Ars Technica reports that the folks at Star Wars Action Network — who dared to break absolutely no law by posting a photo of a new Star Wars action figure, legally purchased at a Walmart store, on their Facebook page — are the victims of Disney’s utter incompetence when it comes to dealing with copyright matters.
Earlier today, Disney had retracted its demand to have SWAN remove the images. But Ars notes that, almost immediately after everyone rejoiced, a second copyright Death Star was built.
“For reasons we can’t understand—Disney has now RESUBMITTED the claim, again removing the pictures (that they restored this morning),” wrote Marjorie Carvalho of SWAN.
Making matters even more confusing, Facebook demanded that the entire post — not just the photos — be taken down.
So instead of the post seen in the above screengrab, visitors to that link now only see this:
And just to rub in how horribly, horribly stupid and bad Disney is, the SWAN staffer who posted the photo is now under a three-day ban from posting to Facebook.
As Ars notes, it’s highly possible this is all the result of a dumb copyright bot. But it also flies in the face of the Digital Millennium [Falcon] Copyright Act, which says it’s against the law for anyone to knowingly file a false copyright takedown notice. Since Disney had previously retracted this notice, it would seem to follow that the company should have know that the initial claim was bogus.
by Chris Morran via Consumerist