From the obituary of Betty Willis, who died Sunday at the age of 91.
“We thought the town was fabulous, so we added the word,” Mrs. Willis said in a 2005 interview with The New York Times. “There was no other word to use.”If the image hadn't been freely reproduced, would it have lasted all these years and would we be reading her obituary today?
She never copyrighted the logo or profited from the sign directly. “It’s my gift to the city,” she said, although she later acknowledged: “I should make a buck out of it. Everybody else is.”
The image was freely reproduced on souvenir tchotchkes ranging from snow globes to Las Vegas centennial license plates.
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How did fabulous (of or pertaining to fables and myths) become such a rip-roaring synonym for "so darned good your smile of fulfillment can only be removed surgically"? Taken literally a neon sign saying Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada could be erected anywhere.
Here's a royalty free stock image of that freely reproduced image with f-ing watermarks on it! Now what's the point of that?
Taken literally a neon sign saying Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada could be erected anywhere.
Serves the place right, though, dunnit? Seeing that it contains a Fabulous New York, a Fabulous Paris, and Fabulous I don't even remember what else.
One good thing about Fabulous Paris is the dearth of actual Parisians.
Too bad we can't point to a scarcity of actual Nooyawkahs.
Nothing sez VEGAS like a snowglobe.
kzookitty
Nothing sez VEGAS like a snowglobe
Undeniable evidence of global warming.
Definitely has become an icon. Wore my Vegas.com hat yesterday, that used the basic shape as its logo. They now appear to be using a stylized V instead. Oh well. Firm I was with did their IP work, and I got their secretary to fix up a care package for my kid, and I grabbed the hat out of it.
If the image hadn't been freely reproduced, would it have lasted all these years and would we be reading her obituary today?
No and that's astute observation, Althouse. In this age of copyright abuse (really Katy? Left Shark?) images don't have a chance to become iconic, because there distribution is limited. It is the arts and crafts that took liberties with "fair use" over the last couple decades that were most vibrant: sampling in Hip Hop, quotes and links in blogging and tweeting, parodies on Youtube, ripoffs on Youtube for that matter.
Mrs. Willis's brilliant neglect of her intellectual property, perhaps because of her intention to make it a gift, allowed the sign to become what it is. Public Domain ain't such a bad place to be if your work is compelling enough!
Hypertext is hard sometimes.
I don't think it matters if she copyrighted the sign. She can't stop people from taking phtographs of it, and those photographs are copyrighted by the photographers, are they not?
In any case if she had figured out how to charge people to look at it, it would not have spread wide enough to be iconic, not without deep pockets behind it.
There really is no better word for that sign than "fabulous." She had the courage to go tacky in a big way -- neon, flashing lights, silver dollars, a big star, an off-centered post, and five different fonts for five different words.
And yet, it holds together in a way that a slicker production wouldn't. She thought her city was fabulous, and fabulous is what the sign is.
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