12 ms·

I think a lot of commenters are stuck on the €20k the author was paid for the work and their completely human reaction (jealously, etc) to seeing the payout oth

I think a lot of commenters are stuck on the €20k the author was paid for the work and their completely human reaction (jealously, etc) to seeing the payout other people who worked on the game got after the buy out. Yes they got paid for producing the work, yes they were jealous. Yes they reacted like most humans would. But, that €20k did not cover the copyrights to the work. Just the creating of it. Regardless as to whether you think the original payment was really good. The copyright sits with the artist, not those that commission it, unless the artist signs it away. That didn't happen. That's Mojang's fault not the artist. And the fact they were trying to pressure the artist into doing that shows that that is the real issue. This post is not about the money or the jealously. It is about the emotional journey the author went on, with their human emotions, and what they thought of as friends. And the different stages of said journey. If I was more cynical about this piece I would suggest that releasing the poem under CC was easily the worse thing the author could have done from MS/Mojangs point of view. Clearly a decision was made by them that should a lawsuit come about they weren't worried. Releasing it as it has been side steps this completely, leaving the power with the author. Ultimately though I enjoyed the story.

wikfwikf 4y ago
a) Did the author really expect that he would be getting royalties to all the Minecraft end text teatowels and fridge magnets as part of the deal? Clearly, the success of these products is largely correlated with the success of the game rather than the importance of what he wrote. b) If I had wanted to make merch with this text on it last week but had been deterred by fear of M$ lawyers, I wouldn't really feel any different about it after the author 'releasing the poem under CC'. His claim to own the rights in the first place is totally dubious. He seems erratic and will probably go on to perform other stunts and legalistic trolling before he gets bored.
- account-5 4y ago
  a) I'm not the author so can't comment on what they really expect. But since they released the work under CC I'd suggest nothing, other than recognition, and based on the post after they finally realised their true reason for being hurt, I think it was also about being treated correctly and with respect. b) INAL, but in the UK: "you automatically get copyright protection when you create: original literary, dramatic, musical and artistic work, including illustration and photography original non-literary written work... ". Assuming it's similar around the world there's nothing dubious about their claim, they didn't sign it away. Regardless of your opinion of the person or their motives it seems they are within their rights to do what they've done.
- wokwokwok 4y ago
  > His claim to own the rights in the first place is totally dubious. Whether you care for him as a human or not is entirely irrelevant to the rights to his work. If there was no legal agreement, he retains the rights to it. It’s not ambiguous.
  - yreg 4y ago
    E-mail chains, or even verbal discussions are binding legal agreements as well. They are just much less clean and safe than a proper contract.
    - sbst32 4y ago
      And? He never agreed to transfer his rights.
      - wikfwikf 4y ago
        How do you know this?
        sbst32 4y ago
        Because he explicitly says so and it never was his intention. If you're trying to say that he agreed to it never understanding what he's agreeing to - then that would probably be a non-binding agreement in any legal proceedings.
        yreg 4y ago
        He also says that he wrote them something along the lines "whatever, let's do the first deal you have offered me" and then intentionally never read the contract. Who knows what they have discussed and agreed to "as friends". The entire situation is very messy. Mojang fucked up by failing to get the contract signed and failing to even notice it. OTOH the writer seems like a contractor from hell who you wouldn't ever want to deal with, and that's based on his side of the story.
- burkaman 4y ago
  > Did the author really expect that he would be getting royalties to all the Minecraft end text teatowels and fridge magnets as part of the deal? No, and I feel like he made it extremely clear that this story is not really about money and his feelings are not driven by a lack of royalties.
  - ineedasername 4y ago
    The author says it's not about the money, but money was only one half of the verbal contract, the half that was actually delivered, and the author spends the entire article talking about the money half. For me, the real issue for an artist that is actually not talking about the money would be the part of the verbal contract that was not fulfilled: Some type of promotional support for the author's other works. Exposure of that work the hundreds of millions of people seems like it would have a staggeringly massive non-monetary value (and in fact could have led to significant monetary gain). Instead though, the author goes to great pains to say it wasn't about the money while mostly talking about the money.
  - spritefs 4y ago
    > No, and I feel like he made it extremely clear that this story is not really about money and his feelings are not driven by a lack of royalties. If it wasn't about money, than what was it about? "Fairness"? So money?
    - burkaman 4y ago
      Yeah fairness, emotions, recognition, his own flaws and failures, and his general outlook on life. It's not about contract law or conflict with Mojang or Microsoft, it's just a story about his feelings.
      - alicesreflexion 4y ago
        Feelings are useful for figuring out what your goals are. They can be money, they can be something more vague like recognition, or truly nebulous like "a sense of human connection," but you've got to have goals. Otherwise you're just a child stumbling in the dark and yelling out. Reading the post, I don't know what the author's goals are, and I get the impression they don't either. It sounds like they weren't sure about their goals to begin with, didn't do anything to achieve them, felt robbed because other people's goals were misaligned with theirs, before finally accepting they can't change the past, which Duh.
whywhywhywhy 4y ago
>But, that €20k did not cover the copyrights to the work. Just the creating of it. Honestly think that’s very debatable he was contracted by the company he can’t just rugpull because decides there is an extra different secret ownership he never handed over and has never mentioned during the transaction and never brought up till years later when he got bitter. Don’t think his claims would stand up at all of lawyers were involved. He needs to take the W, he’ll never have his work in anything as large as MC, he got paid 20k for something no one else would pay for honestly things could be worse, his poem could be removed. I mean it’s now time to ask if he actually even has the rights to license the poem at all.
- Spivak 4y ago
  > Don’t think his claims would stand up at all of lawyers were involved. Absolutely 100% would stand up. If the US and UK have one thing it's strong copyright protections that favor the copyright holder. You can't accidentally transfer owner of your copyright with an off-handed remark and this is well established. If I commission an artist for a work the artist retains the copyright unless it's explicitly transferred to me or if the artists is my employee -- contractor isn't enough. > his poem could be removed That wouldn't stop it in general. It comes down to the specific license terms. Copyright deals with performances and his work has already been performed millions of times. That can't be undone. Pirating a movie, watching it, and then deleting your copy doesn't make it not copyright infringement. If the contract said only for use in Minecraft then any merchandise or Minecraft: Bedrock. Worse, licenses aren't by default transferable. If I give your band a license to play a song I wrote and you leave to join another band it doesn't follow you unless it was explicitly stated in the contract. So if Microsoft did something with the licensed work that wasn't under its legal subsidiary Mojang that might also be a problem. I'm not saying any of this happened but hopefully it's enough to demonstrate that "obviously a judge would rule that a reasonable person would have assumed the work came with copyright assignment" is very unlikely doubly because the fact that they asked him for assignment later means they knew.
- pie_flavor 4y ago
  You own the copyright to any works you create unless you have signed a document that specifically says you don't. It's not his responsibility to bring up the basic fundamentals of copyright law during a transaction, and there's nothing different and secret about them. If the messages constituted an implied contract, the only thing implied would be a license to use it in Minecraft, not a total transfer of all ownership. You may want to become familiar with said basics of copyright; Creative Commons has a good explainer https://certificates.creativecommons.org/cccertedu/chapter/2-1-copyright-basics/ https://certificates.creativecommons.org/cccertedu/chapter/2...

wikfwikf 4y ago

a) Did the author really expect that he would be getting royalties to all the Minecraft end text teatowels and fridge magnets as part of the deal? Clearly, the success of these products is largely correlated with the success of the game rather than the importance of what he wrote. b) If I had wanted to make merch with this text on it last week but had been deterred by fear of M$ lawyers, I wouldn't really feel any different about it after the author 'releasing the poem under CC'. His claim to own the rights in the first place is totally dubious. He seems erratic and will probably go on to perform other stunts and legalistic trolling before he gets bored.

account-5 4y ago
a) I'm not the author so can't comment on what they really expect. But since they released the work under CC I'd suggest nothing, other than recognition, and based on the post after they finally realised their true reason for being hurt, I think it was also about being treated correctly and with respect. b) INAL, but in the UK: "you automatically get copyright protection when you create: original literary, dramatic, musical and artistic work, including illustration and photography original non-literary written work... ". Assuming it's similar around the world there's nothing dubious about their claim, they didn't sign it away. Regardless of your opinion of the person or their motives it seems they are within their rights to do what they've done.
wokwokwok 4y ago
> His claim to own the rights in the first place is totally dubious. Whether you care for him as a human or not is entirely irrelevant to the rights to his work. If there was no legal agreement, he retains the rights to it. It’s not ambiguous.
- yreg 4y ago
  E-mail chains, or even verbal discussions are binding legal agreements as well. They are just much less clean and safe than a proper contract.
  - sbst32 4y ago
    And? He never agreed to transfer his rights.
    - wikfwikf 4y ago
      How do you know this?
      - sbst32 4y ago
        Because he explicitly says so and it never was his intention. If you're trying to say that he agreed to it never understanding what he's agreeing to - then that would probably be a non-binding agreement in any legal proceedings.
        yreg 4y ago
        He also says that he wrote them something along the lines "whatever, let's do the first deal you have offered me" and then intentionally never read the contract. Who knows what they have discussed and agreed to "as friends". The entire situation is very messy. Mojang fucked up by failing to get the contract signed and failing to even notice it. OTOH the writer seems like a contractor from hell who you wouldn't ever want to deal with, and that's based on his side of the story.
burkaman 4y ago
> Did the author really expect that he would be getting royalties to all the Minecraft end text teatowels and fridge magnets as part of the deal? No, and I feel like he made it extremely clear that this story is not really about money and his feelings are not driven by a lack of royalties.
- ineedasername 4y ago
  The author says it's not about the money, but money was only one half of the verbal contract, the half that was actually delivered, and the author spends the entire article talking about the money half. For me, the real issue for an artist that is actually not talking about the money would be the part of the verbal contract that was not fulfilled: Some type of promotional support for the author's other works. Exposure of that work the hundreds of millions of people seems like it would have a staggeringly massive non-monetary value (and in fact could have led to significant monetary gain). Instead though, the author goes to great pains to say it wasn't about the money while mostly talking about the money.
- spritefs 4y ago
  > No, and I feel like he made it extremely clear that this story is not really about money and his feelings are not driven by a lack of royalties. If it wasn't about money, than what was it about? "Fairness"? So money?
  - burkaman 4y ago
    Yeah fairness, emotions, recognition, his own flaws and failures, and his general outlook on life. It's not about contract law or conflict with Mojang or Microsoft, it's just a story about his feelings.
    - alicesreflexion 4y ago
      Feelings are useful for figuring out what your goals are. They can be money, they can be something more vague like recognition, or truly nebulous like "a sense of human connection," but you've got to have goals. Otherwise you're just a child stumbling in the dark and yelling out. Reading the post, I don't know what the author's goals are, and I get the impression they don't either. It sounds like they weren't sure about their goals to begin with, didn't do anything to achieve them, felt robbed because other people's goals were misaligned with theirs, before finally accepting they can't change the past, which Duh.

whywhywhywhy 4y ago

>But, that €20k did not cover the copyrights to the work. Just the creating of it. Honestly think that’s very debatable he was contracted by the company he can’t just rugpull because decides there is an extra different secret ownership he never handed over and has never mentioned during the transaction and never brought up till years later when he got bitter. Don’t think his claims would stand up at all of lawyers were involved. He needs to take the W, he’ll never have his work in anything as large as MC, he got paid 20k for something no one else would pay for honestly things could be worse, his poem could be removed. I mean it’s now time to ask if he actually even has the rights to license the poem at all.

Spivak 4y ago
> Don’t think his claims would stand up at all of lawyers were involved. Absolutely 100% would stand up. If the US and UK have one thing it's strong copyright protections that favor the copyright holder. You can't accidentally transfer owner of your copyright with an off-handed remark and this is well established. If I commission an artist for a work the artist retains the copyright unless it's explicitly transferred to me or if the artists is my employee -- contractor isn't enough. > his poem could be removed That wouldn't stop it in general. It comes down to the specific license terms. Copyright deals with performances and his work has already been performed millions of times. That can't be undone. Pirating a movie, watching it, and then deleting your copy doesn't make it not copyright infringement. If the contract said only for use in Minecraft then any merchandise or Minecraft: Bedrock. Worse, licenses aren't by default transferable. If I give your band a license to play a song I wrote and you leave to join another band it doesn't follow you unless it was explicitly stated in the contract. So if Microsoft did something with the licensed work that wasn't under its legal subsidiary Mojang that might also be a problem. I'm not saying any of this happened but hopefully it's enough to demonstrate that "obviously a judge would rule that a reasonable person would have assumed the work came with copyright assignment" is very unlikely doubly because the fact that they asked him for assignment later means they knew.
pie_flavor 4y ago
You own the copyright to any works you create unless you have signed a document that specifically says you don't. It's not his responsibility to bring up the basic fundamentals of copyright law during a transaction, and there's nothing different and secret about them. If the messages constituted an implied contract, the only thing implied would be a license to use it in Minecraft, not a total transfer of all ownership. You may want to become familiar with said basics of copyright; Creative Commons has a good explainer https://certificates.creativecommons.org/cccertedu/chapter/2-1-copyright-basics/ https://certificates.creativecommons.org/cccertedu/chapter/2...