Lucasfilm v. Ainsworth (Stormtrooper Costume) - UK Supreme Court

http://the1709blog.blogspot.com/2011/03/star-wars-hearing.html

Thursday, 17 March 2011
Star Wars: the Hearing
Last week during a three-day hearing, the UK’s Supreme Court turned its attention to copyright law – for the first time since its metamorphosis from House of Lords to Supreme Court. The issues in Lucasfilm v Ainsworth are whether the Star Wars stormtroopers’ helmets are ‘sculptures’, so attracting copyright protection, and whether English courts have the jurisdiction to hear claims about infringement of foreign copyrights.

*cut*

Write up of the proceedings. 

Copyright holders sure like to abuse their rights.

IT'S JUST A PIECE OF FRIGGIN' PAPER!!! THERE'S NOTHING LEGAL ABOUT IT!!! GOD! ITS LIKE IF I TOOK A PIECE OF PAPER AND SIGNED IT, THAT MEANS ITS MINE!!! >:(

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

Lucas understands the near future of computing and tech things.  All those figures which created his empire is under the threat of becoming obsolete if rules are not set up so that copyrighted/patented/whatever system they can think of is not in place when 3D printers become commonplace.  Just like music to napster and video to p2p, 3D models are the next thing to get consumed.

This "sculpture" debate is just the on the books legal wranglings they have to navigate.

Yes that Limewire thing is ridiculous, it's amazing that all the entertainment industries can easily ignore that it was their infighting which partly caused the drop in the other.  People stopped listening to music because every tv and movie suddenly became cheap enough to consume in mass quantities.  and even that argument is not right, as more people have heard more music in the last 15 years then probably ever before.  The problem is money is not being moved around, and that's making everyone nervous.  and when they get nervous they'll let things slide or get out of hand.  The world needs an easy (and not heavily taxed) system to move pennies.  Trillions of penny transactions.

Some other random thoughts.  Stormtrooper armour, it's not a big seller, so why travel and put up legal arguments in another country for the right to shut down this guy's operation?  Copyright Law has much of it's origins in Britian, what happens there on this issue will spread across the globe.

When:

http://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/stormtrooper-helmet-obj/423124

Becomes:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/superrune/2977142707/

So the question for the rest of us, is how to keep this stuff legal?

one of the 3d printers:

http://www.makerbot.com/

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.

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

Go back and read the next line of the statement...

-Aside: Yeah should have phrased it, paid for the music they listened to.  The logic I was going for was people have 'x' amount of money to spend on entertainment and 'y' amount of time to consume it in.  In the 70s early 80s (pre-explosion of home video), home media cash expenditures predominantly went into the record industry, throughout the 80s and into the 90s that began to shift as more and more video content became available to the public.  the DVD shift partly is one of the factors which tipped the scale away from the music industry.  Why listen to an album when you can consume the entire run of a sitcom, or why not watch your favorite movie over and over instead of your favorite music album.  This argument overlooks many significant factors.  insert grain of salt.  Most making this statement from personal observation, I used to track down weird sound acts, and now I don't.  One topic of interest was replaced by another because of a variety of factors. Similar thing with the public, tv/movies replaced a significant portion of music's audience time, because home viewing became more commonplace.  End Aside-

Now drop in the ability to make stuff, and music/tv/movies get tossed aside as more people make objects.  The Entertainment Industries will lose to the Engineering future.

...yes partly.

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.

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.

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

The South Parks guys wanted to do just this, they got a leaked script of one of the upcoming disaster movies and wanted to remake it with marionettes.  They were told, probably not a good idea, and then came Team America.

he sues because of a homemade sculpture of a stormtrooper helment. Yet, there's all these fan edits and he doesn't freak out. The world just doesn't make sense anymore

RedFive said:

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

Mr. RedFive, we will see you in court!