Check it out! Linden Lab approves of your blue skin, if you want to wear it. In fact, they seem to be encouraging people to join to get a free AVATAR!
So for Lashy, and everybody else that wants to keep on wearing these, there you go.
I am for fan art <3
(picture of my friend Lashy)
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Omg I love those! And your soo totally right. A big part of Second Life is being who and what you want to be, which includes ‘inspired’ avatars. Nothing wrong with it and Lashy looks fantastic.
I think bc of the generic meaning of the word avatar, and you DO get a free “avatar” when you join, this may actually be legal and legitimate. LL is pushing the line with this one, but may not really have legally crossed it. If you look at the face of the avatar in the screen shot, she wearing a blue skin, with markings on it but they are not the same markings as the movie characters, and the face shape is not the same, therefor, one could argue, that is just a blue avatar with a weird nose and not an Avatar with a capital A.
As for the legality of selling full avatars that are intended to be exact replicas of the movie, that is a different story and whether you think it’s right or wrong is irrelevant. It’s a mater of law.
I commented in another blog that nothing is really new. Ears and tails, fantasy colored skin and outfits like this has been around in SL for years. And in various comics. Blue drows/nightelfs? Sure. Gorean panther girls? This outfit (pictured here)I know was on sale more that 6 months before the “Avatar” trailer came out. They yellow eyes I used for my fantasy avatar is from Miriel, a shop that closed in 2008 I think. Inspiration flows free and for all we know, James Cameron was inspired by something he read.
wants one so bad now but where would i wear it grrrr
Typical.. Just like IMVU both of these “tech” companies live off other peoples “CREATIVE CONTENT and IP” and use them without PAYING FOR IT, to promote their pyramid scheme web2.0. Maybe they, like a “MCDONALDS” COULD PAY for using the movie AVATAR to TRY to drive business to their stores./sites.
FAN art- fine….
Commercial usage of others IP– criminal.
lawsuits needed. ist the only way to create a new online economy for anyone NOT in this racket.
glad you liked that plurk… but i’m still waiting to see avatar linkshare banners on your site though, especially in light of your ardent support!
Wait they ban someone’s dress on Xstreet because it blows up like Marilyn Monroe’s did…
http://shoppingcartdisco.com/?p=6340
But having Navi style avatars to push their own platform is fine.
*Face Palms*
So Argyria is sexy now. You can has Argyria by drinking enough colloidal silver over time. Any takers?
When 20th Century Fox gets around to dealing with LL they and a number of residents are going to experience severe legal butt hurt. Just a matter of time. Unless Fox decides to ease up and publish some standards for fandom activities. Which would be an excellent thing for them to do IMHO. But if they don’t and people’s real lives are destroyed by lawsuits then they earned a stay in motel underpass and deserve no sympathy. IP infringement is what it is.
So before you create your next fab thing ask yourself this: Would you have created it had you not seen someone else’s hard, and in the case of Avatar movie infringements, a cost of a half billion dollars investment?
There is no “blue skinned denizen/native of Pandora “style”. It didn’t exist before the movie. Anything attempting to look like that is an infringement. This is not anything remotely like making jeans or shoes or hairstyles.
As for the LL ad… It won’t be around for long. That is simply evidence the LL right hand has no clue about what the left hand is doing. LL will change it.
Personally I think the fan art is a wonderful tribute and no one seems to mind all the Star Trekkies or Star Wars fans in SL, but in any case “Pandora” is a goddess from ancient greek mythology so Fox can’t claim to own that name, and blue skinned aliens have been around since at least the first series of Star Trek so Fox can’t own that idea either. They can however claim to own the word “Na’vi” so anyone using that could find themselves in trouble (and I heard that it happened to De la Fae).
and you might find this interesting too:
http://failblog.org/2010/01/10/avatar-plot-fail/
If you liked the Pocahontas/Smith theory then you may love this one:
http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2009/12/10-possible-sources-of-avatar-in.html
Keeping in mind that Cameron initially thought this up back when he would probably have been reading some of the titles in that list and looking at them it starts to become clear.
But we are still stuck with the reality that if you make and sell fandom and get DMCA’d you may lose your right to be in the upcoming content seller program so it is rather risky to be playing in the fires of Pandora. (Isn’t Pandora a sim in SL anyway?)
Maybe people need to lean on 20th Century Fox for a commitment to fandom. Of course this would mean it is OK to make and give away Na’vi inspired content but not OK to sell it. And there is the crux of the matter. The selling part. There is simply no escape from the copyright factor. And I am waiting to see what happens in April when Disney (army of lawyers) does when they GOM Alice in Wonderland.
Actually, everything from the movie has been done before. Navi minus the ‘ is a town in Israel I believe.
Think the law suit is a free add campaign for both LL and James Cameron and we should sue both of them for using our tax payer dollars to puff up a movie and a video game.