Hasbro C&D Case Files: JanAnimations

My Little Pony 10 comments

jan-animation-cd-letterMany fans this morning awoke to the community news that Hasbro has issued another C&D letter towards somebody in the fandom.  In this case it was the high profile fandom animator known as Jan Animations, fan-famous for such creative animated works such as Button’s Adventures, Ask The Crusaders (Tumblr), Picture Perfect (music video), and the animated song featuring John De Lancie that appears in Bronies: The Extremely Unexpected Adult Fans of My Little Pony.

Specifically the letter (as seen above) was sent via YouTube about JanAnimation’s videos, and in short has been to ask to remove any content containing Button Mash or other MLP characters.  Fans in the community of course have been upset, with gossip of people planning to boycott today’s episode.  While not watching a television station for one show may be low key to a four billion dollar toy company, VP of development and scripted entertainment Mike Vogel (@mktoon) has stated that he plans to look into it.

So for once we might actually hear some internal details from Hasbro as to the specific reason certain fandom creations get targeted.  We’ll publish further information as it becomes available.

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  • Midnight

    I love MLP, but it’s things like this that make me hate Hasbro with a passion. STOP TARGETING US!

  • Anonymous

    Screw the legal team at hasbro.
    May they all be fired.

  • Db

    Enough Hasbro already I understand some fan animations may contain material not suitable for children but Jan animations is not one of them. It’s ridiculous that Hasbro rejects something that enhances mlp brings in more fans all for free. Which means money for Hasbro threw show watches DVD purchases toys purchases etc. By doing this they are actually losing money free money. Think about that Hasbro

  • IDigAPony

    Here’s the deal
    If you hold intellectual property rights (trademarks, service marks, etc) you are required to defend them. If you don’t then you can lose them. We know tha. JanAnimations is not going to sell their work, however if someone else were to produce similar work and sell it, Hasbro could lose their ownership of those properties for not defending them earlier.
    They are actually a VERY tolerant company. (I did data network support for The Walt Disney Company for10 years and was cclose friends with the head of their legal copyright team in NYC. We had many a long discussion about this very topic)

    • Anonymous

      I’ve heard that before, but is it actually true? What do you mean when you say they could lose their intellectual property? Does that mean if I steal Hasbro’s characters and they sue me, that I could make the defense that becausethey did not litigate JA or some other fan work, that I am now legally entitled to ownership of their property? That seems like complete nonsense. I don’t know though, please, can someone elaborate on this?

    • da_kaptin

      There’s a big difference between defending your IP from copyright infringement and defending it from Fair Use. JanAnimations’ use of Button and Sweetie Belle falls under the latter category. Besides, using that same logic, JanAnimations could sue on the grounds that Hasbro hasn’t defended their copyright in other original animations that use their copyrighted characters, i.e. Cupcakes HD, Smile HD, the .MOV series, etc.

  • John Smith

    Can’t they do something to Blender trademarks policy http://www.blender.org/about/logo/

  • Anonymous

    T

  • Anonymous

    I can see why Jananimations got a C&D. Because it is so accurate to the show its self and it didn’t behave like a parody, it behaved like an official episode. Some people would probably mistake it for the official show. Other parodies don’t do that. You could tell Children of the Night was a fan work as you could tell the .mov series or any other animation. most animations dont get copyrighted because most of the time fanimations don’t get copyrighted because they use completely different elements to the story. So don’t worry about other animations they won’t get copyrighted. Even though they have copyrighted characters they fall under one of the rules of ”fair use”: Transformative Works so yeah

  • Kenwood Brony

    the reason Smile HD or .mov series didn’t get copyrighted is because those are completely different story elements not relating to Friendship is Magic. As goes with mostly all other animations. They fall under ”Fair Use” because they’re transformative in nature. But Button’s Adventures wasn’t really that transformative. It behaved like an official episode so people might mistake it for official work and that could hurt Hasbro’s company. But most fan work is fair use and its free advertising so that’s why nothing else has got copyrighted because its fair use. So don’t worry about anything else. It’s just Button’s adventures was too good so it was competing with Hasbro because of it’s popularity. It’s still sad to see it gone though. Whoever read through this whole thing is awesome.