Copydumb



  • @masonwheeler no, the rest of us ignored the debate for the most part, rolled our eyes and moved on with our day.


  • BINNED

    @boomzilla said in Copydumb:

    Yeah, that's part of why I'm thinking about trademarks, where if you aren't using and actively defending them they go away.

    If copyrights worked that way, it would be better than how they work now, even if they were permanent. I can get behind that change.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @masonwheeler said in Copydumb:

    @boomzilla said in Copydumb:

    Yeah...I think you''re not communicating very well, because you're not making sense.

    Funny how you seem to be the only one who doesn't get it...

    @e4tmyl33t got it after I pointed something out. Instead of using the same story idea and making a new adaptation of that (what you originally said) you started talking about other stuff for some reason. And then you said vague things about a particular story. I'm not sure why you think everyone gets that.



  • @e4tmyl33t said in Copydumb:

    @boomzilla said in Copydumb:

    How does copyright prevent changing and retelling a story?

    It's the difference between the following:

    • I want to write a story where the Little Mermaid's kingdom ends up at war with a new undersea power and she needs to return to help lead her people to survive. This can expound upon the original story (as she married a prince and was already technically royalty, and can call upon both sets of experiences to potentially lead her people with new and interesting ideas because of it)

    I thought the Little Mermaid died at the end of the story?


  • sekret PM club

    @dragnslcr said in Copydumb:

    @e4tmyl33t said in Copydumb:

    @boomzilla said in Copydumb:

    How does copyright prevent changing and retelling a story?

    It's the difference between the following:

    • I want to write a story where the Little Mermaid's kingdom ends up at war with a new undersea power and she needs to return to help lead her people to survive. This can expound upon the original story (as she married a prince and was already technically royalty, and can call upon both sets of experiences to potentially lead her people with new and interesting ideas because of it)

    I thought the Little Mermaid died at the end of the story?

    The original? Perhaps, it's been a long time since I looked it up.

    Disney's version? Hell no, they wouldn't let that happen to a female lead!

    If that was the case Disney couldn't have made the two abominable sequels to it.



  • @e4tmyl33t I don't understand why copyright even applies to characters and settings.

    Sure, if you spend millions making a movie or years writing an awesome novel, it makes sense that you get some compensation, such as retaining exclusive rights to make direct copies of it.

    But it's not Harry Potter the character that makes the Harry Potter books get sales, it's the writing. Yeah, J.K. Rowling wrote an awesome book and she gets the sales money from them, but why should she get the sales money from the movies? They're brand new works with their own work and investments, they just happen to share the same imaginary world.



  • @e4tmyl33t said in Copydumb:

    @dragnslcr said in Copydumb:

    I thought the Little Mermaid died at the end of the story?

    The original? Perhaps, it's been a long time since I looked it up.

    Disney's version? Hell no, they wouldn't let that happen to a female lead!

    Exactly. Disney can do whatever they want with their version of The Little Mermaid, but they don't own the original story. If you only use characters, locations, etc. from the original story and whatever you create yourself, Disney wouldn't have a valid infringement claim.


  • sekret PM club

    @dragnslcr said in Copydumb:

    @e4tmyl33t said in Copydumb:

    @dragnslcr said in Copydumb:

    I thought the Little Mermaid died at the end of the story?

    The original? Perhaps, it's been a long time since I looked it up.

    Disney's version? Hell no, they wouldn't let that happen to a female lead!

    Exactly. Disney can do whatever they want with their version of The Little Mermaid, but they don't own the original story. If you only use characters, locations, etc. from the original story and whatever you create yourself, Disney wouldn't have a valid infringement claim.

    You'd think that, but you'd be wrong (at least in the US's copyright enforcement efforts.

    See the following:

    Edit: I may be stretching this a little, but that would be the point. Since Disney used much of the original work in their own version, I'd be functionally unable to tell any story even based off of the original without essentially completely scrapping the idea and rebuilding it to be something different. Like having Ariel instead be a space naga, Prince Eric be Princess Flurglsmitz of a race of shapeshifting purple triangle people, and the sea witch be one old guy with psychic powers instead of magic. At that point, that would no longer be the story I wanted to tell, so why would I bother?


  • sekret PM club

    @anonymous234 said in Copydumb:

    @e4tmyl33t I don't understand why copyright even applies to characters and settings.

    Sure, if you spend millions making a movie or years writing an awesome novel, it makes sense that you get some compensation, such as retaining exclusive rights to make direct copies of it.

    But it's not Harry Potter the character that makes the Harry Potter books get sales, it's the writing. Yeah, J.K. Rowling wrote an awesome book and she gets the sales money from them, but why should she get the sales money from the movies? They're brand new works with their own work and investments, they just happen to share the same imaginary world.

    If this was the way this worked, Star Trek: Axanar would've had a chance.



  • @e4tmyl33t said in Copydumb:

    @dragnslcr said in Copydumb:

    @e4tmyl33t said in Copydumb:

    @dragnslcr said in Copydumb:

    I thought the Little Mermaid died at the end of the story?

    The original? Perhaps, it's been a long time since I looked it up.

    Disney's version? Hell no, they wouldn't let that happen to a female lead!

    Exactly. Disney can do whatever they want with their version of The Little Mermaid, but they don't own the original story. If you only use characters, locations, etc. from the original story and whatever you create yourself, Disney wouldn't have a valid infringement claim.

    You'd think that, but you'd be wrong (at least in the US's copyright enforcement efforts.

    See the following:

    Edit: I may be stretching this a little, but that would be the point. Since Disney used much of the original work in their own version, I'd be functionally unable to tell any story even based off of the original without essentially completely scrapping the idea and rebuilding it to be something different. Like having Ariel instead be a space naga, Prince Eric be Princess Flurglsmitz of a race of shapeshifting purple triangle people, and the sea witch be one old guy with psychic powers instead of magic. At that point, that would no longer be the story I wanted to tell, so why would I bother?

    Yeah, the examples in that article are all against people who used elements that were clearly original to the copyrighted work. Disney cannot claim copyright over elements that they didn't create, but they can claim copyright over anything that they added to the original version of The Little Mermaid.

    If you were going to create a new version yourself, you would definitely need to be very careful not to use anything that was in the Disney version but not in the original. I'm not familiar with the original, but if, for example, the original story didn't use the name Ariel for the mermaid, then your version can't use it either, since that's a creation of Disney.



  • @boomzilla said in Copydumb:

    I mean, yeah, I think we've gone overboard with copyright, but so what? It's not that big a deal.

    The monkey selfie in particular, maybe not, but I think copyright is a pretty big deal when it comes to software.

    If it was established to, say, 20 years (like patents), Windows 95 would just have entered the public domain, meaning it would be legal to decompile, modify and redistribute. In just 5 years Windows XP would be public domain too, and all that code could be combined with Wine and used to run Win32 software in Linux (or to keep Windows XP servers running forever).

    And, we'd have an ever-expanding library of video games that could be "modernized" by someone with enough free time and run on your computer. All the SNES library, and Ocarina of Time coming in 2018.


  • Impossible Mission - B

    @anonymous234 The original copyright term was 14 years, optionally renewable for a second 14 year term.

    Personally, I see no good reason for that ever to have been extended.



  • @masonwheeler said in Copydumb:

    The law is crystal-clear on this point:

    • the copyright belongs to the person who took the photograph, not the person who owns the camera
    • the monkey is not a person and does not have human rights under the law, including the right to intellectual property ownership

    Therefore, no valid copyright exists on the photo in question. Period.

    I disagree. Your two points are correct, but your conclusion is not.

    You can copyright music or images that you programmed a computer to generate. A photo that you trained or otherwise coerced a monkey to take would be no different. Neither a computer nor a monkey can be a legal copyright holder, so the copyright belongs to the human who made the most creative input into actually generating the image. As he had the most creative input into getting the monkey to take the photo, he is the rightful copyright holder of it.



  • @masonwheeler said in Copydumb:

    the monkey was still in control of the camera--and David Slater was not, in any way--when the picture was taken, per his own claim to establish the notability of the photo

    David Slater was in control of the monkey, both by his own claims and by the fact that the camera ended up safely back in his possession rather than destroyed after being dropped from a tree or into the nearest body of water. And since the monkey cannot possess the copyright for the photo, I believe it's correct to say that he possesses it instead.


  • Impossible Mission - B

    @anotherusername said in Copydumb:

    You can copyright music or images that you programmed a computer to generate.

    Sure, because it's still my creation; I just used an intermediate tool to do it. A computer has no will of its own; an animal does.

    A photo that you trained or otherwise coerced a monkey to take would be no different. Neither a computer nor a monkey can be a legal copyright holder, so the copyright belongs to the human who made the most creative input into actually generating the image.

    But that's not what the law says. It says it belongs to the person who took the photo. The monkey, who took the photo, is not a person, therefore no copyright exists.

    There's really no wiggle room here. The US Copyright Office even noted "a photograph taken by a monkey" alongside a mural painted by an elephant and driftwood shaped and smoothed by the ocean as artistic works specifically ineligible for copyright.

    As he had the most creative input into getting the monkey to take the photo, he is the rightful copyright holder of it.

    This assertion only makes sense if you begin with the initial assumption that "the rightful copyright holder of it" is something that must necessarily exist, that every photo must be exclusively owned by somebody. This is not true, and in this case, it does not exist.



  • @masonwheeler said in Copydumb:

    if the story involved Abu, Jasmine, or Jafar, or was set in Agrabah, that would be infringing on Disney's copyright of their specific version of the story

    @e4tmyl33t said in Copydumb:

    Say I want to tell the story of the Little Mermaid, except she marries a Princess instead of a Prince. Every other detail is the same, except the person she falls in love with is a different gender. The story remains the same, the events remain the same, but I cannot write and publish this story because Disney retains the copyright to the Little Mermaid.

    Y'all are confusing the concepts of copyright and trademark. The characters are protected from this if Disney holds a trademark on them, not a copyright. This entirely avoids the question of "fair use" in a derivative work; no such concept exists for an actively protected trademark.

    A copyright prevents you from producing derivative works without license, but even if the work entered the public domain you still couldn't make free use of the trademarked characters. If all of Disney's old films entered public domain this instant, the only thing that it'd mean is that you could copy them freely, distribute copies, and exhibit them publicly without paying royalties to Disney.



  • @masonwheeler said in Copydumb:

    Sure, because it's still my creation; I just used an intermediate tool to do it. A computer has no will of its own; an animal does.

    If the animal was doing something that animals naturally do, then sure. However, monkeys don't naturally use cameras or take pictures, so I'm inclined to believe that he had creative input into the process.



  • @anotherusername said in Copydumb:

    Neither a computer nor a monkey can be a legal copyright holder, so the copyright belongs to the human who made the most creative input into actually generating the image.

    This is not strictly true. First, you have to establish that there was sufficient creative effort to make the work eligible for copyright at all. If there isn't sufficient creative effort, then it doesn't matter who contributed the most.


  • Impossible Mission - B

    @anotherusername

    Y'all are confusing the concepts of copyright and trademark. The characters are protected from this if Disney holds a trademark on them, not a copyright. This entirely avoids the question of "fair use" in a derivative work; no such concept exists for an actively protected trademark.

    Nope. See the recent Sherlock Holmes case, mentioned in the article above. It's very interesting because Sherlock Holmes was a series of works that straddles the public domain line: the early ones are in the public domain now, whereas Conan Doyle's later Holmes stories are still under copyright protection.

    The court ruled specifically that this means all creative elements of the stories that were common to the series, introduced early enough to be in the public domain, are free for anyone to use, but that elements--including specific characters--that were created late enough to still be under copyright are protected by copyright. Trademark has nothing to do with copyright protection for specific characters in works of fiction.



  • @masonwheeler the characters in that case were not trademarked, I take it?

    If the characters aren't trademarked, or even if they are, and the work's still under copyright protection, then yes, copyright does apply. But AFAIK Disney's characters are all trademarked and actively protected, so the copyright expiring on the original films would not mean that people could start using the characters. It'd just mean that people could use the films themselves: creating copies, selling them, buying them, showing them, and watching them, all without a cent of royalties going to Disney.


  • Impossible Mission - B

    @anotherusername Yes, this is true.

    Which raises (not begs! :pendant:) the question, since this is true, why has Disney worked so hard for so long to prevent the copyright on the earliest Mickey Mouse works from expiring? Is anyone buying Steamboat Willie today? Are they even selling it? If they've made any attempt to market it anytime during my life, I'm entirely unaware of the effort.



  • @masonwheeler ask Disney. ¯\(°_o)/¯


  • Banned

    @anotherusername you're forgetting one thing - while you can trademark Mickey Mouse, you cannot trademark a mouse named Mickey. You can trademark its ears, but not its species. It's even harder to trademark Ms. Pretty Princess, which makes for 50% of main cast in every Disney movie.



  • @e4tmyl33t said in Copydumb:

    See the following:

    Eh, just throw a "I DO NOT OWN THE LEGEND OF ZELDA NO COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT IS INTENDED" on the top of the story and you're fine.


  • :belt_onion:

    @masonwheeler said in Copydumb:

    someone

    something?


  • :belt_onion:

    @boomzilla said in Copydumb:

    It's no one else's property.

    It's every one else's property.


  • :belt_onion:

    @cartman82 said in Copydumb:

    He should have just shot the monkey.

    so that's what happened to harambe!


  • :belt_onion:

    @anonymous234 said in Copydumb:

    If it was established to, say, 20 years (like patents), Windows 95 would just have entered the public domain, meaning it would be legal to decompile, modify and redistribute.

    go right ahead.....



  • @darkmatter said in Copydumb:

    He should have just shot the monkey.

    so that's what happened to harambe!

    Harambe got too greedy. He had to go.


  • Notification Spam Recipient

    @dragnslcr said in Copydumb:

    @e4tmyl33t said in Copydumb:

    @boomzilla said in Copydumb:

    How does copyright prevent changing and retelling a story?

    It's the difference between the following:

    • I want to write a story where the Little Mermaid's kingdom ends up at war with a new undersea power and she needs to return to help lead her people to survive. This can expound upon the original story (as she married a prince and was already technically royalty, and can call upon both sets of experiences to potentially lead her people with new and interesting ideas because of it)

    I thought the Little Mermaid died at the end of the story?

    In version 6bA.9, she suicides because the Prince chose another. In 6bA.k, she doesn't die, but indeed lives in excruciating pain (due to walking on what is effectively her fins, the magic wasn't very good and every step would feel like walking on thin spikes).

    Oh, um, spoilers?



  • @anotherusername said in Copydumb:

    @masonwheeler said in Copydumb:

    if the story involved Abu, Jasmine, or Jafar, or was set in Agrabah, that would be infringing on Disney's copyright of their specific version of the story

    @e4tmyl33t said in Copydumb:

    Say I want to tell the story of the Little Mermaid, except she marries a Princess instead of a Prince. Every other detail is the same, except the person she falls in love with is a different gender. The story remains the same, the events remain the same, but I cannot write and publish this story because Disney retains the copyright to the Little Mermaid.

    Y'all are confusing the concepts of copyright and trademark. The characters are protected from this if Disney holds a trademark on them, not a copyright. This entirely avoids the question of "fair use" in a derivative work; no such concept exists for an actively protected trademark.

    A copyright prevents you from producing derivative works without license, but even if the work entered the public domain you still couldn't make free use of the trademarked characters. If all of Disney's old films entered public domain this instant, the only thing that it'd mean is that you could copy them freely, distribute copies, and exhibit them publicly without paying royalties to Disney.

    If we're talking about in the US, you're the one confused.

    Patents protect ideas.

    Trademarks and Service marks protect names and logos.

    Copyright protects everything else, including characters in books; movies; and TV programs.

    As shown in the 10 Copyrights Cases link earlier, Disney has every right to be afraid that Mickey Mouse's character design will be able to be used by anyone once Steamboat Willie's copyright expires as Klinger v. Conan Doyle Estate set a precedent for it.

    Of course, Disney still holds the trademark over the name Mickey Mouse.

    @antiquarian said in Copydumb:

    @boomzilla said in Copydumb:

    Yeah, that's part of why I'm thinking about trademarks, where if you aren't using and actively defending them they go away.

    If copyrights worked that way, it would be better than how they work now, even if they were permanent. I can get behind that change.

    As for making copyrights last forever, in the US that would require a constitutional amendment as Artticle I, Section 8, paragraph 8 of the U.S Constitution forbids Congress from passing copyright (and patent) laws of infinite length.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @powerlord said in Copydumb:

    Of course, Disney still holds the trademark over the name Mickey Mouse.

    It depends on what exactly is trademarked. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the distinctive look (silhouette, etc.) of Mickey was indeed trademarked. However, one of the key things with trademarks is that the more specific they are, the easier they are to defend (and the harder they are to inadvertently infringe).


  • BINNED

    @powerlord said in Copydumb:

    As for making copyrights last forever, in the US that would require a constitutional amendment as Artticle I, Section 8, paragraph 8 of the U.S Constitution forbids Congress from passing copyright (and patent) laws of infinite length.

    In theory yes, but in practice the Constitution says what the Supreme Court says it means, and their last decision about this explicitly permitted Congress to keep extending the length as long as there was a definite length every time they did the extension. So what's the difference in practice (except for the possibility of us one day electing Congressmen who aren't corrupt)?


  • ♿ (Parody)

    A lot of the guff over copyrights is really about new works that use ideas, characters and settings from old works. Has there ever been legislation specifying this sort of thing, or is it all court cases?



  • @boomzilla Sounds like photography as a profession is in danger. This is the direction of our progress now as a society and species, whether we like it or not.



  • If I take a screenshot of a video game, who owns the image?

    If I take a photo of a video game, who owns the image?

    What if it's on a wooden table?


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @shoreline said in Copydumb:

    @boomzilla Sounds like photography as a profession is in danger. This is the direction of our progress now as a society and species, whether we like it or not.

    • Rise of the Planet of the Apes
    • Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
    • War for the Planet of the Apes
    • Photo Studio of the Planet of the Apes


  • @ben_lubar said in Copydumb:

    If I take a screenshot of a video game, who owns the image?

    If I take a photo of a video game, who owns the image?

    What if it's on a wooden table?

    You would own the copyright on the photograph itself. However, that doesn't mean that you aren't also violating the copyright of the video game.



  • @dragnslcr said in Copydumb:

    @ben_lubar said in Copydumb:

    If I take a screenshot of a video game, who owns the image?

    If I take a photo of a video game, who owns the image?

    What if it's on a wooden table?

    You would own the copyright on the photograph itself. However, that doesn't mean that you aren't also violating the copyright of the video game.

    Does a screenshot count as a photograph?

    Does a digital photo count as a photograph?

    Does a frame from a video count as a photograph?



  • @ben_lubar

    Do you own the copyright on the wood grain?

    What if it's photoshopped on a wooden table?

    What if it's photoshopped with a copyrighted image of wood grain?



  • @ben_lubar said in Copydumb:

    @dragnslcr said in Copydumb:

    @ben_lubar said in Copydumb:

    If I take a screenshot of a video game, who owns the image?

    If I take a photo of a video game, who owns the image?

    What if it's on a wooden table?

    You would own the copyright on the photograph itself. However, that doesn't mean that you aren't also violating the copyright of the video game.

    Does a screenshot count as a photograph?

    Yes, because it requires the same creative effort as a photograph (e.g. deciding how to frame the photograph).

    Does a digital photo count as a photograph?

    Yes, the exact medium doesn't matter, as long as it's in a fixed, tangible form (I think those are the words used in the US law)

    Does a frame from a video count as a photograph?

    Maybe, but if not, it would still be a part of the video, which is eligible for copyright on its own anyway.


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    @masonwheeler said in Copydumb:

    A copyright, particularly with today's absurdly long terms, allows someone to do work once and get paid for it essentially forever. That's not how the rest of the world works. If you or I do work today, we'll get paid for it. If we don't do any more, we don't get any more wages.

    I agree that current copyright law is retarded, but this comparison is fallacious and idiotic.


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    @boomzilla said in Copydumb:

    A monkey isn't a person.

    Flagged for specism.


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    @masonwheeler said in Copydumb:

    @boomzilla said in Copydumb:

    It didn't make anything out to be abusive

    Trying to falsely claim a right to someone else's property is not abusive?

    Who's property?


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @polygeekery said in Copydumb:

    Who's property?

    According to the 13th Amendment, no one.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @polygeekery said in Copydumb:

    @masonwheeler said in Copydumb:

    A copyright, particularly with today's absurdly long terms, allows someone to do work once and get paid for it essentially forever. That's not how the rest of the world works. If you or I do work today, we'll get paid for it. If we don't do any more, we don't get any more wages.

    I agree that current copyright law is retarded, but this comparison is fallacious and idiotic.

    I think I skipped over that dumb ass-bit of the post. It's like listening to a Communist complain about profits from real estate.


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    @masonwheeler said in Copydumb:

    Mine. And yours, and everybody's. That's what the public domain means.

    My friend sets up trail cams to scout where to deer hunt. If Bigfoot wanders in front of one of his cameras would that photo be public domain?


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    @masonwheeler said in Copydumb:

    @jaloopa said in Copydumb:

    Aren't you a strong advocate of "piracy isn't theft"?

    This isn't piracy. It's a person attempting to remove my legal right to use something however I wish via an abuse of the court system.

    What if Elon Musk owned the camera that took the monkey selfie?


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    @masonwheeler said in Copydumb:

    Disney is literally stealing our culture from us.

    Fox literally?


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    @cartman82 said in Copydumb:

    @boomzilla He should have just shot the monkey. Then they'd have no plaintiff and he'd get to use the pictures (unless they located the monkey's family and got them to sign off on lawsuit).

    Strangling it with a camera strap would be more poetic.