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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Jadehand... I like your idealism, but I've been through enough to know that counting on 24 million people boycotting Universal would probably never even happen. You can't even get a national no-gas day organized when gas tops $3.00/gal for the national average.... not to mention the fact that I can't count on many of my friends for anything in the first place.

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Lot of panicking going on right now, and rightfully so. After years of the careful and unspoken “we won’t notice fan-made stuff as long as it doesn’t compete with our own merchandise, should we ever get around to making any” attitude from FOX and Universal, a conflict has arisen and a heavy hand is making itself known. No longer will fans get away with their own Serenity logo T-shirts or barely-Photoshopped crewmember designs. It’s not worth the hassle and Universal is well within their rights to block such things, even though in the real world I suspect this will end up costing them a lot in good will and fan backlash.

So, they can take our ship and take our crew and leave us to buy whatever licensed items are left over. But, and this is an important but, they can’t take the ‘verse from us.

I see it as a challenge. Can we move on and create artwork and graphic designs that represent what Serenity means to us without actually referencing the movie or its characters? I think we can.

Let’s make our own crews, our own worlds. The juxtaposition of the old west and space is not copyrighted. Nor are courtesans in futuristic settings, beat up spaceships, pretty captains, crazy telepaths, cliche-breaking funny drama, or even the Papyrus font (well, not the free version, anyway). Don’t make a poster of Mal. Make a poster he’d hang up, instead. Show us the glory and freedom of flying through the black but use your own ship design. Can’t use Blue Sun? Fine. Invent their competitor.

Such designs will not sell as easily as Serenity stuff does, obviously. No built-in advertising, no already-known symbols and catch-phrases. They won’t help promote the show or the movie as well. And for many of us, such creations simply won’t be as satisfying because we fell in love with this ship, with these people.

But I don’t want this recent legal action to mean I’ll never see any more 11th Hour artwork ever again. Running this site I’ve gotten to see the work of many insanely talented people, and I want more. Let’s go find it.

And you know what? I bet it’ll be cooler, funnier, and better than whatever Universal finally produces.

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Originally posted by TenthCrewMember:
(can't afford to).

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Originally posted by Zeek:
You can't blame the legal system on Universal.

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And she owes whatever their licensing fee is for selling items related to THEIR Intellectual Property.

Some of our hot properties cost 500,000 to license. . .

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Posted by Wyyrdo on the OB

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Originally posted by CABridges:
We need to find an equilibrium, somewhere where we can promote a universe we love without agggravating the copyright holders (and where talented artists such as 11th Hour won't get nasty letters). Suggestions towards that are welcome. Suggestions on how to strike back at Universal are only making their argument for them.

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Originally posted by Arbas:
Nonsense they could issue C&Ds and NOT demand retroactive fees, stock and sales info

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Is there any legal reason why Universal can't hire these fan-artists as a sort of freelance publicity corps?

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Originally posted by WhoIsRiver:

They have to ensure official t-shirts get sold, and fan wares stop that.

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Of course, there's a wider picture where fan wares lead to free advertising. The industry hasn't caught up with that.

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Originally posted by kaneman:
"we ARE a significant unpaid addition to their marketing team"

As pointed out in a previous post, Universal is not paying anyone to market Serenity, they no longer have a Serenity marketing team.. Their roll in the verse is to get paid by other people to have the right to make money off of their property. No one at Universal cares a lick about the promotion of FF. They haven't for some time. The marketing staff has been replaced with a licensing sales staff. It is sad to us, but a great example of movie industry capitalism....

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Originally posted by embers:
because original artwork by BlueSunShirts, BlackMarketBeagle and 11th Hour does not belong to Universal...
just like Andy Warhol had every right to paint and sell Campbell soup
cans, free expression of art does mean something.

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Originally posted by Zeek:

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Originally posted by Arbas:
Nonsense they could issue C&Ds and NOT demand retroactive fees, stock and sales info

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Possibly. Or possibly the people who bought licenses are claiming damages and are estimating huge sales and Universal needs proof to the contrary. They can't do that without the sales records and showing what a small stock is actually on hand.

The world is not full of fuzzy bunnies and sunshine 24/7. Universal is a corporation. Sometimes they need to do mean things to survive so they can bring us shiny movies. It's the world we live in and I'd rather focus on the positive.

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Originally posted by SimonWho:
Speaking of admiration for others, may I just tip my evil cap in the direction of Universal's lawyers. I know I dabble with evil as a hobby but it takes a lot of guts to do it for a living (mostly the guts of your enemies but your grandmother's will do in a pinch).

It takes a certain amount of magic to turn around a group of people from sending you letters of praise to calling for a boycott of your entire firm and you pulled it out of the hat. My heartiest congratulations.

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Originally posted by Arbas:
Fair comment but surely to be accurate you'd need complete sales figures sinc the store opened - or to relevent to the licence sales figures since the licence was granted.

Not having a dig here but what is positive about this?

edit - and I have to ask again - what is different about 11th hours setup to warrant the demand for fees when others have only rec'd a c&d order? Or are you saying the action ISN'T being taken by Universal but rather the licence holder - if that's the case we have a simple reaction (you need to KNOW this is accurate info though) we publicise across every medium we have access to what the licence holder has done then boycott the company.

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