Disney bans custom cover art
 

www.dvdcoverart.com was offline for a good portion of yesterday and this morning. They came back up recently with this notice on the front page:

That makes themselves, Lucasfilm and ADV as the only studios that forbid fans from making custom covers of their titles.

What do they think they are accomplishing by this, other than pissing off a segment of their consumers? If they believe this is somehow discouraging bootlegging, they are sorely mistaken, and fully misunderstand the purpose of the site in the first place.

Re: Disney bans custom cover art
 

Their dvdcoverart logo still contains 'Monsters, Inc.' art (from Pixar) so I'm not sure how serious they are about this.

Josh, they have to agressively defend their trademarks, or they will lose them. It's incredibly easy to lose TM protection for not policing it.

If you think Disney even considered the 1% of 1% of DVD owners who even know DCA existed when they made this decision, you are giving us way too much credit.

Remember, Disney also wanted Disney characters painted on a wall removed because of their trademark. Shrug.

Another reason why Di$ney sucks.

Quote:

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Originally posted by DVD Josh
Josh, they have to agressively defend their trademarks, or they will lose them. It's incredibly easy to lose TM protection for not policing it.

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Never understood this. Yes, I realize it makes sense if someone's attempting to make $$$ off of it, but this is for personal use. A shame too...there were some I wanted to download but waited too damn long.

Perhaps an underground forum/movement is in order?

Well the most glaring problem here is that DCA charges users to d/l from the site.

hmm...true, true...I didn't even think about that. However, one doesn't necessarily have to pay to get "credits"...they can also get them when you contribute..

but i'm thinking that the same thing would happen even if covers were made available in DVD Talk's cover art forum [like they used to be]..

It doesn't matter if the TM is being violated for money. If Disney were to sue someone for using their TMs and there were situations where it was well known that they were allowing free use of their TMs, they would lose the case.

I completely understand, and as someone pointed out, DCA is NOT free.

This sucks. Screw you Di$ney!

Considering most of their covers suck and they are the main reason I would want replacement art, this really does suck. Instead of targeting and shutting down things like this, I would like to see studios take a more proactive approach and ask why people don't like crappy floating head covers and why people prefer the original poster art for DVD covers.

I'm afraid they know, but they just don't care. Floating heads get people's attention and move product. This will just force the custom cover society underground, where it should have been anyways.

I do have to say their cover for The Black Hole is pretty neat, even though it's a complete fabrication of ideas. Does that make me a bad guy?

Thanks Disney. Now I can save money by not getting your products! I can spend it on other companies now.

During the Iraqi war there was a small story about some soilders who had a Mickey drawing and said something about getting to Saddam or Bagdad, paraphrasing like "next stop, Bagdad." Disney wasn't too pleased that their mouse was used in a war situation.

BUT, they did not object to their mouse who was tattoed on a character in the Sandra Bullock movie A Time To Kill.

Who gets bashed more Lucas or Disney these days?

I think Disney is a worse situation. At least for me. I really like their products, characters, movies, and theme parks but I absolutely HATE their business practices. Lately they have really been almost to the point of sucking the life out of their products and Roy's infamous letter gives a lot of weight to the arguement.

So, what you are saying is that their marketing analysis is correct, in that the content of the cover art does affect consumers' purchasing decisions.

Unfortunately, you are in the rather small minority who will avoid a product simply because you don't like the packaging, as opposed to the large majority who are attracted based on that same packaging.

Note that I am not saying that I find their packaging attractive, nor am I saying that that the majority of people are necessarily "right" or "wrong" for their (il)logic. I am merely pointing out an ironic observation.

Regardless of whther they know (or even care) that most studio dvd covers are awful, that is just plain conjecture and has no bearing on the situation as far as they are concerned. it is, unfortunately, irrelevant. This is unfortunately also very true - regardless of whether the pacakging sucks, its not going to have any bearing or any difference in a person's decision to pop the disc into the player - it could be a white box with plain black text on it - you'll still watch the disc contents - cover art is, for intents and purposes, when you get down to brass tacks, nothing more that semantics.

Silly tihng is, even though I disagree with their ideas on the custom covers, I will still end up buying some of their stuff. I will most likely get Aladdin and Black Hole this year. Even though I like a decent cover, it is not the ONLY thing that influences my purchase. Its 90% features and 16x9, cover is only 10%. now lets talk inserts... nah, nevermind. :)

It's unfortunate that the heavy hand of the Mouse had to come down like this. But I really have to wonder why people place so much emphasis on coverart when the only thing that gets displayed (99.98% of the time) is only the spine of the case...and even THAT is greatly reduced by the use of thinpaks.

I can see the appeal of creating custom covers from an artistic point of view, but I never understood the appeal of USING custom covers.... (except those fantastic James Bond covers. Specifically for the neat spine design)

I am glad Disney did this. Although it may not prevent possible bootlegging to stop but it sure does hinder it a bit. Bootleggers are the scum of the earth.

I wish Ebay can take a stand on those who do sell bootlegs based on customer negative feedbacks and auction descriptions. If they did that.. honest sellers can finally sell their oop true originals at a price the market is actually worth and not be forced down to what bootlegs are selling theirs at.

Nope, this won't stop bootleggers one bit. Bootleggers use the original artwork, not custom artwork. Does DCA have original coverart? Besides, I'm sure that bootleggers have a legitmate original "master" that they copy from.

Well, I think those "legitimate" sellers who buy quantities of limited discs with the hopes of scalping them later on ebay are the scum of the earth.

I'm siding with Disney on this. While I don't like their decision, it is most definitely their right.

They are not preventing fans from creating their own covers - they are preventing fans from creating their own covers and supplying a way for many others to download the same covers. It's similar to the difference between watching your own DVD and taking it down the the local social hall and showing it to several hundred people.

From what I understand, the fee is to pay for the amount of bandwidth needed to store & transfer the image files (which adds up to incredible amounts considering the number of users & number of covers available).

I fully understand the bootlegging argument and that the site may help these dipsh*ts but it has also helped me. Whenever I want to replace crummy corporate cover art or to print out a cover or insert missing when I bought a used DVD, I go there. I bought a used Lilo & Stitch dirt cheap once without a cover, went home & printed out one that was nearly perfect (limitations of my printer at the time).