Interested in advertising on Derpibooru? Click here for information!
Help fund the $15 daily operational cost of Derpibooru - support us financially!
Description
Another one bites the dust.
Although this time, before the torches and pitchforks are raised towards Hasbro, blame this self-righteous low-life
Although this time, before the torches and pitchforks are raised towards Hasbro, blame this self-righteous low-life
They’ve changed their name to “For Fans By Fans”, but their basic business model is still the same: they solicit fan art submissions without paying the artist anything, and choose art from among the entries to put on licensed merchandise like shirts and posters. That sounds like a great deal, but their Terms Of Service give them “sole and exclusive use” of any entries, which means they can legally prohibit an artist from posting or selling any of those designs anywhere else even if they don’t select those entries for merchandising, so not only does the artist not get a penny from an entry unless it gets selected, FFBF can keep artists from selling their own shirts/posters/etc. online or at conventions.
I don’t know if they still blatantly ignore any and all cheating because cheating still gets them pageviews, but as far as I know it’s still the same people running it as when they were WLF and refused to do anything about assholes gaming their vote setup by using bots or organizing “raids” offsite.
I know this is years late, buy where is this? I’m interested in reading thT5.
I’m sure there’s plenty of bitching about it online. Their “art contests” are barely better than phishing scams– basically a way to solicit huge volumes of potential contributions without having to spend more than a pittance in total– and they have a history of letting assholes cheat and rig the contests and just letting them get away with it even when presented with clear evidence. One douchebag openly bragged about cheating in their “Heroes vs. Villains” contest and ganking the win from Atryl. WLF just straight up doesn’t care about the artists they use.
Is there somewhere where I can read about WeLoveFine’s business practices?
If I had any ability whatsoever to impart opinions unto Hasbro executives, that is #1 at the top of the list: having the Licensing Department dial back the scale at which they’re willing to grant merch licenses, so that fan artists can hook up with smaller manufacturers to get things like plushes and custom figures made at a higher wuality than the manufacturer would otherwise have and at higher numbers than an individual artist could turn out. The basic concept has already proven successful with WeLoveFine, and much as I dislike WLF’s business practices, I think there’s a lot of potential in using small scale merch deals as a sort of farm team for full-on production.
All this makes me wonder… wouldn’t it be awesome if Hasbro offered a license to a legit custom plush manufacturer, similar to what they’re doing with Shapeways and 3D printing? We can all cross our
hoovesfingers…That’s exactly what puts OnlyFactory squarely in the Industrial Thieves category; they’re not an individual fan artist making individual commissions– or even multiple copies of the same reproducible work– they’re a factory that turns out hundreds/thousands of mass produced copies all at once, of a specific type of product which Hasbro makes a significant profit licensing to actual reputable manufacturers. Look at the wretched quality of some of the official merchandise; it’s clearly not difficult at all to get a license and do this the legit way, and the recent announcement of licensed 3D prints shows that Hasbro is all in favor of user-defined products that actually play fair with their IP.
Also, something that needs to be pointed out here:this isn’t as simple as a company using a factory to produce imitation products. This is a company using a factory to produce user-defined products. It’s just like if you asked a cartoonist drawing commissions to draw a pony, but at a much larger scale. The thing that really tips this in Hasbro’s favor legally is that they intend to make tons of each user-defined product, which means they easily become a pawn of a company doing infringement via them (kind of like if you hired a company to produce a new season of MLP).
I don’t see anything pony-related listed on the site now. Have they pulled it all?
I didn’t read all of what that guy wrote, but from what I skimmed over it looks like he’s doing this as part of a plan to agitate for copyright law reform. How the heck he thinks this will help his cause, I don’t know, but heaven knows copyright and trademark laws very badly need to be overhauled, and maybe re-written from scratch. Companies should be allowed to protect IP that they’re using, but they shouldn’t be allowed to lock away stuff that they never exploit, and they shouldn’t feel required to go after small-scale not-for-profit derivative works in order to protect their trademarks.
Well, that’s the guy’s problem for being so smug about it. Just don’t let Hasbro be shamed for doing what they have the right to do.
But still, douchebag move to publicly announce that you’re going to report a site instead of just, I don’t know, reporting it anonymously??? Or letting Hasbro find out themselves??? That way, no one knows who it was that reported the site, and the person that did report it doesn’t face possible doxxing and repercussions from an angry fanbase! Common sense here, guys!
This. Exactly this.
Copyright infringement is NOT theft, but it is copyright infringement, and this situation is a textbook case of why it’s illegal. Hasbro’s partners do legally offer a wide variety of sizes and quality of official plushies. Hasbro has shown remarkable and commendable restraint. They’re not going after the $1200 soft-sculpture artwork, or mom-and-maybe-pop shops that hand-make individual ponies and pose absolutely no threat to their sales. They’re only shutting down a factory that produces unlicensed merchandise in a quality range and production volume that could impair sales of their own licensed merchandise. This is exactly what copyright legitimately exists for.
yea… how can that go worng i will never understand.
seriously, you want to make your own fan whatever, go for it, you just can’t mass produce it.
hell, the wholesale selling of porn packs is stretching it quite a bit too…
Most toys are not always “show accurate.” (Just look at the old/new TMNT action figures.) And honestly, the “Build-a-bear” ones don’t look that bad to me personally.
True, this C&D makes sense, and is perfectly understandable..
@Background Pony #5652
Nobody wants needles, and toxic paint in their ponies.
While US copyright law could definately use some revision and updating for the modern digital age, THIS is the kind of textbook case the laws were written to protect IP’s for. Even in a perfect world, you shouldn’t expect a company to get away with the wholesale stealing and marketing of another company’s IP.
Hasbro has something. Someone else makes a profit off of it. Hasbro is the villain for making them stop stealing.
It’s like someone stole your lawn mower so they could go mow other people’s lawns for money. Yes they are doing the work, but they did it by robbing YOU. That doesn’t put them in the right, no matter how hard you try to justify it.
-Lumino
You can pretend that it’s justified, and that law isn’t corrupted, and IP is not a scam to attack artists and creators, but the fact remains that wubzfactory troll and Hasbro are still taking a dump on everyone’s fun.
It’s because they’re making a definite profit from Hasbro’s IP. And this isn’t some fan thing. This is an actual Chinese company.