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The Real Monsters Behind Godzilla
eldavojohn writes "A Wired blog looks at the real monsters behind Godzilla: his lawyers. Do you think Godzilla is basically a glorified T. Rex? Guess again, as his lawyers have tirelessly argued: 'He's erect-standing. He's got muscular arms, scaly skin and spines on back and tail and he breathes fire and has a furrowed brow, he's got an anthropomorphic torso. The T. rex has emaciated bird-like arms and stands at a 45-degree angle.' Read on to find out why they targeted the site davezilla.com but not mozilla.org. Another abuse of the American trademark & copyright system? You decide — just don't make a float of him or you'll find yourself paying an undisclosed sum to Toho Co. Ltd."
ip law between corporate entities is still sound, and always will be sound
ip law as applied to civilians, civic organizations, parody, hobbyist websites, etc.: dead
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The weird thing is some of the Godzilla movies have entered the public domain. We used a piece in a TV commercial (years and years ago - think Morris worm) and Toho showed up and said no (or face the wrath of our suitcase baring legions). So we took the actual image of Godzilla out but still used the rays destroying tanks, people running, smoldering buildings and there was no problem. Used it again on MTV a couple of times.
Someone should do a bootleg Kiss Vs Godzilla for the asshole IP Olympics.
Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.
Dude, are you some kind of hick or something? No blue states use "coke" as a generic for cola. It's *sniff* used for other things.
Actually Peter Pan's copyright is owned by a hospital in England. As the wiki describes, it's complicated. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Ormond_Street_Hospital#Peter_Pan_copyright
Weird - Wiki link was just culled;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_and_Wendy#Copyright_status
An Invisible Entity of Vast Power whose existence must be taken on faith alone: Liberal Media
Just for reference, the name "Gojira" (the actual Japanese name for Godzilla) was derived from combining the Japanese words for Gorilla (gorira) and Whale (kujira). It would have been hilarious if Godzilla's inventor had envisioned the actual beast to be a mix of the two creatures.