More on Wellywood sign
I never thought I would be thanking US entertainment IP lawyers, but hopefully they have managed to kill off the Wellywood sign planned by Wellington Airport.
The airport claims it thinks it has the legal rights, but really why on Earth would they spend their monopoly income on fighting a legal battle to erect a sign that is hated by the local population.
The anti-Wellywood sign facebook group is already over 13,000.
Danyl noted a few days ago:
Not only has everyone I’ve spoken to objected to the sign, every guy I’ve spoken to has speculated about destroying it personally. I don’t think it’s a keeper.
This has incidentally also been my experience. I was at a bbq on Sunday, and the discussion turned to how to destroy the sign, if it goes ahead. Some of the ideas were:
- A small group going in at 2 am with axes.
- A one person assault squad with petrol and matches. Some concern over nearby bush though.
- Just announce on the Facebook group a date and time to demolish it, and see how many thousand people turn up. The Police won’t be able to arrest 4,000 people, and can you imagine the pressure it would put on to have the sign removed, if say 500 Police had to hold off 4,000 locals trying to destroy the sign.
- Get people to register for a flash mob, and then one day tell people to meet up at the sign in 45 minutes. It could spread very quickly virally.
- Some sort of aerial assault – maybe a hook and grapple tied to a helicopter and just pull the thing out of the ground, and dump it in the ocean.
- Pour acid over the foundations to weaken it, and see how many days it takes to collapse. Could possibly even get an iPredict market going to predict the day.
The best alternative suggestion I have heard, is to have a massive giant weta on the hills. Not only are Wetas endemic to New Zealand, it would be a more appropriate way of celebrating the film industry that has built up around Weta Workshop etc.
Lots of tourists would ask about the giant weta they saw flying in, and one could tell them about they can visit the Weta Cave, and how scores of the major Hollywood films have their special effects and more done here.
Frankly though, anything would be better than an imitation Hollywood sign.
March 15th, 2010 at 12:45 pm
A giant Weta
now that I could like.
100m long and 20m high
March 15th, 2010 at 12:47 pm
Yep bring on the Weta, we could also make jokes that it is a statue of Helen Clark without the customary photoshop tidy up work we normally see.
March 15th, 2010 at 12:53 pm
I love the weta idea. I hope that suggestion gets to the right ears.
Nice to see you are not averse to some public disobedience when you support the cause.
March 15th, 2010 at 12:59 pm
A giant weta would be hugely more appropriate. Great idea.
March 15th, 2010 at 1:04 pm
Announcing the sign before investigating the IP is a bit amateur. A bit like announcing a film without first getting the domain name.
Anyway, if we could draw our attention away from the sign for a moment, the real shocker is the arrogance of a council who make you get resource consent to put a window in a rotten old villa, but who decide that the airport can erect an enormous sign without notification.
March 15th, 2010 at 1:05 pm
I’m over it already.
March 15th, 2010 at 1:07 pm
Good to see you’re open to persuasion, DPF.
As I’ve said before Wellington has plenty of tree wetas, and many of us born and bred there have stories about them. So, while I do like the attachment to the film industry (weta workshop) I also like that the weta is part of the greater Wellington environment, in the wood piles, around the mountain bike trails, under my pillow when I was a kid (ick).
As I said on the phone to David this morning, it’d be a great if a really clever person could put together a site that promotes the weta idea, has a place to post Weta stories, and could provide the ‘visual’ of a giant weta climbing the hillside. That, would get my vote… and it is ten times more creative than WELLYWOOD…a dn doesn’t Wellington pride itself on its creative industries, theatre and the like?
March 15th, 2010 at 1:11 pm
7. Spread a rumour that Osama bin Laden lives in a cave under the sign and wait for a Predator to take it out.
8. Provide free or heavily subsidised spray paint cans to any Miramar youth wearing a baseball cap pointed in the wrong direction and pants arranged to show their underwear.
9. Just wait for Wellington wind to destroy the sign, then sit back and watch the letters bounce across the airport like tumbleweed.
10. Claim that the sign is indestructible to explosives. Then invite the Mythbusters to test the claim. Myth busted!
11. Invite Christo to wrap the sign in pink plastic, thereby replacing a humiliating eyesore with a work of art.
12. Let well known arsonist Jeanette Fitzsimons loose with her organic flammable gorse-remover.
13. Plant trees all over the site, hiding it from view and also reducing the amount of money we’ll need to give Russians to pay for carbon credits.
14. Develop nuclear weapons. Then launch one in to space to redirect a passing asteroid to slam in to the hillside.
15. Forge a document to make it look as if the hillside was stolen from Maori, then leave an axe and a balaclava outside Hone Harawira’s office door.
March 15th, 2010 at 1:14 pm
“Develop nuclear weapons. Then launch one in to space to redirect a passing asteroid to slam in to the hillside.”
The absolute OTT ridiculousness of this one cracked me up.
March 15th, 2010 at 1:14 pm
love the weta idea. I was thinking of an appropriate statue to have erected there, but all i could come up with was a stalin-esque peter jackson
March 15th, 2010 at 1:16 pm
Arn’t wetas a bit ugly, and freaky/scarry looking?
A giant weta might look like there has been a science experiment go wrong. Or we’ve being attacked by bugs from outer space.
A medium sized Gollem might be more acceptable (one that’s a bit bigger that the one they had on The Embassy a few years ago)?
What do you all think of this idea?
March 15th, 2010 at 1:21 pm
16. Get Bruce Simpson to run just one more test of the LCCM
March 15th, 2010 at 1:47 pm
How about a Giant Crater for when we nuke all the politicians?
March 15th, 2010 at 1:47 pm
I like the idea that it looks like a science experiment gone wrong… nothing wrong with scaring tourists and small children.
March 15th, 2010 at 2:00 pm
17. Hire enterprising Rent-A-Terrorist “journalists” from the Sunday Star-Times.
March 15th, 2010 at 2:16 pm
Develop nuclear weapons, claim the centrifuges are under the sign. As before, wait for a predator.
March 15th, 2010 at 2:43 pm
It is public opinion rather than lawyers who will kill the idea off.
It is not US entertainment lawyers who might kill it off but NZ lawyers engaged by Hollywood applying NZ law. I have searched the NZ trademarks register for ‘Hollywood’ which turns up 20 or so entries, but none covering that sign. They cannot use trademark law, unless they got in quick with a trademark application which will survive scrutiny. This leaves copyright law which is universal under the Berne Convention, but this may not assist either. Unlike Blackball Hilton, Wellington Airport has a larger legal kitty so there would be no first round buckling.
This all comes back to IP, ACTA, IP protection racketeering etc. USA commercial interests would like to see a much wider IP scope and a more favourable legal and enforcement regime in NZ and other countries. This will facilitate patent trolling, submarine patents, bullying of small businesses and IP protection racketeering (where licence fees are extracted using vague threats of legal action against alleged but unspecified IP breaches). Worse still it will be a 21st century version of the Enclosures Act in UK a few hundred years ago meaning that a whole realm of IP in the ‘public domain’ will be monetised by commercial interests particularly those in USA.
March 15th, 2010 at 3:04 pm
Lets combine the best of both main ideas to solve the problem. Let them build it, then build a giant mechanised Weta to eat it and stay on the hill
March 15th, 2010 at 3:12 pm
i reckon..to summarise wellington..
you should have a statue..on the heads..of a wet and wind-swept very fat pig..
..with its’ nose buried deep in a (money)-trough..
and it’s’ tail wriggling in delight..
(squeals could be added..if audio is desired..)
phil(whoar.co.nz)
March 15th, 2010 at 3:47 pm
“Frankly though, anything would be better than an imitation Hollywood sign.”
Nothing would also be better than an imitation Hollywood sign.
March 15th, 2010 at 4:17 pm
Or better yet, instead of a sign, or a weta or a statue – just erect a large stockade to hold all the dumb F$%#’s who came up with this idea and the stupid pumpkin terminal as well.
March 15th, 2010 at 4:22 pm
Weta. Fantastic. Do that. Destory Wellywood sign. Done.
March 15th, 2010 at 4:24 pm
I did hear right that it is Wellington Airport wanting to put up the sign?
If so, good grief, the Airport should be putting its money into safety improvements first rather then spending money on such advertising eg extending the runway area over Cobham Drive and into Evans Bay (no doubt they will finally get around to it when an aircraft finally goes over the edge there and smashes up on Cobham Drive. It will be even worse should the accident report have deemed the crash survivable if the aircraft hadn’t broken up into pieces upon hitting the road)!
March 15th, 2010 at 4:36 pm
I really like the Weta scuttling up the hill idea.
That would definitely turn some heads and pay homage to Pete and co.
March 15th, 2010 at 4:56 pm
Train a giant weta to destroy the Wellywood sign.
Sell tickets.
March 15th, 2010 at 4:56 pm
The opposition to the sign is the cringe-worthy aspect in this debate.
The sign itself is harmless, and so is the idea.
Get over yourselves.
March 15th, 2010 at 5:09 pm
Get over your sign-love.
March 15th, 2010 at 5:43 pm
Peter: why?
I don’t feel embarrassed, or lessened, or foolish, or feel the need to cringe over it.
March 15th, 2010 at 7:49 pm
if you are going to ‘pay homage to Pete and co.’..
shouldn’t it be a statue of someone walking..?
y’know..”cos of that trilogy he did about cross-country hiking..?
phil(whoar.co.nz)
March 15th, 2010 at 8:37 pm
Tell the Ploughshares loons it’s actually an antenna belonging to the Americans
March 16th, 2010 at 12:54 pm
Suggestion #5 would not work. But Giant Weta sculpture would be kewl.
March 16th, 2010 at 12:59 pm
As long as it is a Wellington Weta with the black and yellow carapace.