Copyright holders sure like to abuse their rights.

How can anyone take these kinds of cases serious anymore? Is a Stormtooper helmet a sculpture? Who cares.

If Lucasfilm is going to be this petty there must be a long list of people to sue. Lucasfilm should leave suing everyone to Steve Jobs or the recording industry (who are now suing Limewire for $75 trillion). We live in such a ridiculous time in history.

I hadn't thought of it that way. Very interesting.

It is a bizarre situation, shape copy legislation.

If the technology to transmit and replicate 3D objects becomes commonplace it's inevitable that people will try prevent the sort of piracy that has touched the music film and print industries over the years.

At the end of the day people will continue to aspire to own the best available quality commodities but will compromise according to value.

If the officially franchised version of anything is made to the desired quality and affordable piracy becomes unnecessary.

If a desired object is badly made or too expensive people will compromise with a cheaper or free lower standard copy or a non-franchised better quality item.

none said:

People stopped listening to music because every tv and movie suddenly became cheap enough to consume in mass quantities.

People have stopped listening to music?  I'm not sure about that.

There is a lot less support for live music.  And that is partly the music industry's fault for focusing on engineered rather than acoustic music.

Bingowings said:

If the officially franchised version of anything is made to the desired quality and affordable piracy becomes unnecessary.

If a desired object is badly made or too expensive people will compromise with a cheaper or free lower standard copy or a non-franchised better quality item.

Which is exactly what we have going on here with regard to Star Wars77.

George digging his heels in, keeping the quality low = piracy.

The moment he releases the 1977 version properly, the piracy stops. People will pay for quality.

The piracy wouldn't stop entirely, some people will always want a free ride but arguable legitimacy to piracy would be halted, coupled with the cache of owning a legitimate copy (which is still important to many people) it would knock a lot of illegal and profit draining activity on the head.

Bingowings said:

The piracy wouldn't stop entirely, some people will always want a free ride but arguable legitimacy to piracy would be halted, coupled with the cache of owning a legitimate copy (which is still important to many people) it would knock a lot of illegal and profit draining activity on the head.

True.  I work with a couple of people who pirate films just because they can. One of them burned me a copy of The Dark Knight before it was released on DVD.  One of those branded copies from the studios.  I never watched it. Weird, that girl set up a Netflix account specifically for renting\copying. Not sure where she got The Dark Knight she was handing out.

After I bought Indiana Jones - Kingdom... on Blu-ray, I realized I had no way to rip the audio the way I normally do*.  In passing, I mentioned it to her.  She offered to get me a DVD copy, said she'd bring it in the next day.  I passed and just bought a used one off Amazon to rip from.  In fact, *rubs goatee pensively* I shall listen to it now, while I surf the internet work.

*I assume my audio rips are a form of illegal copying so I'm not clean either, but I do buy legal copies to rip from.  In fact, I need to get 2001 on DVD.  I only have it on Blu-ray.

The whole thing reminds me of when MS tried to own the word Windows and Apple tried to claim that the trashcan on OS was their's (when they didn't even come up with the idea Xerox Park did).

I would love for someone else to make a film and call it Bram Stoker's Dracula just to see what happens.

Ainsowrth was targeted because of the size of his operation. He had ads in magazines, he had a website where you could order items online, and he had a storefront with stormtroopers in the window. Oh, and he claimed to own the copyright for stormtroopers.

Lucasfilm is aware that there are hundreds of smaller armor makers (anyone ever heard of the 501st Legion?), but they get a pass because they're low-key, and bow appropriately.

Hell ever since I found out "Happy Birthday" was a copyrighted song and that's why they don't sing it at restaurants or on TV nothing surprises me anymore.  It's Happy Birthday for crying out loud.  The world is crazy.