Cover of Blade Runner (The Director's Cut)

Ridley Scott, announced that a new division of his commercials company, RSA Films, was working on a video series called “Purefold.” The series of linked 5- to 10-minute shorts, aimed first at the Web and then perhaps television, will be set at a point in time before 2019, when the Harrison Ford movie takes place in a dystopian Los Angeles (NYTimes).

People are getting all bent out of shape about this series calling it a Blade Runner prequel.  The problem is that Scott does not have rights to Blade Runner or the Philip K Dick novel on which it was based, "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?"

As far as I can tell, this is a scifi story built around the same themes, but not necessarily a prequel to the classic future noir.