It’s that time again, where I tell you what’s really grinding my gears for the week of May 22nd, 2019.
Some weeks it’s mostly likes, other weeks it’s dislikes.
So what’s grinding my gears this week?
The Forums Went Live
The new CHU forums went live. So feel free to check them out. You do have to signup to post.
We hope this is a nice way for readers to connect with others from the CHU community. We welcome any and all. With the recent closing of G+ which had several comic speculation and news communities, hopefully this will be a nice alternative.
AOC as Wonder Woman
Okay, I get it. Devils Due and Collector’s Cave likely didn’t get permission to basically use Wonder Woman’s outfit on AOC for the AOC Freshman Force Variant. But do they really need to do a cease and desist letter to get these removed entirely? Is it really that bad?
These are now commanding big dollars now on the secondary market, for the issues that did escape the cease and desist order. What I don’t like is DC is apparently sending out notices to anyone selling these. Apparently they want them all destroyed, which is just being stupid silly at this point.
I think we should all find a high resolution photo, print them out on glossy paper and hand them out, post them up everywhere, just to make the DC lawyers squirm a little bit more.. Yes, AgentPoyo is evil when he thinks lawyers take things a bit too far.
I have a feeling we’ll be seeing a bunch of cosplayers changing their Wonder Woman outfits at future conventions. Is DC gonna hit them up with subpoena’s or what not to take it off? In fact, I think all the Wonder Woman cosplayers should change it up and all swarm the DC booths at conventions just for some giggles and great photo ops.
Marvel Shows on Disney+ Streaming
I like the prospect of new spin off shows for some of the Avengers cast. Particularly Falcon and Winter Soldier.
Supposedly Loki is getting his own show and there’s been talk of a Vision and Scarlet Witch show as well.
The only thing I’m not excited about is if Disney+ is going to be it’s own standalone streaming service with it’s own price tag. If they’ve taken control over Hulu, why not incorporate into Hulu since it’s already established itself as one of the few worthy competitors that can keep up with Netflix.
So mark this as a like and dislike. Depending on the shows and how much it costs, I’ll probably not be paying another monthly price for yet another streaming service since I already have Netflix and Hulu.
That’s all I got this week. Comment below on what’s grinding your gears or perhaps, start a conversation over on the forums. 🙂
I all in on Disney+, and I think they’ll probably offer a one price package deal/option for D+ and Hulu at some point. I wouldn’t be surprised if they included a package with ESPN+ as well, maybe $19.99/month for all 3? The 3 combined would be pretty big competition to Cable, IMO!
I pay like $120 a year for Prime on Amazon (which I use for shipping stuff mostly, I don’t usually stream shows on it). I pay around $12 for Hulu. I pay $14 or so for Netflix. If everyone starts doing their own steaming services, the cost almost starts to amounting to cable or more.
I’m waiting for the day when you can order Cable and choose the networks you want to watch. Like $2 a channel or something. That’s a long term model I could support.
Don’t get me wrong though, I like the streaming but with Netflix and others starting to slowly increase their monthly costs, it’s going to burst eventually.
Right now I pay like $130 a month for cable and that includes internet and VOIP phone. One issue I see with cable is 90% of the channels I never touch or watch. So I’m paying like $70 of my bill towards cable. If I don’t touch 90% (it’s probably more than that) of the channels, theoretically my cable bill should only be like $10 or so.
I guess it’s my own doing. I could actually live without cable along with Netflix and Hulu. The wife watches Netflix the most while the kids watch Hulu the most.
You have got to start streaming on Prime. It is a treasure trove of trash and forgotten movies. Things Netflix and Hulu would never ever touch. Sure your going to wade through a ton of terrible stuff when plumbing the depths of unknown movies, but when you come up with a winner, man they are good. I used to ignore Prime for the other two, but now I rarely look at the other two unless it’s one of their exclusive series.
I try not to watch too much tv….rots your brain.
I maybe get about an hour of tv in a day…truth really is that my young kids took over my tv, and when they’re not watching tv they want my attention,,.which means no tv for me either…
Most of my TV is just background noise while I work on CHU or other work. If I’m not on the computer and I have the TV on, its to just zone out.
They did announce Disney+ cost will be $6.99!
That’s actually not that bad of a price to start at. They wanna suck everyone in, then start to slowly raise it. 😉
I think the cost for Disney+ is lower because they OWN ALL the content! Including the FOX stuff.
Bought a 9.8 CBCS Naomi #1 cover A for $199. Sure I could of bought a raw copy or a cover b 9.8 for half the price but I’m looking at it as a gamble my 9.8 will either go back to a $500 book or down to a $100, Better upside than downside and banking on issue #6 to get things hot again.
Small price to pay for no fomo in the brain.
Cover A will win out over time if she continues to stick around.
I just listed another raw copy, which is likely a 9.6 or better. Seems the prices are coming down though as it seems these are hovering around the $70 mark for raw copies. If I sell the one I just listed, I still saved the best one I had for the long term. I’m not complaining though. I didn’t buy in at cover either, I started buying these when they were $10 each. I bought 5, spent around $50 total, even one came damaged so I sold it for $66 so I had a total of 6. I’ve now made $300 from my initial $50 spent by selling 4 of the 6.
If Devil’s Due said the cover was a parody then, I’m pretty sure that AOC cover would hold up in court. Parodies have a pretty air-tight legal backing.
I’m pretty sure without saying it’s a parody would hold up. It’s not like they’re advertising it as a Wonder Woman book.
AOC cover definitely falls under parody usage.
B stands for best…CvrB.
I mean this as no slight to AOC or the artist in question, and leaving politics out of this as much as possible, but that AOC cover both looks insanely unattractive as a person and also looks nothing like AOC
It doesn’t look like her because it’s technically not. They drew her face on a body.
She doesn’t have an attractive face in real life tbf. I think that cover is pretty spot on.
Would you rather someone put Mitch McConnell’s face on a Wonder Woman body? 😛
The enforcement of intellectual property is not really an issue of keeping the lawyers employed .. it is an issue of, if one is allowed to go unchallenged, then it opens the gates for others to try the same tactic ..
Very true.
Get a good enough lawyer and they could argue the case that this isn’t them copying wonder woman, it’s just a woman draped in some star spangled looking outfit.. because DC doesn’t own the rights of Red White and Blue with a woman wearing a tiara type crown in gold.. 😉
I would venture to guess that the Suits at DC / Warner are not overly worried about the AOC bru-ha-ha .. the C&D is more designed to send a message .. as well, I’d also venture to guess that DC / Warner has some substantial Attorney clout on retainer or on staff ..
In this Age of Intellectual Property defense, most large Companies have become more and more sensitive to the issue ..
Here’s some good info on protection of Creative Works that I think the AOC this would fall under (which is why parodies usually are protected). The AOC has a likeness of Wonder Woman but they changed her face to a public figure, they changed and are not using Wonder Woman’s logo… Devils Due could stand their ground but since you know, DC has a team of lawyers on standby and Devils Due is a small operation, makes sense for them to not bother and comply with the caese and desist order.
Protection for Creative Works
The First Amendment and the laws of many states also protect your use of someone’s name or likeness in creative works and other forms of entertainment. Included in this category are things like novels that include mention of real-life figures, historical fiction, movies based loosely on real-life events, “docudramas,” works of art that incorporate an individual’s photo or image, and acts of parody directed at an individual. Some state statutes explicitly exempt these kinds of work from liability for misappropriation or violation of the right of publicity. See, e.g., 42 Pa. Cons. Stat. § 8316(e)(2) (link is to entire code; you need to click through to title 42, part VII, chapter 83, subchapter A, and then choose the specific provision); Wash Rev. Code § 63.60.070(1). In other states, the courts look at the creative or artistic work in question and decide on a case-by-case basis whether the First Amendment values at stake trump the plaintiff’s rights of privacy and publicity. See State Law: Right of Publicity and Misappropriation for details.
As a general matter, you will not be held liable for using someone’s name or likeness in a creative, entertaining, or artistic work that is transformative, meaning that you add some substantial creative element over and above the mere depiction of the person. In other words, the First Amendment ordinarily protects you if you use someone’s name or likeness to create something new that is recognizably your own, rather than something that just evokes and exploits the person’s identity.
For instance, in one case an artist created and sold t-shirts that contained a realistic depiction of The Three Stooges, and the company which owns the publicity rights sued. The California Supreme Court recognized that the First Amendment generally protects artistic and creative works, but found that the t-shirts in question were not sufficiently transformative because “the artist’s skill and talent [was] manifestly subordinated to the overall goal of creating a conventional portrait of a celebrity so as to commercially exploit his or her fame.” Comedy III Prods., Inc. v. Gary Saderup, Inc., 21 P.3d 797, 810 (Cal. 2001). In another case, the artist Barbara Kruger created an untitled work that incorporated a photograph of Charlotte Dabny holding a large magnifying glass over her right eye (which itself was a famous photograph by German photographer Thomas Hoepker). Kruger cropped and enlarged the photographic image, transferred it to silkscreen and superimposed three large red blocks containing the sentence “It’s a small world but not if you have to clean it.” A New York court held that Dabny could not recover for misappropriation because Kruger’s artistic work was protected by the First Amendment because Kruger had added sufficiently transformative elements. See Hoepker v. Kruger, 200 F. Supp.2d 340 (S.D.N.Y. 2002).