Copydumb


  • ♿ (Parody)

    I think that it's legitimate to dispute that the camera owner has copyright, but it's not legitimate for PETA to sue him saying that the monkey owns the copyright.

    “I know for a fact that [the monkey in the photograph] is a female and it’s the wrong age,” he said. “I’m bewildered at the American court system. Surely it matters that the right monkey is suing me.”

    Welcome to the 9th Circuit.


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    @boomzilla said in Copydumb:

    but it's not legitimate for PETA to sue him saying that the monkey owns the copyright.

    Did he actually respond to that? Because I definitely wouldn't have, since it's obvious that there's no way they have a case.

    Edit: So this lawsuit was actually accepted? :wtf: How fucked up is your legal system?


  • Impossible Mission - B

    David Slater has been fighting for years over who has the copyright to photos taken by monkeys using his camera, and says he’s struggling as a result.

    Good. 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. This guy trying to claim copyright over it (and also PETA trying to claim a nonexistent right for the monkey to own the copyright) is just flat-out wrong, and it's good to see at least one of them going broke over it. TBH it'd be nicer to see both sides forced into bankruptcy over this matter.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @masonwheeler said in Copydumb:

    Therefore, no valid copyright exists on the photo in question. Period. This guy trying to claim copyright over it (and also PETA trying to claim a nonexistent right for the monkey to own the copyright) is just flat-out wrong, and it's good to see at least one of them going broke over it. TBH it'd be nicer to see both sides forced into bankruptcy over this matter.

    I don't understand your vitriol towards this guy. Who, BTW, does claim to be broke. I'm not so certain how clear it is, since it was supposedly more than "he owns the camera."

    But fuck PETA.


  • kills Dumbledore

    @masonwheeler said in Copydumb:

    the copyright belongs to the person who took the photograph

    If I set up a camera on a timer so it takes a photo at a specific time, does that count as me taking the photo?

    What about if I set it up to take a photo at random times?

    What if it's attached to a motion sensor to take a photo whenever a person or animal walks in front of it?

    What if I have a remote control that takes a photo when a button is pressed, and give that remote to a monkey?

    What if I just give the camera to the monkey?

    What if I give it to a person?

    It's not exactly black and white. One end of this spectrum, most would agree, is me taking the photo and the other end is another party taking it. At what point am I not taking the photo and therefore not the copyright holder? Drawing lines somewhere in the grey area is difficult



  • @jaloopa I'd say the picture is taken by the last entity that is legally a person that touched the camera in a way that affects a photo being taken or not.


  • Impossible Mission - B

    @boomzilla said in Copydumb:

    I don't understand your vitriol towards this guy.

    It's a combination of several factors.

    • First off, the basic copyright system is badly broken. It's been severely perverted away from its original purpose, which was to give authors leverage against abusive publishers, in order to put an end to an 18th century problem so serious that it was making it well-nigh impossible for authors to earn a living: publishers publishing and selling books without the author's consent and without compensating the author, simply because they could. These days, though, it's become more and more a tool to give abusive publishers leverage against the rest of the world in order to enable them to abuse us more successfully.
    • 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.
    • This guy, though, wasn't even trying to get paid forever for his work; he was trying to get paid forever for work he didn't even do, and never claimed he did. (In fact, his claim that the picture is specifically a "monkey selfie"--that the monkey, not him, took the photo--is specifically the thing that makes the photo noteworthy and culturally valuable in the first place!)
    • Copyright is supposed to last for a relatively short time, and then the work enters the public domain. This has been severely perverted since the original idea was set out, and particularly over the last century, with term extensions (and more recently DRM) literally robbing you and me of what is supposed to be our property vis a vis the public domain. Here, we have a rare clear-cut case of something that belongs to the public domain, and this guy is trying to steal it from us!

    Why wouldn't I be angry at him?


  • FoxDev

    I say it's just a picture of a monkey, stop wasting tens of thousands of dollars trying to prove who owns it, and use that money on something more productive like cocaine and prostitutes.


  • Impossible Mission - B

    @jaloopa said in Copydumb:

    @masonwheeler said in Copydumb:

    the copyright belongs to the person who took the photograph

    If I set up a camera on a timer so it takes a photo at a specific time, does that count as me taking the photo?

    What about if I set it up to take a photo at random times?

    What if it's attached to a motion sensor to take a photo whenever a person or animal walks in front of it?

    What if I have a remote control that takes a photo when a button is pressed, and give that remote to a monkey?

    What if I just give the camera to the monkey?

    What if I give it to a person?

    It's not exactly black and white. One end of this spectrum, most would agree, is me taking the photo and the other end is another party taking it. At what point am I not taking the photo and therefore not the copyright holder? Drawing lines somewhere in the grey area is difficult

    There's plenty of room to argue about where exactly "in the gray area" lines should be drawn. But when someone else is in control of the camera, the law is very clear. There is no "gray area" in this specific case.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @masonwheeler said in Copydumb:

    Why wouldn't I be angry at him?

    I'm not convinced your representation of what he did is very accurate.

    @masonwheeler said in Copydumb:

    This guy, though, wasn't even trying to get paid forever for his work; he was trying to get paid forever for work he didn't even do, and never claimed he did. (In fact, his claim that the picture is specifically a "monkey selfie"--that the monkey, not him, took the photo--is specifically the thing that makes the photo noteworthy and culturally valuable in the first place!)

    Also, while I think you have a bit of a crazy reaction to copyright in general, I don't understand why you'd be mad at him for what you see as problems with the system.

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


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @masonwheeler said in Copydumb:

    There's plenty of room to argue about where exactly "in the gray area" lines should be drawn. But when someone else is in control of the camera, the law is very clear. There is no "gray area" in this specific case.

    OK, so who else? A monkey isn't a person.


  • Impossible Mission - B

    @boomzilla It sounds as if you're not aware that there's a lot more to "the monkey selfie saga" than the PETA lawsuit. This is just the latest chapter; he's been abusive about it, and abusing the legal system to try to claim rights that are not his, for quite a while.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @masonwheeler said in Copydumb:

    @boomzilla It sounds as if you're not aware that there's a lot more to "the monkey selfie saga" than the PETA lawsuit. This is just the latest chapter; he's been abusive about it, and abusing the legal system to try to claim rights that are not his, for quite a while.

    I just read what's in the Grauniad article, which alluded to that stuff. It didn't make anything out to be abusive, and given your previous statements regarding copyright, I'm not inclined to believe that's accurate, either.


  • Impossible Mission - B

    @boomzilla said in Copydumb:

    OK, so who else? A monkey isn't a person.

    True. However, 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. Therefore, no valid copyright exists. It really is that simple.


  • Impossible Mission - B

    @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?


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    @masonwheeler said in Copydumb:

    to someone else's property

    Ding ding ding!

    Whose property is it, in your opinion? If you think your own arguments through, then nobody owns the photo.



  • @masonwheeler said in Copydumb:

    someone else's property

    @masonwheeler said in Copydumb:

    no valid copyright exists

    :thonking:


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @masonwheeler said in Copydumb:

    @boomzilla said in Copydumb:

    OK, so who else? A monkey isn't a person.

    True. However, 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. Therefore, no valid copyright exists. It really is that simple.

    It is now that the ruling has been made (in 2014, AIUI). At least in the US. The international flavor adds some spice to this story.


  • Impossible Mission - B

    @asdf said in Copydumb:

    Whose property is it, in your opinion?

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

    If you think your own arguments through, then nobody owns the photo.

    No, nobody exclusively owns the photo. It belongs to everyone. That includes me, and this guy is trying to steal it from me.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @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?

    TDEMSYR. It's no one else's property. AFAICT, he would be the only person whose property it could possibly be. Have Australian or Indonesian courts / copyright authorities had anything to say on the subject.


  • kills Dumbledore

    @masonwheeler said in Copydumb:

    this guy is trying to steal it from me

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


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @masonwheeler said in Copydumb:

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

    Thanks Syndrome. That's just dumb.

    @masonwheeler said in Copydumb:

    That includes me, and this guy is trying to steal it from me.

    You have a very warped view of reality. Which this thread is one of a long line of examples.


  • Impossible Mission - B

    @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.


  • BINNED

    @boomzilla said in Copydumb:

    Also, while I think you have a bit of a crazy reaction to copyright in general, I don't understand why you'd be mad at him for what you see as problems with the system.

    Actually, he has some valid points, but his anger is misdirected. Copyright was never intended to create a new class of permanent property, but with it getting extended every time Mickey Mouse is about to go public domain, that's exactly what happened.


  • Impossible Mission - B

    @boomzilla said in Copydumb:

    Thanks Syndrome. That's just dumb.

    How? Are you saying that's not what it means for something to be in the public domain?


  • Impossible Mission - B

    @antiquarian said in Copydumb:

    his anger is misdirected.

    It's not directed solely at David Slater. As you allude to, Disney is a major part of the problem, and I'm quite annoyed at them as well. But they're not relevant to this specific case, so I didn't mention them.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @antiquarian said in Copydumb:

    @boomzilla said in Copydumb:

    Also, while I think you have a bit of a crazy reaction to copyright in general, I don't understand why you'd be mad at him for what you see as problems with the system.

    Actually, he has some valid points, but his anger is misdirected. Copyright was never intended to create a new class of permanent property, but with it getting extended every time Mickey Mouse is about to go public domain, that's exactly what happened.

    Yeah, I agreed with that in less specific terms. But again...so what? Is it that big a deal, really?



  • @jaloopa said in Copydumb:

    @masonwheeler said in Copydumb:

    the copyright belongs to the person who took the photograph

    If I set up a camera on a timer so it takes a photo at a specific time, does that count as me taking the photo?

    What about if I set it up to take a photo at random times?

    What if it's attached to a motion sensor to take a photo whenever a person or animal walks in front of it?

    What if I have a remote control that takes a photo when a button is pressed, and give that remote to a monkey?

    The line is most likely here.

    What if I just give the camera to the monkey?

    What if I give it to a person?

    It's not exactly black and white. One end of this spectrum, most would agree, is me taking the photo and the other end is another party taking it. At what point am I not taking the photo and therefore not the copyright holder? Drawing lines somewhere in the grey area is difficult

    The basic principle about whether something is eligible for copyright is the level of creativity involved in the work. For everything above the line, the person who sets up the camera has spent creative effort in framing the photograph (i.e. where to place and aim the camera), even if the exact timing of the photograph is not under their control. For everything below the line, there would probably be insufficient creativity involved in simply giving the camera to another animal.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @masonwheeler said in Copydumb:

    @boomzilla said in Copydumb:

    Thanks Syndrome. That's just dumb.

    How? Are you saying that's not what it means for something to be in the public domain?

    Yes. Public domain means that no one owns it.


  • BINNED

    @boomzilla said in Copydumb:

    Yeah, I agreed with that in less specific terms. But again...so what? Is it that big a deal, really?

    I don't think it's worth taking to the streets in protest over, but I do think it's suboptimal.


  • Impossible Mission - B

    @boomzilla said in Copydumb:

    But again...so what? Is it that big a deal, really?

    Yes, it absolutely is. The entirety of culture is based on copying that which has come before. This is well-enough understood that the phrase "everything is a remix" has become a cliche in artistic circles. (Do I need to post a onebox of The Axis of Awesome's Four Chords Song again?)

    Here's a fun project, now that we've brought Disney into it: go over Disney's catalogue of animated films. Look at how many of them were adaptations of earlier stories. (Hint: it's the vast majority of them.) Look at how many of those were in the public domain at the time they were created, and how many of those were created less than five years after they entered the public domain. And look at how much money Disney made off of them. Yes, it's a very, very big deal, and by refusing to uphold their side of the bargain and pay it forward, Disney is literally stealing our culture from us.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @antiquarian said in Copydumb:

    I don't think it's worth taking to the streets in protest over, but I do think it's suboptimal.

    I'm not even certain of that. Stuff like extending Mickey Mouse seems to have some similarity to trademarks, to me. Like, if it's still an actively used intellectual property, extended copyright makes sense.



  • @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).


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @masonwheeler said in Copydumb:

    @boomzilla said in Copydumb:

    But again...so what? Is it that big a deal, really?

    Yes, it absolutely is. The entirety of culture is based on copying that which has come before. This is well-enough understood that the phrase "everything is a remix" has become a cliche in artistic circles. (Do I need to post a onebox of The Axis of Awesome's Four Chords Song again?)

    Here's a fun project, now that we've brought Disney into it: go over Disney's catalogue of animated films. Look at how many of them were adaptations of earlier stories. (Hint: it's the vast majority of them.) Look at how many of those were in the public domain at the time they were created, and how many of those were created less than five years after they entered the public domain. And look at how much money Disney made off of them. Yes, it's a very, very big deal, and by refusing to uphold their side of the bargain and pay it forward, Disney is literally stealing our culture from us.

    How does copyright prevent changing and retelling a story? Are you also ignoring fair use exceptions?

    Also, "stealing our culture from us" is hysterical.


  • kills Dumbledore

    @cartman82 said in Copydumb:

    He should have just shot the monkey

    Why not make the monkey sign a waiver granting full copyright to him? Then the monkey couldn't claim it ever had a reasonable expectation of owning the copyright


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @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).

    He says that PETA has already named the wrong monkey.


  • sekret PM club

    @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)
    • The same story, but replace the Little Mermaid with the Diminutive Sea Elf. Suddenly, all that character's history is erased and needs to either be magic-hand-waved or rewritten in a way that makes sense, but is sufficiently different enough to not trigger the infinite-lawyer-cannon that Disney aims at anything infringing on their copyright.

  • Impossible Mission - B

    @boomzilla said in Copydumb:

    How does copyright prevent changing and retelling a story?

    By granting exclusive rights to derivative works. For example, it would be perfectly legal for you or me to hypothetically create a movie of the story of Aladdin, from The Arabian Nights, which is in the public domain. But 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, even if the story was very different from any of the Aladdin stories that Disney has published.

    Are you also ignoring fair use exceptions?

    I might as well; everyone else does, including unfortunately the courts, far too often! :(

    Also, "stealing our culture from us" is hysterical.

    Why?


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @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)
    • The same story, but replace the Little Mermaid with the Diminutive Sea Elf. Suddenly, all that character's history is erased and needs to either be magic-hand-waved or rewritten in a way that makes sense, but is sufficiently different enough to not trigger the infinite-lawyer-cannon that Disney aims at anything infringing on their copyright.

    Neither of those are changing and retelling the story.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @masonwheeler said in Copydumb:

    @boomzilla said in Copydumb:

    How does copyright prevent changing and retelling a story?

    By granting exclusive rights to derivative works. For example, it would be perfectly legal for you or me to hypothetically create a movie of the story of Aladdin, from The Arabian Nights, which is in the public domain. But 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, even if the story was very different from any of the Aladdin stories that Disney has published.

    Yes, but if you're doing that then you're not changing it. WTF people?

    Also, "stealing our culture from us" is hysterical.

    Why?

    Because it's so obviously dumb. There's no stealing going on. And framing the discussion like that makes you look insane and will drive people to the opposite of your position, 🦊 style.


  • sekret PM club

    @boomzilla 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)
    • The same story, but replace the Little Mermaid with the Diminutive Sea Elf. Suddenly, all that character's history is erased and needs to either be magic-hand-waved or rewritten in a way that makes sense, but is sufficiently different enough to not trigger the infinite-lawyer-cannon that Disney aims at anything infringing on their copyright.

    Neither of those are changing and retelling the story.

    ...All right, I'll give you that, those would be world-expanding.

    Let's try something simpler.

    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.

    (I'm just using that particular story/character because it's the first thing that popped into my head when I thought Disney for some reason.)

    Either way (my original item or this one), I cannot tell a story about Ariel until Disney's copyright on that story expires (since it also affects being able to create derivative works), and Disney (and others) keep pushing to have that copyright extended practically indefinitely so that they don't lose control of their characters.


  • Impossible Mission - B

    @boomzilla If you don't think that extending an existing story changes it, you really ought to watch Into The Woods sometime.


  • BINNED

    @boomzilla said in Copydumb:

    Like, if it's still an actively used intellectual property, extended copyright makes sense.

    But that's exactly my point: copyright laws weren't intended to create a new class of permanent property. The intent was to increase the amount of works available by temporarily giving content creators monopoly rights over the works they created.


  • Impossible Mission - B

    @antiquarian said in Copydumb:

    But that's exactly my point: copyright laws weren't intended to create a new class of permanent property. The intent was to increase the amount of works available by temporarily giving content creators monopoly rights over the works they created.

    Exactly. And because this is the point of copyright, it's not hard to make an argument that works that continue to be culturally relevant once the period of copyright protection expires are the ones that are the most valuable to the public domain, and thus the ones that need to be released into it, and not kept under copyright, the most.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @masonwheeler said in Copydumb:

    @boomzilla If you don't think that extending an existing story changes it, you really ought to watch Into The Woods sometime.

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


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @antiquarian said in Copydumb:

    @boomzilla said in Copydumb:

    Like, if it's still an actively used intellectual property, extended copyright makes sense.

    But that's exactly my point: copyright laws weren't intended to create a new class of permanent property. The intent was to increase the amount of works available by temporarily giving content creators monopoly rights over the works they created.

    Yes, I totally agree that was the original intent. I'm just not totally convinced that the updates to it are really bad.


  • BINNED

    @boomzilla said in Copydumb:

    I'm just not totally convinced that the updates to it are really bad.

    It's a tricky point because most of the impact is projects that we don't see because they'd fall afoul of copyright law. One thing we can see, however is out of print books, which typically end up selling for multiples of their original price on amazon, so we know there is still demand, but the publishers don't make additional copies available at any price.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @antiquarian said in Copydumb:

    One thing we can see, however is out of print books, which typically end up selling for multiples of their original price on amazon, so we know there is still demand, but the publishers don't make additional copies available at any price.

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

    Either way, discussing the intents and effects of copyrights is interesting and not hysterical like claiming that culture is being stolen. :rolleyes:


  • Impossible Mission - B

    @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...