Want to see what happens when the creative arm of an entertainment company gets confused with the legal arm? Cease and desist hijinks!
Such as Universal’s recent attack against one of its “Serenity” fans. When Universal was benefiting from the free publicity garnered by fan-made products (and tacitly encouraged by the official movie Web site) there was no problem. But now that companies have bought licenses to make official stuff, suddenly those same designs, a year later, are evil and must be thwarted.
And someone at Comedy Central finally noticed that YouTube was full of “South Park,” “Daily Show,” and “Colbert Report” clips and boldly took action. Good thing it happened after Colbert’s Green Screen Challenge was over since Colbert brilliantly used YouTube and all those frustrated video artists out there to build up his audience. Maybe iTunes video sales are lagging?
There’s no question that companies have the right and the duty to protect their copyrights. But those mixed signals are getting a little loud.