Slashdot Mirror
Penny Arcade vs. American Greetings
ferrocene writes "Penny Arcade's American Mcgee/Strawberry Shortcake spoof posted last Monday was pulled because someone at American Greetings got wind of it and set their lawyers on them. PA's forums are abuzz with activity. I'm pro-funny, myself."
Does anyone have this comic mirrored anywhere? I'm sure we'd all love to see what the fuss is about.
Think of the children. Won't somebody PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN!?! Obviously, web comics support terrism.
I thought copyright law had exemptions for satire and humour.
If it didn't, how could anyone talk about anything?
http://members.aol.com/matthewbrinegar/straw.gif I don't think AOL is going to get slashdotted any time soon. :)
American Greetings needs to get a grip. Parody is a legitimate form of Fair Use.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Right on
Fight or flight its all the same
Live to die another day
--Ryan
Short, to the point, and not abusive. Hopefully they will take note. Frankly, I think they need to lighten up.
You win again, gravity!
You didn't get the memo? There is no more fair use for anything electronic any more.
Developers: We can use your help.
I am so god damned tired of companies doing this. Fair use allows parody as long as the use does not cause confusion in the market place, ie: as long as it is obvious that it is parody and not the same 'product'. We have been in and out on similar but different fair use of a trademark ourselves, and finally got the company to see the light.
As much as I hate lawyers (and who doesn't?) it appears we need a new case or two at the highest level to reaffirm our rights to fair use in parody.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
Sucks to be them
What was the purpose of getting the image pulled - to stop people seeing a ripoff of their product/image/whatever
Now the story's on 2 places online, has the attention of the slashdot crowd, and shall be mirrored in dozens of places it never would have gotten to.
Thanks guys - I wouldn't have seen it if you hadn't wanted it pulled!
It's now on Slashdot and the cartoon is being mirrored all over the place... can't ask for more publicity than that!
Sorry, but my karma just ran over your dogma.
Well, I've been reading the forum(Powered by Vbulletin(TM), and I'm so upset I got dizzy. I couldn't feel better at all until I had a cool, refreshing drink of Pepsi(TM) and had a seat in my La-Z-Boy(TM) adjustable recliner. Remember, we belong to corporations. They own words in our language now, and there's nothing you can do about it unless you want to fly on a Boeing(TM) jetliner out of the country.
The boys have started a petition stating that the signers will boycott American Greetings until the comic is allowed to be shown.
Let's show 'em what happens when slashdot readers get wind of something like this.
grade school blackboard drawing of humping stick figures labeled "principal" and "teacher". Anybody who finds that "funny" needs to see a lawyer themselves
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA... oh wait
It's a parody of American McGee (or maybe of the flood of crap pseudo-gothic grotesquerie of which he forms but a small part). It just happens to refer to Strawberry Thingy.
Sorry, I'm so pedantic I just had to point that out, because some people seem to have the impression that it's a really childish parody of Strawberry Doodad. Whereas in fact it's an okay (but not hilarious) parody of American 'Alice' McGee and his belief that giving anything at all a big fanged grin and some pseudo-bondage chic will make it entertaining.
This is of course a false belief, similar to the belief (popular in Asia and, I'm told, elsewhere) that giving something cat ears, a cat tail, and enormous big eyes makes it automatically entertaining.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
Between Penny-Arcade and Slashdot readers, there are probably enough people to make a difference in their Mother's Day card sales, and unlike boycotting the entire movie industry, this is a really easy one to do. Also, unlike with an MPAA member boycott, they won't simply be able to attribute declining sales to increasing piracy.
So buy Hallmark, tell your friends to do likewise, and let the American Greetings Company know you're doing it. Maybe we can start to teach companies that in the information age, sending out indiscriminate C&D letters in the hopes of intimidation will cause more harm than good to their brand names.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
There was a time a company wouldn't dare file a suit like this. They would have been laughed at and ridiculed. But today...
Johnny Fascism Seed has found some fertile ground and the seeds are taking root. He smiles as he looks around at all the potential. Been years since he's had a good crop. Since the close of WWII, and the fall of the Soviets, there had been so little to do. But now he had a prize that would have been worth waiting a thousand years...America!
Is this technically a parody? I thought of parody as imitation, not copying, of the original. So Spaceballs or Bored of the Rings are parodies where it is obvious what the source material is but none of the characters, names or places are directly from the originals.
In this case the actual name of the character is being used in the cartoon. Now, if they'd used the same image and made up a new name I don't think AG would have a leg to stand on, but in the current form they may be within their rights.
I don't know the law on this, and maybe my understanding parody is not the same as a court would see it, but I think AG may be right.
And the sad thing is: American Greetings were not even the target of the parody. That honor goes to American (coincidence?) McGee. Looks to me like they didn't even bother to read the site.
Quoth Gabe here:
You know the joke is about American McGee right? Not Strawberry Shortcake.
(Quoting Gabe)
You win again, gravity!
I don't follow Penny Arcade, and I didn't read the forum. I just looked at the picture and saw an unwarranted (and stupid) attack on "Strawberry Shortcake". Maybe American Greetings has a point.
"Lord, grant that I may always be right, for Thou knowest that I am hard to turn" -- A Scots-Irish prayer
How exactly is this an "Oh no our rights are being trampled!" case? It's simply PA being charged under the Slander and Libel law. I wish the editors wouldn't cheapen the usually sound and just YRO section with stories of common criminals getting what's coming to them.
A) They are not being 'charged' with anything. Read the article.
B) Even if they were, it could not be slander/libel. Nothing was said about American Greetings, it's products, or it's representatives.
What was done was a parody of one of their products. The C&D (sad that those are so common everyone will know what I mean) was about trademark infringement. The first amendment has long been interpreted in this country to protect the rights of parody and satire in almost every case. "Our rights are being trampled" because once again a giant corp. is trying to sling around their weight in clear defience of the law.
jello.
aka aron.
Maybe I live in a hole or something, but I have no idea why this was pulled. I don't even know who this "Strawberry Shortcake" is, unless she is a tasty treat that I like to eat when the strawberries are ripe.
Can anyone explain to me what is going on?
sorry, beat you to it (by 3 mins), I'm the AC above. ;)
Still maybe they'll get it now.
I guess you didn't see the strip? If it's the one I saw, it was *not* a "copy of the original" -- unless strawberry shortcake went through puberty with a vengeance since the last time I saw her.
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
It appears that the contact us section of american greetings has been slashdotted.
500 Internal Server Error The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request. Please contact the server administrator, help@corporate.americangreetings.com and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error. More information about this error may be available in the server error log.
Here's what I was attempting to send, feel free to use mine at your convenience.
Regarding the spoof of strawberry shortcake at penny-arcade.com
I think that your company is over zealous with its requirement to remove the parody comic from it's web site. You should be aware however your action been posted at several online news forums about your meager attempt at censorship. A pardoy is just that and it in by no means hurts the trade marks, nor does it cause confusion with the original work. I have also written a letter to the creator of the parody urging him to stand up your legal department and challenge your stupidity in court. If he chooses to do so I will gladly donate to his legal efforts.
Furthermore, I will urge my family, friends and co-workers never to buy any product from american greetings ever again, unless this sillyness by your company comes to an end.
Yours Truly
bla bla bla
"Every security scheme that is based on secrets eventually fails." - Steve Jobs
Penny Arcade is satire, and it's about games, you idiot... If you know anything about American McGee, you would understand it. The PA guys didn't make AM Alice, or the forthcoming Wiz of Oz that he is doing, they simply took it to this conclusion. Taking anything at face value like you have done indicates your lack of "emotional development."
Aha, but you only read the strip because of the bruhaha(erm ha..haha..ha?).
If you had read the strip in it's original setting and read the accompanying explanation(as al PA readers would have), the intent and message would have been clear - that it was a parody, and not even on Strawberry Shortcake/AG.
It was the action by them (and subsequent reaction of the PA fans) that might have led you to misunderstand the message of the comic.
etc.
sorry to reply to myself - just found a link to the image:
http://members.aol.com/matthewbrinegar/straw.gif
Uh, not a copy of the original image. I can see how AG would be unhappy about this -- she is big-breasted in a corset sitting on another girl with her ass sticking out and red marks from being hit with a whip (or whatever that is).
But is it a parody? Does it really harm AG? Do they have a legal leg to stand on in demanding that it be taken down? Does it really matter if you are a big company with a bunch of lawyers and the other guys just run a website with the two of them and don't have time/money to defend themselves?
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
It is technically a parody, but it is not protected under fair use. (Whether you use the same names as the original, or twist them into funny-but-recognizable versions like "Frodo->Frito" and "Biblo->Dildo" doesn't matter)
To get the fair-use exemption to copyright law, your work must not just be a parody- it must be a parody of the material you are infringing.
In this case, Penny Arcade used some kind of "Strawberry Shortcake" copyrighted material to create a parody of American McGee's videogame development preferences (as seen here).
Since the parody doesn't make any critical commentary about "Strawberry Shortcake", it has no legal justification to use those names or images.
The famous recent case on this subject was linked to (pdf) by Penny-Arcade. In that case, a parody called "The Cat NOT in the Cat" was banned for using images from a book by Theodor Geisel to make a comment on the conduct of the Orenthal Simpsom murder trial. Because the materials he was borrowing were neither positively nor negatively commented on by his work, he was not allowed to publish the parody.
Every time something like this happens Slashdot is filled with arm chair lawyers.
I might agree with you, but did you actually read the comic? I thought it was pretty funny, but I can also see why they wanted to get rid of it. And don't give me crap about little girls not reading Penny Arcade.
Also, how come there are 18 posts moded up to "5 Interesting" that say... "Wah wahh wahh... fair use... wah wahh" ? 17 of them should be moded "Redundant"
Like anyone can even know that
Damn. I just wrote a post here lamenting the fact that this happened, but now you've made me remember all the crap I learned in my Mass Comm. Law class. You're totally right, and this is one of the most insightful posts in the thread.
If I hadn't already posted AND had mod points, I would totally mod you up for being exactly in line with how I learned the law.
El Karma: excelente(principalmente la suma de moderación hecha a los comentarios de los usuarios)
At the same time, you could very well argue that PA was simultaneously parodying American McGee and American Greetings. American Greetings recently began pushing its Strawberry Shortcake brand to market again, albeit in an updated, "hipper" form.
So, Mike and Jerry's work could simultaneously be lampooning McGee's twisted product notions as well as Greetings' re-released, ultra="hip" version of their character.
Just a thought.
I wish I had a kryptonite cross, because then you could keep Dracula and Superman away.
I really wish I understood the legal limits of parody and satire. It is often cited that copyright law allows it. At the same time, I once heard an interview with Weird Al Yankovic. He was talking about his parodies of pop songs. He mentioned that he always got permission from the copyright owners before he published one. He almost always got it, but he did ask. This would suggest that there are some potential legal hassles if you're not careful.
I realy don't think anybody would think the parody is the real strawberry. It's way too crude. If this got sent to major newspapers by mistake, I doubt it would get printed.
I do have to admit, I only saw it because of the fuss over it. Wow, what a way to get your work noticed.
The truth shall set you free!
It's funny - glad i was able to grab a copy of it to amuse myself.
But enough is enough! Please don't post regarding "parody" and "fair use" if you don't know the actual legal definition.
The bottom line is that this cartoon is NOT a parody by the legal definition ("Strawberry Shortcake" IS a trademarked name) and American Greetings had every right to request that the image be pulled down.
Imagine for a moment that American Greetings had lost a court case regarding the name "Strawberry Shortcake" because it had not demonstrated that it vigorously defended its rights to that name, and that the topic was being discussed on slashdot. The first post in that forum would be "American Greetings should have protected its rights pursuant to the trademarked name. It's their own fault for not being diligent." (do some slashdot research; it shouldn't be too hard to find examples that illustrate this point)
Let's try a bit of consistency for once, instead of jumping on the anti-corporation bandwagon.
The PA message boards have a worse signal to noise ratio than slashdot. I'm amazed.
Norris/Palin 2012
Fact: We deserve leaders who can kick your ass and field dress your carcass.
The big hole in the "parody/satire" defense is the fact that Strawberry Shortcake (A children's book character if you didn't know) isn't their target. It more targets American McGee. Just take a look at their news for that day (Especially Gabe's post midway through). And the problem is that court precedent doesn't support them (link to .pdf file). The third case "Dr. Seuss Enterprises Vs. Penguin Books" is especially relevent.
Just remember, kids:
:)
It's only a parody if it only promotes the brand. Never EVER harm the brand. You can speak out against your corporate masters as long as it projects their product in a positive light.
...but hasn't Penny Arcade parodied (or, as we say over the pond, "royally taken the piss") out of about a billion things...?
The original DivX boxen
About every games developer ever
About every game ever
Seems to me like the general trend for litigiousness is changing the "sacred" into the "scared".
Moderation Total: -1 Troll, +3 Goat
Well, there was this recent lawsuit regarding barbie so...
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
Slashdot boycott anyone? Email writing campaign? Addition of American Greetings to the /. list of mandatory hated organizations? ;P
perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5, (41*2), sqrt(7056), (unpack(c,H)-2), oct(115), 10)'
Figured perhaps we can get some of them in on it and get more interst in it.
-THIS SPACE FOR RENT!
You're part of the noise, genius.
why run from Vincenzo?
Here's the email I sent to American Greetings:
I am disappointed in your response to Penny Arcade's (http://www.penny-arcade.com) spoof of American McGee's Alice game by using Strawberry Shortcake characters. When I was young, Strawberry Shortcake was my favorite cartoon. I watched it on tv, had all the toys, and even had the bedroom set. Rather than overreacting when I saw Penny Arcade's use of the characters in their spoof, I saw if for the humor and the fun they were poking at American McGee, not Strawberry Shortcake. As a consumer of your products, I see no problem with that comic and would request that you stop harassing/threatening Penny Arcade. They aren't rich like your company and can't afford to defend themselves against corporate bullying. Please recognize humor for what it is, that they're not hurting you, and that you're not gaining yourselves any fans or new customers with this action. In fact, due to the issue's coverage on Slashdot (http://slashdot.org), you are more likely to LOSE customers and support. We vote with our wallets, and with a bunch of holidays coming up, do you really want us to switch to another greeting company because of a silly comic? I'm sure Hallmark will be sending you a thankyou card soon; maybe you'll get lucky and it'll be an American Greetings card.
Penny Arcade guys come up with some funny shit. Us gamers are united, even if we don't talk directly to each other... We all got the same clue about games. The one most corporations is missing.
God spoke to me
As usual, the lawyers are not at responsible here. They are the lap dogs of the corporation. Let's talk to the people who are going to be most affected and who are most responsible.
For example:
Spira, James C.
Director and COO at American Greetings
As of 2003-01-06 Reported to own 210,000 shares of American Greetings. As of this post, his holdings are probably worth approx 2.95 million USD.
List of Officers at American Greetings
But it should be noted that currently American Greetings is in the process of changing their executives, so it's unclear who would actually be responsible for these kinds of positions/acts.
Insider Trade Filings for American Greetings (Give you an idea of who's interested in making money off the stock)
Z.
I didn't even like this comic. But now that its banned I had to get it.
The jackass who runs PennyArcade is a complete moron, and the little comic strips they do look like utter SHIT. My fucking 9 year-old cousin can do better. It would be no great loss if the whole worthless fucking site went under.
Sure, but he plays videogames and draws cartoons for a living, while you whine about him doing it on slashdot.
Seems one of you is a luser...
I'll let you figure out wich one.
"First lesson," Jon said. "Stick them with the pointy end."
Maybe that argument could work, but it sounds like something of a stretch. (Published comments by the Penny-Arcade author demonstrated he was firmly aiming at Mr. McGee)
So if they wanted to present that viewpoint, they'd probably have to do it in court. An expensive and dangerous proposition all around.
Come on, does American Greetings, Corp. really think attacking a legitimate parody really furthers its business goals as a company? Did the person(s) initiating this action have no knowledge of how an Internet based community would respond to such an assault on civil liberties? Did this action really protect and further your "Strawberry Shortcake" brand or simply generate much deserved hype around a web comic?
I would like to see you do the right thing as a company... retract your legal threats and allow Penny Arcade to repost that comic. Imagine the goodwill (and sales) you will generate from the Internet community.
Besides, I easily found the "forbidden" comic on an alternate web site (see attachment). Now this single panel will be seen by many, many more people simply because of your action. One second thought, thanks for all the free publicity for the web comic community! Keep up the great work!
By the way, I have a web comic (http://particlesphere.com/) whose main character is a redheaded female... sorta looks like Strawberry Whoever if you squint! Please threaten me with legal action... I really need the publicity!
Thank you,
Will Jayroe
http://particlesphere.com/
particlesphere.com - quantum
Actually, he did get permission for "Amish Paradise." Or, rather, he thought he did. There was a miscommunication somewhere along the lines. Al talked to someone in Coolio's employ, who gave the all clear, but apparently did so without making sure Coolio himself was OK with it. When the song was actually released, Coolio found out, and disapproved.
Generally, "Weird Al" has been very courteous regarding the wishes of the original artist. A number of songs he did in the 1980s were perfomed on tour, but never recorded for this reason. The most notable example being "Chicken Pot Pie," a parody of Paul McCartney's "Live and Let Die" which McCartney asked not to be released because of his vegetarianism.
But I gather this has more to do with Al being courteous and not wanting to burn his bridges as much as it has to do with legal neccessity.
Sean Daugherty "I have walked in Eternity -- and Eternity weeps."
Sorry, but much like spam, a blacklist approach to corporations is much to hard to maintain. Thus, I am starting a whitelist of corps I will still buy from or support.
(Funny yet almost true...)
Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.
I understand your legal point, but surely PA's drawing IS a parody of American Greeting's original character?
It clearly picks out the absurdity of the original's cuteness and lack of sex-appeal and the fact that the character never grows up or misbehaves, and parodies these points by giving her curves, age and a bad attitude.
If the references to Mr McGee were removed, the comic would still function as a humorous visual parody of the work American Greetings is claiming it infringes.
I suggest PA put the picture back up, but change the words to read "What if Strawberry Shortcake was as nasty as American Greeting's Lawyers?"
This would clearly be a parody of the material in question.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
You must not have any sisters. Anyone who has been subject to the saccharine sweetness that is Strawberry Shortcake would support any amount of mockery.
[Set Cain on fire and steal his lute.]
Whatever you do, don't fuck with Rinda.Vas@amgreetings.com. That would be mean, and irresponsible. Penny Arcade did the right thing, making Rinda.Vas@amgreetings.com an image, instead of spam-harvester friendly text.
Curse these slow fingers! *shakes fist at the cruel heavens*
You win again, gravity!
The actual parody was intended to be of American McGee's new game, Oz. (He's the guy who did that Alice in Wonderland gothic style shooter).
Maybe American Greetings is actually Making the game and want to keep the title under wraps. :)
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
Thanks for the link. I have a new desktop background, I hope it doesn't offend anyone at work.
Now its on Kazza :)
Will Peer to Peer be the last bastion of free speach?
Dear American Greetings,
In response to your actions regarding the removal of a web comic done by Penny Arcade, our sales have quadrupled!
I mean, check this out, we're raking it in! We havent seen this much money since Chirstmas 1999 when everyone thought it was the last one before the Apocolypse of 2000! Just this morning our Executive Accountant came in here and told us we should remodel our entire office and buy a new company jet! I mean, wow guys, you really pissed quite a few blokes off this time! We even got to fire our entire card writing division seeing as no one cares what they say anymore, because they buy them just to spite you!
Oh, and one more thing, that was a better picture of Strawberry Shortcake than your artists ever drew.
Pitched my tent more than the company bikini party, I'll tell you that.
Enclosed is a check for 100 dollars, pay your lawyers to piss someone else off, my secretary needs a new set of boobs!
Your Best Friend Ever,
CEO of Hallmark.
This is my sig. Its pathetic.
I guess I would be in big trouble if anyone ever actually bought them. :-) But I just created it for fun anyway, it isn't like my financial future is riding on it.
www.poundingsand.com and look for Micropoly. (view larger image to see it better)
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
I thought it was amusing. Maybe American Greetings is upset because they were trying to sell a similar line of T-shirts to Hot-Topic and this beat them to it.
Interesting. You make snap judgement about the site yet you know absolutely nothing about it. It's not one guy, it's two. And let's see you do anything involving talent. Right, of course you can't.
> 17 of them should be moded "Redundant"
Because "redundant" is a stupid moderation. Most people load the story page once and read all (maybe not ALL...) of the comments on that page without hitting reload, so by the time they respond to something halfway through, others may have posted the same thing, but you can't see it because the page you are reading is 10 minutes old. That and the fact that the same argument can be used in many different places in the comment threads.
It parody's both Strawberry Shortcake (or is that Ho' Cake now?) and American McGee's videogame making history/talent. Neither is shown in a particulary bad light (really!)
Can you parody both things at once? I don't know. And it also seems that there's an overly tight definition being used here.
My opinion: fuck American Greetings. PA should win. Why?But that's my take on it--put me on that jury!
Looks like we killed the site hosting the comic! I just put a copy up on my server, so I guess we'll see how long it lasts.
Win2k box vs. Slashdot, Round 1:
Strawberry Shortcake Parody
How can they copyright Strawberry Shortcake?
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
I don't buy American Greetings cards... they suck anyway.
Have you ever been to a Carlton Cards store? Christ those places are sentiment-shitholes.
Every card is bland, or gooey, bl-ooey, or completely unfunny. Same thing with the ornaments during the holdiays.
Do yourself a favor and stick to Hallmark cards at CVS. They actually have permission to use Peanuts characters.
Boycott, hahahaha.
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
Yes, I know. I did actually see the strip before this all started (and thought it was pretty funny).
/. readers will take action -- pointless, ineffective action (boycotting AG, yeah... that'll really get their attention -- lots and lots of flame-mail... that'll make them realize what a mistake they've made).
Does that make any difference to AG? I'm sure they couldn't care less. In their eyes they see their characters names being used in a way they disapprove of (a voluptuous StrawberryShortcake beating the shit out of PlumbPudding with their T&A sticking out).
Does that make any difference at all legally? I don't really know, but I'm guessing no. Again, AG's legal footing may be dubious, bit it doesn't matter since PA doesn't have the resources to defend themselves. All they can do is take it down and then make sure everyone knows about it.
Then all the
Note: I'm not saying they're right or wrong -- just making observations.
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
Actually I read the strip and only caught the meaning of it today, after it had been explained here. I read the notes, but didn't understand what they were talking about.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
I was going to laugh at this, but then I saw the word "blokes." What the hell is wrong with you people? Hallmark is an American company, by the way.
Well, yes, that was the whole point. Gabe was sarcastically demonstrating how puerile American McGee actually is. I have to agree with Gabe.
Maybe you could read the News page on PA next time. Sometimes the jokes require a little bit of insider knowledge before you can "get" them.
Yay! Someone with a clue gets it, and even gets modded to 5.
I saw the PA cartoon when it came out, thought it was funny, but also thought "they're going to get slammed if the SS owners find out".
Microsoft, Apple, etc etc, all our favorite companies to pick on have trademarked names. I haven't once seen ms or apple send cease and desist letters to someone who wrote a comic making a parody of ms or bashing apple using one of their precious trademarks.
The goal of computer science is to build something that will last at least until we've finished building it.
That's a far cry from actually appropriating Dr Seuss artwork for your own parody.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
Pan of child vigiourously tugging mom through toy department. [mom looks haggard.]
.. we're going to be late.'
.. thank-you.
Mom: 'Honey, just pick something out
Child: 'It has to be just right mommy, It susie's birthday, its important.' [earnest child psudo-whine voice.]
Mom: 'How about this one?' Picking up Strawberry Shortcake Doll
Child: (looking stern) 'Now mommy, we can't buy HER , her manufacturer supresses free speech by threatening to persecute adult parodies of it on the web!'
[Jerking record sound, freeze frame on the kid looking reproachful.]
Announcer: Are your children more concerned with their civil rigths than you are ? Make a difference, donate to the EFF. We're looking out for you.
*bows* thank-you
--Ne auderis delere orbem rigidum meum, non erravi pernicose!
Well that's just a big bowl of snot.
Having actually been in a situation like this (that is to say, I've seen how lawyers at one company worked) I can tell you that much of the time it's the lawyers who present the "option" of "action against an infringer". This is actually quite logical, as being seen by the wossname "officers" of a company while actually doing something puts you in a good light with said "officers", which could be the difference between getting pinkslipped and being able to continually sell your services to the company. Good ole american self-preservation at work, see?
Personally though, I'd be quite a bit happier if lawyers as a profession were made obsolete through continued refactoring of the legal system... though, since the legal system is "by the lawyers, for the lawyers", that is unbelievably unlikely to ever happen without some kind of a continental scale disaster (engineered or natural, who cares).
I laughed when I saw the Image. So I figured there must be something Wrong with me, so I took your advice and went to see a lawyer. And He said "What the hell you bothering me for? go see a shrink"
Now I am really confused.
In this case, Penny Arcade used some kind of "Strawberry Shortcake" copyrighted material to create a parody of American McGee's videogame development preferences
Almost correct. No content created by American Greetings was used, so there is no copyright case here. This is either purely a trademark case, or a crock.
Going to that url now gives:
Sorry, We Can't Display That Page
This member has exceeded their bandwith for the day. Please check back after 4 am EST to access this page
At least mafia-owned pizzarias make excellent pizza. Compare to Bill Gates.
I think people have to start realizing here that there is a very fine line between parody and a slander suit.
If you look at "Weird Al" Yankovic, he very well knows about this issue, hence the reason why he personally asks the original copyright holder of the song for permission before doing his parody of it. The same applies for MAD magazine; the editors there have to be VERY careful in their parody creations to prevent some corporate type showing up with a nasty slander suit. You wonder has MAD parodied PepsiCo or the Coca-Cola Company lately....
Now you know why Disney and the Coca-Cola Company agressively protect their copyrights--even a wrongly-written parody could have very negative effects on the company reputation. Does any remember the case Disney brought against the people who wrote the infamous Mickey Mouse and the Air Pirates comic in the early 1970's?
Comic Book Guy: "Oh, a sarcasm detector. That's a really useful invention."
(sarcasm detector explodes from overload)
... because those jokes weren't funny the first billion times I heard them.
So what they should do is simply put a little text at the bottom of the picture criticizing the game. (IE Strawberry Shortcake is going to be a god-awful video game)
Canadian Cynic, canadian politics is less boring than you
Seems ironic, what with Weird Al being a vegan himself...
I second that. I pray to all that's holy that you are, indeed, a chick.
i wonder if Hallmark has a card for this?
"Sorry you're getting harassed by some dumb company's legal department."
maybe with a picture of a cute little kid being abused or something.
> In this particular case, I think the best
> response to this kind of lawyer-based slapdown
> stupidity is to mirror the picture far and
> wide.
Yeah, the real question is, since most regular PA readers had already seen this strip, how many people who would never have known about it in the first place are going to end up seeing it now because of this action? I'm sure quite a few slashdotters to begin with, and this probably isn't the only forum where corporate bullying gets brought up.
Seems like the opposite of the desired effect to me. Unless their desired effect was just to pass the message: "corporate america has no sense of humor". And everyone already knew that anyway.
lysergically yours
> I just looked at the picture and saw an unwarranted (and stupid) attack on "Strawberry Shortcake".
I read the comics, but have never read a word from the forums on PA. If you see that as an attack on American Greetings then you don't know who American McGee is. Just because you don't understand the joke doesn't make it slanderous. It just means you missed an important part of it, which is not your fault.
Also, if you consider it as an attack on Strawberry Shortcake you may need to reevaluate your sense of humor.
http://www.necrodominion.com/funny/morelikestrawbe rrycelcake.gif
Here's a working URL to the strip in question.
But he still defended their right to publish it. That's class.
No.
You seem to think that copyright infringment only happens if you mechanically copy something.
Drawing a picture by hand, or otherwise recreating something similar to the original is no defense.
Example: If I create a film depicting the adventures of Doc Brown and Marty McFly in their time-traveling car, I have violated some movie studio's copyright. Even though I didn't copy any specific frame of film, I'm still copying their ideas. The fact that I didn't use the trademarked title "Back To The Future" does not protect me.
If I renamed the characters, and chose a different make of car and breed of mascot dog, then maybe I could argue that by because the idea was reduced to essential stereotypes, it's not close enough to infringe.
This doesn't relate to the merits of the case, but I thought that was the dumbest PA strip in a long time (and, in spite of the general humor, they drop some real bombs from time to time). Okay, humor's in the eye of the beholder, but that's my opinion.
As for the case, I doubt that PA has a leg to stand on -- it's parody, but it's not parody of SS; it's actually parody of a completely unrelated video game designer. So it's not fair use; it's just trademark dilution and possibly a tiny bit of copyright infringement (a very tiny possibility of that last!).
On to a different question: _should_ it be legal to use copyrighted and trademarked work in a parody of something unrelated to the copyrighted/trademarked materiel? I'd like to see some discussion of that question.
-Billy
To : rinda.vas@amgreetings.com :4 -14&res=l
7 7
Cc
Attchmnt:
Subject : http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2003-0
----- Message Text -----
Hi,
I read a news article quoteing a comic strip. But the article didn't say
what the joke was. So I tried to access the articles link to the strip but
only got your email address instead. As a result I don't understand. Can
you please email me the strip or explain the joke to me? Was it funny?
--
Regards,
Tommy - http://www.geocities.com/todu5811/autosignature?8
RFC2440 fingerprint: 6E74 A86B 4EF3 934E 939D 58C7 7ABD EC6A 85A0 2F13
We've got a big conflict on here as to whether this particular piece of "art" is indeed a parody or not. My question is, can an individual piece of art only "parody" one thing, or can it parody multiple sources?
In this case, yes, it seems to parody American McGee, but it seems to parody the "cutesy oh so good" Strawberry Shortcake, poking fun at a seamier dark side of the annoyingly sweet character. Does the fact that AM is mentioned disallow also parodying Strawberry, I've never heard anything against dual-parody.
Or maybe it's that the two items being parodied are fairly unrelated, but I still don't see why dual-parody would be disallowed - could an arguement as the word-simularity between "American Greetings" and "American McGee" (if AM had done cards for AG, Mad Magazine often did shorts like this)
I do see the point made by American Greetings as to their trademark though - if they'd sent a nicer letter this probably would have gone better for them. I think a lot of the problem comes not from the use of the copyright bat, but just in legalese scare tactics when a simply "please, we'd appreciate it if you didn't do that" might work better - or at least as a start.
Who used a work that was out of copyright (Alice in Wonderland) to base his game on...
-m
You prove your ignorance when you say "I'm still copying their ideas." Copyright law does not protect ideas. It never has and never will. Copyright protects a specific expression of an idea, and nothing more.
The forums at PA makes /. looks like a collection of rocket scientists.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
The issue with the PA strip is not satire fair use as many have pointed out. Strawberry Shortcake is not being parodied, and therefore the use of the character is illegal. But then why did the PA artists use the character at all? They're clearly not ignorant of copyright law.
I believe that Gabe and Tycho thought that Strawberry Shortcake was now in the public domain; and if copyrights had reasonable terms she would be. However, copyrights now last for at least 20 years, and more if you have enough sway in Congress (see Disney).
If American Greetings were still using the Strawberry Shortcake character (the way Disney is still using Mickey) I could see their justification for protecting their copyright. As an artist, I wouldn't want my body of work being coopted even as I was creating and promoting it, and I think the Penny Arcade guys would agree. But Strawberry Shortcake is a dead concept, to such a degree that I would bet nearly nobody even knew she was owned by American Greetings.
American Greetings has an opportunity to demonstrate good corporate citizenship, improve their public image, and set an example for other media companies by dropping their copyright on Strawberry Shortcake and any other properties they aren't using and don't plan to use again. There's no sense in wasting money and time to protect things you won't use.
That's really fascinating --- I guess slashdot can be educational! I want to follow up, though. Is there really no room whatsoever for composing critical commentary of something using unrelated but culturally-recognizable symbols? It seems to me that that's where much of the strength of satire lies. All those years of Mad Magazine spoofing everything in sight come to mind. Is it really a copyright violation to draw an editorial cartoon depicting Don Rumsfeld as the Skipper and G. W. Bush as Gilligan?
-schussat
The hour of noon has passed. Let us go and get some Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Hello,
I just wanted to voice my opinion regarding your actions against the "Penny Arcade" comic satire using the "Strawberry Shortcake" caricature. Whether your actions are legal or not, please realize that as a consumer with a sense of humor, I now realize which greeting card company to avoid.
Thanks for listening,
Humor-enabled consumer - (my name)
An "idea" is almost anything that a human can think of. ("Idea" doesn't necessarily imply that it was original or creative. From a dictionary: "something that exists in the mind". A phone number I've memorized for 10 minutes? It's technically an "idea")
All "expressions of ideas" are in themselves "ideas" (a person can study an expression and bring it into her mind, causing it to meet the definition of "idea"). Some ideas are too vague to copyright, but if they're made more explicit and detailed, then they also qualify as expressed, and are protected.
The statement "Copyright protects a specific expression of an idea, and nothing more." is either false, or too vague to be meaningful (depending on how you choose to define "idea", which is a tough question, and reasonable people could disagree with my dictionary). It prehaps reflects how the law you want behave, maybe even how it was meant to behave, but not what it actually does.
This image (at least in my case) has now become subject to the "ironic distribution effect". What I mean is, I never would have seen this image, and if I had seen it I never would have saved it on my drive--except that they tried to ban it. Now, I've downloaded it into a folder on my desktop. Periodicly I round up all the junk on my desktop into a folder, name the folder by date, and copy it over to my other drive. Ultimately, these folders get burned onto a CD forming a kind of personal diary of what was on my desktop. Thanks to American Greeting's attempt to suppress this image, it's now being immortalized on my archive CDs. Now that's ironic.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Oh barf. Here's an animated example of their shortcake character complete with nauseating sound.
I already saw the picture. It's fapworthy.
Image is from Penny Arcade. It was removed from cache, modified to be smaller in the Gimp and placed in this folder. Please do not download it =).
I think you're pointing out what AG's main objection really is - the reason they want the cartoon pulled is because it's depicting SS in an unflattering manner. By their very objection, they're confirming the fact that they're the subject of a parody.
If they feel the sting, there must have been a bite. Therefore, it's a parody, and no longer an unfair breach of copyright. (IANAL, though)
You don't need Geeksintraining if you're on Slashdot.
Next time bullplop like this happens, we should make it our duty to mirror the hell out of it. We should start a movement. The slogan:
"I've got a free 486 web server. I can save Free Speech."
This reminds me a LOT of a centerfold National Lampoon did in the early 1980's called "Strawberry Cheesecake" with our Strawberry Shortcake and a Smurph engaged in, um, well, wild monkey sex. I've been looking for a copy of that for years and haven't been able to find it. :(
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
Penny Arcade has wisely not spoken up on the topic, but it could be considered a parody of both American McGee and Strawberry. The American McGee case is trivial. But what about Stawberry? American Greetings, believe it or not, makes greeting cards, not cartoons. American Greetings has liscenced its product to many people, for cartoons, dolls and whatnot. It could be construed to be a commentary of their remarketing of the character (which has happened recently) for a more lucrative market. I honestly don't think that Mike and Jerry intended it, but it could be there. If only they had chosen something with a more sordid history. Like Rainbow Bright, or what not.
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
I heard the Alice game was pretty good, actually, and I personally appreciated the fact that the female protagonist wasn't a huge-titted gun-toting bimbo, gunning down hordes of aliens. But for my Pentium1/Voodoo1 combo I'd have bought a copy. If you think the original Lewis Carroll book isn't creepy and maybe a hint of "gothic", maybe you should re-read it some time.
Freedom: "I won't!"
ho hummo rtcake .jpg
http://polyhead.net/~Polyhead/PAStawberrySh
In other words. Proctor and Gamble is diligent in protecting their "Kleenex" trademark by sending out letters to writers who use their trademark as a generic term. If you write a book and say "Susan grabbed a kleenex to wipe away a tear as Windows XP crashed again". You might get a letter from a P&G reminding you that "Kleenex" is a trademark for paper tissue, not a generic term. Then, if there is a real challenge to P&G on the trademark, their lawyers can bring in boxes and boxes of letters they have written over the years to prove they have been diligent in efforts to protect their trademark.
The Penny Arcade - American Greetings - Strawberry Shortcake is one of two things. Or a combination of both:
1) American Greeting is protecting their trademark by being diligent in all instances of real or perceived infringement.
2) Some company lawyer, or para-legal, is justifying their paycheck by sending out trademark infringement letters.
Either way, their use is probably protected as parody.
You all might get a laugh out of a couple of Trademark Infringement letters I got about parodies on my www.JokeWallpaper.com site. From 1996 a trademark letter from Netscape, and one from 1998 from UPS.
http://www.jokewallpaper.com/trademark.htm
Have Fun,
Steve Kremer
Problem is, American McGee isn't making a Strawberry Shortcake game. The comic was just making fun of American McGee's style when he makes his own version of culturally significant works, in this case his current project, Oz.
It has been a few days since this commic, and the related front page posts on PA, but if I recall correctly they were making fun of his tendancy to make things dark and "moody" by making the lead female a sexpot and somewhat of a goth girl. In that, I believe they succeed very well, while simultaneously providing a great satire of Strawbery Shortcake. It doesn't appear that American Greatings felt the same way.
Can I Play With Madness?
American Greetings, it seems to me, is in fact one of the few companies that can be successfully slapped down on this, and may in fact make a good model to make a point to other companies. Not because *I* boycott, but because I can legitimately ask my friends and family not to buy their cards when buying for me.
Accordingly that is exactly what I have asked of my friends and family - that they avoid this company when buying my cards. I have also sent the following to American Greetings to make them aware of it.
---------------
In recent news, it appears that American Greetings sent a cease and desist order to the creators of the Web Comic Penny Arcade, requiring the artists to remove a comic strip or deal with the threat of a civil suit.
As the strip in question was an obvious parody which had no chance of confusion with the Strawberry Shortcake trademark, it easily passes both the copyright fair use test, and the trademark infringement tests, a fact that the lawyers at American Greetings were fully aware of when they sent the Cease and Desist order. American Greetings chose to continue with the order in the knowledge that it was merely suppressing a lawful parody, not execising its trademark or copyright rights.
Therefore I am no longer doing business with American Greetings, either as a buyer of cards for others, or as a recipient of those cards for my own special occasions. I have requested from my friends and family that, should such an occasion come, they are not to buy a card from your company.
As it happens, some of my friends have asked me why I have this sudden distaste for your line of merchandise. Upon being informed of the reasons for my choice, they have also requested the same of their friends and family.
It may be worth noting that if the standard cliche that only six-degrees of separation intercede between any two people is true, American greetings now stands only 4 degrees of separation away from a complete loss of market share.
Thank you for your time,
------ ----
An Invisible Entity of Vast Power whose existence must be taken on faith alone: Liberal Media
I suggest PA put the picture back up, but change the words to read "What if Strawberry Shortcake was as nasty as American Greeting's Lawyers?"
This would clearly be a parody of the material in question.
It would also be quite lame, both creatively and in humorous terms.
A lot of people are suggesting various alterations to the image that would allow it to be reposted. To me, that's even worse than its removal. What kind of statement are you making by altering a creative piece of artwork to satisfy a bunch of copyright lawyers? Removing the images show a lot more artistic integrity - you're making a statement that basically says "your attitude will lead to no art." That's a strong statement.
Why doesn't IDG just threaten their ISP with a cease-and-decist letter? That usually works...
If she is not innudated with spam, does that mean she will have time to reply to my request for clarification on the legal protections of parody? Or on the violation of AmGreet's mission statement to act in a moral and ethical manner?
Actually, he did get permission for "Amish Paradise." Or, rather, he thought he did. There was a miscommunication somewhere along the lines. Al talked to someone in Coolio's employ, who gave the all clear, but apparently did so without making sure Coolio himself was OK with it. When the song was actually released, Coolio found out, and disapproved.
Al should've gone straight to Stevie Wonder and got permission to use the music from "Pastime Paradise".
where there's fish, there's cats
Of course, if you continue to read the TKLAW document they linked to, it explains even the authors incredulous reaction to why exactly the court ruled as such. Parody isn't a laser that can only be concetrated on one thing... making Strawberry Shortcake into a dominatrix and using that to parody American McGee can be a valid form of parody on both accounts. Of course, an interpertation of the comment the parody made, if any, would be left up to the court. Honestly, though I tend to think that the law would side with Tycho and Gabe, realistically, they're fucked. American Greetings, I assume, has enough money to translate into a decent armada of lawyers, which is a resource simply not avalible to two web-artists. Furthermore, you're taking a chance even bringing it to court. I predict Tycho and Gabe won't pursue this past having some dedicated fans e-mail the bitch who gave them the cease-and-desist and trying to get some sort of boycott together, which probably won't do anything.
It's unfortunate, really, but that's our legal system. Perhaps it's time for some changes.
This is directly in line with American Greetings' current marketing for Strawberry Shortcake. Since Strawberry has been "out of circulation" for a while, they now are realizing the potential to market her to the adults who grew up with her.
They sell thong panties with images from the cartoon on them. THONG PANTIES!
http://www.icehouse.net/llt/images/20030414h.jpg
It'll be up for a lil bit so backup, mirror and spread if you haven't already.
All I know about Bush is I had a good job when Clinton was president.
http://www.mildlydisturbed.com/fark/strawberry.jpg
Here is another mirror of this comic: http://brainsoup.duckies.org/index.php/item/102
Penny Arcade continually infringes on other people's intellectual property. Trademarks, copyrights, etc. Some of it may be justified as parody, but certainly not all of it.
And just look how they supported (NOT) the open source community when it was previously attacked. Why do they deserve our sympathy or support?
Here it is, tons of bandwidth, not going anywhere like some of the others (I own the site): Penny Arcade Archive
Enjoy!
my smug mug is on smugmug
Maybe American Greetings is chapped because they didn't think of the grown up version themselves?
Should a post consist entirely of questions? Is this flamebait? Is this funny?
Bush and Blair ate my sig!
Go back to the Supreme Court precedents and read about the idea/expression dichotomy. Ginsburg talks about it all in the recent Eldred/Aschroft decision. You can't copyright an idea, only particular means of expressing it.
-R
this is nuts, I am a business student, and I can say that from a business stand point it is totally legal, for the following reasons, 1 it is a parody/satirical cominatry on both, AG shortcake cartoon, and mcgees style of distortion of games and other material, 2 it is not for profit, it is a comic for which nothing is paid by the consumer, therefore not for profit. under both these examples it is protected, more so since the artwork and idea are both totally independant of either group and only an artist interpirtation on the subjects being parodied.
What American Greetings needs is to get no more sales of their crappy games ever again
Uhmm.. American McGee sells games. American Greetings sells greeting cards.
where there's fish, there's cats
They should just alter the name from Strawberry Shortcake to something like Raspberry Cheesecake.
This is not the way to build a lasting empire.
I was able to find the picture posted here:
f f4 1a456f08dd2eadc75e87254b8c&act=ST&f=17&t=2 678
http://www.actioncorp.net/forum/index.php?s=92b
Anyone who has been subject to the saccharine sweetness that is Strawberry Shortcake would support any amount of mockery.
That smell alone deserves mocking. It could choke a man to death.
I think that it would be a good idea if everyone who would like to show some support for PA regarding this issue shelled out some cash and donated or signed up for Club PA. Lawyers aren't usually cheap. Yeah, they use PayPal, but it's the lesser evil when compared to corporations bullying the little guy.
So lets show some support and help them out.I wouldn't be surprised if this is just a big publicity stunt because no one in their right mind would vistit their site or find that crap funny.
I might a bit confused, so bear with me (correct me if I'm wrong).
The comic used an "innocent" strawberry shortcake to parody McGee's work. The people who own the rights to Strawberry Shortcake got upset and ask them to remove the infringing material from their website. Since the parody was not about Strawberry Shortcake, but rather using them as a tool to parody something else, it is not a protected parody.
If that is right, and it's not the people who own the rights to McGee's work, but the owners of Strawberry Shortcake, I agree that the comic was infringing upon their rights. If the comic was parodying Strawberry Shortcake in any way it should be protected.
But I might be wrong.
Funny story, that reminds me of. In second year university, end of frosh week, I show up for a Biology lab a little bit, shall we say, hung over. As I slump into my seat I mumble some explicit phrase involving 8:00am labs, to which the girl across from me gets rather huffy. I respond "And who are you, Strawberry F*cking Shortcake?" There, can I get sued by American Greetings now, too?
Eh, humour is all in the presentation.
You think that lazy fat ass acne ridden kids who are not in their demographic will be able to boycott this?
Not much of a boycott if they where never buying the stuff in the first place.
In a "glad I am not like those retarded morons" type way.
Yeah, lets me guess their contributions:
"Boobies!!!!!!!LLOLOLOLO!!!11111"
"More proof we live in a police state!!!1!!!!!"
"B00bies"
"Theey aree beggning for atttenti0n, this is ust a ploy to get u to veiw their site, USa the internet gooods will not follllow of this....OOps forgot to remove my head from my ass before typing."
"Where are the boobies, I don't care unless there are boobies"
etc
Take the time to wget their site to dev/null and how frequently do you do this?
For a second I thought I was reading the usual pinping done by penny-whorage.
Are you one of the sites runners?
how is c:\mydocu~1 different from \usr\user?
You haven't seen this.
If there was ever a need for gene elimination this is it.
does anyone know if EA games or American McGee reacted to the comic, or what their stance on this issue is?
So then they really are saying they are hypocrits?
I also think that "insightful" "writing" dropped a bunch of peoples IQs. Maybe they should stop acting like kids and hanging out with little boys.
I seem to recall seeing an interview with Weird Al on this subject on VH-1. They showed Coolio's press conference slamming Weird Al and denying that they ever gave him permission to parody Gangsta's Paradise. Then they showed Al apologizing to Coolio, and saying that he had contacted Coolio's management for permission to parody the song. While Coolio himself may never have had any knowledge of the arrangement, Al said Coolio didn't have any problem cashing the check they wrote him for the rights to use the melody.
I take comfort in the fact that Weird Al is still popular after all these years and still making great music. Coolio is not just five minutes ago, but more like five years ago, and hasn't released anything of note in at least as long.
*Rubs butt on first amendment*
On of the primary concerns the founding fathers had was to protect certain types of parody speech. Oh well.
BTW the petition was approchaing 8000 sigs when i checked a few mins ago
Yes, although here it would nevertheless probably be an infringement as a derivative work.
For example, the idea of traveling through time, or even of traveling through time in a car, is not protectable because it's an idea. Get too close to the specific details of the Back to the Future movies (the car being a nuclear-powered DeLorean invented by Doc Brown, etc.) and then you're treading on the copyright.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Sorry to be picky, but you had my head tripping about when Luther Campbell sued his own band. Actually, music publisher Acuff-Rose, who own the rights to the Roy Orbison song Oh Pretty Woman sued the group 2Live Crew, and Luther Campbell was the lead singer/rapper of the group.
Anyway, I believe that it was the People vs. Larry Flynt where the Supreme Court first held that parody was protected under the first amemdmant. Later cases like the Acuff-Rose/2Live Crew one filled in details on what constitutes constitutionally protected parody.
Don't forget that Friday is Hawaiian shirt day.
A very well made point - but I have to firmly disagree. I agree that the material you are infringing should be the subject (or one of the subjects) of the parody, but I say that the Strawberry Shortcake material was the primary subject of the material. More accurately, the comic is making a statement how American McGee would (unintentionally) make a parody of Strawberry Shortcake if he were allowed to convert it to a videogame. If this picture was produced by American McGee himself, there would be no question that it is a parody of Strawberry Shortcake. In fact, it is clearly the intent to pretend that this is so, with the true nature only revealed in the small print and the context of where it was originally posted (the penny arcade site now being the only place where you definately cannot find it).
Does the fact that the comic was produced by Penny Arcade rather than American McGee make it any less of a parody of Strawberry Shortcake? I don't think so.
Is it a parody of American McGee's work? Well, I think it's that too! American McGee's work on Alice was widely acclaimed, but his work on Wizard of Oz has implied a one trick pony mentality - take a wholesome subject material (I'm talking about the _commonly_ held perception of the material) and make it dark, twisted, and add sexual elements. To choose an extremely wholesome and childlike initial subject and apply all the "trademark" McGee elements in one image just highlights the unimaginative nature of his approach. It is an intentional parody of one persons work whose work unintentionally makes a parody of others'.
I like it, but then I've been following Penny Arcade for years.
If it was just a capitulatory type of change, then i agree, just no reposting it at all would be a stronger moral statement.
However reformating the art into a statement against the perpetrators of its original removal as suggested above is a perfectly valid response i believe.
"Your attitude will lead to art that makes fun of you," is just as good as "your attitude will lead to no art."
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
7bc2976d0438198fc62f9713cb08f89d straw.gif
I unfortunately know very little about trademark infringement, but after studying up a little on copyright laws when someone was encroaching upon some of my rights, i discovered the following:
First off, copyright protection only applies to the image or work ITSELF, and not derivatives. If I were to draw a picture of strawberry shortcake myself, it would not be copyright infringement, but trademark infringement. Since Mike didn't use a copyrighted work in the actual comic, no violation of copyright occurred.
As for public domain, a work enters the public domain 70 years after the death of its creator, or after 120 years, whichever comes first. I believe it is slightly longer for works owned by companies (Disney, for instance), but it does expire eventually. I wouldn't be surprised if Disney's comes up pretty soon here, to be honest.
Also, regarding the parody... this parody could be taken two ways. He appeared to be using Strawberry Shortcake as a way to poke fun at American McGee, but it could just as easily be interpreted as him using American McGee's trademark as a way to poke fun at Strawberry Shortcake. Now, from what I gather, that should be covered under parody, and since this is not a for-sale item, it has no effect on the marketplace whatsoever.
Strawberry Shortcake, Popples, Care Bears and related trademarks are federally registered trademarks of Those Characters From Cleveland ("TCFC"), an American Greetings Company. All 978 Trademark Records at USPTO.gov
r ound.com
American Greetings Corporation (AM) (#2 US maker of greeting cards)
One American Road , Cleveland, Ohio
DesignWare party goods, GuildHouse candles, PlusMark gift wrap, and Designers' Collection stationery, balloons, giftware
Subsidiaries:
Those Characters From Cleveland, Inc. (character licensing)
AGC, Inc. (Design licensing)
Learning Horizons (supplemental educational products)
Magnivision (nonprescription reading glasses)
AmericanGreetings.com (online cards)
Bluemountain.com
Beatgreets.com
Passita
AG Industries, Inc. (Product display fixtures)
Gibson Greetings, Inc.
American Pie Acquisition Corp.
Egreetings Network, Inc. (egreetings.com)
Plus Mark, Inc.
Carlton Cards Retail, Inc.
CPS Company of Delaware Inc.
Carlton Cards Limited (Canada, UK)
Camden Graphics Group (UK)
Hanson White Ltd. (UK)
Gibson Greetings International Limited (UK)
The Ink Group Publishers Ltd. (U.K.)
Carlton Cards Ltd. (Ireland)
Carlton Mexico, S.A. de C.V.
John Sands (Australia, New Zealand) Ltd.
The Ink Group PTY Ltd. (Australia)
The Ink Group NZ Ltd.
S.A. Greetings Company (PTY) Ltd. (South Africa)
Memory Lane SDN BHD (85% owned) (Singapore, Hong Kong, China and Malaysia)
Top Competitors:
Hallmark (principal competitor)
123Greetings
Corbis - owned by Microsoft
Last 10k
All they would really have to do to protect themselves is slightly modify the name.
No, "Feenicks" isn't an appropriate name for a web browser either. Trademark infringement does not always hinge on "identical" but on "confusingly similar".
Will I retire or break 10K?
Al said Coolio didn't have any problem cashing the check they wrote him for the rights to use the melody.
My point was that neither Coolio nor anyone associated with him wrote that melody, Stevie Wonder did. Coolio has no claim on it, unless in the process of using it he actually purchased the copyright from Stevie.
where there's fish, there's cats
I also have put up a mirror, and have tons of bandwidth to spare.
http://yourmomsbox.com/community/images/straw.gif
Enjoy!
216-252-7300
Somehow I doubt those particular images are copyrighted by American Greetings.
Most Berne Convention parties' copyright laws have something similar to 17 USC 106, which states:
Will I retire or break 10K?
You misunderstand, I fear. The PA strip has nothing to do with Strawberry Shortcake (on a side note, how the hell can that get to be a registered trademark?).
I have no understanding of (or belief in, sadly) the USA's laws regarding free speech or copyright. What it is important to not is that the fact that Ms. Shortcake's appearance here (however modified) means nothing in itself. The idea is that should American McGee get it into his head to do a game about SS, it would probably look a lot like that, as shown by his 'interpretations' of Alice in Wonderland and, now, The Wizard of Oz.
American Greetings shouldn't take the PA strip to be unfavourable, but in fact acknowledge the obvious homage to what Messyrs Krahulik and Holkins clearly seem to think is some sort of epitome of sacharrine children's fiction. To anyone who understands the strip, the idea that SS is incorruptibly nice and sweet is reinforced, not diminished, by the comment of the strip (said comment being that American McGee is a conceptually unoriginal hack artist, little better than generational legions of bored teenagers sitting in Maths lessons, who would see the same depravities regardless of the subject matter he chose to defile).
American Greetings should see this as a kind of Blessing: Penny Arcade puts Strawberry Shortcake (which, frankly, no-one's heard of outside the US) right up there with Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz (both of which are widely known and highly popular outside the states)!
My main point is this. The way I see it, it would be just as funny (much more to non-americans) to use, say, Snow White (though Rammstein got there first) or Little Red Riding Hood (bestiality, hmm?). The equivalent in the UK would be to fuck with these early reading books which had characters such as "Roger Red Hat", "Billy Blue Hat", and "John and Jennifer Yellow Hat". They did nothing much more advanced than walk around saying hi to each other, but it would be soooo easy to make a schoolbook porno version.
Its a mystery why PA chose Strawberry Shortcake, when there are a heck of a lot more recognisable "wholesome" kids characters out there. Thats basically the joke. American McGee has no original talent above making wholesome kid's characters abuse themselves. My solution to this whole debacle? Just do another strip, just without this relatively obscure Strawberry Shortcake person, and with some nursery rhyme played out in bondage gear. Its the same strip, but American Greetings don't get the credit.
I would be sending this to them via email, but right now there's no point because I don't believe they are even going to check the inbox. She's probably already got a new inbox set up (unless the IT dudes are still trying to recover the server). Whatever happens, she won't see my message amongst the million others in there.
Protected under the 1st Amendment? I thought that as long as parody was proven that there is no legal recourse to a company unless the parody directly and quantitatively harms the company. Sort of like the Hustler Parody of Billy Graham if I remember right.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - BF
I know its buried in the myriad of thread, but here is legal precident from the SC concerning parodies.
. ZO .html
Its the SC ruling from the 1995 case, so lots of legalese (wheres the langiage support Google for THAT one?)
http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/92-1292
PVJR
Hey that's a nice loophole around letting people ever do parody. Just arbitrarily define what's being parodied to something else and call your copyrights "tools".
but I say that the Strawberry Shortcake material was the primary subject of the material
Gabe Newell disagrees with you on that point (he says so in the text he wrote to accompany the image). I'd expect the same from a judge or juror- upon learning the comic was written for a professional videogames website, they will agree that the primary subject was the one most pertinent to videogames (that is, a famous game designer, rather than a 15-year old pink doll)
Did he wake up in the morning and decide "I think I'll write about a toy I saw once in elementary school?" Of course not- he read an annoucement of "American McGee's Oz" and pondered "What other innocent, girlish fantasy-land could he plunder next?"
More accurately, the comic is making a statement how American McGee would (unintentionally) make a parody of Strawberry Shortcake if he were allowed to convert it to a videogame.
Exactly. That's the gripping hand. "making a statement how American McGee" tells us that the critical commentary is directed towards McGee primarily, not Strawberry Shortcake. You say they allude to a parody of SShortcake, suggesting that McGee would make one, but even if that's so, they aren't themselves parodying SShortcake.
I like it, but then I've been following Penny Arcade for years.
It's a good joke- somewhat esoteric, so a reader will feel satisfied if he understood it without hints. (and people who needed hints from the text to remember who AMG or SS were probably wouldn't get the joke even with help)
I agree that the material you are infringing should be the subject (or one of the subjects) of the parody
I don't agree with that, actually. Yes, that is the law. But I don't believe it should be.
I like it, but then I've been following Penny Arcade for years.
It's lasted better than Nickel Arcade, that's for sure.
I just hate to see anyone treating Strawberry Shortcake like a common tart.
"Lord, grant that I may always be right, for Thou knowest that I am hard to turn" -- A Scots-Irish prayer
Could all this be just one big publicity stunt on behalf of AG? Already, by just sending one complaint email to PA, 10's of thousands of people have read and replied. The petition that PA started has already reached 10000 signitures last time i checked. Also this issue "PA vs AG" has gone over dozens of sites, bringing in hundreds of forums threads a replies. For one, I have never even heard of AG, before a couple of days ago, mainly due to the fact that i dont live in america, and just browsing through their site for a couple of minutes i can see its worth. And we should all remember, any publicity is good publicity.
If everyone links to the image somewhere specifically using the text "Strawberry Shortcake", it should start appearing in Google (image) searches. That'll learn them.
The Dr. Seuss v. Penguin books case was decided in favor of the complainant (that's Dr Seuss Enterprises, fyi) because the Penguin "parody" turned out to be a satire. Instead of parodying Cat in the Hat, the Penguin book parodied the OJ Simpson trial, using the artistic and lingual style of Theodore Geisel. Penny Arcade's "Tart as a Double Entendre" comic didn't simply use Strawberry Shortcake as a vehicle of expression to parody American McGee. It parodied the artistic style of Strawberry Shortcake and the thematic style of American McGee simultaneously. By altering the artistic style of Strawberry Shortcake to resemble the latest in Gabe's "sketchy" art (rather than using the gothic art design of American McGee), he conjured up the essence of the cultural icon while transforming it in a sexually charged yet personalized parody. Because of that ARTISTIC change, he explicitly targetted the innocent style of the copyrighted Shortcake. The comic meets both requirements of parody, both of American McGee and CR'ed Shortcake. And yes, parody can target more than one subject at a time.
They had to complain. They couldn't let it pass. I would put money on it half of the people reading this either had no idea about Penny-Arcade or even the comic it self. They should have left it alone and let it rot in the archives directory of the PA site instead of sicking their lawyers on it and making a big deal about it. I read PA, and looking at the Comic did not make me change my mind about the company, infact I did not even look into what it represented until now. So what really will result of this? - PA will save about 56,320 Bytes in web space. - Hallmark will receive more business. - My mother will get a decent card for mother's day. - Penny-Arcade, Slashdot, and Random Forums around the world will have a new topic to rant about. American Greetings. . .
Thanks?
Master Of The Tessenjutsu - "He'll Cool you down and cut your arm off in one shot."
it's on the censored archive, in strawberry_shortcake. see .sig for details.
Will do. I think we should all boycott any company bringing puerile lawsuits against obviously satire. We need to start putting web servers on oil platforms in the middle of the ocean and operate them like Swiss banks so nobody is liable. I remember someone saying they were going to do that with a Napster like product. Please tell me what this lawsuit does for the company besides bring them negative backlash and popularize the strip??
Visit http://www.freestandingentertainment.com
Greetings,
I was displeased today to discover the action your company has taken in regards to the Penny Arcade parody of and involving your trademark "Strawberry Shortcake". Your company should realize that such heavy handed action produces far more negative publicity towards your products than such a parody ever would. Regardless of the actual legal specifics, it was wrong to attempt to suppress said parody. I trust greeting card companies to express my feelings and opinions to those people I send them to. How can I trust American Greetings to do that anymore when they so obviously do not represent my desire for freedom of speech and expression?
Regardless, I will be purchasing Hallmark cards instead until this situation is resolved to my satisfaction.
Sincerely,
Ok, i'm not familiar with this site at all. I honestly just wandered over from Penny Arcade and immersed myself in all these posts and the hilarity that is American Law (well, any Law really, I'm just Canadian so I find this question of parody very strange) However, since many of you people seem to have a firm grasp on reality, or at least on a goodly portion of your brain, I felt I could raise a question or two and hopefully have someone clear the air for me. #1) How in the world did American Greatings find Penny-Arcade in the first place? I goggled "Strawberry Shortcake" and gave up after 30 pages and still no link to PA. Metacrawler and Yahoo! got the same response. I found more porn and actual recipies for Strawberry Shortcake than any parody. #2) How is it, legally speaking, that parody is not protected as parody when the parody is not a DIRECT parody? Is there no such thing as indirect? I mean, if I use a popular radio jingle to make fun of a film, that isn't protected? I would have to use that particular film and the images associated with it in order to safely make fun of it? Half the fog in Toronto tonight is me. I'm so confused. Thank you for your patience and time. me
I'm not too familiar with the copyright laws, and this whole things seems incredibly stupid, but it's hard to tell if PA is within their actual legal limitations here.
For one, as was stated many times, the comic does parody American McGee by poking fun at making childhood characters into goth-evil whatever people. Like with Alice, he took the characters and basically made them twisted.
However, the comic isn't doing a pardoy of Strawberry Shortcake. Honestly, I think it's just weird that she has a copyright, but eh. So, I guess I see that in terms of a business standpoint - they don't want to be seen as supporting something that says a company is wrong.
Well, not wrong, but we get the idea from Gabe's post and the comic that he thinks American McGee is pretty sick, and he's making that obvious with the comic. However, American Greetings might not share this view, and if you used their licensed material, American Greetings in a sense do become affiliated with the comic and it's message, at least it appears that way to me.
I do think the entire thing is stupid. I mean, who really gives a fuck about Strawberry Shortcake anyway? I don't even know if she has a fable or whatnot. I guess the way they could make the comic more approriate would be to parody an already existing story so that it had the underlying pardoy of American McGee; Like, take Goldilocks and the Three Bears and have Goldilocks, like, trying to fight off three really gruesome bears - it works because it's making fun of the old story of Goldilocks by making it into a twisted story, but still is making fun of American McGee for it's stupidity. Or, like, Red Riding Hood.
Basically it just seems like they picked the wrong subjects accidentally for their piece, and I hope they can remake it with a better selection. And I hope the email they sent to PA was polite, because if it wasn't then they're just being overbearing and I will refuse to buy any products from them from this day forward.
Do you think whoever owns American Greetings (I think it's Mattel) could possibly be affiliated with Electronic Arts? Just a thought...
as bad publicity. Apparently, there's no such thing as corporate humor, either.
its called Jerry Falwell v. Hustler Magazine unless someone else have already stated this before i think we can look back to other cases involving the same type of situation.. its called a parody and it is protected.
AG isn't owned by Mattel (or anyone) -- it's a publicly traded company (AM) run mostly by the Weiss family
Dear American Greetings,
I applad and support your defending of your IP. Don't let the imature brats get to you. Just like penny-dorkage's site runners, none of them do any work, they have no money, and the free loaders would not pay for anything anyway.
-AC
And I have read their strip for quite some time.
I got sick of it since the jokes mostly just consist of the following theme:
First panel: Bitching about something
Second panel: Character A insulting character B.
Third Panel: One of the characters "u r ghay."
The fact that every fucking moron quotes them ever damn time, they believe every thing PA says without a question, and they does what ever PA say as if they where gods doesn't help either.
This is just as funny as the "In Soviet Russia" jokes, which is to say it isn't funny at all.
What retards! Why do they need to get AGC's permission to boycott AGC?
Since they are petitioning you for the premission to boycott you, please don't give them the premission to boycott you.
According to the wording they are pettioning AGC for their premission to boycott AGC.
Actually, as a parent of a 4 year old girl and the husband of a Strawbery Shortcake fan of old, Strawberry Shortcake is making a new comeback (albeit in an updated form with the help of Bandai). And the old version is also available at various stores. My wife, for one, was well aware that American Greetings owned SS, and I didn't even know that American Greetings existed (they're all Hallmark to me - talk about your fading of a trademark). I don't really want to comment on the product itself or the differences between the old and the new versions, but the SS brand is being actively sold and marketed today. So I can understand why AG wanted to protect their brand - but that doesn't mean I support their means for doing so. A politely worded letter asking for modifcation rather than C&D would have probably been more effective. AG may have succeeded in protecting their trademark, but I think they failed in terms of marketing their product.
Will this mean I won't buy any Strawberry Shortcake stuff for my daughter? Maybe, maybe not. Content is content in my opinion, and quality is still the most important factor in my purchasing decisions. But I will think twice about it and be more critical of my purchases from them (and will probably be less likely to purchase every little set and accessory my daughter asks for) and not just on SS branded stuff by AG. Their marketing department won't appreciate that the company's law firm has given me a reason not to buy their product, and they will have to spend additional money on damage control.
Redundant should not be used on duplicates in a single thread. It is ideally suited for modding down posts that re-state something said a hundred times before. First posts, in soviet russia jokes and mentioning the legal situation between Apple Computers and Apple Records come to mind. Redundant is usually metamoderated unfair regardless of the way you use it.
Hank! White!
the last lawsuit this woman was involved with was over the internet adress popples.com apparently the objective of this company is to own all rights to 80's swag they can get their greedy little paws on. I'm better off without their crap anyway
There is a petition to boycott American Greetings because of what they did to Penny Arcade. The spelling errors on it have been corrected too. ^^ To sign to petition: http://www.petitiononline.com/agcbyctt/petition.ht ml
To see the disputed comic:
http://www.spymac.com/gallery/showphoto.php?photo= 25644&size=big&papass=&sort=1&thec at=
To read the post "Strawberry Shortcake Comic Removed" go to:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/news.php3?date=2003-04 -23
I never make mistakes. I once thought I did but I was wrong
There is a petition to boycott American Greetings because of what they did to Penny Arcade. The spelling errors on it have been corrected too. ^^ To sign to petition: http://www.petitiononline.com/agcbyctt/petition.ht ml
To see the disputed comic: http://www.spymac.com/gallery/showphoto.php?photo= 25644&size=big&papass=&sort=1&thec at=
To read the post "Strawberry Shortcake Comic Removed" go to:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/news.php3?date=2003-04 -23
I never make mistakes. I once thought I did but I was wrong
A common tart, eh? Hey, you made a funny.
On another note, I don't understand how one can "treat" a fictional character like anything. That implies an element of realism that simply does not exist.
I've tried since late yesterday (Thu Apr 24 ~4pm EDT) to get to Penny Aracade's web site and have been getting nothing but "11001 - Host not found" errors. Ping and nslookup also fail. Is this a local DNS problem, or...?
Clues, anyone?
Very good point. So, instead, from now on I'll attack the company :)
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tycho@penny-arcade.com
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gabriel@penny-arcade.com
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you generally can get away with a whole lot more than you can if you are trying to sell a product using someone else's name.
Penny-Arcade.com sells products on its comics pages. Such products include advertising and PA merchandise.
or instance, a fake television commercial on a comedy show about Crack A Cola is almost certainly going to walk away without incident.
Are you sure? See Coca-Cola Co. v. Gemini Rising, Inc., 346 F. Supp. 1183 (E.D.N.Y. 1972), over selling posters containing "Enjoy Cocaine" with a modifed Coca-Cola logo. The producer of your hypothetical comedy show would not be able to eventually sell DVDs of the season containing the Coke parody without the Coca-Cola Co. bringing up Coke v. Gemini Rising in a drawn-out court proceeding.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I haven't been able to connect to them for two days now. Does anyone know if their site has been yanked?
That works, unless the company isn't real. I'm still not sure if any of you are real, either. ;P
American Greeting Mother's Day Card: $1.99
Hallmark Mother's Day Card: $3.49
Prompting consumers nationwide to take a stand for free speech by purchasing from your competition: Priceless.
There are some things laywers can't sue over, For everything else, there's a lawsuit.
Amazingly enough, even with the popples.com lawsuit and the recent PA issue, www.americangreetingssucks.com doesn't exist. (the www.sucks.com being the de facto standard for company directed consumer complaint sites) Is this a sign that the IT market is recovering? I mean, I figured there'd be a lot of freelance web designers out there with extra time on their hands.
Third Panel: One of the characters "u r ghay." You're thinking of whatever the hell that stupid movies comic is, not PA. That or you haven't actually read PA. You can not like the comic, but you can't be a dumbass in the process.
...is up for a (probably) very short time here.
I saw the PA cartoon when it came out, thought it was funny, but also thought "they're going to get slammed if the SS owners find out"
I saw it and wondered what a Strawberry Shortcake was (i thought it must have been a char from Alice in Wonderland), but I must say, all I knew was that I surely wanted one of my own.
Do the following really mean anything? SCSA MCP CCSA CCNA
--I'm not actually after an answer!