Are Avatar costumes free?

[Dodece]

@daroamer

Lucas Film may not be happy, but that is all they can do is be unhappy. It is not illegal to use their material for inspiration. It is illegal to use their material for exploitation. You can use the characters and other copyrighted ideas to create your own work. You just can't do that, and sell it for a profit. In fact you can sell it as long as it is in the form of parody, as in not being a serious rendition.

In other words I can make a film of Chewbacca slaughtering dark age villagers with a chainsaw and just give it away to people, and George Lucas can't do shit about it. I may in fact even be able to sell it, because it is a parody. In other words nobody can mistake it as being true to the material. Now if I decide to merchandise my little film the one thing I can't do is put out material with the Chewbacca likeness. However I can put out merchandise of the massacred villagers.

So if a user wants to create fan art for other fans to use. They are well within their legal rights to do so. There are people that write Star Wars fan fiction, and make their own toys, and so on. You really can't police that, and lawsuits that try to do so usually fail. George Lucas has a lot of experience in losing court cases.

Regardless it is better to not even attempt to infringe upon fan creation. All it does is encourage more of it, and incites fans to boycott your legitimate products.