6 ms·

Maybe those "fucked" artists should invent their own characters. You know, being creative instead of copying other people's ideas.

shawn 8y ago
Just like Disney did with Alice in Wonderland, right? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tk862BbjWx4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tk862BbjWx4 "And now you, dear filmmaker, want to come along and want to make your own version of Star Wars: A New Hope? For shame! That's like stealing food right out of George Lucas' mouth."
- hcknwscommenter 8y ago
  Your comment reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of copyright law. It is perfectly acceptable to copy the basic "idea" of a story. You just can't copy or make derivative works of Star Wars or Alice in Wonderland themselves, but you can copy all the themes and ideas thereof.
  - shawn 8y ago
    The argument is that it's harmful for society to restrict artists from remixing other people's work. And when you put it that way, how could it be otherwise? We'll have to agree to disagree that it'd cause problems for people to be able to tell a Darth Vader story.
    - hcknwscommenter 8y ago
      It causes problems because then there is no profit incentive and then there goes the entire content creation industry. You can remix themes and ideas all you want. Just don't call it Darth Vader and profit off other people's investment in that specific expression of the space opera.
- georgeecollins 8y ago
  Good point about Disney, they shouldn't be allowed to control characters forever. But two wrongs don't make a right. Nintendo and Valve made recent pieces of intellectual property that they should be allowed to own for a reasonable period of time.
- smegger001 8y ago
  I am just waiting for Disney to buy the rights to Joseph Campbell's "Hero with a Thousand Faces" and try to claim they own the monomyth and all derivative stories are violating their copyright.
drb91 8y ago
Being creative and copying ideas are not mutually exclusive. For instance, I love the harry potter universe. I just happen to think that JK Rowling is a terrible writer. I would pay hundreds of dollars for quality fan fiction, ideally licensed or legal. There’s really no mechanism for any human on the planet to tell a story in this universe and widely distribute it legally. Arguably this is more of an issue with copyright and trademark, but I think there’s a lot of room for art to fluorish if there’s a market not beholden to IP law.
- cyphar 8y ago
  Just a small nitpick, there is no such thing as "IP law". There are copyright laws, trademark laws, and patent laws. All of them have different rules and regulations, and the only thing some people think they have in common is that they (in some fashion) "regulate ideas" with small differences in their application. This is simply not an accurate view of such laws, and ends up muddying the waters by making the clear differences between such laws seem unclear (I'm not saying that you are guilty of doing this intentionally -- it is a very common misconception that is spread because the copyright lobby in the US intentionally tries to muddy the waters so that discussions of reform get squashed). Always refer to copyright laws as "copyright laws", trademark laws as "trademark laws", and so on.
- emiliobumachar 8y ago
  As a heads up, you're in luck. Ms. Rowling happens to allow a large fan fiction community to thrive royalty-free, as long as no money changes hands. I have read and particularly recommend Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. http://www.hpmor.com/ http://www.hpmor.com/ Many other works set in the HP universe exist.
- ZainRiz 8y ago
  Harry Potter has more fanfiction about it than any other storiy. The most famous one is on hpmor.com, but you can find tons of others on fanfiction.net.
tomrod 8y ago
Good artists create. Great artists steal.
- lsalvatore 8y ago
  Love the quote, but it wasn't referring to ROM-hacking Pokemon Blue and passing it off as your own game.
  - shawn 8y ago
    Ah, a small correction: I'd never pass someone else's work off as my own. The idea is more along the lines of "Look at this silly hat I put on Picachu. Won't you give me a few cents so I can keep dressing up Pokemon as space marines?"
cyphar 8y ago
This is a ridiculous idea, that falls apart with even cursory scrutiny. For a trivial example, almost all of Shakespeare's plays were amalgamations of other people's plays or were based on other people's stories (Hamlet, for instance, was a retelling of a 16th century version of the 13th century Scandinavian legend of Amleth). Would you argue that Shakespeare was not creative? Or is it possible that stories are based on the culture of a society, and the culture of a society is based on the stories told -- meaning that any story can be argued to be a copy of another person's idea.
- lsalvatore 8y ago
  You're not going to convince me that someone narrating over themselves play Half-Life has the same creativity as Shakespeare, because "everything is a copy". To say that no one actually owns the rights to Pokemon, that someone copying Pokemon frame-by-frame is of equal creative value as someone drawing their own monsters, well I just am deeply saddened by that.
  - cyphar 8y ago
    (I'll be honest that I didn't originally didn't read that the topic under discussion was modding of games. Passing off a game as your own is obviously not right, but that isn't the only topic under discussion here.) Of course modding is not the same as Shakespeare. My point was that stories like those of Shakespeare would not have been possible with our modern notions of copyright. I do agree that many (but not all) examples of such work are just simply rip-offs of other people's work. On the other hand, does it make sense for any work to be untouchable for an essentially unlimited period of time? So while you might argue that mods are all shameless copies of another person's work, I direct you to 'The Stanley Parable'[1] which was a mod of Half-Life 2. I think most people would argue that it is a creative work that is unique despite the fact that it re-uses assets from a copyrighted work. There are many counter-examples to the idea that the only way to have creative value in a game is to "draw your own monsters". Jim Sterling ran a contest where people were to come up with original works based on an overused Unity asset, and the winning entry was a game made entirely out of textures based on that asset[2]. Is that not a creative work? I think that ultimately it's a disservice to argue that all such works should not be allowed because many examples of people building on previous work is lazy or a transparent rip-off. That the requirement for a creative work be a strict sense of originality (not to mention that you need to decide how do you define sufficient originality -- is "Harry Potter Told Using Pokemon" an original work?). [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stanley_Parable https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stanley_Parable [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTL6NlPF0Lw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTL6NlPF0Lw

shawn 8y ago

Just like Disney did with Alice in Wonderland, right? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tk862BbjWx4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tk862BbjWx4 "And now you, dear filmmaker, want to come along and want to make your own version of Star Wars: A New Hope? For shame! That's like stealing food right out of George Lucas' mouth."

hcknwscommenter 8y ago
Your comment reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of copyright law. It is perfectly acceptable to copy the basic "idea" of a story. You just can't copy or make derivative works of Star Wars or Alice in Wonderland themselves, but you can copy all the themes and ideas thereof.
- shawn 8y ago
  The argument is that it's harmful for society to restrict artists from remixing other people's work. And when you put it that way, how could it be otherwise? We'll have to agree to disagree that it'd cause problems for people to be able to tell a Darth Vader story.
  - hcknwscommenter 8y ago
    It causes problems because then there is no profit incentive and then there goes the entire content creation industry. You can remix themes and ideas all you want. Just don't call it Darth Vader and profit off other people's investment in that specific expression of the space opera.
georgeecollins 8y ago
Good point about Disney, they shouldn't be allowed to control characters forever. But two wrongs don't make a right. Nintendo and Valve made recent pieces of intellectual property that they should be allowed to own for a reasonable period of time.
smegger001 8y ago
I am just waiting for Disney to buy the rights to Joseph Campbell's "Hero with a Thousand Faces" and try to claim they own the monomyth and all derivative stories are violating their copyright.

drb91 8y ago

Being creative and copying ideas are not mutually exclusive. For instance, I love the harry potter universe. I just happen to think that JK Rowling is a terrible writer. I would pay hundreds of dollars for quality fan fiction, ideally licensed or legal. There’s really no mechanism for any human on the planet to tell a story in this universe and widely distribute it legally. Arguably this is more of an issue with copyright and trademark, but I think there’s a lot of room for art to fluorish if there’s a market not beholden to IP law.

cyphar 8y ago
Just a small nitpick, there is no such thing as "IP law". There are copyright laws, trademark laws, and patent laws. All of them have different rules and regulations, and the only thing some people think they have in common is that they (in some fashion) "regulate ideas" with small differences in their application. This is simply not an accurate view of such laws, and ends up muddying the waters by making the clear differences between such laws seem unclear (I'm not saying that you are guilty of doing this intentionally -- it is a very common misconception that is spread because the copyright lobby in the US intentionally tries to muddy the waters so that discussions of reform get squashed). Always refer to copyright laws as "copyright laws", trademark laws as "trademark laws", and so on.
emiliobumachar 8y ago
As a heads up, you're in luck. Ms. Rowling happens to allow a large fan fiction community to thrive royalty-free, as long as no money changes hands. I have read and particularly recommend Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. http://www.hpmor.com/ http://www.hpmor.com/ Many other works set in the HP universe exist.
ZainRiz 8y ago
Harry Potter has more fanfiction about it than any other storiy. The most famous one is on hpmor.com, but you can find tons of others on fanfiction.net.

tomrod 8y ago

Good artists create. Great artists steal.

lsalvatore 8y ago
Love the quote, but it wasn't referring to ROM-hacking Pokemon Blue and passing it off as your own game.
- shawn 8y ago
  Ah, a small correction: I'd never pass someone else's work off as my own. The idea is more along the lines of "Look at this silly hat I put on Picachu. Won't you give me a few cents so I can keep dressing up Pokemon as space marines?"

cyphar 8y ago

This is a ridiculous idea, that falls apart with even cursory scrutiny. For a trivial example, almost all of Shakespeare's plays were amalgamations of other people's plays or were based on other people's stories (Hamlet, for instance, was a retelling of a 16th century version of the 13th century Scandinavian legend of Amleth). Would you argue that Shakespeare was not creative? Or is it possible that stories are based on the culture of a society, and the culture of a society is based on the stories told -- meaning that any story can be argued to be a copy of another person's idea.

lsalvatore 8y ago
You're not going to convince me that someone narrating over themselves play Half-Life has the same creativity as Shakespeare, because "everything is a copy". To say that no one actually owns the rights to Pokemon, that someone copying Pokemon frame-by-frame is of equal creative value as someone drawing their own monsters, well I just am deeply saddened by that.
- cyphar 8y ago
  (I'll be honest that I didn't originally didn't read that the topic under discussion was modding of games. Passing off a game as your own is obviously not right, but that isn't the only topic under discussion here.) Of course modding is not the same as Shakespeare. My point was that stories like those of Shakespeare would not have been possible with our modern notions of copyright. I do agree that many (but not all) examples of such work are just simply rip-offs of other people's work. On the other hand, does it make sense for any work to be untouchable for an essentially unlimited period of time? So while you might argue that mods are all shameless copies of another person's work, I direct you to 'The Stanley Parable'[1] which was a mod of Half-Life 2. I think most people would argue that it is a creative work that is unique despite the fact that it re-uses assets from a copyrighted work. There are many counter-examples to the idea that the only way to have creative value in a game is to "draw your own monsters". Jim Sterling ran a contest where people were to come up with original works based on an overused Unity asset, and the winning entry was a game made entirely out of textures based on that asset[2]. Is that not a creative work? I think that ultimately it's a disservice to argue that all such works should not be allowed because many examples of people building on previous work is lazy or a transparent rip-off. That the requirement for a creative work be a strict sense of originality (not to mention that you need to decide how do you define sufficient originality -- is "Harry Potter Told Using Pokemon" an original work?). [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stanley_Parable https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stanley_Parable [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTL6NlPF0Lw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTL6NlPF0Lw