicknamed the Mickey Mouse Protection Act for nothing.

After arguing for a few minutes about that, the woman stomped over to Captain Jellico and complained about the girl at the Copy Center, who was "rude" and "refused" to do her job.

Yes, it's so rude to obey the law, isn't it?

It's amazing how they try and play armchair lawyer if you don't give them a discount/refund "because it's the law" but if YOU have to obey FEDERAL LAW they think you're being rude. Morons.