5 ms·

It seems pretty strange that they can do this. How does copyright even apply here, other than for the defendant? If I buy a book, I now own the artifact 100%

It seems pretty strange that they can do this. How does copyright even apply here, other than for the defendant? If I buy a book, I now own the artifact 100% and the first sale doctrine would tend to indicate that nobody else can tell me what to do with that book (with the caveat that I can't make more copies - the whole point of copyright). So these folks bought a book and have figured out how to cut out a page and glue in another one. Seems totally OK. Now they're selling a kit that helps you "mod" your book by teaching you how to cut out a page and replace it with another one. Still no problems IMO. Could someone prevent you from running a service where someone mails you a book, you cut out some pages and replace them, and then mail it back? I don't think so. These aren't great analogies obviously. But it's hard to understand how they have standing given that they sold the copies of the game already. Seems like they'd have better luck going on some kind of contractual violation like their EULA or their agreement you have to subject yourself to in order to connect to the game servers.

makecheck 8y ago
It probably has something to do with the investment that would be required if the original item didn’t exist. Suppose it costs you 10 million dollars to make product X, and you are able to make that money back barely (say 11 million). Then, someone else comes along and builds something quickly on top of your expensive investment and is able to make 5 million of their own. Wouldn’t you be mad? They’ve essentially found a low-effort way to make returns without taking any of the risk you did. Without you, they wouldn’t be able to do what they did unless they came up with the whole original item on their own and then built on top of it. Therefore, in essence they are profiting off of your investment. The law may be significantly more complex and nuanced than this but it’s not hard at all to imagine scenarios where the original producer of a product does not want to enable profits of spin-offs from their work. Edit: This is one reason patents exist. You are allowed to protect your massive investment for a period of time, no matter how much society may benefit from building on it immediately.
- gdhbcc 8y ago
  That argument never made sense. If a farmer sells some rice to someone else, who then turns around and sells it for profit, the farmer doesnt get to dictate what the trader can do with the rice. Copyright has no legitimate economic or technological grounds.
  - weberc2 8y ago
    Copyright refers to copying an innovation. First sale refers to reselling a product. You’re conflating the two.
- whatshisface 8y ago
  Maybe you'd be mad, but would that anger be justified? We all benefit from each other's work in society. The person building on your work wouldn't be harming you in any way (except perhaps by competing with you, which we all agree is a good thing for everyone in the world except for you), and they would be beneficial to their customers by a significant $5M. Only a foolish society would subtract that from itself because for some reason a platform supplier got "mad."
- belltaco 8y ago
  I don't think it works like that, you can buy whatever you want and resell while adding value. Just like a printing press that buys paper and then makes millions from it by printing books. Also, just because something cost you a lot doesn't mean you get to claim protection over it. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweat_of_the_brow#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweat_of_the_brow#United_State...
- bko 8y ago
  > Suppose it costs you 10 million dollars to make product X, and you are able to make that money back barely (say 11 million). Then, someone else comes along and builds something quickly on top of your expensive investment and is able to make 5 million of their own. Wouldn’t you be mad? That's a terrible analogy. Practically everything is built on using materials built from others. That's essentially specialization.
- stevew20 8y ago
  What you've described is called "capitalism", and "progress". Epic Games did not invent GPUs, which are way more expensive than their product; however, try running Fortnite without one. 1FPS and unplayable.
smnrchrds 8y ago
Fortnite's EULA [0] and virtually any EULA for any software produced in the past couple of decades includes the following bit: The Software is licensed, not sold, to you under the License. The License does not grant you any title or ownership in the Software. First sale doctrine does not apply. We don't own many things anymore. Books, music, software, movies—they used to be products you bought but now they are services you subscribe to. It is not a trend that I like. [0] https://www.epicgames.com/fortnite/en-US/eula https://www.epicgames.com/fortnite/en-US/eula
- msandford 8y ago
  There are myriad situations where contracts are written which aren't enforceable, but that doesn't make writing the contract illegal, nor does it make _trying_ to enforce it illegal either. That might be a shortcoming of our legal system, but that's how it works. The EULA may or may not be binding in any appreciable way: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-user_license_agreement#Enforceability_of_EULAs_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-user_license_agreement#Enf... If they can establish that their EULA does bind then maybe they've got a case.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- rasz 8y ago
  Toilet paper in EU, you can even resell preloaded OEM software.
snarfy 8y ago
Your arguments come from a traditional point of view. With laws like the DMCA and it's successors, copyright is an entirely different beast when those copies are digital. You can't make more copies, but you also can't circumvent any copy protection in place.
tomohawk 8y ago
There have been lawsuits about re-edited movies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Re-edited_film https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Re-edited_film
- icebraining 8y ago
  Most re-edited movies are mostly composed of parts of the original movie, so there is redistribution. The most similar case here is ClearPlay, which only instructs the video player on how to skip certain parts of the video, and that was not considered copyright infringement.
dxhdr 8y ago
Fortnite is a service, not a product you can own. It's very much the same as Netflix, Gmail, or Dropbox. Given that, why should it be okay to hack Fortnite, but hacking Netflix or Spotify would be considered criminal behavior?
- hankhill 8y ago
  exactly. for example, if i download a movie and edit it, then show it to friends, I'm providing a service in the sense you're arguing, but it's covered by first sale doctrine. same with fortnite. just because he's using (sharing) the mod doesn't make him any less protected under law
- tastroder 8y ago
  The hacking comparison is a really slippery slope though. As long as I don't harm another actual human there should not be anything wrong with me manipulating how I access a service or how parts of that service behave on my machine. I'm thinking browser extension that alert Gmail for my use cases or alternative clients for hardware a service provider like Netflix or Spotify has no incentive to care about. We should really make it possible to talk about these issues akin to a right to repair for software, not by criminalizing every deviation from the corporate norm as computer misuse or copyright infringements.
vhold 8y ago
It's too much to paste here, but the reasoning they use for the copyright claim is laid out in the most detail on page 20, starting at statement 99. https://torrentfreak.com/images/epic-golden.pdf https://torrentfreak.com/images/epic-golden.pdf The lawsuit does also contain many claims of breach of contract, and goes beyond that, saying that they are also interfering with other peoples' contractual obligations since they have promoted something that has resulted in other people breaching the game's contract.
VectorLock 8y ago
Fortnite isn't a stand alone software product. Its a game with an online service that is required for it to function.
- prepend 8y ago
  The modifications were only made to the software product installed on user desktops.
tzs 8y ago
> It seems pretty strange that they can do this. How does copyright even apply here, other than for the defendant? If I buy a book [...] It might be significant that in this case it is not a book. Copyright is a bundle of different rights, and some of them usually only come up for certain kinds of media. In particular, one of the rights in the bundle is the right to publicly perform the work. Perhaps broadcasting playing the game could violate the performance right? > Could someone prevent you from running a service where someone mails you a book, you cut out some pages and replace them, and then mail it back? I don't think so. I wouldn't be so sure. Here are two cases, both involving a company that apparently buys works of art, mounts them on ceramic, and sells the result. In the first case [1] they bought books containing good quality prints, removed the prints from the book, mounted each print separately, and sold the tiles separately. The 9th Circuit found that this was a derivative work and was infringing. In the second case [2] it was apparently again the same company buying and mounting art. This time the works they bought and mounted and sold were notecards and small lithographs. The 7th Circuit said that this was not a derivative work and not infringing. [1] https://openjurist.org/856/f2d/1341/mirage-editions-inc-v-albuquerque-art-co https://openjurist.org/856/f2d/1341/mirage-editions-inc-v-al... [2] https://www.law.cornell.edu/copyright/cases/125_F3d_580.htm https://www.law.cornell.edu/copyright/cases/125_F3d_580.htm

makecheck 8y ago

It probably has something to do with the investment that would be required if the original item didn’t exist. Suppose it costs you 10 million dollars to make product X, and you are able to make that money back barely (say 11 million). Then, someone else comes along and builds something quickly on top of your expensive investment and is able to make 5 million of their own. Wouldn’t you be mad? They’ve essentially found a low-effort way to make returns without taking any of the risk you did. Without you, they wouldn’t be able to do what they did unless they came up with the whole original item on their own and then built on top of it. Therefore, in essence they are profiting off of your investment. The law may be significantly more complex and nuanced than this but it’s not hard at all to imagine scenarios where the original producer of a product does not want to enable profits of spin-offs from their work. Edit: This is one reason patents exist. You are allowed to protect your massive investment for a period of time, no matter how much society may benefit from building on it immediately.

gdhbcc 8y ago
That argument never made sense. If a farmer sells some rice to someone else, who then turns around and sells it for profit, the farmer doesnt get to dictate what the trader can do with the rice. Copyright has no legitimate economic or technological grounds.
- weberc2 8y ago
  Copyright refers to copying an innovation. First sale refers to reselling a product. You’re conflating the two.
whatshisface 8y ago
Maybe you'd be mad, but would that anger be justified? We all benefit from each other's work in society. The person building on your work wouldn't be harming you in any way (except perhaps by competing with you, which we all agree is a good thing for everyone in the world except for you), and they would be beneficial to their customers by a significant $5M. Only a foolish society would subtract that from itself because for some reason a platform supplier got "mad."
belltaco 8y ago
I don't think it works like that, you can buy whatever you want and resell while adding value. Just like a printing press that buys paper and then makes millions from it by printing books. Also, just because something cost you a lot doesn't mean you get to claim protection over it. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweat_of_the_brow#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweat_of_the_brow#United_State...
bko 8y ago
> Suppose it costs you 10 million dollars to make product X, and you are able to make that money back barely (say 11 million). Then, someone else comes along and builds something quickly on top of your expensive investment and is able to make 5 million of their own. Wouldn’t you be mad? That's a terrible analogy. Practically everything is built on using materials built from others. That's essentially specialization.
stevew20 8y ago
What you've described is called "capitalism", and "progress". Epic Games did not invent GPUs, which are way more expensive than their product; however, try running Fortnite without one. 1FPS and unplayable.

smnrchrds 8y ago

Fortnite's EULA [0] and virtually any EULA for any software produced in the past couple of decades includes the following bit: The Software is licensed, not sold, to you under the License. The License does not grant you any title or ownership in the Software. First sale doctrine does not apply. We don't own many things anymore. Books, music, software, movies—they used to be products you bought but now they are services you subscribe to. It is not a trend that I like. [0] https://www.epicgames.com/fortnite/en-US/eula https://www.epicgames.com/fortnite/en-US/eula

msandford 8y ago
There are myriad situations where contracts are written which aren't enforceable, but that doesn't make writing the contract illegal, nor does it make _trying_ to enforce it illegal either. That might be a shortcoming of our legal system, but that's how it works. The EULA may or may not be binding in any appreciable way: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-user_license_agreement#Enforceability_of_EULAs_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-user_license_agreement#Enf... If they can establish that their EULA does bind then maybe they've got a case.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
rasz 8y ago
Toilet paper in EU, you can even resell preloaded OEM software.

snarfy 8y ago

Your arguments come from a traditional point of view. With laws like the DMCA and it's successors, copyright is an entirely different beast when those copies are digital. You can't make more copies, but you also can't circumvent any copy protection in place.

tomohawk 8y ago

There have been lawsuits about re-edited movies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Re-edited_film https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Re-edited_film

icebraining 8y ago
Most re-edited movies are mostly composed of parts of the original movie, so there is redistribution. The most similar case here is ClearPlay, which only instructs the video player on how to skip certain parts of the video, and that was not considered copyright infringement.

dxhdr 8y ago

Fortnite is a service, not a product you can own. It's very much the same as Netflix, Gmail, or Dropbox. Given that, why should it be okay to hack Fortnite, but hacking Netflix or Spotify would be considered criminal behavior?

hankhill 8y ago
exactly. for example, if i download a movie and edit it, then show it to friends, I'm providing a service in the sense you're arguing, but it's covered by first sale doctrine. same with fortnite. just because he's using (sharing) the mod doesn't make him any less protected under law
tastroder 8y ago
The hacking comparison is a really slippery slope though. As long as I don't harm another actual human there should not be anything wrong with me manipulating how I access a service or how parts of that service behave on my machine. I'm thinking browser extension that alert Gmail for my use cases or alternative clients for hardware a service provider like Netflix or Spotify has no incentive to care about. We should really make it possible to talk about these issues akin to a right to repair for software, not by criminalizing every deviation from the corporate norm as computer misuse or copyright infringements.

vhold 8y ago

It's too much to paste here, but the reasoning they use for the copyright claim is laid out in the most detail on page 20, starting at statement 99. https://torrentfreak.com/images/epic-golden.pdf https://torrentfreak.com/images/epic-golden.pdf The lawsuit does also contain many claims of breach of contract, and goes beyond that, saying that they are also interfering with other peoples' contractual obligations since they have promoted something that has resulted in other people breaching the game's contract.

VectorLock 8y ago

Fortnite isn't a stand alone software product. Its a game with an online service that is required for it to function.

prepend 8y ago
The modifications were only made to the software product installed on user desktops.

tzs 8y ago

> It seems pretty strange that they can do this. How does copyright even apply here, other than for the defendant? If I buy a book [...] It might be significant that in this case it is not a book. Copyright is a bundle of different rights, and some of them usually only come up for certain kinds of media. In particular, one of the rights in the bundle is the right to publicly perform the work. Perhaps broadcasting playing the game could violate the performance right? > Could someone prevent you from running a service where someone mails you a book, you cut out some pages and replace them, and then mail it back? I don't think so. I wouldn't be so sure. Here are two cases, both involving a company that apparently buys works of art, mounts them on ceramic, and sells the result. In the first case [1] they bought books containing good quality prints, removed the prints from the book, mounted each print separately, and sold the tiles separately. The 9th Circuit found that this was a derivative work and was infringing. In the second case [2] it was apparently again the same company buying and mounting art. This time the works they bought and mounted and sold were notecards and small lithographs. The 7th Circuit said that this was not a derivative work and not infringing. [1] https://openjurist.org/856/f2d/1341/mirage-editions-inc-v-albuquerque-art-co https://openjurist.org/856/f2d/1341/mirage-editions-inc-v-al... [2] https://www.law.cornell.edu/copyright/cases/125_F3d_580.htm https://www.law.cornell.edu/copyright/cases/125_F3d_580.htm