Owners of Fictional Properties, online games, and rightsholders in general:

Please, take a word of heed: Your fans are humans. If you can, handle them gently. They won't mean you any harm and they *will* accidentally step on your toes. They'll love your stuff, they'll love you, and they'll make mistakes. See them as human, and treat them gently, and they will remain your staunchest allies. They'll buy your next book, promote your works and continue to love you, even if you shut down their activities, PROVIDING YOU DO IT RIGHT.

DON'T use your lawyers as your first line of contact in the case of a dispute! Lawyers come from a different culture from most fans. They know that standard procedure in the legal world is to send out a brash and threatening 'Bigfoot' letter. This just hurts your fans, and drives them off. And, lawyers charge a lot of money for these letters, so not only are you paying for something -- you're not getting an optimal result for your money. So, what should you do?

Just ask nicely first. Don't even mention lawyers in the first letter if you can avoid it. The fact that you, the creator of their favorite thing, has 1. noticed them and 2. taken the time to ask them nicely will go an amazingly long way. Believe me. Try this method first. It doesn't weaken your legal case in the slightest.

If this fails, then call in your lawyers and land on them like a ton of bricks.

Just look at this situation:

Flex.org is a high school's scheduling program. It has nothing to do with any Revlon products. The lawyers at Revlon got the clever idea to try to slam anyone and everyone using something akin to their domains without doing any research, and it's a terrible PR move!

Check out Flex.org's Tale of Woe:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/10/05/1420234&mode=thread

http://www.brassknuckles.net/revlon.html

Letters *are* cheap, and lawyers love to write them, but your fans are people first. These kinds of tactics
really aren't necessary. This is the fourth case that I've seen where if a nice and non-threatening letter had
been sent, the outcome would have been different. Case in Point: A friend of mine holds a .org domain, and
was sent a letter like that ordering him to give it up. He had a legitimate claim to it, but they threatened him
with court action. Network Solutions/InterNIC upheld his claim to the domain.

The thing is: He would have given them the domain for free (they were a non profit)...he really wasn't using it
for much, but they made him so mad by their threat that now it would cost them an immense amount of
money or he'd just never give it to them.

I have a feeling if Revlon had offered Flex.org $1000 for the domain, they would have gotten it in a
heartbeat...Now, they've just made a bad PR move and they didn't get the desired result. Ya catch more flies
with honey than you do with vinegar.

Thanks for listening, and -- for whatever fandom property you've made -- thanks for making it. I've probably enjoyed it at some time myself.

-Dee Dreslough