Wait … Did C3PO Always Have Silver Leg?

This started out to be an article about the Mandela Effect, but it grew into an exploration of image use conventions and rules. Actual images of C3PO were removed years ago due to lack of permission from Lucasfilm, Ltd. We have substituted our own images, including the robot above, but we have no control over images that appear as stills for YouTube videos on this page. No video on this page is our creation.

In the original Star Wars did C-3PO have a silver leg? He did now.

Excuse the swearing-in this video, but it pretty much captures the incredulity many feel about what seems to be a significant factual change:

Consider that what you are experiencing as “your life” might be a simulation, perhaps created by the quantum computer offspring of artificial intelligence which humans created in the past … before humans went extinct. The idea is that something called “the singularity” happened, super robots took over the earth and for one reason or another, we are now living in their game.

If that is the case, we’d expect seemingly impossible things to happen with surprising frequency. For example, against astronomical odds, the same person might be struck by lighting 7 times and meteorites might hit the same house of a man in Bosnia six times across several years.

We might also expect glitches in the matrix, things in our collective memories that do not match up with current reality. Here’s a great one: In this timeline, we are in now, C3PO always had a silver leg.

Anthony Daniels (the man who played C3PO) explained this. The silver leg was very reflective, so it reflected his other gold leg and the sand on Tatooine. It was so unnoticeable that the stills photographer didn’t even notice it until a view days in taking pictures.

Read more at USA today.

This does not fit our collective memory. We remember C3PO in Star Wars as having two gold legs.

Of course, you can believe that the silver leg was just subtle, that it reflected gold things like the other leg and the sand, so we just never noticed, but a more fun and intriguing explanation is that changes to the universe simulation we are living in now are not instantaneous. There is an overlap time when we recall the universe before it split, but our memories will be updated and then everyone will know C-3PO always had a silver leg.

Ever feel you branched into a wrong line?

PS. I dug out some VHS tape of “Star Wars, A New Hope“, the first one released in 1977. C-3PO did have the silver leg, it seems.

Update April 20, 2020: All images of C3PO, the famous gold robot (with a silver leg??) from the movie Star Wars, are now removed due to lack of permission from Lucasfilm, Ltd. We had replaced them with a free image of a different gold robot from Pixabay, although it really makes no sense for this story. We did this voluntarily, there was no take down or cease and desist order. Out of curiosity and wanting to be legitimate about our work on this free news blog, we wrote to ask for permission. They declined.

It raises an interesting question. Are reporters allowed to use images for stories if the images are of characters from major motion pictures? After some research, it sounds like we were not in the wrong to use the images of C3PO based on the principles of fair use for journalism. We’ve highlighted the items below for which the use of an image of C3PO seems like it would be upheld for the purposes of this story (below).

The above Principles in Fair Use for Journalism is from 2013, and these things do evolve over time, but there is no more recent version, so we assume this is still a valid guide.

The next question is… can we write the words “Star Wars” and “C3-PO” on this non-profit news blog for this story? These are trademarked items known as properties, or intellectual properties. The email reply from Lucasfilm, Ltd. about the images said in part that “any unauthorized use of these names, characters, music and images would, at a minimum be inappropriate.” If it is inappropriate, we will remove the references, no problem, but is it? It’s hard to imagine how to do a news story about something without using the name of the thing. In terms of reporters and bloggers using trademark names, we found the following and it sure sounds like we are allowed to use the names of trademarks, such as “Star Wars” and “C3-PO” in a news story about these properties of Lucasflim, Ltd.

Trademark law does not let a trademark owner exert its trademark rights to stop news reporting about it or its products or services. You see proof of this everyday on the front pages of newspapers, the homepages of news websites, and countless blogs.  … 

 

Nominative Fair Use: The nominative fair use defense protects your ability to use a trademark to refer to a trademark owner or its goods or services for purposes of reporting, commentary, criticism, and parody, as well as for comparative advertising. Courts impose three requirements on defendants who want to take advantage of the nominative fair use defense: (1) the trademark owner, product, or service in question must not be readily identifiable without use of the trademark; (2) the defendant must use only as much of the mark as is necessary to identify the trademark owner, product, or service; and (3) the defendant must do nothing that would suggest sponsorship or endorsement by the trademark owner. This defense works against trademark infringement lawsuits.  …

 

News Reporting and News Commentary: The news reporting and news commentary defense, found at 15 U.S.C. § 1125(c)(3)(B), is a complete defense to a trademark dilution claim. The law is not clear on what exactly qualifies as news reporting and news commentary, but one court has applied this defense to stop a dilution claim against a blogger who wrote critical commentary about a company that resells items on eBay. See BidZirk, LLC v. Smith, 2007 WL 3119445 (D.S.C. Oct. 22, 2007). There is no explicit news reporting defense to trademark infringement claims, but courts are likely to protect the use of a trademark in news reporting and commentary based on the nominative fair use defense and because there is no likelihood of confusion.

{DMLP.org}