Spots the Space Marine by M.C. Hogarth can be purchased at Amazon once again thanks to the intervention of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and others. As reported here yesterday, Amazon had taken down the book after Games Workshop attempted to enforce its trademark on the term “space marine” – notwithstanding the term’s decades long history as a staple of sf stories before Warhammer 40K ever came along.
Hogarth tried to resolve the dispute in a friendly way, but Games Workshop refused to withdraw its complaint. So she reached out for help, including to EFF (and thanks to the many folks, including Wil Wheaton, Popehat, and Cory Doctorow, who helped spread the word). We were able to intervene and, to Amazon’s credit, the company reviewed the claim and restored the book. Let’s hope Games Workshop will now have the good sense to realize the bullying has to stop. We’re pleased that Amazon did the right thing here, and that we were able to help.
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Author Hogarth has posted her thanks: “I tell my daughter that there’s magic in the world and that human beings are responsible for creating it. You all have proved that decisively. I’ll never forget the past few days, and for that I and my family thank you earnestly from the depths of our hearts.”
I recall the attempts to trademark “science fiction”. There are easier ways to protect your intellectual property instead of revealing your lack of background. I’m often seeing lawsuits brought about the the lawyers concern, not the creator.
Issues 133 & 137 of this Esteemed Journal covered the excitement of the trademarking of “Fandom”.
This: http://www.salon.com/2000/12/13/fandom/ and this: http://fanlore.org/wiki/Fandom,_Inc. should bring back memories,
WordPress sabotaged Michael’s second URL. The period (aka dot, aka full stop) following “Inc” should be part of the URL. Maybe this will work, if I manually enter the URL: http://fanlore.org/wiki/Fandom,_Inc.
Nope. WordPress thinks it knows what we want to type, better than we do.
How freakingly annoying. I even tried manually coding the link, and WordPress simply won’t utilize the final period when connecting to the page.