When is cosplay a crime?

0:01NPR

0:11A lot of us have first loves when it comes to pop culture. For Aaliyah Pyatt, hers was Star Wars. She went to her first ever comic convention in 2014 dressed up as Han Solo. I had thrifted like a men's blazer and cut the sleeves off. And then I just like took an old pair of jeans and like some ribbon and sewed it on the side and then just added the stripes with markers. That was the start of Aaliyah's journey as a cosplayer. She's also been towed from Super Mario and Lieutenant Uhura from Star Trek. She once sewed an entire Cinderella ball gown from scratch. Let's just say Aaliyah knows her way around a hot glue gun.

0:50Every cosplayer, like, it'll be 3 a.m. and you're crying and you're just hot gluing elements on because you don't want to sew it anymore. Cosplayers are a huge part of fan culture. You see people dressed up at movie theaters for big releases and at conventions like Comic-Con. And often their costumes and accessories are so detailed that they look like they stepped off the screen. But there can be a fine line between homage and intellectual property theft. And corporations like Disney and DC tend to be very protective of their creations. After all, there's billions of dollars tied up with licensing juggernauts like Star Wars.

1:29And yet, Aaliyah has never been sued or told to stop. That's because of a longstanding arrangement between companies and their cosplaying fans. This is The Indicator from Planet Money. I'm Darian Woods. And I'm Waylon Wong. We're doing a special series this week about Hollywood. Today on the show, the story of how Star Wars cosplayers and Lucasfilm found a kind of economic symbiosis and helps up the tone for how companies relate to their superfans.

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2:44Speeds may slow above 35 gigabytes on unlimited plan. Taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details. The term cosplay came out of Japanese anime and manga communities in the 1980s. And as you can probably guess, the word is a mashup of costume and play. But people were cosplaying almost a century before there was a term for it. Andrew Liptak is the author of the book Cosplay, A History. He says people were dressing up as their favorite science fiction characters in the late 1800s. Andrew has this anecdote from 1940. some attendees at a sci-fi convention in Chicago showed up in costume. And they had a little bit of a gag where they went to the local newspaper office and basically said, hey, we're time travelers from the future.

3:28We're here for the interview. I'm pretty sure I would have fallen for this, Darian. Okay, you've got to be more protective against scammers from the future. Anyway, Angie says cosplay kept growing with the debut of the Star Trek TV series in the 60s and the first Star Wars film in 1977. Later on, the internet helped fans find each other and share tips on how to make costumes. But Andrew says this activity was kind of hush-hush. He's a cosplayer himself. He bought his first Star Wars Stormtrooper suit around 20 years ago. He knew a guy who knew a guy selling this armor. It cost$500. That would be almost like$1 ,000 today.

4:09Yeah, this is not about Halloween costumes or something just for a dress-up party. Andrew says makers of the Stormtrooper armor needed a special setup for molding plastic. So I sent him a check and later that summer, a box full of plastic came to my house and I put it together and I started suiting up as a Stormtrooper. That's sort of how all those transactions went. And a lot of that was because people were nervous about litigation or being told that they can't do this sort of thing. Andrew says this anxiety started to lift somewhat in the mid-90s. That's when cosplayers started meeting with company representatives at industry or pop culture conventions.

4:47They would explain, we're not trying to steal your intellectual property. We're just fans making this stuff for ourselves. One pivotal connection happened between Lucasfilm and a group of Star Wars fans who dressed up like stormtroopers. They're known as the 501st Legion. The group's founder met up with someone named Steve Sansweet. He was Lucasfilm's head of fan relations. We spoke to Steve and asked him, What were the main questions that Lucasfilm had that they wanted you to suss out? I think one of the questions they had is, what if somebody takes a Darth Vader helmet and robs a bank or a gas station?

5:23And I said, that can happen anyway. And in fact, it has happened. It has never been a member of any of these costuming groups. I expressed the fact that I had met a lot of these folks and that they were not a problem doing that. They wanted to know where the costumes came from. So I said, they're making them themselves. They get together and they help each other build these costumes. So it's really a great activity, too. Steve went to bat for the 501st Legion. And over time, the fans and Lucasfilm worked out guidelines. The main rule is that the group's members could not profit from their activity.

5:59So selling a small number of Stormtrooper armor kits or uniform patches to other members, that was OK. Mass-producing unlicensed costumes or lightsabers, that was not OK. It also helped that cosplayers like the 501st were making very high-end, intricate outfits. Remember, these costumes can cost over$1 ,000. So they don't compete with the officially licensed costumes that you can find at a big box store. I think the people at Lucasfilm realized that it is not in Lucasfilm's benefit to go around and try to shut down fans who are doing items that are really not material to the bottom line. And it wasn't just that the company politely tolerated the fans.

6:44Lucasfilm and later Disney, which acquired Star Wars, ended up working closely with cosplayers. Members of the 501st Legion have marched as stormtroopers in the Rose Parade and the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. They were even hired as extras for the show The Mandalorian. They brought their own costumes. Fans are having fun and they are really boosting the franchise and the IP. And I think Lucasfilm has always seen it that way. There were fans in homemade costumes. Back in 1977, you saw Darth Vader standing in line to watch Star Wars and sometimes freaky helmets, but they were having fun. And that was the main thing, to get the fans engaged and let them play in George Lucas's sandbox.

7:26And importantly, these fans weren't profiting from their cosplay in a way that Lucasfilm and Disney saw as harmful to their business empires. Now, these companies have gone to court in other cases. For example, in 2006, Lucasfilm successfully sued a British maker of unlicensed Star Wars costumes and helmets. Disney also tried shutting down a business that hired out costumed characters for children's birthday parties. It was unsuccessful in that. And that's why I got Elsa to come to my birthday party, Darian. Officially licensed, expensive, but worth it. Yeah, it's not like they called her like Snow Princess who will sing at your party.

8:06I can't believe it's not Elsa. Nerd culture and fandom have gotten huge in the last couple of decades. We now have even more Star Wars movies and TV shows, plus the Marvel Cinematic Universe and so many other franchises. So there seems to be this agreement, tacit or otherwise, between the studios and the corporations and fans. But what is the actual letter of the law? What if a company did want to go after these people? Cosplay remains a murky area of the law. That's according to Meredith Rose. She's a lawyer at a consumer advocacy organization called Public Knowledge. And she has also cosplayed herself.

8:45She once dressed up as She-Hulk, the Marvel superhero who is a lawyer by day. I'm six foot nothing and bare feet, too, so it was a natural fit. Meredith says cosplay is tricky for lawyers to figure out because it involves clothing. Copyright law does not cover practical or functional objects. And historically in the U.S., we've considered clothing to be a functional object because it covers your body. Something like a logo is a different story. So an insignia like, say, the Superman S would be covered by copyright or trademark law. And characters like Darth Vader also have protection. So Meredith says companies could go after cosplayers if they wanted to.

9:29But she hasn't seen this happen, probably because companies would rather be friendly with these fans than antagonize them. Could all of these companies turn around at any point and say, you know what, we're not doing this anymore? Like, yeah, they could do that. But I think just as a reality, this is one of those things where social norms around it, for better or for worse, end up being much more important than the law. I mean, take it from She-Hulk, attorney at law. I will not get into a fight with her.

10:00Tomorrow, we wrap up our movie series with a movie-themed Indicators of the Week. Get your popcorn ready. This episode was produced by Angel Carreras and engineered by Jimmy Keeley. It was fact-checked by Sierra Juarez. Kate Kincanon is our show's editor, and The Indicator is a production of NPR.

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