For the last decade, Marjorie Carvalho and her husband have produced Star Wars Action News, a podcast dedicated to Star Wars collectibles of all sorts. Predictably, they've had a lot to talk about, as waves of action figures and other collectibles have been launched in the run-up to the much-anticipated release next week of Star Wars: Episode VII—The Force Awakens.
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.
"Have we known this figure was coming?" the staffer, named Justin, asked in the post. "I just found her at Walmart—no new other figures."
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 Technica. 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."
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 12 2015, @02:04AM
Streisand effect soon as it's already spread out... http://www.businessinsider.com/rey-star-wars-action-figure-photo-dmca-copyright-takedown-lucasfilm-disney-2015-12?r=UK&IR=T [businessinsider.com]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by TheReaperD on Saturday December 12 2015, @03:02AM
Apparently, this ended up getting even more interesting as after Disney was contacted by several organizations, including Consumerist (same parent as Consumer Reports), Disney responded by rescinding the DMCA takedown then to only answer their own action by filing another takedown notice but, this time taking their whole page down and a three day ban on posting as Facebook considered this a repeat violation. It just goes to show how broken the entire DMCA is. The whole system needs to be thrown out.
Ad eundum quo nemo ante iit