The 500-Pound Wookiee Q. What Internet content does a 500-pound Wookiee own? A. Whatever he wants. by David R. Phillips Published 9/1/99

Tales of the LFL Attorneys

The other night on ICQ, I was chatting with a fellow Star Wars website operator in a conversation reminiscent of the 3-D HoloChess scene on the Falcon in A New Hope:

Webmaster: "Y’know, nobody even thinks twice about stealing stuff from my website to use on their own. They don’t do that to LucasFilm."

Me: "You don’t rip people’s arms off or shut down people’s websites. LucasFilm does."

In our corner of the world, LucasFilm has become the 500-pound wookiee.

The stories abound across the net, and fear strikes all of us -- another webmaster receives a Cease and Desist (C&D) letter from LucasFilm's (or an affiliated company’s) corporate attorneys to pull graphics or a storyline featured on his site. Even worse, when going through your bookmarks and hitting websites that worked only last week you get the dreaded "a domain name server for this site could not be found" or "you do not have permission to access" message in your browser  -- and another one bites the dust. Yet another website gets the really heavy end of the hammer dropped on it and is gone, most of the time leaving behind no explanation. LucasFilm doesn’t stand alone in this regard -- Cease and Desist orders have hit Star Wars websites from places as unlikely as Toys-R-Us and Frito-Lay.

These webmasters' tales of woe could fit right into a collection of short stories as a sequel to "Tales of the Bounty Hunters," this one called "Tales of the LFL Attorneys." Over the last few weeks, I have spoken with a number of people who hold (or held) registrations for domains that contain within their URLs "starwars," some variation of "phantom menace," or a well-recognized character name from the Star Wars Universe. Nearly all had received the much-dreaded Cease and Desist letter at one time or another. Some still own the domains, but even those mostly result in "site not found" error messages. Other domains formerly held by individuals now bring you right to the official site at www.starwars.com itself after their takeover.

Is this a good thing for LucasFilm to be doing? Are they right to be doing it? Most importantly, do they have any legal standing to do it in the first place?

Don’t getta me wrongo... I’m not telling you Echo Station is about to provide you with the do-all, end-all, be-all legal reference that will enable you to take on LFL in a court of law should a situation ever arise... but I’m at least going to try and provide you with more information based on recent legal findings, stories from other people who have had interaction with LFL, and what you can expect to happen.

Let’s start with the websites that matter most (at least from my point of view) -- those of the fans -- the enterprising people who went out and registered a Star Wars related domain name and (in most cases) put forth the effort to build and develop a website. (You can see a list of all the websites I contacted here.) I spent the better part of three days tracking down websites that either contained the word "starwars," some variation of "phantom menace," or a character’s name from one of the films. Needless to say, this wasn't easy... but the fantastic responses made the time and effort worthwhile, and some have evolved into ongoing correspondence on various issues. The owners of the sites I found were, for the most part, extremely laid-back and willing to talk about the entire experience of running a domain that essentially has a bullseye painted across it’s homepage.

Of course, there’s an exception to every rule -- there was the one laughable death threat I got from an irate "fan" (and I use the term loosely) who felt this article would apparently bring legions of death-squad stormtroopers to his front door within 24 hours of publication. To him, and to all others that think my writing this article is in some way going to bring something to LFL’s attention they’re not already aware of, I have but one thing to say: "Get a clue." LucasFilm is (for the most part) a well-oiled machine, folks. They’ve got a whole group of people that have (at least as part of their job responsibilities) nothing better to do than track down sites just like the ones I’m talking about in this article, not to mention bootleg copies of The Phantom Menace and just about anything else out there that can get you hung upside down with hot irons applied to your feet by EV-9D9. Just because they’ve got a better track record of playing nicely with fans than some other corporate entities out there doesn’t mean they’re clueless, or entirely benevolent, either.

Typical of the responses I received was from Brian Semling, who owns (at least for the moment) www.starwarstoys.com ...he’s an avid collector of action figures. His response was as follows:

Another response came from Mark Borkowski, owner and operator of www.phantommenacetoys.com:

So here we have two similar websites -- both somewhat commercial in nature, both revolving around Star Wars toys, and both operating under Star Wars related domain names -- and yet only one has received a Cease and Desist and is being forced to move to a new home. What’s the difference? Why did one trigger a reaction from LFL and not the other? I only wish I knew the answer, because LFL would be the only ones who could tell, and they’re not talking. Repeated requests for comment went unanswered.

As I mentioned earlier, LucasFilm is not alone in attempting to shut down Star Wars websites. Frequent visitors to this site may recall the petition that we started when Toys-R-Us attempted to shut down the website of Gus Lopez at www.toysrgus.com -- a site that had been up and running for quite some time and is quite popular with the collecting world. Gus received a nastygram (see it here: page 1 page 2 page 3) from the Toys-R-Us attorneys at Darby and Darby Associates who apparently believe their clients own anything and everything that contains the letters "RUS" anywhere in the world. World-wide (literally) support started flooding in, ranging from articles and efforts on fan-based sites like our own to stories in the Wall Street Journal and on popular internet news sites like www.slashdot.org (read the article here) and CNet’s www.news.com (read the article here) to name a few. Reponses to the petition formed on our own site were overwhelming -- close to 15,000 responses flooded through our mail servers in less than a month and were routed to the attorney named on the Cease and Desist order as well as the customer service and public relations departments of Toys-R-Us. The end result? Well, www.toysrgus.com still works and houses Gus’ site...you be the judge of our petitions' effectiveness.

Guilty by association?

Strangely enough...I also have received a Cease and Desist letter...but the strange part is that it had nothing to do with Echo Station. I’m listed as the Technical Contact for many of the domains we host on our servers (if you didn’t know we also offered web hosting services... well, now you do <g>) and one of those hosted sites incurred the wrath of The Energizer Bunny. Well, not the bunny itself, but the company holding the trademarks and copyrights to the hyperactive rabbit we’ve all seen on television. You may remember one of their commercials -- the one which featured Darth Vader, the Energizer Bunny, and a  lightsaber which malfunctions due to faulty batteries. Stills taken from the commercial were made available on www.lucasfan.net for a period of time until the Cease and Desist arrived in my email inbox. I called the attorney signing the email (since no site information was listed and I was baffled as to what Echo Station might have done with the Energizer Bunny to annoy someone) and quickly got matters straightened out. As Mike Streeter, owner and operator of www.lucasfan.net puts it:

I’ve got to agree with Mike on this one. The letter wasn’t very well thought out; not only did it arrive addressed to me rather than the listed registrant of the domain, but also it failed to give a crucial piece of information -- what website they were referring to. There are people on the web today with dozens (if not hundreds) of domains registered in their name. I happen to show up as the technical contact for every domain hosted on our servers... and if one out of those several hundred sites does something wrong, am I to be held liable simply by being the guy behind the scenes making sure the servers don’t crash? Are ISPs and web hosting providers supposed to monitor the content of every site on our servers on a daily basis? Checking every page, each graphic, each file to make sure that nothing untoward is happening? Luckily, the answer to that question is "no." There are now protections in place for ISPs and hosting companies to limit their liability and keep themselves from getting caught in the crossfire between litigating parties involved in a copyright/trademark dispute, so long as they take the time to fill out a few forms and register themselves properly with the appropriate agencies.

A domain by any other name would smell as sweet ...

Another response from a Star Wars webmaster, this one opening up another issue, came in from Jesse Malkin:

So now we enter another difficult realm...character names. Are character names fair game for anyone to get away with registering and running? Yet another series of internet support swelled up to surround the teenager nicknamed "Pokey" who ran a website at www.pokey.org when the owners of the trademarks for the cartoon characters "Gumby and Pokey" attempted to take the domain away from him. A similar circumstance arose with a domain given to a child to celebrate her birth -- www.veronica.org. Enter Archie Comic Publications (you remember them...Archie, Jughead, Veronica, Betty, and the gang) who claimed to own the trademark to the name "Veronica." Ludicrous, right? You might think so, but these folks still had to go through an amazing amount of effort and hassle to keep their domains alive. In the Star Wars realm, there are sites live and running at URLs like www.chewbacca.com and www.princessleia.com without headache or hassle, and at least to me, it stands to reason that character names invented for the movies are just as (if not more so) privately held and protected under copyright. The owner and operator of www.princessleia.com had this to say: