As one of the points of contact for the Bay Area Ghostbusters, I recieved word there is another franchise in the area.
While I think this is great and the more the merrier, what concerns me is this group charges an appearance fee to show up. They make no mention if the payment they recieve goes to a charity or not, but they do give you a free jacket as part of showing up.
If this is the case the Bay Area guys are going to be keeping quite a distance from them as we do not charge to show up to an event we ask that a donation be made to a charity in our name.
This group calls itself the East Bay Ghostbusters. Has anyone had any dealings with them and if so what were you’re impressions? We met them breifly at Wondercon but it seemed as is they were more interested in selling us merchandise than anything else (they did not have a booth).
Anyways what are your thoughts of a group charging for appearances? We are going to stand by our rule of asking for a donation be made in our name to a charity.
What I really worry about is our group getting hit with some legal stuff from Sony claiming we’re making money off the Ghostbusters licence.
While we’re still a new group our members are really trying to do some good for the community and I’d hate to see it ■■■■■■ away becuase of some ■■■■ like this. Rest assured we will not be contacting Sony or pulling any douchey stuff like that. We just don’t want to be known as the group who profits from Ghostbusters.
This sounds like REALLY bad news. The question is, how do we stop them before they ruin it for everyone and how do we do it discreetly without bringing undue attention to those who do operate respectfully of Sony?
I really have no idea, I’m open to ideas from you vetrans though. Ideally it would be nice if they just stopped charging for appearances and raised money for various charities
you can tell them what they’re doing has caught up to two groups in florida who were notified by sony to stop making personal profits from sony intellectual property.
charity work is almost as bad, but it would be stupid for sony to chase down money earned at a charity event using their copyrighted properties. could you imagine the uproar sony would get if they went after an event that was raising money for breast cancer?
It doesn’t always have to be about non profit work, it’s just what our group chooses to do.
They are charging appearance fees and personally profiting from the Ghostbusters trademark. This is what concerns me I don’t want our group to be caught up in some legal stuff with Sony beacause of the doings of another franchise located in such close proximity to our own.
If thier Franchise was all about just going to car shows, partying , going to cons in uniform, or whatever I wouldn’t be concerned.
I wouldn’t be terribly concerned about it. If they are conducting themselves in a manner that earns the ire of Sony, Sony will let them know. You shouldn’t be worried about getting confused with them, legal departments only send CnDs to individuals actually violating rights, not the imaginary offices of imaginary ghost hunting franchises.
