We’re Gonna Live Forever! (Oops)

A bit of a diversion from my usual topics, but I got this e-mail from CafePress that cracked me up and I couldn’t help but share.  The popular product creation company is partnering with the new Fame movie brand to allow users to create fan products.  At first this struck me as an excellent online-mass media partnership, until I read the rules.  Some are totally reasonable, and what you might expect from such a contest:

• No reference to drugs or medication.
• No derogatory reference to race, gender, sexual preference, religion, mental handicaps, obesity, or physical impairments.
• No use of profanity, vulgarity or hate language.
• No use of explicit sexual language, images or graphics.
• No political party associations (e.g. republican, democrat, or candidates).
• No creation of products other than the specified Products

While others are just completely nonsensical:

• All images must be tagged with “fame movie”.
• No use of copyrighted material from the movie or its promotional materials (e.g. no use of images or clips from the movie, the movie posters or from the movie website).
• No use of the official Fame logo.
• No use of lyrics from the Fame theme song.
• No use of, names, images or depictions of the actors in the movie.
• OK to use names of the characters from the movie.
• No use of cartoon, caricature images of the actors from the movie.

Um, pardon my ignorance, but how can you possibly make a fan product for a show if you’re not allowed to use lyrics, logos, characters, cartoon versions of characters, or any other depictions of, well, anything, from the movie.

Way to fail, CafePress and Fame.