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Did Activision Violate Arnold Schwarzenegger's Publicity Rights With Austrian Accented Thor?
from the i'll-be-baaaaack dept
Ah, the fun never stops with the still ambiguous world of publicity rights, a relatively recent, but growing field of "intellectual property" that has all sorts of problems. THREsq points us to a legal analysis of whether or not California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger would have a publicity rights claim over the character "Thor," found in Starcraft II. It's hard to argue that the character isn't based on Ahhh-nold, as it has his accent and repeats (sometimes paraphrased) famous Arnold lines from various movies:
In some ways, this is not all that different than the recent complaint from Michael Jackson's estate over the "zombie" Michael Jackson found in the game Plants vs. Zombies. Of course, to make this even more interesting, Schwarzenegger is still leading the legal fight against violent video games in California, so it seems even more amusing that his "voice" appears in a new video game.
That said, there's no indication that Schwarzenegger is actually upset by this -- and he apparently has not complained about other attempts to mimic his voice, such as with the Simpson's character McBane. So, at this point, the post above appears to be idle speculation on how a publicity rights claim might play out. However, it seems like a sad commentary on the state of publicity rights law that it's even worth considering whether such a creative choice by the gamemakers might break the law.
That said, there's no indication that Schwarzenegger is actually upset by this -- and he apparently has not complained about other attempts to mimic his voice, such as with the Simpson's character McBane. So, at this point, the post above appears to be idle speculation on how a publicity rights claim might play out. However, it seems like a sad commentary on the state of publicity rights law that it's even worth considering whether such a creative choice by the gamemakers might break the law.
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Should be protected
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You hear about someone using something you see as your own and feel that they owe you something. You can either hit a bong and chill out, have a laugh and be happy people are influenced by your lifes works or you can be all American on them and sue.
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Not too concerned about the publicity rights claim...
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well blah to this
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Blizzard copies too, so what?
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Thor is...
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Blizzard uses them in WoW heaps as well
There are many others as well, as well as the dances the avatars do are based on well known dance scenes from movies like Saturday night fevor, its all throughout the game.
But its makes it more fun and interesting.
Also the dance from "toxic" is used as well,
There used to be an ARNIE web site, that would generate random classic arnie statements, that you could download and use for your ring tone, or for error messages on your computer or whatever. its a bit of fun..
I would expect arnie would not care, ive seen him recieve alot of that type of comment in fun, and he enjoys it and treats it as the joke and fun it is.
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Publicity is always a good thing.
Someone like Arnold or Michael(estate) should be proud that their voice or appearance is so recognizable rather than try to censor everything similar to yourself.
I've always been told that any publicity is good publicity.
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Re: Publicity is always a good thing.
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fick arnold the girly boy
are you collecting any royalties off terminator and conan movies?
how about total recall
NO violence there
SO i guess we'll all see arnold do little house on the side street
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The dryads's human call in WC3 is still one of their best :)
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