Slashdot Mirror
Firefly Fans Fight Back Against Universal
Gossi writes "What happens when a film studio and a fanbase get into bed? Fans of Joss Whedon's Firefly, and the movie by Universal Studios — Serenity — are not amused. After being encouraged to viral market Serenity, the studio has started legal action against fans (demanding $9000 in retroactive licensing fees in one case and demanding fan promotion stop), and going after Cafepress. The fans response? Retroactively invoice Universal for their services."
...but just because you're dumb enough to advertise somebody's product free of charge for them, doesn't mean you get to change your mind and invoice them in the end - even if your "invoice" is just a parody. You advertised it because you liked the product. It was your own choice to do so, don't whine to us.
However, there's a very big difference between telling your friends about a product, and doing things like making T-shirts that attempt to cash in financially on a product you didn't make and have no rights to.
If you aren't able to tell the difference between these two things, you deserve everything the court throws at you.
And this group has a lot of spare time and energy and has shown they'll fight for something they believe in.
They have also shown that they will work for free for an international multimillion dollar corporation. They are not exactly the smartest people on this planet.
Come on! They worked for free so that a corporation could make profit by selling them mind dumbing entertainment! It would be just as stupid if I worked for free at McDonalds and then went to the other side of the counter and bought the hamburgers I just cooked.
Antti S. Brax - Old school - http://www.iki.fi/asb/
Don't you wish Bill Gates were a Sci-Fi fan? He could just finance a whole season, no strings attached, just for the heck of it, and donate the the sales of the DVD to his charity fund. I'd buy.
Ah, well. Firefly, we hardly knew ye.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
However this is missing the point of how viral marketing campaigns are supposed to work. Viral marketing can be scary particularly for large control-freak companies, as the essential point behind viral marketing is to give away control of the brand to the fans / early adopters and let them be a mouthpiece for your product, a voice that other fans and their less fanish friends, family and acquaintances will trust when they wouldn't even notice a conventional marketing campaign via TV, radio, print and billboards.
I wouldn't be surprised if Universal's marketing dept were over the moon with all the fan promotion including Serenity T-shirts (free advertising by the wearer). And at the same time their IP dept were doing the only thing they know how to do. Plenty of YouTube vids were posted by marketing depts only to be retracted by their own lawyeres.
It seems to me that part of the deal with viral marketing is giving away control to the fans and while this may be informal (how do you contract for that 20th C-style?) and the fan volunteers have a right to be treated with respect for their work. Even if that means they make a little money out of the owner's IP. Under the technicalities of the law that may be "unlicenced" use, but there is an implicit grant of rights in marketing a product that we consumers have let slide and given the corporations free rein to trample over. Otherwise every time we told a mate about a great product we'd have to pay a licence fee and balance that by billing the corporation for marketing services. Just as these Browncoats have tried to show...
--
USA: home of the world's largest terrorist training camp.
I don't know about the GP, but I'm definitely not poor, and I don't own a TV. I've been considering buying a good projector for gaming and the occasional movie, but I have no desire to watch any of the junk I see friends watching on TV at their houses. I'd rather read a book, go scuba diving, or do pretty much anything else. I guess I just don't see any benefit to having television. The only show I've seen in the last five years that entertained me was Stargate, and I'd rather just download it. If they offered it online at $1/episode I'd definitely pay for it. Why have a big, useless TV taking up space? Just so I can have a reason to pay $30-100 every month on a cable or satellite bill?
SWM seeks new sig for a brief fling
As others have already pointed out, it's not copacetic to sell merchandise like that. You think you can start selling Star Wars t-shirts and Lucasfilm will be OK with that? Not likely.
At present, this is the closest thing I could find to an infringement of any copyright or trademark on the T-shirt site in question. The product itself has no hint of infringement, and the description of the product has the word "serenity" but it's just a translation from the Chinese character in the picture on the shirt. Maybe the site used to contain more infringing stuff; I don't know. But at present, the Universal lawyers are still demanding that he take down the site (and holding the usual obscene $150,000 per instance copyright infringement damage number over his head to make sure he does it).
There is a danger to the Firefly/Serenity franchise here. Viral marketing works, but it works in both directions. The whole mythos of Firefly is about rebellion against a powerful government. If it looks like the franchise is in the hands a pseudo-government (big corporation) the most ardent fans will rebel. Of course, Firefly/Serenity has been in the hands of a big company since it was started, but the Browncoats might actually notice it now and become rather disillusioned rather than support it as fervently as they have done so far. No viral marketing means (maybe) no market. No market means no movie.
Have you ever wondered How to Take Over
I keep hearing how Serenity was a flop, and yet the cinemas i saw were packed when it came out, and the dvd is selling well in the stores i check.
I was never a fan of Firefly, in fact i've never seen an episode and yet the 8 minute trailer sold me on going to see Serenity (despite the tv Ad that gave me shivers and a horrible sickening feeling). I would love to see a sequel to Serenity or anything along the lines of it and would buy the dvd, even though im not a dvd buying person.
As far as i can see the marketing worked, not the traditional marketing though. I think somone has some sore feelings after having their "tried and trusted" marketing system shown to be as unrealible and broken as it is.
Offtopic, I know, but here's my theory: It's due to a universal (pun not intened) misconception that a manager should focus on the "big picture" and delegate responsibilites to subordinates. So your average manager is totally out of touch with the customers, the employees, and the market. The only thing he or she sees is charts, reports and presentations, and somehow key decisions should be made with this stuff.
But if you read a little MORE (I know, I know, it's Slashdot) you'll see he said this:
"The questionable image in my shop were, for the most part, already pulled down by Cafe Press after the first email notice I got last week."
And if you keep reading (this could go on forever, I'm sure) there was an original C&D related to the copyright and images, which was complied with (the 'already pulled down...' part). These being images that Universal had previously encouraged use of for promotion of the movie - there have even been (unsupported) claims that Universal employees had at least turned a blind eye, if not passively encouraged, use of the images on infringing merchandise. Of course, I could encourage someone to use my company's logo, that doesn't mean it's okay for them to do so... but keep in mind, the people infringing copyright here are the 'average joe' types that are not nearly as aware of copyright law as the slashdot crowd. They're scared to death, because they're honest people who made an honest mistake by taking these Universal employees at face value, and are now taking these letters at face value as well, thinking they suddenly owe a tremendous amount of money to Universal.
It sounds like the first letter (the C&D) was for the copyrighted images, and the second letter billing for the retroactive licensing fees - in addition to other demands, including a year's backlog of customer order information - was for Firefly/Serenity related original works.
What apparently happened is that Universal sold T-shirt rights to a third party, which is now either enforcing on behalf of Universal, or demanding that Universal enforce (all this is going through a... fourth(?) party law firm, of course) the Firefly/Serenity copyright. Again, no supporting evidence, but that's what's been said.
Seems to me, the appropriate/ethical thing for Universal to do would be to acknowledge that they have sent mixed signals to the fans of their IP, and take care of this. I've heard it said that Universal has in the past been pretty even-handed with their IP enforcement, so maybe there's still a chance that they'll step up to the plate with this one.
My wife and I don't buy anything that has a Sony name on it or affiliated with it. We look at EVERYTHING for Sony.
We've started doing the same for Universal a few months back (over other issues). Do we make a difference? No.
But we tell our friends and family about it, and we know it does make a difference. Why? Because they've not bought any Sony electronics, or even gone to any recent Universal movies. It's gotten to the point that we even get e-mails from friends and family asking us about a particular movie or CD -- and we'll do a quick Google or IMDB or Amazon search to confirm if it's Sony or Universal.
Does that make a difference? Probably not, but in the long run I'm happier not supporting those companies. That's all we can do, and big companies have been surprisingly toppled by individual decisions (see GM).
--dada / anarcho-capitalist
There's nothing stopping the mentally challeged lawyers at Universal from doing the very same thing to the fansites promoting the new Galactica. In fact, those websites would be doing themselves a favor by raising awareness of this action.
The new Battlestar Galactica series is popular and has good ratings by cable standards, but not great ratings by new. The season premier got a 1.5 share. The CBS evening news pulls a 5, and CBS is embarrassed by the low rating. So there's some perspective.
Sci-Fi recently encouraged fans to "Make Galactica #1" with a spread the word campaign. Sound familiar? Kinda like what the Browncoats were encouraged to do?
Next year the marketing machine for Star Trek will ramp up to promote the new TOS based movie. Do you think they might reach out to the fans? Do you thing Paramont might be desperate for some old school Trekkie action? Perhaps it would be stupid for Paramont to sue fan sites, biting the hand and all that.
Universal hasn't learned this leason.
There is a line between blogging about the movie and showing trailers on your web site, and marketing licensable items (like shirts). The first two are viral advertising, the latter is, well, marketing something that someone else owns as your own products.
From the fucking article:
I don't see any mention of marketing t-shirts as viral advertising.
Now while I generally think of movie executives as dick heads, but to be fare, they put up a lot of money to finance a movie that returned not so much. If they make a few million dollars on this, then good for them. They put up US$39 million dollars in production costs, around US$15 million in advertising costs, and about US$8.5 million in distribution costs. The film made US$38.3 million GROSS at the box office (meaning before the theaters take their cut). If the movie ran over production budget, or flopped, etc. You wouldn't give a rat's ass about the folks who would have lost their shirts. They paid for the right to market shirts.
Just because you REALLY REALLY like something, doesn't mean you can take if for your own and do whatever you want with it. This is also the reason we have patents (real patents, not business rules patents). If someone spends time and a lot of money to develop a new something, whether directly as an investment, or in their own time (so they can't earn money elsewhere), why do you think it should be OK for someone else to profit off of it. Or is it a matter of "if it's the little guy getting ripped, then defend the hell out of him, but if it is the big guy, or they have something you really really like, then fuck it, rob him"?
Man on the street to another guy: "Excuse me, but do you know what time it is?"
Second guy: "It's three P.M."
First guy: "Thank you... and I really really like your watch... I want to sell it to that guy over there."
Second guy: "What? Excuse me, it is my watch, I paid for it."
First guy (gathers a mob around him): "We don't care. We want it , and we're going to sell it."
I know this can easily be called a troll since there are going to be a lot of fanboys reading this thread, but really. And I happen to really really like Serenity (saw it twice in the threater), and watched and really really liked Firefly when it first came on TV... and was supremely disappointed when it was canceled. But I still think that showing trailers on your web site is one thing and selling someone else's idea as your own is another.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
Since Universal Pictures knew about the "infringing" activities and did nothing when those activities helped promote their film, their retroactive licensing fees should IMO be estopped. I don't know if Universal's cease and desist orders can be estopped or not. Since people built business models based upon Universal's tacit acceptance of the use of their trademarks, I think a good argument could be made that Universal delayed too long and have thus invalidated their own trademarks. If trademarks are not vigorously enforced, they are forfeited.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
A buddy showed me a bit of Serenity because I'm a sci fi fan. I hadn't seen Firefly because I worked nights during its run. I had heard of it but didn't see it.
I went and bought Serenity, watched it, loved it and bought the entire DVD set of Firefly. Showed them to the Mrs., and she loves it too. Too bad it was underwritten by douchebags.