Lunar's Xena Website

Website
Name:
Owner/Maintainer:	Lunar
Dates:	late 1990s
Type:
Fandom:	Xena: Warrior Princess
URL:	site (images are not viewable]
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The fansite's title is unknown. It was the subject of a cease and desist letter in mid-1999.

The page was still viewable as of at least November 1999.

Art Titles

The Wayback Machine archived the page a few times before it was taken down, but the image links are broken. One can still see the titles however:.

• The Calm After the Storm
• Firelight
• Flames Of Passion
• My Hearts Desire
• Passion In The Moonlight
• The Dark Side Of My Soul
• The Love I Lost
• Warm Glow Of Love
• Desire
• Seduction
• The Look Of Love

There is a disclaimer on the page that "Original pictures are copyright of Maxim Magazine. No infringment [sic] on those copyrights is intended."

The Cease and Desist

...another controversy broke several weeks ago that bodes ominously for the future, though the matter may well blow over, and we certainly hope it does:

We've all heard about studios "cracking down" on fannish activities, and it's been threatened from time to time over the years. At the present time the US TV industry has formally recognized Internet fandom as a promotional tool in which the fan base for a product reinforces the publicity machine and consolidates support. It's like free advertising targeted to the core consumer. This is all well and good, but sometimes fan activities do transgress both the spirit and the letter of copyright, and sometimes the heavy hand does come down.

Recently USA Studios dropped the blade on a member of the Xena: Warrior Princess fan community. Lunar maintained a website at which she displayed her quite exquisite subtextual Xena artwork. Now, while her B&W; work was clearly hand-drawn (from the risqué photo shoot for Maxim magazine), her color work was basically digital art which recombined photographs and adjusted their quality to resemble artwork. The backgrounds were definitely an artistic creation and Lunar had reached a level of visual integrity highly reminiscent of the "Birdsong" Star Trek covers — breathtaking, in other words.

The contentious page can probably be accessed from here, because if "Lunar" spoke to a defence attorney, the councel [sic] would tell her that if she intends to fight this on the grounds that no offence has taken place, the worst thing she can do is take the page down. So doing admits the offence! Unfortunately, the quality was so high that the original photography was self-evident to most viewers, and the high degree of artistic manipulation notwithstanding, it was deemed inappropriate use of copyrighted images. Inappropriate use, in this case, referred to the fact she was selling her work over the Internet, and sharing list space with companies that had paid for formal merchandising licenses. Lunar received a very officious communication, in strong legal language, instructing her to cease activities, remove her website, and provide a complete statement of accountancy to the legal department of the studio, including the identities of those who had bought from her.

Such action is rare. Twenty years ago a strongly pornographic Star Wars fanzine was published in Sweden, and George Lucas's lawyers issued a cease and desist order. The publisher simply refused to cooperate ... and the matter was taken no further. There are other incidents, and companies like Britain's ITC have maintained a low tolerance to fanzine publishing on their copyrights — and in the process helped suppress fandoms that would have been much greater otherwise. But for a studio to take such a stand today is pretty unique, and USA Studios' legal action raises the specter of other fannish activities being restricted in future.

Caution is the watchword. If a company perceives its revenue to be under threat it has every right to take steps to restrict that threat, so it's important that fandom maintain its image as a supporter of the success of its chosen obsessions, not a freeloader upon that success. Fanzines are a non-profit enterprise, and most barely cover their production expenses in the first year. They are also unique merchandise that does not directly compete with the official merchandise for any program or film, therefore they can hardly be seen to encroach upon the territory of the licensed manufacturers. In Lunar's case, retailing photo-realistic artwork comes close to competing with the official release stills market. I don't think the issue of the artwork being generated digitally from photographs is really central — all artists work from photographs if they actually want a likeness to the subject, achieved for an appropriate investment of time, and artists such as the celebrated Boris Vallejo have absorbed the photography stage into the standard production sequence for a painting. I don't see it as a serious issue. The problem is more likely simply that a profit was made from a product that could not have existed without the company's copyrighted materials as the starting point. Had the work been portraits in oils, or whatever medium, and had the originals been perhaps auctioned for charity, I doubt USA Studios would have had anything but praise for the endeavor. As it is, they have dealt a salutary slap on the wrist to someone whom they deem is deriving parasitic income from their property.

And probably the single most important factor in this is the apparent fact that USA Studios turned a completely blind eye to her activities up until the point at which they received a formal complaint which seems to have originated with Lunar's estranged ex-husband. He "dobbed her in" as they say in Australia, an act of spite, knowing that an official complaint would force USA's hand and make them interfere in what was, taken in the broader picture, a fairly innocent affair.

The outcome of the matter has not been circulated, at least not to DOAW contacts yet, but you can be sure we'll report the details if and when they come to light.