Examiner.net: “Churches Fight Over Name Use in Court“:
The Community of Christ has obtained a temporary court order protecting rights and ownership of its previous name, the “Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints” and its recognized initials, “RLDS.”
NY Times Columnist David Pogue saw “National Treasure 2” and felt mis-led by the trailer, which seemed to contain bits left out of the final cut. Pogue asks:
Just how different can a trailer be without becoming false advertising?
In this case, those lines from Riley made the movie seem funnier than it was, the president’s line made the dramatic stakes seem higher than they were, and the scenes at the Lincoln Memorial made the historical conspiracy seem more ingenious than it was (historical clues hidden right under our noses!). I can say with confidence that some of those elements played a part in my wanting to see the movie.
Rearranging scenes in the trailer is one thing. But what about this business of putting stuff in the trailer — a *lot* of stuff — that isn’t in the movie at all? If they can get away with “National Treasure”-style misrepresentation, what’s to stop other moviemakers from putting special effects, witty lines, exotic locales and hot-looking actors into *their* trailers, just to get us to go to a movie that doesn’t have any of those things?
So how to advise your movie trailer producer client to avoid false advertising? Draft a suitable disclaimer for the trailer. I’ll get you started:
“Objects in the trailer may appear more entertaining than they are”
“Movie subject to change without notice”
“This trailer contains movie and movie by-products”
“Any discussion of this trailer without the expressed written consent of Major League Baseball is strictly prohibited”
“Contents of movie may settle during shipment”
If you’re stuck with coming up with a suitable disclaimer, here’s a list to consult.
BUT SERIOUSLY, 43(B)log reviews this question and opines that it is certainly within the realm of possibility that because a trailer implies that the footage shown is in the movie being advertised, that the trailer as Pogue describes it is explicitly false, and that a colorable action may lie.
And as long as we’re free associating about sharp movie practice: some of you may recall that in 1984 Eddie Murphy was the hottest comedy star around. Dudley Moore made a movie called “Best Defense” and the advance word was that it was horrible. Reportedly, after major filming was finished, Murphy was brought in and twenty minutes of film was made and added to the film, which was then advertised as a Dudley Moore and Eddie Murphy comedy, even though they never appeared in the same frame. Hilarity ensued.
BusinessWire: “Moniker Joins Oversee.net”
About Oversee.net
Founded in 2000, Oversee.net is a technology-driven online marketing solutions company with two primary divisions–Oversee Domain Services and Oversee Marketing Services. Headquartered in Los Angeles with offices in Portland, Oregon and San Mateo, California, the Company has over 200 employees. Some of Oversee’s key brands include SnapNames®, the operator of the largest available source of expired and deleting domain names; DomainSponsor™, a global leader in domain monetization, and Low.com™, a top consumer financial services portal. Oversee has been growing profitably since inception.
Oversee was named to the Inc. 500 and ranked third in the Deloitte Technology Fast 50 of Los Angeles and 18th in the nation. Oversee was also named “Internet and New Media Company of the Year” by the Technology Council of Southern California and its CEO and Co-Founder, Lawrence Ng, was named a winner of the 2007 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award for the Greater Los Angeles program in the technology category. To learn more, please visit http://www.oversee.net.
About Moniker.com
Moniker, with headquarters in Pompano Beach, Florida, is the leading provider of Domain Asset Management™, a complete set of business services that provide companies a single-point-of-access to help manage and maximize the value of their domains. With more than a decade of experience, Moniker is a top 10 domain registrar, holds the industry’s highest customer retention rate and pioneered the industry’s first domain appraisal formula. It is considered the industry’s premier marketplace to buy and sell premium domain names. For more information, visit http://www.moniker.com.
News.com: Washington Post Sticks By RIAA Story Despite Evidence It Goofed:
Marc Fisher, a Post columnist, wrote on Sunday that the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) asserted in a legal brief that anyone who copies music from a CD onto their computer is a thief.
. . .
Quoting from the brief, Fisher wrote that the RIAA had argued that MP3 files created from legally bought CDs are “unauthorized copies” and violate the law. If it were true, the move would represent a major shift in strategy by the RIAA, which typically hasn’t challenged an individual’s right to copy CDs for personal use.
The problem with Fisher’s story is that nowhere in the RIAA’s brief does the group call someone a criminal for simply copying music to a computer.”
The article goes on to quote Prof Patry on the Pariser quote (noted in the post below:
This new rhetoric of ‘everything anyone does without (RIAA) permission is stealing’ is well worth noting and well worth challenging at every occasion,” Patry wrote. “It is the rhetoric of copyright as an ancient property right, permitting copyright owners to control all uses as a natural right; the converse is that everyone else is an immoral thief.”
WaPo: Record Industry Goes After Personal Use:
Whether customers may copy their CDs onto their computers — an act at the very heart of the digital revolution — has a murky legal foundation, the RIAA argues. The industry’s own Web site says that making a personal copy of a CD that you bought legitimately may not be a legal right, but it “won’t usually raise concerns,” as long as you don’t give away the music or lend it to anyone.
. . .
The Howell case was not the first time the industry has argued that making a personal copy from a legally purchased CD is illegal. At the Thomas trial in Minnesota, Sony BMG’s chief of litigation, Jennifer Pariser, testified that “when an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song.” Copying a song you bought is “a nice way of saying ‘steals just one copy,’ ” she said.
NY State Dept of Economic Development v. I Love Santa Barbara (NDNY Dec 27 2007) (Appeal of TTAB decision denying NY’s opposition to use of “I (Heart) Santa Barbara).
NY Times: “Anarchists in the Aisles? Stores Provide a Stage“:
Otherwise known as reverse shoplifting, shopdropping involves surreptitiously putting things in stores, rather than illegally taking them out, and the motivations vary.
Anti-consumerist artists slip replica products packaged with political messages onto shelves while religious proselytizers insert pamphlets between the pages of gay-and-lesbian readings at book stores.
SHOPDROPPING is an ongoing project in which I alter the packaging of canned goods and then shopdrop the items back onto grocery store shelves. I replace the packaging with labels created using my photographs. The shopdropped works act as a series of art objects that people can purchase from the grocery store. Because the barcodes and price tags are left intact purchasing the cans before they are discovered and removed is possible. In one instance the shopdropped cans were even restocked to a new aisle based on the barcode information.
Slashdot: “Trekkie Sues Christie’s for Fraudulent Props“:
“Christie’s spokesman Rik Pike stood behind the authenticity of the auction and said the disgruntled buyer’s case had no merit. The lawsuit, filed in state court in Manhattan, demands millions of dollars in punitive damages and a refund for the visor and two other items Moustakis bought at the 2006 auction.”
Scotsman.com: “US Mogul Foils Web Name Hijack Scheme“:
An American multi-millionaire has come to the rescue of a Leith businessman whose website was hijacked by a hacker.
Internet mogul Bob Parsons owns the domain registry firm GoDaddy.com which web designer David Airey used to log his own site.
CNN.COM: Court Orders Cartoon Characters To Witness Stand:
An Italian court ordered the animated bird, along with Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and his girlfriend Daisy, to testify in a counterfeiting case.
In what lawyers believe was a clerical error worthy of a Looney Tunes cartoon, a court in Naples sent a summons to the characters ordering them to appear Friday in a trial in the southern Italian city, officials said.