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."
If anyone doesn't think viral marketing works - then they should read this. The first I heard about Serenity was on a friend's blog. I think they'd got into a preview screening on the basis that they'd blog about it. I then watched the first eight minutes of it which was being shown to promote the film and enjoyed it. I then went to see the film and enjoyed it and thought it was worth it too.
There are very few films I go see at the cinema and because I don't have a TV most of the promotions for them pass me by - and a lot don't appeal.
Video Game cheats, hints a
Don't annoy someone who has more spare time than you do.
And this group has a lot of spare time and energy and has shown they'll fight for something they believe in.
But of course no one is required to have any social literacy to head a major corporation. Obviously.
It seems to me a case of some people going a little overboard with the whole "promote" idea. In this day and age, you can't use a corporate trademark like that and not expect some kind of backlash. Kudos to the fanbase on the other hand for getting the word out there about this fine show(s).
Is there heaven? Is there Hell? Is that a Tuna Melt I smell?-Primus
* Serenity and Firefly are the intellectual property of "Universal Studios Licensing, LLLP"
Ok, having only briefly looked it over... I think what Universal is objecting to is this knucklehead selling merchandise for profit, utilizing their images. This isn't promoting the film, this is promoting his bank account. If I am reading it correctly, they're not telling him to stop promoting the film, they're telling him to stop promoting his products using their IP.
So, well, what's the problem?
I just went onto the universal studios website to find out what movies to not watch. Shouldn't have bothered.
The Black Dahlia
Man of the Year
Idlewild
Accepted
Miami Vice
You, Me and Dupree
coming
Lets go to Prison
The Good Shepherd
Children of Men
Alpha Dog
the more they over-think the plumbing the easier it is to stop up the pipe
So a guy decides to print up some Serenity t-shirts and sell them on cafe press, and is surprised when he gets sued by Universal. How braindead can you be? Viral marketing means putting a mention of Firefly/Serenity on your website with a link to Amazon.
That said, bring back Firefly. Best sci-fi series since ST:TNG in my opinion.
I don't think resources are an issue for the fan base. They've already shown a willingness to go to bat for a show/movie they liked, and did it all for free.
It can be pretty amazing what people can accomplish out of pure passion for the work, as opposed to the profit to be made from it. In this case, the fans are more than willing to make the effort. The question is, will it be for or against Universal releases of the future?
If it goes against, there could be some problems for future TV and movies from Universal, as this loyal block will remember and potentially boycott. Universal knows that the potential loss of revenue from a rabid base of fans in that much coveted "18-35 male without an understanding of credit card debt" demographic would be something advertisers would look at closely. It would certainly cost them more than the 9,000 they are looking for in liscensing fees.
Then again, the MPAA and RIAA are dumb enough to cut off the hands that feed them all the time. Why should this be any different?
and I hated this movie, but I still paid my $8 dollars to watch it on opening night because of all the hype.
Can I get a retroactive refund?
They will be guilty of fraud. Doing something for someone does not entitle you to compensation unless you have a prior agreement that these actions will be compensated for. This is equivalent to me showing up on your lawn, mawing it and sending you a bill that I deem is fair. You didn't agree to pay for before hand, so you don't owe the money. Billing someone for the money they don't owe you is fraud.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
For Universal, don't mess with the kind of people who have a lotttt more spare time than you do. The group is the kind of group that *will* get into a good television show (especially as good as Firefly was). These fans were and still are super-dedicated to the show and have and will have a lot of energy to spare for the show that is practically their religion.
However, that being said, Universal will disregard everything that they (and anyone else) do. It's going to take a hot poker to get Universal to do anything pro-consumer. Remember, all of the decisions are made by a group of women and men sitting at a table trying to figure out how to maximize profit. And that they are going to try to do, even if they are shortsighted about it.
This is the clue bat. This is your head. This is the clue bat hitting your head.
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.
But that is entirely beside the point. The point is that Universal believes this is a valuable franchise, and acts to protect it. They are not trying to shut down the fan community. Simply, there are people at Universal who think a Serenity sequel is a possibility, and they want to maintain control over that so when they fund the next movie they're going to get a proper ROI. That is all.
It's basically good news that they want to defend this.
Our intelligent designer has never created an animal that we couldn't improve by strapping a bomb to it.
.. go after the 'authors' - and I use that word in the loosest possible sense - of all those responsible for the inevitable shitty fan fiction based on Firefly, as well as all the crappy Buffy/X-Files stuff. If I'd created or owned the rights to a series, I'd be more concerned about that. To say nothing of the really disturbing slash stuff.
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.
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.
Watch how I sue.
As an addendum, Universal has stated that they also want the sky back.
Sure, we can all agree to that, but you miss my point about legal protection. Unlike the labor of fans, it takes money to buy the labor of lawyers. Promoting something by posting about it on your free personal blog about how you like it is not even close to the same ballpark as filing a motion in court. Not even close. This community you are so fond of has yet to pool together money to mount a legal defense--it is only free time they have pooled. And like it or not, money and labor are not the same thing. And who is going to pony up the money to pay the legal professionals who can actually help them wriggle out of this problem? Mr. Free Blog Post? Probably not. It's a very real problem that cannot be glossed over by fandom.
Not only that, but if you read the copy of the email that was sent, it seems that Universal's issue is with the unlicensed sale of shirts. Hmm let's see...selling something for profit like a shirt is hardly the benevolent, grassroots effort that it's being made out to be. It's making that sweet merchandising money off of a property you absolutely don't own and have no right to profit from in that manner. For a community that loves the GPL and loves to espouse rhetoric such as "You can only license something you own", Slashdot sure does want to have its cake and eat it too. I would rate seeking compensation for unlicensed clothing as something no less petty than, say, demanding that "GNU" precede the word "Linux" in the name of an operating system.
Why don't they just call it Iceweasel and be done with it?
Oh, Firefly. Nevermind, do carry on.
This sig is intentionally left blank
Looking at the postings and the takedown notice, it seems that the person being threateded with legal action might have a strong position.
Yes, they are clearly creating derivative works and would normally be violating Universal's copyright. However, it seems that Universal specifically was encouraging fans to create derivative works to promote the release of the movie. I would personally subpoena every document involving the viral campaign and look for language that I could use to prove a grant of license to the fans.
Disclaimer: I am not your attorney, I am most likely not even licensed to practice in your state. This is simply an academic discussion.
"May have been the losing side. Still not convinced it was the wrong one." (Bushwhacked)
I didn't desert Windows; Windows deserted me: BSOD
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.
"After being encouraged to viral market Serenity, the studio has started legal action against fans"
I hate what the Internet has done to basic language skills.
Except the issue here isn't with the C&D. The C&D came and was complied with well before the second message demanding a retroactive $9k in licensing fees, to close their entire store permanently, and logs of the last 12 months of sales.
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Serenity Now!
Serenity Now!
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