Items from Movies, Games, and other Copyrighted Media (Update: 6-30-05)
"We need GI's like they have in DBZ!!! And Lightsabres with Jedi Outfits! Oh, and Harry Potter outfits too!" We've all either seen suggestions like these hundreds of times, or been the ones to make the suggestions. Well, the thing that comes up just about every time someone makes a suggestion like this is, "They can't make that, it's copyrighted!"
Before anything else is said, please consider how many of the items you've seen around Gaia resemble items from anime, manga, movies, games, TV shows, or other popular media. If you said none, then you're definitely just not aware of it. Many of Gaia's current items are very similar to popular clothing and items from various media.
Obviously, exact replicas of copyrighted clothing and items cannot be created for Gaia. However, it's not infrequent that we get clothing or items that have only small differences, the same way that you'll find generic brands of various name-brand items in a grocery store.
So, you want to suggest items from movies, games, anime, and other copyrighted media? You can! You'll probably never get exact replicas of them, but you never know when we might get a Gaia version of something.
To clarify, for the forum regulars: this means that pointing out to someone that they are suggesting a copyrighted item and that an exact duplicate cannot be made is completely unneccessary and irrelevant to the suggestion.
The site administrators are not going to create any items that would involve them in copyright infringement, however, neither do they expect every user on Gaia to be familiar with copyright laws. Nor is having knowledge and understanding of copyright information a requirement to posting suggestions in the Site Feedback forum.
Keeping this in mind, suggestions about items of this type will NOT be recycled unless they also fall under a different FMI category.
Users are also requested to NOT reply to these threads with any sort of deterrent simply because someone doesn't specify a 'similar' or 'like' item instead of suggesting an actual copyrighted item.