You can't take the 'verse from me

A battle is brewing.

First, Universal Studios encourages the fans of Firefly ("Browncoats") to viral market for the movie Serenity. But how do they thank the loyal fans for all of the money they've just saved on advertising? They are asking for retroactive licensing fees and sending Cease & Desist orders for the very fan-based products that helped both the movie and TV show succeed.

The Browncoats' answer?

Here's OUR invoice, you gorram ingrates.

From Slashdot.com - Firefly Fans Fight Back Against Universal.

From SerenityStuff.com - An Open Letter to Browncoats
From SerenityStuff.com - An Open Letter to Universal

How did a few fans respond to the ban? By poking fun at Universal, of course! What better way to say " I helped promote Serenity and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt" than this, or this! There is already a filk song about it, which I found on the FireFilk Yahoo Group called the "Ballad of Universal", by a writer named NE Star. And it goes a little something like this...

Take my shirts,
Take my hats,
Say I have to pay for that.
I don’t care, I’m still free
to try and find Serenity.

Take the website
and the swag.
There’s no doubt, it’s not a gag.
I don’t care, I’ll still be
watchin’ the crew of Serenity.

There’s no stuff for you and me
since we got that C&D*.
But you can’t take my heart from me.

(*cease and desist order)

SerenityStuff.com thinks The Storm has Passed. The little cynical part of me wonders if this whole thing could be just a another stab to see what life is left in this 'market'. Don't believe me? Read the marketing case study on Aff!nitive.com.

If you have somehow managed to stay interested in this topic (then you are either a BrownCoat, or are extremely bored) check out the copious amounts of comments on this subject at Whedonesque.com.