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Star Ballz Trumps Lucas
baby_head_rush writes: "The company that created pr0n cartoon Star Ballz won in court. George Lucas and company lost their first bid to stop its sale.
A judge with some common sense. There is 'little likelihood of confusion' between Star Wars and Star Ballz." Not for young eyes.
A note posted on the starballz.com Website succinct in its evaluation: "Basically , it means...the judge reached the decision [Lucasfilm's] claims were a totally unfounded PILE OF CRAP."
Looks like Wank Solo will fly again!
Winter 2010: With Glowing Hearts
If you go to the screenshots, I'd swear that was Goku. It seems that DragonBall Z would have a bigger claim to infringement.
And I must admit, it does look really stupid.
I demand a million helicopters and a DOLLAR!
Lucasfilm's spokeswoman said "This is a pornographic cartoon utilizing Star Wars intellectual property. We feel strongly that the law does not allow for parody to be a defense to a pornographic use of someone else's intellectual property, especially when that use is directed to children."
But regardless of being pornographic or now, people are allowed to use intellectual property for parody purposes, which is clearly what Star Ballz is doing. Well done to the Judge for not taking sides with the big corporation, but instead choosing what is right for people's freedom.
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Everyone loves a good parody, especially something as familiar as Star Wars. If I recall correctly, I saw Star Wars Intellectual Property being parodied on a recent Celebrity Death Match. It's not that big of a leap from CDM to anime porn. Besides, I wasn't the only one who lusted over the Princess when I was twelve. This had to happen sooner or later.
How many hits from Slashdot will result in sales of the video just because MMG's pissing in a big studio's corn flakes?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
"We feel strongly that the law does not allow for parody to be a defense to a pornographic use of someone else's intellectual property, especially when that use is directed to children."
Of course. Always invoke the children. That justifies any measure.
The Gardener
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People v Larry Flint, he did exactly that he created a porno parody of a religious guy. Flint won at the Supreme Court.
Parody is enshrined within that judgement as being allowable, and indeed a cornerstone of US Law. Supporting Hustler and Flint in that case were NYT, Washington Post and others who you wouldn't normally see on the same shelf as Hustler.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
From the screenshots i'd say that someone figured out that hentai can be a well selling stuff :)
It's not like its the first parody with "Balls" in the name ;-)
This little Gem from the 80's is just great!
Starballz claims this is a parody. Really? Parody, says Websters is "a literary or musical work in which the style of an author or work is closely imitated for comic effect or in ridicule." Case law shows that criticising or commenting on the original is also fair use (although not necessarily parody).
Having your own original characters do a Matrix freeze-orbit scene is parody for comic effect (please, enough, stop doing this now). Borrowing the characters, but spoofing twenty two other works and making very cutting critital points about "moichandising, moichandising" leaves you mostly clear, as Mel Brooks showed, and in agreement with the very informative overview of fair use and parody laws at publaw.com
But this... well, I dunno. It's commercial, it's not commenting or criticising that I can see (not is it primarily comic per se, it's part of a well defined genre of its own, like musical), it uses substantial portions of the original (characters, scenes and plot). That only leaves the effect on the original which is, to be fair, minimal. But in three out of the four criteria that a court should use to decide fair use, it appears to fall down.
Perhaps it does comment on or criticise the original. Of course, we'd have to watch it first to find out. And perhaps Lucasarts should have done so too:
It's hard to sympathise with a lawyer getting bitchslapped at the best of times, but this, if true, is probably karmic enough to cancel out any actual moral transgretion.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
This is so stupid, I can't even make myself sit through the preview. If Lucas hadn't sued odds are no one would have even heard of this.
"This is a pornographic cartoon utilizing Star Wars intellectual property. We feel strongly that the law does not allow for parody to be a defense to a pornographic use of someone else's intellectual property, especially when that use is directed to children."
What I don't understand is how it is 'directed to children'. Starwars itself isn't directed specifically to children, pornography (usually) isn't. Is it LucasFilms contention then that all cartoons are directed to children? If that is the case then he needs to take a trip to Japan. I just can not see how this is directed to children and that seems a very unfair statement to make, probably done more for shock factor (porn directed at children! oh, no!) then because it holds any truth to it.
...for more parodies like that? I have to admit that watching a re-run of "Thunderbirds" on DVD last night, my mind drifted for a moment fantazing about Lady Penelope and Tintin taking care of the 5 sons while the father and Tintin had some fun too and GranMa was watching and cheering up Tintin's father having taken off her denture.
I hope that people with animation talent won't be shy experiencing new ways to bring us joy and visual pleasure.
In a country drown by puritanism and religion, I am impressed about the open mindness verdict the judge has demonstrated. New lifestyles are reaching our country. This is re-assuring.
Kuddos to these guys for protecting US citizen rights by having taken the chance to fight Lucaz.
To these guys and the judge: You've got ballz! I know about a lot of people who would have comply with what ever big corp. would have order them to do (cough! Lindows cough!)
PPA, the (bi) girl next door.
-- I feel better now. Thanks for asking.
Yup. Just from the amount of publicity this POS is getting on /., they've probably already ensured that this is more people than would ever have seen this crap.
They only open their mouths like in one scene in the whole two demos, and that was enough to get me to groan out loud......
If Lucas had just let well enough be, natural selection would have taken its natural course on this piece, and no more than 10 people (the 10 friends of the dudes who made this thing) would ever have watched it, or even heard of it.
Far more serious free speech issues are going the wrong way. How about accademic freedom? The University of South Florida is canning a computer science teacher for saying bad things about Israel (see this Salon story). How about DeCSS? How about encryption rights? How about Digital Rights Denial? In all matters of real importance, the US federal government has proved itself wrong headed recently. So while the publishing giants feel free to swear on the public airways they own, place naked people on billboards, and do whatever else they think they can to make a buck, you and me are being stripped of the right to utter dissaproval in any meaningful way. Your comminications will be monitored (carnivore and local ISP caches), your house will be searched unreasonably(USA and Patriot acts), your property will be confiscated (standard proceedure), and you will be quiet.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Lucasfilm has made them even more powerful than they could ever have imagined.
/. is strong with this one..."
"The power of the
That green slime had it coming.
On a related note, the usual "fortune" at the bottom of this page says "Can't open /usr/games/lib/fortunes.dat." Is that a bug, or a parody of a bug?
We're partially to blame. Every time we point to a Nintendo console as being "kiddy" because games are using cartoon graphics instead of being hyper-realistic, we perpetuate that belief.
:)
Of course, when I say WE, I really mean all of you.