With the new Star Wars installment "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" being released next week, a Walmart store in Council Bluffs, Iowa, was believed to have mistakenly displayed some action toy figures of the movie.
When Star Wars collector and host of the Star Wars Action News podcast Justin Kozisek bought one of the toy figures and posted an image on social media, he got copyright violation notices from Facebook and Disney, which now owns Star Wars production company LucasFilm, an article on Fortune.com stated.
Disney and Lucasfilm have been busy with their aggressive anti-piracy campaign which comes with a strong warning on any movie leak on the internet, Torrent Freak reported. In the past 48 hours these two big companies behind the overdrive, were taking action to protect the rights.
The drive started when Kozisek posted a couple of pictures of the toy figure "Rey," one of the main characters of the new Star Wars film, he bought from one of America's famous stores on his Facebook account. There was even an image of the boxed figure, which he legally purchased.
"Have we known this figure was coming? I just found her at Walmart -- no other new figures," he added. "These pictures were removed from the post. Facebook notified us they deleted the photos after someone reported them for copyright infringement."
Jeremy Conrad at Star Wars Unity subsequently reposted Justin's photos and admitted that even he felt the heat in a bigger way. "This morning I woke up to numerous DMCA takedown notices on the @starwarsunity Twitter account, Facebook, Google+ Page, and my personal Twitter for posting an image of an action figure that was legally purchased at Walmart," Conrad explained.
According to Fortune.com, the toy figure of Rey that Kozisek bought has not been officially released nor publicized and "features Rey wearing a tight-fitting version of her beige outfit with a sleeveless blazer--and holding a blue lightsaber, which some fan blogs declared a plot spoiler."
