I think it is unconscionable that we can use the force of the state to coerce someone to delete ALL copies of a work they created. I'm fairly anti-copyright but I get that they probably shouldn't be able to sell the books (even though the author has been in the ground for decades), fine. Give them a fine, write up a ticket, community service or whatever, but deleting everything just seems so brutish.
This person tried to sue the estate for copyright infringement to the tune of $250M because he thinks think they lifted something out of his fanfiction for Rings of Power, as if he somehow had ownership of Tolkien's setting. This was just a countersuit because he put himself on their radar in the dumbest way possible.
play stupid games win stupid prizes. There are plenty of fanfictions that go to market safely by filing off the serial numbers, just do that.
I'm generally in favor of derivative works and I enjoy spending time on AO3. I'm not in favor of being an idiot about it, though. Maybe you should not bite the hand that feeds you: https://i.imgur.com/2wwbson.png
I don't think us courts for courts should be in the business of handing out stupid prizes. Instead, they should be measured and consistent with our longstanding social agreements. Someone has to be the adult in the room and seek the moral high ground.
Courts aren't moral entities, they're legal ones. This person went out of their way to put a completely unnecessary legal target on their back. This is absolutely 100% a stupid prizes scenario.
I love fan creation and believe it should be enshrined properly in fair use doctrine, but god damn, I cannot imagine being stupid enough to make fan work of an IP and then sue the IP holder because I think they took my idea. Holy fuck.
Stupid prizes are not a good thing, and we should not be excited out our public institutions handing them out.
Stupid prizes are a predictable but negative response.
Like mouthing off to the police and then getting a beating - a predictable and stupid prize. But that doesn't mean we should endorse and accept that as an appropriate response from our institutions.
I wouldn't say they are good at all, in fact this one included, they're often quite bad, but they are also quite predictable. They're the result of inadvisable actions taken on usually against some combination of understood law, common sense, or pro-social practices resulting in a set of consequences, the severity of which runs the gamut, that most people upon thinking about it could've outlined for you ahead of time. Hence the saying: Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
One could argue you couldn't even really get rid of them entirely if you wanted. No matter how understanding and accommodating you make a given system, it would doubtlessly remain possible to act so entirely devoid of reason that you could inflict upon yourself consequences that most people would say are not fit to your offenses, but nevertheless happen because of the aforementioned acts.
For example, if you were to under-pay your taxes by $20 and simply refused any and all compliance with the resulting process, the IRS will eventually go about spending several thousand dollars of various employee's and legal resources to collect that $20 plus any and all interest, fees, etc. that resulted. Most people would be correct I feel to say that expending all those resources and all that time and such to collect a measly $20 is stupid, especially if the balance ended up being many hundreds if not thousands of dollars by the time the fines and interest were tabulated. But this is a classic play-stupid-games situation: you refused to pay the $20 for whatever odd reason, and the system in turn acts how it would for anyone else refusing to pay taxes because building a special system for weirdos who only underpay by $20 would also be a really huge waste of time and resources.
I hear you but, if you love fan fiction, it shouldn't even be POSSIBLE to request to delete all copies of the derivative work. In the end copyright was meant to protect new ideas and while this is a follow-up to an existing story, it clearly has new ideas inside
It's definitely a consequence I never considered as possible and frankly am not a fan of, to be clear. But fan created works are still very legally gray basically across the board. If I had heard about this sooner, I likely would've been following the case closely as I wouldn't have any clue what to expect in terms of outcome.
Ultimately though, at least insofar as the current system exists and operates, fan creations are not protected and in fact seem to be legally unprotected. In the odd event this person was correct, that one of the writers for Rings of Power adapted their work without compensation... well... it isn't entirely theirs, by definition, even if you have fan creations enshrined as fair use. There would probably have to be some legislation covering intellectual property that's derived from other intellectual property, and how that ownership then is calculated.
Certainly, expecting the Tolkien estate and a company the size of Amazon to have to pay royalties to a fan writer is just, and I'm sorry, but it's fucking absurd.
Agreed. My point is specific about deleting work, that's wrong from the perspective of copyright. A law could be put in place where derivative work cannot be commercialized.
EDIT: in some (or perhaps many) countries this is explicitly forbidden in many cases.
One explicit legal norm in Germany: § 331 StPO: Verbot der Verschlechterung (Penal rules of procedure: prohibition of pejoration)
Switzerland also knows the prohibition of reformatio in peius in many cases but it stems from the legal maxime that in some trial types the judge never goes beyond what the party has requested, but this is a double-edged sword: on one hand you are protected from reformatio in peius but on the other hand you miss out on opportunities you did not think about and therefore did not request. Sometimes the judge even maliciously adds to the decision that there was a right to something but it won't be granted because it was not requested.
I agree that it's an extreme step, but given that the creator of the work was trying to use it to extort both the Tolkien estate and Amazon, confiscating the work to prevent further abuse is understandable.
Also, the book was submitted as an exhibit in the court case, so you can read it there. It's genuinely awful. Nothing of value is being lost here.
It woudl be odd for the court to resolve a copyright infringement case by more copyright infringement. It's not theirs to put in the public domain; it's the Tolkien estate's IP.
It's literary merits are irrelevant. This is someone's work, and they are being denied the right to even keep a backup up in the attic. If one party's control over a creative work can be extended to strip another party of any control over his, something's fucked up with the system.
This is hilarious. So the judge forbids him to further distribute the book he wrote, but now publishes and distributes it on his behalf. For free. Go figure. Can the court now be considered guilty of violating copyright ?
A similar action was taken with the 1922 film Nosferatu, but prints of the film survived.
I would wager that the current work will also avoid destruction.
"Even with several details altered, Stoker's heirs sued over the adaptation, and a court ruling ordered all copies of the film to be destroyed. However, several prints of Nosferatu survived, and the film came to be regarded as an influential masterpiece of cinema and the horror genre."
Pfft. This is a classic example of fuck around and find out. Dude decided to try to sidecar one of the most beloved canons in recorded history instead of coming up with his own IP, then decided suing the estate that controls said IP was his ticket to a life of luxury. Biting the hand that feeds doesn't even begin, they should have been profoundly grateful that the estate tolerated their existence up until that point.
I'd have a lot more sympathy for the guy if he wasn't selling his fanfic.
On the other hand, I'm not sure if we should be thrilled with the idea of companies searching though all the fanfic they can find with the intention of stealing fan's original ideas and storylines and then suing anyone who complains about it either.
In the end, it's copyright that needs significant reform. Under a sane system of copyright tolkien's works would already be in the public domain and this guy would have been well within his rights to sell his story and sue if his original contributions were used without his permission. Given how things are currently though I can't see things playing out any differently.
No aspect of copryright is morally defensible, which is why the lawmakers who created it merely defended it on the grounds of encouraging innovation in science and art.
So you are perfectly OK with laboring for years to conceive, design, and build as unique work of art, writing, or software, from which you could earn a living, and then it being OK for me to just slap my name/label on it and out-market you, taking all the gains and leaving you destitute?
Or, are you just someone who does not expect to ever create anything of value?
It’s important to keep in mind that intellectual property is a notion that arose in Western Europe in the early modern period and can still seem foreign to much of the globe. Even if nearly all countries have now implemented IP legislation for trade reasons, in practice it might go unenforced unless the plaintiff is politically connected. The cutthroat environment that you describe above is still how things often work in Asia, but people go on creating works of their imagination regardless.
I don’t think that’s quite the takedown of the gp you might it is; copyright doesn’t really ensure any of those things. It looks like think you’re conflating a few things here, particularly attribution and profit. I don’t think copyright guarantees either.
The gp was speaking about the purpose behind creating copyright, which is to produce the maximum number of works, while you were looking at the results to the author, the goals of recognition and payment.
Only specific representations are protected: non-derivative readaptations are generally permitted (the thorny issue is whether it is derivative or not: c.f. Disney vs Pixar). Additionally, the US specifically avoids guaranteeing profits for works by endorsing “sweat-of-the-brow” or effort-based value judgements. Doing otherwise is an implicit validation of communism: to each according to their effort, which is counter to the distribution policy under capitalism.
>>copyright doesn’t really ensure any of those things.
Indeed, it does not guarantee profit or earning a living (indeed, there are many works with great labor that earn a loss). But it does give OP a grounds to pursue remedies to recover and prevent further infringement were I to copy his/her stuff, and out-sell it under my label.
The mention of "years of work" was not to imply that profit is somehow to be communist-style equating of profit-to-effort. It was to contrast a massive effort often required to create a serious work of literature, art, or software, vs. the trivial effort required to pump out new copies and slap your name on it.
Any sense of ethics would find it unfair for Alan to put in years of work to create a truly unique and valuable work, and Bob to claim it as his and make all the profits. And that is the moral case for copyright.
I also notice that OP said he's against Capitalism, but did not say he was OK with Bob taking Alan's work and profits as his own.
That said, the implementation, constraints (fair use), and terms are vastly arguable.
All technological discoveries and developments are owed to the historical work of all mankind. It would take quite the nerve to gesture one's own short life as even capable of a single one of such marvels.
To answer your question: No, I am not OK with capitalism, which is why I don't need such philosophically vacant concepts like copyright to justify exploiting the hard work of others.
>>All technological discoveries and developments are owed to the historical work of all mankind
Yup, which is where they go when the copyright expires. And, I am definitely on board with shorter expiration terms, and entirely against these endless extensions won by lobbying of corps like Disney.
While you've said you are "not OK with capitalism", you haven't said that you are OK with my proposal. Why?
And yes, I am familiar with the original phrasing "to promote the progress of science and useful arts". That does not mean that there is no possible moral ground behind the law. It only means that the authors of the law found it sufficient to mention the utilitarian grounds, and indeed that founding group tended to look first for utilitarian basis for the rights they wrote down.
> So you are perfectly OK with laboring for years to conceive
Then why doesn't Einstein get a patent on Theory of relativity? Why is it okay for scientists to work for decades and have no IP rights over it?
Why does is our system designed so that only corporations can afford the cost of a patent, and most people in the developing world could never afford them?
And after paying all that money we get patents on blatantly fake inventions, like the Antigravity Machine?
You're mixing up patents, copyright, and plagiarism. Similar but not the same ideas.
Copyright exists to protect a creator's right to the proceeds of their creative output. Copyright is pretty broad. If I tell a different story with your characters I'm still violating copyright.
Patents exist to protect an inventor's right to the proceeds of their invention. If you invent a true hoverboard and I buy one, reverse engineer it, and sell copies I'm in trouble. But if I am merely inspired by your creation to go invent my own hover tech that works differently I can sell that just fine.
Descriptions of the real world as it already exits do not get copyright or patent regardless of the work put in. No matter how good a job you do creating a map of New York you can't prevent someone else from making a map of New York.
You are totally missing the point - the point made in the previous post was, that intellectual labour should be rewarded with some sort of IP, so that the creator of it is rewarded. The categorisation of different types of IP is not fundamental.
The counterpoint I made is that we do not reward some types of intellectual labour at all. And some of the greatest contributions to humanity are of the type, that is not rewarded. So the argument as initially presented is flawed:
Either the authors of intellectual labour do not need to be rewarded with ownership, perhaps other types of compensation is more appropriate
OR
Authors of scientific intellectual labour are currently unfairly exploited and should be compensated
I understood your previous post to be arguing against copyright on the basis of scientific work not counting. If you meant copyright is fine but the way we compensate scientific work is bad then I agree. It's a complex issue because I don't think you should be able to copyright a factual claim but I do think scientific work should be better compensated. I don't know of a solution to that problem but I would be eager to hear one.
>>Authors of scientific intellectual labour are currently unfairly exploited and should be compensated
Yup, that is very true.
And it's why a number of universities are creating patent offices to help their scientists commercialize their works (with the university getting a share; I'm not up to date on how fair the sharing is)
> In April, Polychron sued the Tolkien estate and Amazon. He claimed that “Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power,” an Amazon Prime Video prequel series that was released last year and is one of the few adaptations authorized by the Tolkien estate, infringed on the copyright of his book. He asked for $250 million in compensation.
> Polychron said in court documents that he was inspired by Tolkien and the original “Rings” series, but he argued that he created a “wholly original book and concept” for the sequel, including “separate characters and story lines that compose as much as one-half of the 8-episode series” released by Amazon.
Has anyone both read Polychron's work, and watched the Amazon series? Is there even a shadow of truth in this allegation?
> Is there even a shadow of truth in this allegation?
I certainly don't see it. Rings of Power is set as a distant prequel to Lord of the Rings; Polychron's novel was an immediate sequel. There are necessarily some characters and other elements of the setting which appear in both, but that's because they're both derivative works of Tolkien's writings, not because one is derivative of the other.
Here's the specific list of similarities claimed by Polychron. To my eye, most of them are either trivial (e.g. a woman rides a horse, a character is dark-skinned, someone says "this is a map", someone makes a heroic last stand), or involve the shared usage of elements from Tolkien's work (e.g. the doors of Khazad-dûm, orcs as corrupted elves, a character is named Théoden).
The claim to separate characters is somewhat undermined by chapter 1, page 1 which features Samwise and Rosie Gamgee, and mentions Bilbo and Frodo Baggins.
Do you have any citations for this case? I haven't been able to find anything that mentions such a court case (or anything mentioning connections between the Mexican Inn and the Frito Company).
> The Lord of the Rings fan fiction writer who sued Amazon and the Tolkien Estate, claiming The Rings of Power infringed on his copyrighted novel, has lost.
What's the status of a work done without permission? I read that it is illegal and the court order it to be destroyed, but if it would not be destroyed, would the author regain the copyright after Tolkien works are in the public domain? Would it forever forbidden to be publicly available?
It's kind of a hobby, but generally known as datahoarding.
Just this morning, I've been trying to find a copy of the "Science Fiction" series (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1380838/) that has Cliff Stoll's "Cuckoo Egg" tale for the first episode. Unfortunately, can't find it and it may well disappear as "Yorkshire Television" no longer exists as a separate entity. (It's not banned - just obscure enough to vanish)
So copyright demands the destruction of creative works...
But creative works only exist because of ex-post-facto extensions to copyright after they were created, and if we do not hurry up an place Shakespeare's works under copyright for the profit of Sony, they will no ponger exist because Shakespeare has no motivation to write them.
All this is especially true outside "Science the the Useful Arts," which is where corporate profits are most Constitutionally protected in the USA.
