April 28, 2003 - Monday

Welp, another filler of scary scary dolls. This weekend, I went to a LAN party at Sean's house.. we played lots of Freelancer and got pretty buff.. it was a fun game and I had a great time =} Sunday, when I hooked my computer back up and started poking around with Xara, it kept crashing, much to my dismay. To those who don't know, my comic is done with that program =\ So I reinstalled it twice and ran scandisk on my computer. I dunno if it's 'fixed', but it 'runs better' now. But it's 2am and I don't wanna work on my comic since.. well.. I'm tired. So in other news, I'm still pumping out stuff for Acen, so if you're going, come visit me at my booth in the dealer's room! I'm gonna put online coupons up later so you can get a dollar off your purchases or something. Oh, everyone, send your best wishes to E-chan. She's been drugged up because of her hurt back. So.. yeah. I've run out of rantage. If you want entertainment, go to Mangled Stare and check out his comic. If you want enteractive fun, go to Faito and post something =} And if you have some money to blow (remember to save some for my stuff at Acen!) go to Ebay and bid on Vaz's watercolor artwork! He needs money for his trip to Fanime! OKies, enough begging. Enjoy the scary dolls =}

[^Young^] - 2:01 AM PDT

Yeah, my back sucks big time right now. But I'm getting better. ^^ Anyway,I have a major reason to post. Apparently, our friends over at Penny Arcade are under attack by the American Greetings Corporation for a comic they posted a few days ago. If you read the comic regularly, it was the Strawberry Shortcake parody. The bigwigs over at American Greetings don't seem to have a sense of humour, and so they threatened legal action against Penny Arcade unless they removed the strip, which unfortunately, they did. This is an online petition against American Greetings, and I encourage everyone to sign it. This is an attack against free speech, and against the web comic community in general. Let's not take this sitting down, shall we?

[^e^] - 8:44 AM PDT

Oh, in regards to that Strawberry Shortcake thing; I've been reading up on the threads on the PA forums and honestly, there are a lot of.. er... @$$holes there =} If you don't like the fact that the company that owns Strawberry Shortcake asked PA to take down the comic, don't come up with some huge plot to e-mail bomb the poor woman who was doing her job that sent the message to PA or doing anything stupid like that. I know we all have a voice, but doing something stupid like that sets back any rational thoughts we have by a hundred fold. If you're upset, sign the petition and be orderly. Nobody likes one idiot to mess things up =}

[^Young^] - 7:05 PM PDT

April 29, 2003 - Tuesday

Reading up on the concepts behind the PA/American's Greetings issue going on at the moment, I think there are far too many rabid fans frothing at the mouth attempting to protect the underdog without thinking about the matter in full at the moment. PA did a parody comic, and that's pretty obvious. The problem with parody is that, as far as I know, you can parody an existing idea or concept. For instance, Space Balls was a parody of Star Wars and Lucas did not sue them for making the movie. Now, on the other hand, if Space Balls used the character Cyclops from X-men, I'm sure Marvel would get extraordinarily upset since Cyclops is a trademarked character and anything Space Balls does detracts from Cyclop's current image that Marvel is attempting to create. PA was parodying American McGee's works with a trademarked character. I think American's Greeting's major problem with it isn't that they used Strawberry Shortcake, but more accurately, because they made her look like a lesbian dominatrix, which obviously damages the image that American's Greetings created for the character. So, giving it some real thought, I think American's Greetings is right and they did what they should have done, to defend their trademark. I also think PA did the right thing in taking down the comic and putting up a second comic later making fun of American's Greetings, because it's their free speech right. No one needs to sign any petitions or give PA any money for legal defense. Legally, PA is 'wrong' because they put up a comic that harmed someone else's trademarked character. Legally, PA is 'right' by putting up a free speech comic making fun of American's Greetings by calling them Nazis =} Oh, just in case anyone was curious, I've been researching Copyrights and Trademarks because of the nature of my fanart. I was trying to see if it's legal for me to sell my art =} Theoretically, it's legal because the art is copyrighted by me and it isn't anyone else's work... but if I left the logos of the series the characters came from on the artwork, it constitutes trademark infringement. However, if I don't damage the property I'm using the trademark from, the company probably won't send me a cease and desist order or sue me. They have the full right to do so, however, if they want to =}

[^Young^] - 3:36 AM PDT

Hmm... So a parody of a concept or idea is fine, but using a trademarked character (however altered) in a parody is not. Would it be ok if the character used was itself a parody? Or one that is not referred to directly by it's trademarked name? Considering the comic they were doing it wouldn't have worked very well, but if they hadn't referred to "Strawberry Shortcake" or if they had called her something else would they have been in the clear?

[^SEan^] - 4:20 PM PDT

Yes, technically, they would have been clear. Or, if they did a parody of non-trademarked characters... like... Little Miss Muffet, for instance (who I think was owned by Grimm's Fairytale folk or something like that, but is now open domain)... or things like Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland which are public domain (which is why American McGee is messing with them.... which is also why I chose Oz for Otherworld =}). As long as they didn't use the character trademark Strawberry Shortcake, it would have been legal, though, if it was a close enough reference, American's Greetings still might have had a good cause for a C&D order... like if they named her "Strawberry Muffincake" or something but it was still clearly aluding to and damaging Strawberry Shortcake.

[^Young^] - 5:33 PM PDT

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