"And I find hard to believe that any movie studio, publisher, record company etc would smash the hands of artists who give tons of FREE publicity, keep their "product" in the public eye, and breed rigorous brand loyalty. You can't even buy that kind of a cult following even if you wanted to!!! Why would they alienate their most loyal customers? That would be stupid." Stupid it may seem, but that arises out of a lack of knowledge of the specifics of the law, and the reasons for those laws. I'm going to try to remain calm and reasonable right now, and not post the words I typed first the way I typed them. Unlike a lot of people, excepting situations where I feel its important to share information that affects an entire community, I generally follow the rules I agreed to. And if I did post them as I wanted, I would need to be banned for personal attacks. Right now, after reading that, I am so pissed off I can't see straight. Public figures are not public domain. Not all modern myths are public domain (be careful using that phrase, it has specific meaning) Popular culture is decidedly not public domain. I, personally, have lost thousands of dollars to people who think like that. I have spent months in cold courtrooms that echo like bad music halls listening to people use those same arguments in front of judges in small calims courts, and every single time they did I won the honor and the privilege of being able to say that yes, they did steal from me and by god, one day the collection agents will get ten or fifteen bucks from them. And you may find it hard to believe, but perhaps you didn't hear about the actions just a few short years ago regarding harry potter, by warner brothers. Or maybe you missed the three separate occasions where paramount -- in a bid to keep star trek alive as something they can make money from -- was put in a position by such well meaning fans calling it stupid of having to shut down hundreds of fanzines and such. And dammit, ya know what? No -- no one is gonna walk up to that kid for drawing R2D2 on his notebook. But if that same kid scans that sketch in and colors it nicely and puts it up on the internet -- which is distributing it -- then yeah -- if the rights holder wants to they sure as hell can do something about it. OMG I am pissed. Tell ya what: you go make something original. Spend the real quality freaking hours it takes to do so -- just as many as it takes to make a good piece of fan art -- and then you post it, and ya know what? I'll copy it and put it up on every single site I come across. And when people think that I made it because I never freaking bother to credit you, you tell me how you feel. In case no one got the idea in the first place, this is being done now because they can do it now. It would have been nice if, gee, just maybe, for once in their freaking lives people would have actually paid attention to what the hell they were doing and NOT uploaded it in the first place. Go freaking learn something for a change.

thou and I, my friend, can, in the most flunkey world, make, each of us, one non-flunkey, one hero, if we like: that will be two heroes to begin with. (Carlyle)