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Feb. 8th, 2013 11:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
necia_phoenixOriginally published at Necia Phoenix. You can comment here or there.
A few years ago I started reading a blog/serial by M.C.A Hogarth (I knew of her first via livejournal) though I’ve been pretty sporadic on LJ lately, I liked seeing her progress with her projects.
So in December when she announced that Amazon had yanked Spots the Space Marine because of a supposed trademark issue I was a bit concerned. IF it could happen to her, it could happen to others. And dear gods don’t get me started on the claim that Space Marine ‘belonged’ to Game Workshop. There are others who were far more verbal about it, and more knowledgeable about the situation. I had never heard of Game Workshop before this started.
M.C.A. Hogarth protested it, after all, the term Space Marine is a common one in the Science Fiction genre (dare I whisper the word ‘cliche’ even?) and the term first came into being in the 30s/40s. Hells bells the stupid that Game Workshop displayed with this, and the bullying they pulled made me see red. (that was the day the website was offline, in retrospect I think that was a good thing. I can be very incoherent when furious.)
So when a friend shared this, announcing that Game Workshop backed down after a slew of people getting on twitter, facebook, reditt, and other venues posting about it and M.C.A. Hogarth contacted the EFF, I bounced, cheered and startled my kids by my hooting.
Yes I just went and bought a copy of Spots the Space Marine.
Just because M.C.A. Hogarth is a self pubbed author doesn’t give anyone the right to tromple over her books. This issue is sure to come up again. We need stay vigilant and get mad and do what we can to help fellow authors/artists stand against bullying of this nature.
Congrats M.C.A. Hogarth! Thank you everyone who got mad and spread the news.
