How does it work, exactly? Mostly it works hard at confusing me. It gets even more confusing in Canada, where our parody/fair use laws are not as broad as in the States.
How does fanart fit into everything? I know Disney cracks down on any non-approved commercial use of their characters (to the point where Artist Alleys at anime cons will ban Disney-based fanart so they don’t get jumped on by Disney). The fact that Disney can do this implies that they have the law behind them, otherwise they’d get a big collective bird flipped at them. Ok, I understand up until that point.
But what about stuff like this? Or this?
We can all agree that it’s epically awesome. But how can it be legal for the artist (and Threadless) to sell for profit? The artist did the concept and the drawing, but Hanna-Barbera (Warner Bros.?) owns the characters. Fanart tend to be as popular as it is because it appeals to people who already know/like the character, so it’s using the property of the originator in order to make a profit.
It can’t just be an international case of “if the copyright holder doesn’t find out & crack down, it means it’s ok” or “if you are small-time, the copyright holder won’t bother pursuing legal action“, can it? Given how quickly these social media pillows spread through, well, social media, I can’t possibly believe that Twitter (and MySpace, FaceBook, Gmail, etc.) don’t know that these pillows exist. Heck, Gmail specifically has a rule that if you host your company email through their Google Apps, if you upload your own logo, your image cannot contain the Gmail logo. So if they don’t want people who use their services to use their logo without permission without any personal gain, it doesn’t seem like they would be A-OK with some chick selling (admittedly awesome) pillows of their logo.
Heck, I would happily own both the shirt and a Twitter pillow. Not so much because I like the original way they are presented, but because I like the character/item portrayed. Therefore, I’d be buying it because of the copyright holder’s marketing and popularization. I would likely think this zombie-hunter shirt was awesome if it showed two completely original characters, but I probably wouldn’t (want to) buy it without that extra push of “I already know and like those characters!”
Gah. I don’t get this.