# Don't Shoot Star Wars...toys.



## Braineack (Dec 11, 2015)

Couple takes pics of Star Wars figure they bought, gets DMCA notice from Lucasfilm

On Tuesday, a Star Wars Action News staffer saw something he shouldn't have—and bought it. A 3 3/4" action figure of "Rey," a female character from The Force Awakens, was on display in a Walmart in Iowa, apparently earlier than it should have been. The staff member bought it for $6.94 plus tax, no questions asked. The following day, he posted pictures of the Rey figure on Star Wars Action News' Facebook page.

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A short time later, Carvalho got a surprising message.

"A friend texted my husband saying, hey, are you getting sued?" said Carvalho in an interview with Ars. The image from the Facebook post was gone. "We looked and noticed we'd gotten a notice from Facebook saying our image violated copyright. It was confusing because our staff member, Justin, he took the photo."

The image had quickly spread through social media—and just as fast, Lucasfilm, its owner Disney, and at least one third-party content policing company have blanketed the Internet with Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notices.

Carvalho's husband replaced the Facebook post with a note telling her followers the images must be kept off her site.

"Those photos have gone viral—they're out there," he wrote. "But they aren't here. And we will not be posting them again as we consider Hasbro a valuable partner in our coverage of Star Wars toys."

(There was some initial confusion about who sent the notices, but they were sent by Disney, Lucasfilm, and copyright enforcement agents—not Hasbro, which produces the toys.)

Not everyone reacted so amicably. Jeremy Conrad, who runs a fan website called Star Wars Unity and an associated Twitter account, got a DMCA notice from Lucasfilm when he re-tweeted photos of the figure. That notice, sent by a third-party enforcement company called Irdeto, described the infringement as "a screen shot of an unreleased figurine for Star Wars: Force Awakens."

"It's not unreleased if you can walk into Walmart and buy the damn toy!" wrote Conrad on his website. "Due to this I urge all Star Wars fans to avoid Hasbro product and not purchase any of their Star Wars releases. Until Hasbro grows a brain and stops bullying fans online, they do not deserve any of our money."

...​


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## waday (Dec 11, 2015)

Braineack said:


> "Due to this I urge all Star Wars fans to avoid Hasbro product and not purchase any of their Star Wars releases. Until Hasbro grows a brain and stops bullying fans online, they do not deserve any of our money."



I thought the DMCA was from Disney/Lucasfilm/Etc, not Hasbro? Why boycott Hasbro, when they should be boycotting Disney/Lucasfilm?



Braineack said:


> (There was some initial confusion about who sent the notices, but they were sent by Disney, Lucasfilm, and copyright enforcement agents—not Hasbro, which produces the toys.)


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## astroNikon (Dec 11, 2015)

They should sue Walmart for allowing him to purchase the figure legally and before the official release.


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## pjaye (Dec 11, 2015)

Victory! Disney Reverses Their DMCA Claim on Fan's Action Figure Photos!

It's been retracted.


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## astroNikon (Dec 11, 2015)

That's great.
I was waiting for them to recall all Star Wars action figures just to be on the safe side for them not to be released early.


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## desertrattm2r12 (Dec 15, 2015)

This is quite interesting. There's a screwy law that says if a trademark holder does not protect his trademark, and just lets anyone use it, he loses the trademark. Remember when somebody -- Lucas, I guess -- threatened to sue the government for calling some missile defense system "Star Wars?"
Disney once sent a pre-school in Arizona a cease-and-desist letter because some dude painted Disney characters onto a wall in a mural without paying Disney for the rights.
Disney really wan't very worried about the pre-school but the law requires them, if they do sue somebody like a huge corporation, to prove they at least tried to protect their trademark. They get Brownie Points from the judge is they have lots of these cease-and-desist letters in their files.
So the ambulance-chasers get their underwear in a knot about the smallest things. I think somebody just wanted to kill the photo of the character,  pre-release.
I won't mention that Ole Walt was a bigoted ole phart who was miserly with his employees (check his violent strikebreaking tactics using Mob muscle at his studio in the early 1940s). The pantheon of the of the gods like Thor and Zeus and Walt-baby don't allow any inconvenient truths to interrupt their worship.


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## Designer (Dec 15, 2015)

desertrattm2r12 said:


> I think somebody just wanted to kill the photo of the character,  pre-release.


Or more like pumping up the pre-release publicity.  

Oh, that never happens, right?


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