Pause has already reported on Urban Tagger's latest insight to their legal dilemma with Hasbro, which just makes me more frustrated. I've dealt with folks in the legal realm and it's nothing to get excited about. Quite the contrary. Even if UT does manage to reopen the blog, there will likely still be a close eye on them that they'll have to consider. Working under that sort of pressure could take the fun out of it which is, lets face it, the whole reason anyone has a blog or is in this hobby. It's fun! It's also fun giving back to the community, something UT has done so well over their 18 month trek so far.
This whole ordeal has had me thinking "Well, I broke the news about the Pyragon. Why haven't I been maliciously attacked by Hasbro?" First, my thinking is that I found the information legitimately off of Hasbro's website. Secondly, when I released the information, I sourced where I got it from and didn't put my name on the photos I released. Urban Taggers has always put their "Stamp" on their news and, while it has likely gotten them a lot of attention and kept folks from claiming the information as their own. In doing this, ALL of the leaked information that Hasbro has their panties in a twist about has a direct line back to Urban Taggers. In gaining popularity like that, they also made themselves very easy targets.
When I released info on the Pyragon, most of the folks who got the info that knew me or knew of this blog gave me credit. There are other sites out there that have just taken off and run with the images that I posted about that. At first, I kind of regretted not putting some kind of label on them to claim them as information from this blog, as it would've been great PR. In light of this series of events, I'm kind of glad I didn't. I'm not trying to make an example of Urban Taggers at all or to say that labeling their information was wrong/came back to bite them in the rear, but rather learning from this situation so other hobbyists and blog owners like myself don't get burned in the future.
I really do hope that UT escapes this without any major problems. However, I'm having a tough time imagining that things will return to normal in the wake of Hasbro's legal team. It's likely that one of the best sources of Nerf News out there could get snuffed, which is a shame. Hasbro should be PAYING Urban Taggers for all the great work and reviews and PR they've gotten for their gear, not punishing them. If we had decent news from Nerf about upcoming stuff, things would be different. But they don't fill us in on upcoming blasters until it's pretty much already out there. I hope, regardless of what happens after this settles down, that Hasbro realizes the support Urban Taggers gave them.
Hasbro, you stupid.
ReplyDeleteit definitely baffles me that they'd go after their major source of hype and free advertising. Max Force even went out of their way and contacted blogs to get their gear out there, but not Hasbro. Because they're not smart enough, so it seems.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if they are trying to make an example out of them. What Hasbro fears is that by the time new Nerf products hit the shelves, the knock-off brands will have already crafted cheap lookalikes that lure unknowing parents into spending money on less expensive but lower quality brands and not on the Nerf that their kids really wanted.
ReplyDeleteI just saw a generic watergun in my local dollar store that looks like the old classic CPS super soakers... They're everywhere, but thats another story...
I do agree this has got out of hand UT was just making hype as far as I can see.
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