Heh, more of this shit.
Remember, the only reason we can still watch the highly influential 1922 vampire movie Nosferatu today is because some people didn’t destroy all their copies despite a court saying they had to.
DISOBEY DESTRUCTION ORDERS.
COPY ALL THE THINGS.
The author in question here was pretty shitty. He wrote his own sequel to called “Fellowship of the King”, and then sued Amazon and the Tolkien estate saying they stole elements from his book. He lost, and the Tolkien estate countersued.
The guy played stupid games and won stupid prizes.
Yeah, I read. I don’t have much sympathy for him. He sounds like a jerk.
IMO preserving the content is more important than honoring him (or, for that matter, humiliating him).
I can’t help being curious, who are these “Tolkien Estate” people? I want NAMES!
His son’s I think
That’s Christopher, and he died in 2020. Now it’s a few different members of the family plus their attorney.
Hey this is a pretty interesting story, got a link?
Here a pretty good version of it
https://www.npr.org/2022/03/15/1086605684/try-as-she-might-bram-stokers-widow-couldnt-kill-nosferatu
What an interesting read!
Thank you so much. Interesting to hear about Stoker’s widow, and her going to the courts to pursue a copyright claim.
It’s a fascinating story. I often wonder how it would of been perceived at a time when copyright wasn’t in a post Disney world.
I didn’t see anything on Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosferatu?wprov=sfla1
What do you mean? It’s right in the lead section:
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.
Some older dutch movies were released as rentals to the theaters that had to be returned after they stopped playing the movie. These copies were all destroyed and re-releases on DVD now look worse than what it looked like in movie theatres.
The good news is that some theatres hung on to some movies.
Thank goodness. Have those copies resurfaced and gone into the possession of proper archivists and/or research collections?
I don’t know how many might be still be around, but I know for a couple of movies where they are. I don’t think they have been properly archived and/or converted to digital media yet. I would like to see if there are people in The Netherlands that can do these things and if the current owners of the rolls of film are willing to.
In my opinion LotR should’ve already entered the public domain but thanks to Disney well have to wait until 2044 for that.
Can’t have the already well-off children go without their steady income that they didn’t have to work for…
Well how else are we supposed to encourage people to be related to people who develop intellectual property? It makes sense from a neponomic standpoint.
Believe it or not, some people do work extra hard in order to ensure their descendants have an easy life. I’m not weighing in on whether that is wise or not but it is definitely a thing.
Yeah, and that’s why white people are richer than black people today, even though slavery ostensibly ended 200 years ago. It’s time that we outlaw this behaviour.
you’re gonna get downvoted but no amount of downvotes will change the fact that black people weren’t allowed to own things in america until most things were already owned by white people.
Necromonic, even.
Embracer is gonna be the next one to beg for an extension.
Reasonable takes like this hurt daddy’s profits… is u a domestic terrorist?
Worse, a foreign one
Obama coming out of retirement to authorize this drone strike!
“We will not stand by while our national security interests are being assaulted by the axis of evil”
“Axis of evil” was a GWB and Cheney thing. I don’t think Obama ever used the term.
i threw that in to keep satire level headed… this aint about Obama but rather the US government behavior overall.
It may as well be, they’re endorsing all sorts of shit content lately (like the Golem game, or the ring of power)
The books go into public domain in 20 years. Now that Christopher Tolkien is out of the way (who tended to block a lot of stuff, for better or worse) , the current heirs want as much out of it as they can.
20 years might sound like a lot, but that’s about as much time as between the Peter Jackson movies and now.
Tbh they seem to be a lot more “hands off” with non-canon stuff, which I think includes all of the LOTR/middle earth licensed games, and that’s not a bad thing imo.
I haven’t played the gollum game, but rings of power was actually good tho
Do yourself a favor and don’t play the Gollum game
It’s really bad
Honestly I don’t really care, I’m more inclined to strategy and 4x games.
If you don mind me recommending a game, check out against the storm, it’s a city builder with rogue like elements, and it came out recently out of early access, it’s reaaaaally addictingI will take your advice and check out this game
Do let me know what you think of it!
Better than the Mines of Moria, though… Barely, and only at times.
Don’t worry, they’ll manage to get it extended again before 2044.
Such optimism that it wont be extended again.
Steamboat Willie, the first Mickey Mouse cartoon, will become public domain in literally 13 days.
Only because it’s not as important for them to keep it, they make a lot of money from other properties
It’s not just about money, but their image. Nintendo does the exact same thing with fan games that make $0.
No, they can’t extend any further. The copyright has a hard expiration at the end of 2023.
I remember thinking that in 1998 too. It is too late to extend copyright for Steamboat Willie before it expires but that does not mean that corps like Disney won be fighting tooth and nail to extend it again in a few years when things they actually care about are expiring.
Yeah, Mickey is definitely going to be something they’ll fight for in the future.
I don’t find it probable they’ll succeed in convincing Congress that copyright life should be significantly greater than a century, since that’s nice and round and excessive, but we live in a corporation-first capitalist hellscape, so who knows?
They’ve lobbied before
They have, but they didn’t. And it’s not a foregone conclusion that they’d succeed. The longest copyright lifespan is currently 105 years from what I read, and I wonder if they could grease enough palms to convince people it should be longer than a century.
We’re already in “excessively long” territory, and Congress still has a few reasonable people left, so I’m not convinced it would happen.
You can’t just extend copyright indefinitely. It’s not like a patent, where you can make minute changes and claim it’s a new product. The original works have a copyright limit of 95 years after the first date of publish (thanks Disney and other corporate lobbyists).
If we go by The Return of the King, it was published in 1955. That means the words, the story, the settings, and the characters will be public domain in 2050. Steamboat Willie, on the other hand, was published in 1928. That means it expires at the end of this year. Unless Disney can convince Congress to change copyright law again, these copyrights all have hard expiration dates.
ETA: Disney might have a case where they can claim copyright on the information they added or changed from the original works, just like how they can still claim copyright over Mickey after losing Steamboat Willie.
And I’m sure they will, because fuck society, amirite? /s
Works made for hire are 95 years from publication. LotR is not a work for hire, so it goes by life of the author plus 75 years. It goes public domain in 2044.
They already do. Winnie the Pooh is public domain but not Disneys version the one everyone thinks of.
Demand reform.
30 years from publication, no exceptions.
I think an argument could be made to set it to the date of death of the author. I agree with the other guy that it should only apply to commercial works though.
I also don’t think that the copyright should be transferable. The trading of ideas is an absurd concept to me. But then us humans do a lot of absurd things so I guess it’s just par for the course.
People have a right to culture. If you grew up with a story, it’s yours now, no matter how dead the author isn’t. Past works are the foundation for everything you can make.
And if the purpose of copyright is not to encourage new works, burn it to the ground.
That’s an oversimplification. All works are derivative to some extent. There’s a huge difference between taking inspiration from something, to taking the characters and setting from something. Particularly if you’re intending to make a profit.
If an author makes something that a large number of people enjoy, why shouldn’t they be able to make money off it for the rest of their life? Why exactly should an individual give up the rights to their creation simply so that someone else can use their characters and their worlds?
To be clear, I’m talking solely on an individual level. I think the system we have where a corporation can own an idea is very broken. I’m also talking about this from a perspective of the world we currently live in. In an ideal world where money wasn’t the endgame for survival, ideas would flow more freely and nobody would need to care. But that’s not the world we live in.
You can’t sell something to a million people and still own it.
Copyright is a gift, from us to them, to encourage new works, for us. Why would that mean some old fart gets to stop people making new stories for the characters they grew up with? They’re our characters, now. We bought them. That’s what the money was for.
And if thirty years of revenue with zero additional labor required somehow isn’t enough - oh well.
Can you imagine making your argument for any other industry? Why in the name of god would art be the place where doing real good one time is a ticket to retirement? Not farming, not medicine, not engineering. Homeboy wrote a song once, so he gets to ride the gravy train until he fuckin’ dies.
Your buying the stories not the ownership of all the ideas.
Word salad.
Again: the explicit purpose of copyright is to provide the public with new works. After a fixed limited time, all works belong in the public domain. If you want copyright to be anything but that, I would rather not do copyright at all.
It’s not a right. That name is a lie. It’s a monetary incentive. And once someone’s made their money, that’s that. It’s ours now. The deal worked.
And for commercial purposes only. If you’re not making money off of it, you should be able to use it however you want.
Well public domain or not this changes nothing for the sailors of the high seas.
not exactly. You can of course still get existing works by pirating them.
But if the Tolkien works entered the public domain, anyone could use them for any creative purposes freely. And yes, a lot of the new material would be trash. But some excellent works would appear to.
A good example of this is Lovecraft’s works and the Cthulhu Mythos, that although not public domain until recent years, Lovecraft encouraged others to use his own creations on their own stories, thus expanding the literary universe of his own creation. Some stories are awful, but there has also been a ton of great works based on Lovecraft’s creations that couldn’t have existed otherwise.
Also Sherlock Holmes. Now, the BBC might have done a terrible job, but a lot of other people have written great stories because Sherlock Holmes is in the public domain
Another character in the public domain is Zeus, and the rest of his family. Liked Disney’s Hercules? Supergiant’s Hades? Netflix’s Blood of Zeus? Riordan’s Percy Jackson? Only possible because of public domain.
Apparently it did for a short while in the US, but not anymore.
LotR should’ve already entered the public domain
Where is the petition to sign up for?
Should copyright for works that old be expired? Yes!
In the actual world we live in, was this guy ever going to avoid being sued so hard that his grandchildren will be embarrassed for him? No!
You’ve got to admire the lemming-like devotion to the legal cliff he threw himself off though. Writing a sequel to not only a copyright work, but one that is still in the cultural zeitgeist thanks to a 20-year old wildly successful series of films? Ballsy. Subsequently suing one of the largest companies in the world and the estate that produced the original works as infringing his copyright?
Chutzpa, I believe the term is.
20 year old films? I didn’t realise someone had made the movies before Peter Jackson…
checks date of release
…fuck
They did make an animation before Peter Jackson’s release and I’m too afraid to look at that date
There’s at least two animated versions that I’m aware of! Apologies for the URLs that contain dates…
Don’t forget the 1977 animated version “The Hobbit”
Let’s not forget Led Zepplin referencing it in a song that’s still played every day on the radio.
Yeah, this guy didn’t have a leg to stand on. There’s an independently owned cafe opposite sarhole mill (inspiration for “the shire”) on the street JRR Tolkien grew up on called “the hungry hobbit”. It’s been called that since 2005 - before the release of the hobbit film. A production company sued this tiny sandwich shop, sitting on a roundabout 3 miles south of Birmingham for the unauthorised use of the word “hobbit”. That was completely egregious imo. It’s now called “the hungry hobb” - they just took down the last two letters on the sign. I really should grab a sandwich from them one day.
Hobbit was a word way before J.R.R. wrote his books, stupid that they were able to sue them
When it happened I thought the typeface was the issue rather than the word hobbit. But no.Here’s before and this is after. I can’t get my head around the fact that the production company sued this tiny sandwich shop. It’s so ridiculous!
Funny how the secondary title on the left still says hungry hobbit haha
Unfortunately, you can sue anyone for any bogus reason you want. And if you have more money than whoever you’re suing, it doesn’t matter how frivolous it is, because you can just bankrupt them by forcing them to pay lawyer fees.
That’s precisely what happened here. The place had been called the hungry hobbit for years under multiple owners. The current owner bought it, updated some official paperwork and within the first 6 months of her ownership got hit with the “unauthorised usage” bs. She couldn’t afford to fight it. Thankfully the “hungry hobb” is still doing enough business to stay open 12 years later.
Really where was it used?
Found it but no it was not. One line in one book from 1895 “The whole earth was overrun with ghosts, boggles … hobbits, hobgoblins."
So still think it’s very unlikely it was a word that anyone knew before the Hobbit.
There are 309 million possible ways to combine 6 letters. I would wager only a few million are even remotely pronounceable. The notion that someone can claim a bunch of those words and prevent other people from using them, even in unrelated areas, is completely absurd. There are over 8 billion people on this planet, words get reused. They should just fucking deal with it.
deleted by creator
I get your point but in this case it’s not JRR Tolkiens estate who’s claiming copyright infringement, it’s a random production company in Sweden or something. A production company in an entirely different country with no real ties to JRRT has decided an independent cafe built on the same street as Tolkien grew up on, opposite the mill he used as inspiration, is harming their asset somehow by calling themselves the hungry hobbit.
A word isn’t a thought. Thoughts are unique, but a word can be arrived at independently in several different ways by the sea spelled with a C, you see.
Ballsy? He’s an outright copyright troll and anyone celebrating him here in the comments should read the article…
He wrote a knockoff book and then tried to claim Tolkien’s characters as his own and sue his estate? Does nobody remember the days of BS software patent trolls trying to claim they invented “the app” or “method for clicking on things with the mouse cursor?” Do we remember how mad we were at those shysters?
This guy deserves whatever he gets.
I read through the article but it doesn’t seem to specify the nature of the book. How do we know it’s a “knock off”? It might very well be fanfiction. Copyright law aside, fanfiction can be original and is a valid artistic expression.
This is quite a nuanced issue. The author is claiming that the Rings of Power copied his ideas. Even if the author didn’t have the legal right to publish this book, he might have put original ideas into his work, and the Tolkien Estate should not automatically own these. The copyright owner “should” (within the current legal framework) be able to make you take down your derivative work, but they don’t own it. The article doesn’t specify why the original lawsuit was dismissed.
Honestly, I’m surprised he wasn’t embarrassed to claim that any part of that tedious shitheap of storytelling that Amazon produced had been lifted from his work.
The few episodes of that ridiculous black-hole of entertainment are the only things I have ever watched where I truly wanted those hours of my life back.
You felt much more strongly about it than me then. I just found myself not caring about it in the slightest; the only thing I really felt was boredom. Which is arguably the worst possible outcome for any work of art.
Indeed. At least if you hate a work of art it’s making you feel something.
I mean, Game of Thrones season 8 made me feel that I’m never watching any content related to it ever again. Not sure they really wanted that kind of hate.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
it’s making you feel something
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Speaking of Chutzpah…
“The Fellowship of the King” title is a combination of the titles of the first book in the LOTR trilogy “The Fellowship of the Ring” and the third book “The Return of the King”.
“The Two Trees” title is similar to the second book in the LOTR trilogy “The Two Towers”
Look, I agree his works shouldn’t be destroyed, just not monetizable.
But the dude poked a bear with a sharp stick… Suing the creators of the story/characters you’ve built your content on for copyright infringement? Brilliant move…
Right? Like I’d go write Harry Potter 8 and then sue WB lol that guy is nuts.
Suing the creators
JRR Tolkein has been dead for fifty years.
He explicitly sued Tolkiens estate. Effectively the same.
Your semantics aren’t appreciated.
‘The artist, the artist, the artist! And whoever owns their corpse. Same difference, right? Just semantics.’
Every fucking thread with you cultists. Do you listen to yourself?
Lmao, I don’t even like Tolkiens work…
Nor do I agree with copyright law.
However; simply disagreeing with reality doesn’t change it.
But; go ahead and continue to personally attack strangers on the internet instead of actually working towards the change you want to see. I’m sure it’ll be effective.
You don’t think that for the copyright laws to change we also need to change how we view it? How could you be properly critical of the copyright law if you refuse to make the distinction necessary for a certain type of criticism?
I get the “that’s not how the world is” argument, but you can’t talk about how the world could/should be by using only the word that describe the current state of the world. If you want to be critical of the existing system you need to develop a vocabulary that allows for such criticism.
For instance if you don’t make the distinction between the creator and copyright holder you can’t make criticism such as “you shouldn’t be able to copyright works that you haven’t created”. You can’t tell the difference between copyright owned by the creator and copyright owned by copyright owner because those two people are indistinguishable, so the entire criticism becomes nonsense.
If the estate had gone after the author, this would be a very different conversation; but that’s not what happened. The author chose to involve Tolkiens estate, knowing the current climate around copyright.
I struggle to find sympathy for that.
Then you add on direct personal insults instead of constructive conversation and I completely check out. It’s not worth my energy to have a discussion with such people.
You’ve clearly already checked out considering I’m not even the person who insulted you. Here’s an idea, maybe don’t partake in conversations you’re not going to bother to even pay attention. I guarantee you’ll automatically come across as less of an asshole.
Working toward change, but not making normative statements or highlighting problems in rationale. Obviously a real copyright reformist goes around tutting at those “semantics” while parroting the status quo.
Troll harder.
This is more like smacking a warhead with a hammer until it blows like in Loony Tunes. It is a shockingly suicidal decision with predictable results. He’ll be in debt for the rest of his life and should be thankful the Tolkien estate didn’t have him flayed for his impudence. Learning about how out of touch with reality the author is does make me curious how unhinged his book might be, though. If it turns out to be “The Room” of lotr fanficfiction I’d like to see it fan canonized just to spite the most litigious family in literature.
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Copyright’s explicit purpose is to encourage new works.
Any form of “unpublishing” is theft from the public. You wanna say a guy can’t make money on a thing? Great, fine, go nuts. But nothing any human being put effort into deserves to be lost forever.
Copyright doesn’t encourage new works. If anything, copyright discourages new works by locking fair use and transformative behind an expensive legal process. Digitization in America is illegal by default except for books where a judge ruled it’s transformative enough.
The proven method to encourage new works is to have no copyright. But alas, publishers back then didn’t appreciate that others print “their” books. Higher quality cover? More durable paper? Book is out of print? Zero profits? Give me money or fuck off. Publishers sure didn’t change.
Yeah nothing says “write a book” like all revenue going to whichever corporation bootlegs it on the fanciest paper.
Yeah sure let’s ignore out of print books that nobody will ever see again unless you pirate it.
The explicit, stated purpose of copyright was to encourage sharing of ideas. When it lasted originally 14 years, it worked. Before that, you might have had a great idea and kept it to yourself because why take years of your life researching a subject and writing a book when a publisher’s going to immediately copy it and pay you nothing? 14 years is plenty of time to get a return on your investment and most importantly, after that, it didn’t belong to you anymore. It belonged to everyone.
For example, that would mean District 9 and Hunger Games would be in the public domain right now.
But nothing any human being put effort into deserves to be lost forever.
Except for Mein Kampf, Birth of a Nation, and What is a Woman
Mein Kampf is sold even in Germany end Austria, because we recognize its relevance in our History.
I don’t understand what you want accomplish by destroying texts.
I mean it deserves to be lost forever in that it has no artistic or ideological merit. Mein Kampf deserves to be lost. But we deserve to keep it as a warning so that we do not repeat history. But if humanity could grow to the point that such warnings are never needed again, and if the book could be forgotten due to losing all present and future relevance, that would be a good thing. What a thing deserves is sometimes different to what is necessary or good.
Yes, copyright exists to encourage new works - which the author ignored by creating content violating copyright law. Never mind the public, this dude stole from the copyright holders. He’s a pirate and he got caught.
LOTR should be public domain right now. Only because copyright was extended to draconian levels would it be a question.
Copyright has long been perverted to disregard the interests of the public. You are defending rent-seekers.
I’m not defending anyone. I’m explaining the contradiction in the previous statement.
No there is new work that has been done that you are reducing to “piracy”. As if intellectual and creative processes ever could take place in a vacuum. The only contradiction is that copyright laws as a concept do nothing than stifle innovation and progress. If you do not like how anyone can profit from other people’s ideas you should maybe rethink your stance on monetisation schemes in general instead.
Everything you just said is the opposite of reality and facts. What’s going on in this sub?
There is a new work by an author using someone else’s intellectual property. That’s what’s this is about. That’s how they were sued.
Copyright laws specifically promote new ideas by punishing those who re-use existing ideas.
You can profit from others’ ideas by asking permission and paying a licensing fee. This happens all the time. It’s how business is done every day.
True. To throw my opinion into the mix, if the Rings of Power show did actually copy from his work, they should look to partner with Demetrious instead of all this nonsense. I agree he legally can’t profit off the IP of the Tolkien estate as laws stand, but copywrite also lasts far longer than it has any good reason to. It should be the author’s lifetime plus a decade or so. Finally, it is an affront to creativity everywhere to order the destruction of all physical and electronic copies. That should not happen. Ever.
I’m not getting into how long a copyright should last. I don’t have a meaningful opinion on it.
What it seems people are overlooking (or forgiving?) is that the guy published a book about characters (IP) he doesn’t own. Taking something that doesn’t belong to you is theft.
Whether or not Amazon should option his material is irrelevant if he didn’t get permission to use it in the first place. I mean, fan fiction is one thing. Creative license and educational purposes could be argued. But he published a freaking book!
Do you think Zack Snyder should get to put out a Rebel Moon and call it “Rebel Moon: A Star Wars Story” without getting permission or paying for licensing? Is this the reality this sub believes we live in? If you write a novel and I read it and soon start writing better more successful stories based explicitly on your characters without crediting you or sharing in my profit, how would you feel? Should your work be public domain? Is that what you (collective) feel is best for “the public”?
I don’t really have an opinion on what should happen with the work either. I could see some cases where it would be a major loss for the public to have the work erased. This could be catastrophic for classic literature. For something so new and not having any established cultural significance (as much as you wish it did), I’d go with whatever a judge believes is best under the law. You’re welcome to argue the validity of the law, and I may agree with you, but that’s a different conversation.
Average Blahaj user
It’s crazy that people believe ideas can be owned.
Ideas no, but money yes. And humans will be forever behind money over anything.
Said like someone who has never had a good idea their entire life.
It’s mind boggling how anyone could possibly consider otherwise. Aside from your own life, there’s nothing more belonging to oneself than their thoughts.
Once you share your thought, they are no longer yours alone, and the thoughts they spark in others are, in some ways, both yours and theirs. Or, if you prefer to hear it another way, “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”
This entire sub is delusional. You believe in things which are untrue. You make things up to justify theft. It’s funny and it’s sad. I really don’t know where you get these irrational theories or how you’d ever justify them in a court.
If you want to live in literal communism, sure, you can establish that any idea anyone expresses belongs to the world. In the world we actually live in, we have laws protecting people’s intellectual property in order for them to generate content and profit from those original ideas. Otherwise, what’s the point of having an idea at all if anyone can make money from it. This further promotes new original ideas that aren’t derivative of existing ones. This is exactly what the OP stated and I agreed with.
Every now and then I see threads like this on lemmy where people are getting downvoted into negatives despite being objectively correct about something (and the wrong info being upvoted). I think there may be a lot of very young, inexperienced, naive, and gullible children here. At least I hope they’re children.
…says someone who spent a lifetime forming thoughts and opinions by taking in other people’s thoughts. I’ve yet to see a citation for all the people whose thoughts you’re parroting. You’ve stolen the most personal belonging a person can have!
Our do you think your thoughts which we’re reading as words are both original and created in a vacuum?
Are you all children in here? Did you have nap time and your sippy today?
Fuck off.
Maybe read the fucking room, Mal.
K. Evidently reading the room is more important than reading the article.
Going after the copyright holder for infringing on your work, which by merely existing commercially infringes on their copyright, is one hell of a way to get sued out the arse…
Having said that, it is a crime that LOTR still hasn’t entered the public domain yet.
Yeah, I’m not sure what this idiot thought would happen…
The author then filed suit against both Amazon and the Tolkien estate, claiming the streaming series “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” had borrowed from his sequel and infringed his copyright.
The gall.
I honestly wouldn’t even be surprised. What was it, that thing with Star Trek Discovery taking plot points from some adventure game with space-faring tardigrades?
Tolkien Estate? What’s that? People profiting off of the work of an author who has been dead for 50 years?
Copyright law is fucked up.
I dunno, if I build a house, I can leave it to my family for generations. Indeed, barring something interfering with that ownership, it will be passed along. Maybe they’ll sell it, or take out a loan against it and default, or a disaster could strike, or whatever.
Why would any other creation be less portable to my heirs?
Mind you, I’m definitely of the belief that artistic creations like books should eventually go public domain. I’m fine with any number of possible restrictions on that duration. But it is strange that one of the only things that automatically gets removed from a family are things like writing. Ideas, if you want to break it down. We treat them different than other things we create.
Again, I’m fine with there’s being limits on holding ideas restricted. That’s necessary to prevent loss of such things, that are harder to preserve than something like a piece of jewelry, or a statue, or a house. That’s why patents and copyrights need to expire, but I can’t agree that the limits as they exist are fucked up/bad/wrong.
Seriously, I’m a published author, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about such things.
Now, I would love to see the laws change so that any copyright held by a publicly traded company, or that has been sold/abandoned by the actual heirs of the author is shorter than when held by the heirs of the author.
And, any popular work is going to have the issue of who gets to decide what is and isn’t done to the works before or after public domain. You can end up with something wonderful being shat on by asshats. So it isn’t like copyrights expiring is without drawbacks. When what’s at stake is only keeping the works published and available, that’s a clear cut thing that benefits everyone.
But adaptations, expansions, “fanfic”? I would definitely prefer someone that at least has some chance of the author’s intent being known than some shitty company looking to milk the work for every possible dime.
Why shouldn’t authors be able to build generational wealth the way a business can? You’re talking about people profiting off a dead man, but that’s what investments and properties and such are. It’s future generations profiting off a dead person’s work. There’s billionaires out there that are sitting on wealth that was amassed not just decades ago, but sometimes centuries. Why do authors not have that possibility?
A house exists, in order to remove ownership of that hous you would need to physically expell the family living there. A story is fictional, it does not exist and removing the copy protection from it does not require actively harming the inheritors of the person who wrote it.
A house is also not so much generational wealth as it is generational ownership. You don’t get active revenue from a single house if ypu are living in it. And generational wealth is pretty fucked up and should not happen.
Besides if an author really wants to make sure their children are taken care of, teach them to continue the story, the family name will ensure they get more sales than anyone else writing stories in the same universe as the original.
Shouldn’t you be paying the people who built your house royalties then?
I understand that at a personal level you would want to share wealth with your children and their children, but that is not what copyright is about. The intention is that the creator gets to make their earnings out of their original product for a limited time only. So that they can continue to make original products and make a living. It is not intended to provide for your family for generations. While this may be what it has become with the help of corporations, in my opinion this is not it’s intended use.
Aside from that I think your works should become public domain after a limited time, prefferedly during your lifetime. So that as much as possible people get to enjoy your original works of art.
You make a good point about generational wealth in business and I think there should be limits to that as well. It doesn’t help the world at all if wealth just stagnates like that and in my opinion it should be shared with those doing the actual work, instead of a select few who were born in it, were extremely lucky, or gained money in immoral ways.
I’ll leave it at that since I am not the right person to go into a discussion with you about all of these things. I do want to thank you for your work and for gifting us with your books entertaining us and giving us an escape of daily problems, expanding our knowledge with educational content or whatever else. Know that you are valued and there are people out there being touched by your work.
This guy was just deluded to think he was in the right or could win.
I was going to write a Star Wars sequel and then sue Disney for copyright infringement, until I heard this story.
Don’t let your dreams be dreams! What were you going to spend all that money on anyway, retirement?
The only sane thing to do in response to this is the same thing that SHOULD have been done when Paramount went all sue happy on folks making unofficial Star Trek stuff.
Creators should stop making things related to their works and consumers should stop consuming and giving Paramount money for the official works.
The lesson being if the rights holder for something wants to keep it all to themselves, let them, forget it exists and starve it out of profitable existence. Spend the time and money with content, creators, and consumers that don’t believe sucking up ever dime that’s not nailed down is, or should be, the ultimate goal.
Did you even read the article? This dumbass wrote a book based on LotR characters and then HE tried to sue the Tolkien estate and Amazon. This person actually probably needs mental help if they think this could have worked, it was such an incredibly bad idea that there has to be some kind of mental health crises involved.
Worth also mentioning the Tolkien estate is notoriously letigous. There are piracy sites that specifically ban Tolkiens works from being uploaded for that very reason.
They plagiarized his fanfiction. Theoretically you would have rights to your stories even if they involve characters that you don’t have rights to.
US law is on the Estate’s side
If the characters/events from LOTR are a big part of his fan fiction then the Estate can have it destroyed
Also since the author had no legal ownership of the works, there is nothing wrong with the people who have rights to it using it
Transformative works exist, I don’t think it works like that.
The if part is what gets argued in court
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformative_use
transformation is a type of fair use that builds on a copyrighted work in a different manner or for a different purpose from the original
Fifty Shades vs Twilight would be transformative
Anderson v. Stallone
Would be the most likely case reference for this ruling where Anderson made a Rocky sequel and it was deemed infringement
Yeah wow it’s like I thought ( the right holder being able to dick around writers)
It was strikingly clear to the Court that Anderson’s work was a derivative work; that under 17 U.S.C. section 106(2) derivative works are the exclusive privilege of the copyright holder (Stallone, in this case); and that since Anderson’s work is unauthorized, no part of it can be given protection.
After he had meetings with MGM about using that script.
That’s a lose lose scenario. I’d rather guillotine the copyright holder so the IP “fall in the public domain” if you ask me.
Your true enemy is capitalism, tho. Don’t shoot the messenger.
Can’t have copyright in capitalistic systems
The person who can produce the work the cheapest is the one who gets money
What was this guy thinking? He was clearly violating copyright.
Is he just soft in the head, or is he up to something us not crazy people can’t see?
First two books in the series were “Fellowship of the King” and “The Two Trees” so…I’m not entirely convinced they were even very original stories…
So the third must be “Return of the Ring.”
Oh, is that the one where Bodo Fraggins goes on a long journey to give back to Soraun the ring he lost?
Frodeo Braggins is a short-statured cowboy with big hairy feet, and has a habit of boasting about improbably grandiose adventures
“Excuse me, Mr. Soraun, sir, I think you lost this a couple thousand years ago.”
I’m not a Tolkien fan and even I recognized that, haha.
Wtf.
His motivations are beyond our understanding
Demetrious Polychron
holy shit what an incredible name, don’t even care what’s this about, I’m with him. President Polychron 2024.
I’m Demetrious Polychron –
– and you just got cyberpunk’dCould only be made better with some Mountain Dew.
IDK what Demetrious means, but polychronic means multiple fatal diagnoses, like when you have multiple stage 4 cancers.
He tried to take them to court?!
They were…not smart lol.
Well if they did plagiarize some independent’s fanfiction, and they can get away with that, it really limits the remedies for independent writers when their unpaid for script drafts end up being used for storylines.
Abolish copyright law, it does nothing but stymie creativity
At least restrict it. A carpenter who made me a chair doesn’t get paid every time I rest my derriere on it.
Naaah, that’s not true.
I promise you that if the stuff I’ve written and published could be used by anyone, however they wanted, it would not have been published. I would have kept that shit to myself.
If anything, copyright laws encourage creativity because the person knows they can take their time to build things up. You don’t have to worry about fifteen sequels to your book being spammed by hacks trying to profit from your work
