Fox Copyrights Jayne's Hat

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Elvaril

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Dec 31, 2010
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Esotera said:
Why on earth would you want to enforce copyright on a knitted hat? It's not like they're selling the product so it's not in competition.
They are producing them now. They are selling official Jayne hats through a couple sites like thinkgeek.
http://www.thinkgeek.com/product/f108/?srp=1
That is why they are now enforcing this copyright by sending cease and desist letters to websites like Etsy regarding independent people who are making them.

Now I know they can get unauthorized sellers stores on stuff sites like Etsy shut down like this, but I wonder if they can do anything about convention sellers. I bought my handmade Jayne hat from a booth at Dragon*Con last year and my dog got a hold of it about 20 minutes after I got home, so I was hoping to get a new one this year.
 

direkiller

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Dec 4, 2008
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thaluikhain said:
Heh, don't patents only last 20 years? If so, almost half gone already.

I sorta like the idea of waiting until lots of people are violating your IP, then suing everyone without warning, though.
28 years originally
but US copyrights and IP rights got weird
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tk862BbjWx4
 

Orange12345

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Aug 11, 2011
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Owyn_Merrilin said:
Just looking at that picture, how is the design in any way novel? Is it because they used orange yarn? Because I'm pretty sure that's a traditional Finnish hat right there.

It's called a Lapp.




Edit:


I came to say the same thing, that hat doesn't look that different from any other hat so why don't all these sites just start selling "knitted caps" instead of jayne hats
 

omicron1

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Mar 26, 2008
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Really? And it goes to charity? And limited stock? I guess I'd better go buy one then...
*checks website*
Proceeds go to Equality Now.
Eeeeee... I dunno...
*Checks wikipedia*
Equality Now is for women's rights, not the other obvious thing
Oh. Ok, Sure, why not?
 

Muspelheim

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Apr 7, 2011
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albino boo said:
So if you come up with new design of knitted hat that is popular, without copyright, what is to stop some guy in China making 3 million of them and getting rich of the back of your design? If every time you come with a design someone else gets rich, how long do you think you will keep making new hat designs?
Well, before I'd get miffed that a chinese manufacturer is making money off a hat design I did, then it is going to have to be pretty special and recognisable, not just "It's a knitted hat with earflaps. Orange. A bit like a babyhat", since that isn't really an original design.

It'd be a problem to me if my particular design really was something special, something people haven't been making and wearing for ages. Like a hat shaped like a duck with a boat on its back. But if I pretend to have invented, and thus own, the idea of an orange knitted flaphat, it's another story.
 

Ryotknife

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Oct 15, 2011
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Mid Boss said:
Vegosiux said:
Wait, since when have copyrights/patents been effective ex post facto?

Someone should be calling bullshit on this. I mean, someone with clout.
When you have lots of money and an army of lawyers then copyright and trademark laws become.... flexible.... For example, NBC owns a trade mark on the phrase "That's what she said"
pretty much this, if you have enough money or clout/lawyers you can get away with anything.
 

Albino Boo

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Jun 14, 2010
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Entitled said:
albino boo said:
So if you come up with new design of knitted hat that is popular, without copyright, what is to stop some guy in China making 3 million of them and getting rich of the back of your design? If every time you come with a design someone else gets rich, how long do you think you will keep making new hat designs?
Not sure if sarcastic or copynazi apologist.

In either case, here is a straight answer: Forever. The history of pre-copyright humankind, is a history of various fancy hat designs.

Copyright didn't cause creativity. The idea that copyright encourages productivity MIGHT make a certain amount of sense in some limited cases, like with blockbuster movie and AAA game industries, but not even that is proven.

Any creativity that can be done in a single person's free time, has been done for millenia before IP laws, and the only thing that the IP laws do for them, is LIMIT whether or not you are allowed to do a creative work.
Oh dear there is thing called mass production that only occurred after copyright and patents. Creativity was not done in the person spare time, artists have been commissioned for millennia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phidias . However in in eras before mass production the cost of materials and of production limited the availability of goods. I suggest you go to any musume and look at any art work done in the classical period and remember that those are products of people earning their living by creativity 1000s of years ago.
 

emeraldrafael

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Jul 17, 2010
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Fox must be trying to make a run against EA next year for worst company and stop the hat trick.

though really this just seems poor on fox's standpoint. not that i would ever say fox is a good company and prettty much screw every good thing they do.

also what exactly is the difference between that hat and the standard winter headwear type hats with the flaps and strings? does this mean those cant be produced anymore, or can they just not be that shade of orange? cause yo could always just sell orange knit hats and not nclude the name and i dont know if fox could really fight you on that without saying they own the design on all those other types of hats which i'm pretty sure hey'll lose.
 

hazabaza1

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Nov 26, 2008
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It's a fucking knitted hat.
People wear this sort of stuff all the time. So what, now people can't sell orange ones without Fox's permission? This must be a joke.
 

CriticalMiss

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Jan 18, 2013
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People should just start making Jane hats instead. They look the same and are the same colour, but they have a different name and are made for gorillas instead. Totally different to hats for humans and absolutely nothing to do with Firefly. I don't even know what Firefly is, you brought it up.
 

Something Amyss

Aswyng and Amyss
Dec 3, 2008
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Mid Boss said:
copyrighted
Trademarked. They can't copyright an article of clothing. This is a fairly sizable difference. But I digress.

Proving that EA isn't the only company out there that would happily throw their fans under the bus to make a buck.
The problem here is assuming they ever gave a Fox about Firefly fans.

Vegosiux said:
Wait, since when have copyrights/patents been effective ex post facto?
I can't defintively answer you, but I can elaborate:

Copyright is automatic in the US. You actually have to opt-out, rather than opt-in. You can't copyright after-the-fact, though you can register at pretty much any point.

I can't say for certain that Trademark and Patent law has ALWAYS allowed you to apply after-the-fact, but there is a history of it being both done and legal for longer than I've been alive. The one case that immediately comes to mind is the patent of the Collective Card Game, which was done after the boom in CCGs occurred, and nearly crippled a lot of companies.
 

Bara_no_Hime

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As someone who absolutely hates current copyright law, and as an author, I often have people say "but, you create IP - do you want people to rip you off?!"

And to those people, I say this: Jayne's Hat.

I never said I wanted no copyright law - I just don't want the current insane copyright laws - laws that will probably NOT protect MY IP, but rather protect whomever published my IP so that they own the rights to my work.

If anyone owns the rights to Jayne's Hat, it's Joss fucking Whedon. Fox canceled the show - the gall they have to do this now is just sickening.

Current copyright laws are utter bullshit. This is a great example of why. Artists - like those people on Esty - having their hard work stolen from them so some company can monetize it (or more likely, simply prevent anyone from making them while not making them themselves).

So yes, this is why I hate copyright law.
 

Something Amyss

Aswyng and Amyss
Dec 3, 2008
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Frission said:
Pfff. I've seen hats like that before Firefly. You can't copyright something you didn't invent.

... right?
Well, technically no, since copyright involves something other than invention.

But I doubt you wanted the pedantic answer. :p

The answer is....Yes. You can trademark and even patent something you didn't come up with initially.

Though, the more boring answer is that they're only really going after people who are marketing these hats as Firefly merch, which in itself is something that they already had the right to do with or without the creativity of a hat being involved.
 

Entitled

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albino boo said:
Oh dear there is thing called mass production that only occurred after copyright and patents.
Irrlevant, given that mass production itself is funded by charging for the actual produced goods, not by copyright. That's why so many non-copyrighted products are also being mass-produced. Fedoras are still being mass-produced, because manufacturers don't actually need copy protection to create more of something once the design already exists.

Creating a new hat design today, isn't more difficult today than 500 years ago. If you would create a new hat design now, and a chinese manufacturer would copy it, you would be no worse off than the hatter who invented the cavalier hat and then had to compete with the other hatters for the few hundred sellable units that they could manufacture each.

The option of selling more though mass manufacturing isn't putting an extra burden on you, that needs to be compensated for with copyright. it is an extra benefit that can be used if you have the capital for it.

Just because you can also imagine a chance to get absurdly rich, much more so than the medieval hatter could have been, by controlling all future production of your hat design, doesn't mean that you have an inalianable moral right to demand that control, as long as new designs could be produced without it anyways (as they always have been), an you wouldn't actually lose anything.

albino boo said:
Creativity was not done in the person spare time, artists have been commissioned for millennia.
I'm aware of the fact that creative works used to be exist as professions. I'm merely saying, that anywork that CAN BE done as a hobby, likely doesn't need to be guaranteed by copyright to begin with.

Most writers, painters, and musicians in history, WERE amateurs (and most of them still are), and only a select few could and can actually make a living from art. The point is, that creativity came first, and profitable art production is just a pleasant cherry on top of it for the most successful and professional ones. People first started to make hats, and then started to figure out ways to profit more and more from hats. The same with paintings, writings, and songs.

They are not comparable to, say, AAA video games, where first came copyright, and copyright-based industry, and then the genres as we know them got built sprecifically around this new chance of profitability.

albino boo said:
However in in eras before mass production the cost of materials and of production limited the availability of goods. I suggest you go to any musume and look at any art work done in the classical period and remember that those are products of people earning their living by creativity 1000s of years ago.
I don't have to go to a museum, because we have this wonderful thing called the Internet, that can create a copy of these paintings without costing anything to anyone.