A Reddit user called capt_wink_martindale wrote a piece last month describing what he claims happened to him as a student film-maker who'd licensed the rights to an Isaac Asimov story for his thesis project, and his project was shut down due to legal intimidation from the film studio producing the I, Robot film. He does not offer any source to substantiate his allegations, but they're awfully damning, and sound — to my ear, anyway — plausible.
Somehow the legal team from the studio found out about a student project, in a small private college in the Midwest, with no budget, being shot in a warehouse basement, and decided to issue a cease and desist order. Basically, what that means, is that the studio’s lawyers said to us, “You’re using our property. Stop, or we’ll sue you into the stone age.” I responded by sending them the consent form from the Asimov estate, and explained that it was a student project, not a commercial venture worth litigating. I turned over our script, our shooting notes, our shot list, copies of our tapes and even the concept art drawings.
Instead of the letter recognizing our valiant efforts as students that I expected, I found myself on the tail end of a phone call that changed my life. I was contacted directly by the lead of the studio’s legal team, who explained my situation to me very clearly. He told me that I was technically in my legal right to use Isaac Asimov’s material. However, if I chose to proceed, they would file multiple lawsuits totaling over 2 million dollars against me. In the end, I might win, but it would take hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees just to fight it, but would cost them nothing more than the salaries they already pay their lawyers. It would be 10 years before any type of verdict could be levied, and by then it wouldn’t matter what the outcome was, since their film would be long since released…
This is Why I Oppose the MPAA (self.SOPA) (via JWZ)
