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.

Comments

Isn't that Goku?

[taliver]

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.

Parody & IP

[jaavaaguru]

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.

Great.

[martij2]

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.

Porn protected, political speech not.

[Erris]

Woopy, the right to make a buck prevails again. The government has protected a purveyor of porn against another movie maker in a squable over who owns darth vader. So what? It's a victory, but not a usefull one. Feel free to parody fantisy to your heart's content, just make sure you might be making money at 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.