I’m a (very minor) public figure myself, and if someone made a hyper-sexualized comic book about me without my permission, I’d be pretty upset. And I think I’d have grounds to be.

Again: may be completely legal, and I’m no fan of lawyer-bullying, but I’m not crazy about it otherwise.

That said, the law firm certainly didn’t help this confusion by addressing the letter to “DMCA Agent.”

Munn and/or her lawyers need to look up the Streisand Effect.

Well duh, my guess is that’s the whole point~ They have looked it up, and they’re banking on it!

“Olivia Munn conquers the world in this hilarious spoof! Hollywood’s hottest geek girl, Olivia Munn, hosts G4′s Attack of the Show, but while at Comic Con, she is attacked by a swarm of fans. Unable to escape, her gamma-irradiated cells explode and unleash the fury of The 50-Foot Womunn. It’s the showdown of the century! Geeks vs Munn!”

Seems a lot like a spoof type skit they’d do on SNL, so what’s the difference? Not sure she can complain that it is “hyper sexualized” since she has pictures on her public web page in bikinis, underwear, and topless.

Again, not sure what the complaint really is here…

And then you’d sic the lawyers on them? Because it seems to me that if there’s a line that’s been crossed here, that’s it.

That said, don’t mistake my defense of her for my being a fan. I’m not. She’s basically famous for just being an attractive woman who does well in front of a camera. Nothing more. I haven’t heard especially positive things about her from some who’ve been around her, so… Yeah, not a fan.

It would star Jesse Thorn and HeatherB in the most epic battle of my imagination.

Parody? The fact that she’s so insignificant probably helps her case.

I’d have to side with Ms. Munn (or, reluctantly, her lawyers) here.

‘If by parody you mean “using her image in an attempt to make a profit without paying her for it”, then yes!’

http://twitter.com/oliviamunn

Isn’t this a parody of her large breasts and willingness to objectify herself?

Let’s say I make a comic book about William Shatner, or Jon Stewart, or Kari Byron from “MythBusters.” It basically stars them doing the stuff they do on TV. If I draw one up to show my buddies in high school, at work or hanging out around the house, no biggie. A CND would be an overreaction. Now lets asy I run it through a copier, make a bunch of copies, and start selling it for money, without permission and without sending it to the people whose names and images I am profiting from. Then, we have a problem.

So here’s the deal. To do something like this to profit off a person, you either need permission from the artist or a “note.” The publishers of this comic are in the business and aren’t innocent to this. Whether you’re Shatner or Byron or Stewart or Munn, semi famous, almost famous, or mega famous, your image is your property. Indeed, if your thing is being a host and model, as a model that is what your trade is, plain and simple, and someone riffing on it for profit is both taking cash from your image and potetially damaging it because a professionally released book might be seen as sanctioned by Munn and hence associated with her by fans as well as others in the industry.

Let’s say I came to your job and started snagging a piece of your pay check. You wouldn’t like that either. Especially if I really hadn’t done any work to take it, and was drafting off what you did, while you get less for it. Plus if I was potentially telling people stuff about you they might take as true and that you wouldn’t want them too because you had worked hard to show you were someone else, i.e. you. That’s the gist of it here. If they are sued they should lose badly, I hope they’ll be smart enough to quietly let the comic go, they’ve gotten their publicity, which I don’t see as good publicity from a professional standpoint.

She definitely has a nerdcore audience and I have to hope she would be flattered and amused by a parody comic. If she actually initiated the takedown her geekboy fandom might feel somewhat less warmly towards her in the future. She might be perceived as greedily protecting her image at the cost of her true fans (and who but a true fan would make a comic book about her?).

On the other hand, how do we distinguish parody from a straight out comedy adventure? I always though the old Star Trek comics looked like parody but they were licensed and approved. If the comic just uses Ms. Munn as the central heroic character in an amusing story, is it parody or fan fiction? Is fan fiction protected as commercial speech?

Any intellectual property lawyers want to weigh in on this?