A website called "Variety" recently published an article on Fair Use, using Friendship is Magic as the primary focus. It talks about how different companies tend to treat the augmentaton of copyrights in unique ways. Hasbro, for example, fully embraced out ridiculous crossover videos, which not only made our community stronger, but advertises the hell out of the cartoon.
Can you imagine how difficult it would have been to spread without the freedom to use these characters in the majority of our fanworks? Hell even my banners break every rule in the book.
I'm glad Hasbro took this route with us. Brohoof's all around.
You can find the article
here!
thanks to Calpain for the link!
76 comments:
FIRST
ReplyDeleteCopyright... I like to think of it more as a guideline.
ReplyDeleteNone Shal be the first.
ReplyDeleteThumbs up to Hasbro!
ReplyDeleteIt goes both ways though, I mean, they also benefit from us spreading the awesomeness of the show.
ReplyDeleteI think maybe Hasbro isn't used to having a fan base like us for a show like this, so that may not know the best way to respond to us. Still they seem to enjoy unofficially acknowledging us even though they still won't change their merchandise.
ReplyDeleteHasbro have certainly net themselves a whole lot of love for their superbly chilled attitude toward the outpouring of fan creativity. May Celestia bless your stock price!
ReplyDeleteGlad that Hasbro supports our community so well.
ReplyDeleteWell done Hasbro :D
ReplyDeleteTop shelf!
ReplyDeleteI know I never would have gotten into it if it weren't for some of the PMVs. The viral marketing done by the community is the only reason that the Brony community is as strong as it is.
ReplyDeleteWell DUH, it took ponies to understand how companies shall treat their customers...
ReplyDeleteHASBRO TAKE MY MONEY
TAKE IT I SAID
Hasbro is pretty cool for not taking down all the hard work that people have made on PVMs and such.
ReplyDeleteWhat would the fandom be like if Hasbro was more strict? Would we even be here?
ReplyDelete@Anonymous
ReplyDeleteWe'd be on the moon with Luna... Or 4chan.
The best form of marketing is word-of-mouth and that costs a company NOTHING!
ReplyDeleteIf they were more strict we would still be here.
ReplyDeleteBasically it would be like "mods are asleep quick post ponies."
Peanuts is a classic cartoon. Friendship is Magic is a kiddie show. You fail at context, Variety.
ReplyDeleteHasbro is awesome but i wish they would stop trolling us with the pink celestia toy. I want a white one >:O lol
ReplyDeleteALL HAIL HASBRO!!!
ReplyDeleteIf Hasbro had been strict with their take down notices, I wouldn't be here. Nor would the 3 other people who I converted. Many of which have bought MLP merchandise. Without the postings on YouTube, none of this would have ever happened since I don't even own a TV, much less have access to the HUB.
ReplyDeleteI just wish I could buy some of those molded toys, especially the blind bag ones, here in the US. The 5 pack with Celestia was awesome, but it leaves my collection short!
ReplyDeleteAlso, a poster would be awesome to get as well. One that is similar to the comiccon one :D
Its cool that Hasbro is cool.
ReplyDeleteHasbro is a pretty cool company.
ReplyDeleteHasbro is primarily a toy company, so they think of this *waves at the internet* as free advertising. Which is very smart. Most media companies STILL haven't figured out how to monetize infinite goods (songs/shows/movies) by leveraging that interest towards finite goods (toys/tshirts/whatever)
ReplyDeleteMore companies need to follow Hasbro's example in terms of interacting with the Fandom. Rather then suppressing Fanvids and Fanart out of a desperate need to maintain an old-fashioned view of Copyrights, they accept their existence, understanding they aren't a threat to their Intellectual Property.
ReplyDeletei don't see anything wrong with what the brony community does. It certainly helped attract fans in ways that the Hasbro advertising team could never have. Besides, fans are far more important than money(gain or loss thereof).
ReplyDeleteAnd for that Hasbro has my respect.
ReplyDeleteBy allowing us this kind of stuff, we're pretty much doing all the Internet advertising Hasbro would ever need. They get an expanded viewership, some extra bucks from the new fans buying merch, and a rapidly growing and loyal fanbase. They'd be crazy to crack down on PMVs and the like.
ReplyDeleteLet's show our appreciation toward Hasbro and thank them for being as awesome as they are right now regarding copyrights and the fandom's activities.
ReplyDeleteI don't know about the post about Hasbro not being used to a community about this, the transformers community in general is a lot like this one, and transformers have been a Hasbro product for years.
ReplyDeleteJonathan McIntosh is in the article? Is this some kind of joke?:D
ReplyDeleteI'm just glad that someone got paid to shop a Wu Tang cutie mark on Twilight.
ReplyDeleteWas a decent article. I think it's a better idea to just embrace it, rather than try to censor it most of the time. Censoring typically just upsets a lot of people, including many of the fans of the original works. Which would also hurt the business too obviously. Unless they are obviously trying to cause big trouble for them, it seems best to just go with the flow. I'm glad Hasbro is more accepting and embraces the community and the content they put out. It is indeed a good bit of advertising for them too. Can't count how many times I've heard someone say they saw some MLP parody which lead to them checking out the actual show itself.
ReplyDeleteWhen I joined the fandom I was quite frankly amazed by how accepting Hasbro was. Lots of companies seem to overreact to this. Props to you hasbro.
ReplyDeleteNot gonna lie that was shorter than I expected. Still decent.
ReplyDeleteIf I was 21 (or even drank: Mormon) I would toast to Hasbro all the time. Maybe I have some of that punch Gummy likes so much lying around...
ReplyDeletep.s. I don't think drank is a word, either.
I got in to this series because I heard about it from a friend, watched Ponycraft 2, and then decided to give the show a shot and watched all the episodes on youtube. If Hasbro had decided to censor the fan videos and episodes on youtube, there's no way I would have started watching the show. The decision to keep everything up isn't just nice, its helpful to the show as well, and the fans get to obsess over the show in peace. Thank you for keeping everything up Hasbro to let me watch this glorious show.
ReplyDeleteHasbro's fabulous
ReplyDeleteI find that Hasbro has been ridiculously accepting of the fandom, especially compared to just about every other company out there. PMVs? Fine. Content remixes? Fine. Mature content? Maybe not fine, but it sure hasn't vanished. The whole darn season on YouTube in HD, with 1 million+ views and counting? Zero action whatsoever.
ReplyDeleteCompare that to other companies that flip out if you so much as use a single frame of their work. I think FiM is going to become a case study of sorts for tolerating copyright infringement, especially since allowing such extreme levels of fanmade content has caused the fanbase to grow exponentially. Granted, Hasbro is more into selling toys than getting TV ratings (which might explain their tolerance), but even then, for the most part this tolerance has been a very, very good thing for Hasbro.
Certainly who knows if I would ever have noticed that there even was a new series out if not for the youtube videos.. ^^;
ReplyDeleteIt is nice that Hasbro has been such good sports about all fan made stuff on the web. If only other companies could fallow their example.
ReplyDeleteMajor props to Hasbro looking the other way on everything. I wouldn't know A THING about this show or its fandom if it wasn't for parody videos.
ReplyDeleteI think Nickeloded could take some tips from hasbro
ReplyDelete*nickeloden dont know how that happened
ReplyDeleteI love staring at Hasbro's plot.
ReplyDeleteMost of us forget one important thing why Hasbro is more laid back than other companies. They want to sell toys. The more people that see the shows from The Hub, the more advertisement they get for the toys they are producing.
ReplyDeleteAlso as we the fans demand Brony related stuff Hasbro is smart and actually start producing them.
Have you seen the stockprice? Its expensive and that's a good sign for a stockholder and the company itself!
Hasbro, is one of the good ones when it comes to letting their fandom be.
ReplyDeleteWant to know what one of the bad ones is? I leave you with a phrase:
"Don't mess with the Mouse."
@Someonelse
ReplyDeleteDitto, except Straight Edge, not Mormon :)
I discovered FiM from a link in a journal to the 7 Artist Epic music video. I would have never even considered watching MLP if I hadn't seen that video.
Hasbro has bronies. And this is why.
ReplyDeleteHasbro did perhaps the most logical thing to do. They make most of their $ of the toys and not the show. Letting the fandom explode as it has became the best free advertising they could hope for
ReplyDeleteHow to get Bronies' monies who are otherwise afraid of buying shirts, lunchboxes, and toys:
ReplyDeleteOfficial novels. Not coloring books, not Dr. Suess length "stories," but proper novels. Contact the guy that did the Battletech fic: professional voice, knowledge of audience, willing to take the time to do it right...
I, for one, would eat that up.
That is something Hasbro HAS done right!
ReplyDeleteOff topic, I was in Ross Dress for Less and saw the Twilight Sparkle balloon with a figure in their toy section for $12. I had to PULL myself away and tell myself that it wasn't worth it, that I'm making my own merch (hoodie, stickers) anyway, and that the toy honestly sucked and looked pretty cheep and crappy.
Still, I was tempted to buy it. Very tempted.
Confound you Hasbro and your brightly colored equines! They drive me to *almost* buy crappy brightly colored plastic toys!
If they made some decent, show-accurate merch, you can guess where my money will be going :D
I had to chuckle when I saw “a Web site called ‘Variety’”, considering that Variety has been one of the most important entertainment-industry periodicals almost from its founding in . . . 1905. (That I had to look up.)
ReplyDelete—Dave Bryant
I'm one of those people that eventually watched this show because I had been exposed to it through PMVs and Pony-trailers, etc. Without all the other content I probably would have watched the first episode or two then given up. Thank you, Hasbro, for supporting this community!
ReplyDeleteRe: the Wu-Tang video
ReplyDeleteMy Little Pony just made me enjoy a rap song.
OK, the world can end now. There's nothing left to accomplish.
@Brevity
ReplyDeleteNovels and other such high-quality text fiction was the inspiration for my mock-up cover for a hypothetical book titled Tales From Equestria, featured in Nightly Round-up #46 back on 25 July.
—Dave Bryant
I know I wouldn't be here, and thus wouldn't have given Hasbro any of my money if it weren't for the PMVs. I don't get the Hub, so without it going viral I wouldn't even there was a new generation of MLP, much less care about the characters.
ReplyDeleteDave Bryant, I'm about to print off a copy of that cover, slip it onto my bookcase and see if anyone notices. That was amazing. I really wish I was enough of an artist to contribute back to all this.
21 million + pageviews hammering the ponies into the collective subconscious of teh interweb on this site alone.
ReplyDeleteMoney can't buy that sort of world-changing insanity.
BTW: "A website called 'Variety'"?!? Holy horseapples, Sethisto! VARIETY!!! THE trade mag for the whole freakin' entertainment industry!
Got here through watching Ponycraft 2 from a friend. I don't even play the series, and yet it intrigued me very epicly. A good dose of editing, and perfect lip syncing made the call! Pulling me into the world of MLP:FiM makes me a happy brony.
ReplyDeleteI'm happy to see Hasbro being very relaxed, and acted accordingly to the surprise audience.
Companies need to know that in the age of the internet, when they piss off one fan by going after his/her tribute to a franchise he/she obviously loved enough to create original content for, they're pissing of hundreds, if not thousands of other people who liked that particular video/story/drawing/game and/or who are fanwork creators themselves, in constant fear of their hard work being taken down.
ReplyDeleteConsistent behaviour of this sort may not make me stop being a fan of a particular franchise/show/movie/whatever. But it may make me think twice about paying for stuff I don't really need (i.e. merchandise). Or, in the case of a television show, throwing any money at all at the corporate overlords (I have a DVR; I can do without commercial DVDs). Or trying out another, similar product by said company.
There are millions of ways for me to spend my time and money. If I like your *company* (as opposed to just one product), it's much more likely that I'll check out what you have to offer, and thus reward not just your product, but also your interaction with the fans of that product.
Being laissez-faire on the internet is a really easy way for companies to garner that often-sought but not-well-understand corporate buzzword "brand loyalty". Create a good product and many people will like it. Some people will love it. But foster a good image about that product, about yourself, and about your relationship with the people who really really loved what you did, and you will turn those fans into even bigger fans. Who will in turn evangelise to the masses in order to convert even more people to the awesomeness that is #insert franchise here#. And you've got yourself some built-in interest in whatever you do next. You can't buy that kind of brand loyalty. But you can foster it by adjusting to and embracing the ways of the internet and Web 2.0.
I would not have stumbled upon MLPFIM without all the fan activity. And I definitely could not have checked out the actual episodes if they hadn't been readily available online.
I don't think I would be regularly editing the wiki if the fandom hadn't kept interest in the show so high by bombarding me with stories and images and videos and fanart almost every day. "Who's this Lyra I keep reading about? Let's look her up. Oh, she doesn't have an entry. Well, maybe I should do some research and create one."
Maybe if the fandom let up for a week I might lose interest during the long wait until season 2. I certainly would be thinking about other things right now, and would never contemplate buying candy-coloured pony toys. But because fans are not intimidated and punished for expressing their love for the show, they keep creating. Which keeps ponies on my mind.
So, thank you, Hasbro. Put out a region-free Blu-ray set with a reasonable price tag relative to bonus features, and I will purchase it. Not because I need to -- I've already burnt HD copies of the episodes onto DVD-Rs. But because I want to.
"A website called Variety"? *looks*
ReplyDeleteSeth, that's the web presence of the news magazine Variety, which is the most widely recognized trade journal of the film and theater industry in the United States! This is HUGE! This will be read by industry insiders, Hollywood producers, and professionally creative people AROUND THE WORLD!
People are going to notice bronies now...
>Meanwhile, kiddie show "My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic" has somehow attracted an adult-male cult following
ReplyDelete>about to leave a correcting comment
>no comment section
well, fuck "Variety"
I think as long as the majority of bronies respect the source material, Hasbro SHOULD be happy with all of the free publicity we generate for it.
ReplyDeleteTHIS is what Hasbro has done correctly. For all their marketing failures, they have at least got this part right. When you don't treat the fans like savage animalistic criminals by trying to control EVERY single aspect of the media product (DRM), and let the people help it grow through various unofficial and non-licensed ways, then the fans will reward you for it.
ReplyDeleteThe craptastic "music" industry could learn a thing or two from that strategy. Once you get the respect of the fans, you will eventually get their money too.
Alright, I know it's been said, but...
ReplyDeleteSETHISTO! ARE YOU SERIOUSLY SAYING "A website called 'Variety'"?!?!?!
You do realize that this is the BIGGEST magazine in the entertainment industry, and that it has been around longer than probably 99.9% of bronies have been alive?!
This is BIG NEWS. If any mention of the bronies in media has mattered at all up until this point, THIS MATTERS MORE.
Gah, I know I'm going to have to post this as 'anonymous,' something I never do. But when it comes to business and such, I know people don't really like the reality of it all and take great delight at kicking the messenger into a pit.
ReplyDeleteThe truth is, Hasbro took a gigantic gamble with MLP:FiM that paid off in dividends. It was a tremendously risky move to be so complacent to copyright violations akimbo, and when it comes to how companies 'should' treat their customers, this is not an example others will follow.
Let's cite an example from The Incredibles, when Syndrome is explaining his plans for taking care of the Supers. He wants to change everybody with technology, "So when everybody is super, nobody is."
To tie this analogy to Hasbro, if every other company did this, the 'openness' phenomenon wouldn't exist. In the end, with so much free media available in such great quantities, the market of the entertainment industry would collapse. We'd like to just assume that every show that comes along will be as awesome as ponies, yet that's simply impossible.
MLP:FiM was the perfect storm of quality and fan reception that allowed Hasbro's gamble to work for them. I've gone out and purchased merchandise out of a coerced obligation to support the show's team of artists. AKA: "Shut up and take my money!"
But not every show can do this. If they did, they would all sink, as the Internet hivemind can only geek out obsessively over one thing at a time. If subcultures like MLP:FiM popped up every month, I would be so distracted that the 'merchandise-driven' financial engine wouldn't have enough time to warm up before my attentions shifted elsewhere.
So here's my conclusion.
MLP:FiM is a special example, an example largely credited to the vision, direction, artists, talent, and fanfare of it all. However, it is not going to be the future model for distributing media. The future of MLP:FiM is protected from its differences in the fact that it's so wildly popular on the Internet, and it's the only one.
Case in point. Top trending on 'KnowYourMeme' for...how many months now?
Wow... The hipocracy of Variety printing an article like this makes me want to scream...
ReplyDeleteVariety is known for tossing frivolous lawsuits on this issue, most notably attempting to sue The Vandals, a punk rock band, for using their lettering on an album which made fun of pop culture. Reading this just makes me want to punch them...
Just for completeness, I would also like to throw in my chuckle at "A website named Variety."
ReplyDeleteActually, when you think about it, Hasbro has handled this almost perfectly! A brohoof to them from me!
ReplyDelete-Your Twilight loving grammar nazi, Twilight Otaku
As a semi-Transformers fan, I like how Hasbro treats that property. The fans tend to pirate the heck out of the shows, but then they proceed to spread the love and buy 7 repaints of Hot Rod just because.
ReplyDeleteOlder MLP fans are known for less show-love and more buying repaints, so Hasbro's trying to appeal to them by sticking to what they know. Once they decide that the G4 fanbase is more like their Transformers fans, they'll really get their flanks into gear.
TL:DL- Good work Hasbro.
ReplyDeleteWell good move on Hasbro's part, Great move on Variety's part as they do not poke fun at us Bronies. The Shultz Estate and Hasbro are in a simular position here, that they have control over thier property (Yes I throw a (C)Hasbro in there to cover my butt). But the Charles Schultz Estate decided to lock down all parodies of thier work. We cant have Lucy and Linus Shipping cant we.. but we can get Big Mac going end over end as Pinky Pie pulls a football away at the kickoff of a game vs the Bud Clydesdales.
Sometimes I worry when I see their characters used in... less than wholesome ways, but even Lauren acknowledged Rule 34 as an inevitability of any internet fandom, and I'm glad Hasbro doesn't flip their shit going after everyone because of pony porn.
ReplyDeleteI feel kinda sheepish for all the "HAAASBROOOO!!!" curses from earlier this year, when they've since gone out of their way to acknowledge us and even cater to us.
@Anonymous You might say that it has garnered…*puts on sunglasses*…a 'colt' following.
ReplyDeleteYEAAAAAAAAAH
I only just read this article a couple days ago, and I have to say, major props to Hasbro for letting their fanbase stay creative, even if some of the content is... questionable. I'll be the first to admit, I am a 26-year old male who hasn't watched original cartoons since the late-90's. I would have never started watching MLP:FIM if it wasn't for some of my friends sending me ridiculous PMV mash-ups and ponified movie trailers. I really enjoyed the animation and decided to check it out. I've been a huge fan since.
ReplyDeleteIt's also a very savvy business move on Hasbro's part. Normally, they are trying to appeal to a demographic that has to demand that the parent's will buy what they are selling. Can you imagine the bewilderment at Hasbro HQ when they come to find out that the demographic they have reached are the consumer's that actually have the money, and are willing to part with it? It's the perfect storm, Hasbro would be absolutely crazy not to ride that horse for all it's worth, so to speak.
@eaglehooves
ReplyDeleteDave Bryant, I'm about to print off a copy of that cover, slip it onto my bookcase and see if anyone notices. That was amazing. I really wish I was enough of an artist to contribute back to all this.
Thanks so much for the compliment! I’d love to know how many double-takes you get from doing that.