As Phil said in the previous commentary, they aren’t getting paid for this. They just don’t want to use fake made up company names (well besides Hurricane, but that is a different issue).
As long as they don’t get a note about it and having to retcon…
I remember archive binging the entire Dr. Mcninja when the clown was still Ronald and the evil megacorp was McDonalds. But in Doc’s case, it was the author being a little more proactive about it (“we’re getting popular, better safe than sorry”) and retconned it to lame-sounding-but-lawyer-friendly “McBonalds” or something and quick logo edits.
A lesser known (I believe) webcomic got legally entangled just because of using what Wizards of Coast claimed to be intelectual property – Okay, I’d understand if it was something they’re ferocious about like Yuan-ti or whatever other races they protect to make up for the fact they couldn’t snatch the name “Hobbit”, but… a rust monster? Really?
There are really an army of suits there making six figures just looking the most obscure corners of the internet for people stealing their original characters, like the mimic or the gelatinous cube?
TL:DR; I expect none of them take offense on the free merchandise, otherwise Sepiaworld will have to contend with McBonald’s, Patty Prince, Kirby’s, Baggin’ Bagels, and having to change that Ford Focus to a BMC Mini.
(Also, a massive hiatus while the bureaucracy rock gets rolling)
There isn’t any concern at all for the use of other company logos and such when they are portrayed within their intention.
A Ford Focus just being the car that it really is, the Arby’s just being fast food. this is fine as it doesn’t say anything about those products and they are simple scene filler.
When you directly use those logos to send a message or use them in a way to create a reaction then you start *poking the bull* as it were.
The way they are presented here is just to bring the scene to a sense of reality and break it away from the real comic which is total fantasy.
Compared to where I live, USA’s legal system sounds like utter madness, and since I only hear and read about the bad cases or lawsuit-happy drones, I thought there should be some problem at some point. Hell, even here, if you call the guys at Xerox to solve your problems with Xerox devices, they’ll give you at least a very mean look if they notice you still call “photocopied documents on sheets of paper or plastic” xeroxes.
But from what I understand now, this is considered “fair use”, right?
Definitely still a huge…. HUGE mess.
But yes this (I believe) would fall under fair use. At least for the free online version.
It gets exceedingly complicated when you sell the product though. Largely how I see it though is if this page sold in a book there still would not be an issue because people are not buying it because of the logos. If people bought it because there was a Ford Focus or Arby’s then that would be questionable.
If only US drones had more to do with lawsuits than they do currently…
That said, “Fair Use” is a very ill-defined law, so as said it can easily get “messy” even if the material is used within that, as several corporations and IP holders will often quibble about what constitutes “Fair Use” (to say nothing of international corporations and/or international content, which this website constitutes as it is not region locked, thankfully). For example Sega made several claims against anything mentioning Shining Force or related things on YouTube not too long ago, in spite of a lot of it being under “Fair Use” being reviews, or even non-profit channel content, etc.
All told, “Fair Use” and copy-right laws in general are pretty messy both in the US and with any nations with similar laws and/or applicable treaties.
Fair Use isn’t an ill-defined law. It’s not a law at all. It is a legal defense that allows one to get away with copyright infringement under certain circumstances, and as such is composed of nothing more than a bunch of precedent layered over some general guidelines.
And while we’re on the general topic, the Xerox thing is due to trademark law, which is necessarily quite unforgiving. Trademark law allows you to protect the value of the names you put on your products, which stem entirely from the associations your customers hold, from your competitors selling bootleg products. If everybody uses “Xerox machine” to mean “generic photocopier” then the name “Xerox” isn’t worth the ink you write it with, since it just means “photocopier”, and you have zero protections for your worthless trademark.
I think the clarity with which the brands can be shown in this chapter looks too deliberate to be only a scene-description device – it might have a deeper significance in the context of the chapther (or the whole story, perhaps? I dont remember noticing them on the other times we saw “reality”, but it might have been there).
Ha, we haven’t had a drumroll in a while. The last drummer probably got some bad RSI though, there are so many puns here that keeping up must be a truly gruelling task!
Yep. Capitalism is what gives you the ability to go out & purchase the computer (or cell phone or whatever) of your choice. Capitalism is what brings you the internet & the the rest of the world with it.
And Capitalism is what gives the Hipsters the opportunity to go to Starbucks, drink outrageously-priced coffee & use their wifi connection so they can endlessly blog about the evils of Capitalism…
;)
As said before, we use these brands merely as set dressings. We’re not getting paid, and sometimes the brand choice is for humor, but mostly just to assert the familiarity of the world.
Maybe it’s because I live far from America and recognize only a few of the brands, but it doesn’t bother me at all; I think you guys achieve the intended effect with it. I mean, besides what Acrox said, and that I found the Focus on last page simultaneously somewhat really cool and somewhat jarringly trace-looking, I can’t really see why anyone should take issue with all the brands showing up in sepia world.
I do find Jarring the mix of parody brand names and real brand names – typically I’d go all one or all the other, but I don’t have any problem with products being in the things I consume. At least here they’re an artistic choice rather than a financial one.
It’d be awesome if you got paid, though. Just saying. I think we’d all like to see you guys get paid more for the work you do.
That aside, I’m sure there are artistic reasons to not do product placement. I wouldn’t put product placement in my poems, but then again, no one would pay me to.
Once you start going down the line of being paid for product placement, you start having that company (or companies) looking over your shoulder dictating/controlling what you produce
I wonder if the company’s operation and performance is beginning to slip due to Dedalus’ obsession. Small talk like that will eventually grow to reflect a larger problem among the rank and file.
Much easier for you to google that than for anyone to explain it beyond what the comic and the comments have already implied. Here’s a song that explains just as little.
Great song, still have a few of those Ye Olde systems (but got the Amiga 600 with the built in Hard Drive, until the HD literally blew up one night while it wasn’t even turned on: had been sleeping, woke up and saw a blue flash, didn’t think anything about it for a couple days until tried to turn it on and nothing happened, fortunately it was only the HD that stopped working and could still spend hours playing Frontier {still to this day can’t stand listening to “Hall of the Mountain King”, puts me into a semi-rage})
“It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.”
“The grue is a sinister, lurking presence in the dark places of the earth. Its favorite diet is adventurers, but its insatiable appetite is tempered by its fear of light. No grue has ever been seen by the light of day, and few have survived its fearsome jaws to tell the tale.”
It’s a monster from the game series Zork. If you moved in the dark too many times you were likely to be eaten.
I believe the grue was originally a monster from Jack Vance’s Dying Earth stories. Though I don’t remember that he ever complained about his stuff appearing in D&D. IOUN stones! The magic system!
Is that… product placement?
A disturbing amount of it. I guess GA has new advertisers.
As Phil said in the previous commentary, they aren’t getting paid for this. They just don’t want to use fake made up company names (well besides Hurricane, but that is a different issue).
It’s almost a shame that they aren’t getting paid for that.
“Hit me up with that collab son!”
As long as they don’t get a note about it and having to retcon…
I remember archive binging the entire Dr. Mcninja when the clown was still Ronald and the evil megacorp was McDonalds. But in Doc’s case, it was the author being a little more proactive about it (“we’re getting popular, better safe than sorry”) and retconned it to lame-sounding-but-lawyer-friendly “McBonalds” or something and quick logo edits.
A lesser known (I believe) webcomic got legally entangled just because of using what Wizards of Coast claimed to be intelectual property – Okay, I’d understand if it was something they’re ferocious about like Yuan-ti or whatever other races they protect to make up for the fact they couldn’t snatch the name “Hobbit”, but… a rust monster? Really?
There are really an army of suits there making six figures just looking the most obscure corners of the internet for people stealing their original characters, like the mimic or the gelatinous cube?
TL:DR; I expect none of them take offense on the free merchandise, otherwise Sepiaworld will have to contend with McBonald’s, Patty Prince, Kirby’s, Baggin’ Bagels, and having to change that Ford Focus to a BMC Mini.
(Also, a massive hiatus while the bureaucracy rock gets rolling)
There isn’t any concern at all for the use of other company logos and such when they are portrayed within their intention.
A Ford Focus just being the car that it really is, the Arby’s just being fast food. this is fine as it doesn’t say anything about those products and they are simple scene filler.
When you directly use those logos to send a message or use them in a way to create a reaction then you start *poking the bull* as it were.
The way they are presented here is just to bring the scene to a sense of reality and break it away from the real comic which is total fantasy.
Thanks for the clarification.
Compared to where I live, USA’s legal system sounds like utter madness, and since I only hear and read about the bad cases or lawsuit-happy drones, I thought there should be some problem at some point. Hell, even here, if you call the guys at Xerox to solve your problems with Xerox devices, they’ll give you at least a very mean look if they notice you still call “photocopied documents on sheets of paper or plastic” xeroxes.
But from what I understand now, this is considered “fair use”, right?
Definitely still a huge…. HUGE mess.
But yes this (I believe) would fall under fair use. At least for the free online version.
It gets exceedingly complicated when you sell the product though. Largely how I see it though is if this page sold in a book there still would not be an issue because people are not buying it because of the logos. If people bought it because there was a Ford Focus or Arby’s then that would be questionable.
HUGE MESS! :)
If only US drones had more to do with lawsuits than they do currently…
That said, “Fair Use” is a very ill-defined law, so as said it can easily get “messy” even if the material is used within that, as several corporations and IP holders will often quibble about what constitutes “Fair Use” (to say nothing of international corporations and/or international content, which this website constitutes as it is not region locked, thankfully). For example Sega made several claims against anything mentioning Shining Force or related things on YouTube not too long ago, in spite of a lot of it being under “Fair Use” being reviews, or even non-profit channel content, etc.
All told, “Fair Use” and copy-right laws in general are pretty messy both in the US and with any nations with similar laws and/or applicable treaties.
Fair Use isn’t an ill-defined law. It’s not a law at all. It is a legal defense that allows one to get away with copyright infringement under certain circumstances, and as such is composed of nothing more than a bunch of precedent layered over some general guidelines.
And while we’re on the general topic, the Xerox thing is due to trademark law, which is necessarily quite unforgiving. Trademark law allows you to protect the value of the names you put on your products, which stem entirely from the associations your customers hold, from your competitors selling bootleg products. If everybody uses “Xerox machine” to mean “generic photocopier” then the name “Xerox” isn’t worth the ink you write it with, since it just means “photocopier”, and you have zero protections for your worthless trademark.
Penny Arcade deserved to get sued.
Why? O_o (loving this gravy of Gravvyboat :D)
They assumed no-one was paying attention to the brand.
That is probably the mildest version of Strawberry Shortcake I’ve seen on the ‘net.
Isn’t Parody a form of expression that is protected, unless it is deliberately slanderous (or something)?
I think the clarity with which the brands can be shown in this chapter looks too deliberate to be only a scene-description device – it might have a deeper significance in the context of the chapther (or the whole story, perhaps? I dont remember noticing them on the other times we saw “reality”, but it might have been there).
Gruesome working conditions.
They grue on the employees that have been there a while, but the newbies are still getting used to it.
Messing with the newbie while eating lunch? How gruel.
So, where’s Charlie ?
Dunno but this thread is Gruevy.
*Ba-dum Tching*
Ha, we haven’t had a drumroll in a while. The last drummer probably got some bad RSI though, there are so many puns here that keeping up must be a truly gruelling task!
He’s under the gazebo.
Another victim of the fearful gazebo.
Will no brave adventurer vanquish this terrible foe?!
In the text-based adventure game known as Improbable Island, YOU can be the one to vanquish the horrendous gazebo!
I know. I’ve been there & done that. However, not a T-shirt was to be found.
This storyline to brought to you by Capitalism.
I hope you guys are getting something for all these product placements.
Capitalism keeps this site free to view. Watch where you throw those stones there buddy.
Yep. Capitalism is what gives you the ability to go out & purchase the computer (or cell phone or whatever) of your choice. Capitalism is what brings you the internet & the the rest of the world with it.
And Capitalism is what gives the Hipsters the opportunity to go to Starbucks, drink outrageously-priced coffee & use their wifi connection so they can endlessly blog about the evils of Capitalism…
;)
Well….can we assume you like these products?
As said before, we use these brands merely as set dressings. We’re not getting paid, and sometimes the brand choice is for humor, but mostly just to assert the familiarity of the world.
Maybe it’s because I live far from America and recognize only a few of the brands, but it doesn’t bother me at all; I think you guys achieve the intended effect with it. I mean, besides what Acrox said, and that I found the Focus on last page simultaneously somewhat really cool and somewhat jarringly trace-looking, I can’t really see why anyone should take issue with all the brands showing up in sepia world.
I do find Jarring the mix of parody brand names and real brand names – typically I’d go all one or all the other, but I don’t have any problem with products being in the things I consume. At least here they’re an artistic choice rather than a financial one.
Yeah, I thought they were fictional. Juicy Juice, seriously? :P
Yeah, that’s real. Juicy Juice really is a thing.
It’d be awesome if you got paid, though. Just saying. I think we’d all like to see you guys get paid more for the work you do.
That aside, I’m sure there are artistic reasons to not do product placement. I wouldn’t put product placement in my poems, but then again, no one would pay me to.
Once you start going down the line of being paid for product placement, you start having that company (or companies) looking over your shoulder dictating/controlling what you produce
That guy in the middle has the best face.
he’s also eating pancakes for lunch, I approve
You mean, Trollface?
The beared guy reminds me of Herb the Werewolf from Bonnie N. Collide, not sure what is it though
I wonder if the company’s operation and performance is beginning to slip due to Dedalus’ obsession. Small talk like that will eventually grow to reflect a larger problem among the rank and file.
Products exist. Sometimes you can find them in places. If it’s in a webcomic, I ain’t got a problem with this.
Wow. I didn’t think you’d actually go that far. Joking about grues? Have some respect, man. A lot of us have lost family and friends to Grue attacks.
Remember kids. There ARE monsters hiding in the dark. And you are likely to be eaten by them.
It is pitch dark. You are likely to be eaten by a CEO.
*bad thai?
Pad Thai. Good stuff; I envy the grue that gets a regular diet of it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pad_Thai
Oh no, my unfamiliarity with all things Thai has been exposed.
OMG! Thai this man down & Pad him for hidden weapons!
Nobody else is gonna say it? K
Rachel, E-Merl, Scipio.
Not Scipio… Gravedust
I’ll buy into that theory.
i dont see it
No no no. Scipio, Rachel, E-Merl.
On a random note, Carol’s really rocking that cravat.
Oh… she DOES look a lot like Syr’nj there, huh?
I was going to say that too, glad I checked the other comments first. well, your comment at least.
Still think she looks more like Kouryick, at least facially
What are those horrible dried up husks on the table in front of the lady eating Arbys’ food? Do they serve discarded snake skin bites now?
Curly fries
“Listen, don’t disrespect the grue, okay?”
I THINK that’s how the quote goes – can’t find my Userfriendly comic book right now :)
What the Frank is a ‘grue’?
A fictional monster that attack in the dark.
Much easier for you to google that than for anyone to explain it beyond what the comic and the comments have already implied. Here’s a song that explains just as little.
Great song, still have a few of those Ye Olde systems (but got the Amiga 600 with the built in Hard Drive, until the HD literally blew up one night while it wasn’t even turned on: had been sleeping, woke up and saw a blue flash, didn’t think anything about it for a couple days until tried to turn it on and nothing happened, fortunately it was only the HD that stopped working and could still spend hours playing Frontier {still to this day can’t stand listening to “Hall of the Mountain King”, puts me into a semi-rage})
“It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.”
“The grue is a sinister, lurking presence in the dark places of the earth. Its favorite diet is adventurers, but its insatiable appetite is tempered by its fear of light. No grue has ever been seen by the light of day, and few have survived its fearsome jaws to tell the tale.”
It’s a monster from the game series Zork. If you moved in the dark too many times you were likely to be eaten.
Haven’t played Zork in over 15 years (think it was Zork, it’s been a long time :()
Yep. Zork. Introduced in the very first of the Zork series.
Well it’s good he asked cause I knew about grues but didn’t know they originated in Zork, and I also didn’t know about that song xD
To my shame I had to google it as well.
I believe the grue was originally a monster from Jack Vance’s Dying Earth stories. Though I don’t remember that he ever complained about his stuff appearing in D&D. IOUN stones! The magic system!