4 ms·
I work in intellectual property, though I am not a lawyer. If this person were my client I’d diplomatically tell them that they’re clean out of luck on this one
by superultra 4y ago
I work in intellectual property, though I am not a lawyer. If this person were my client I’d diplomatically tell them that they’re clean out of luck on this one. All the documents that come as a shock to the author are boiler plate NDA and work for hire arrangements, and outside of being a famous author who’s “brand” would bring something of marketing value to the table, at no point really would anyone be able to negotiate anything other than a work for hire arrangement.
This person seems to think that because they wrote some albeit meaningful copy for a game, that the team owed them involvement in strategic high level multi-million dollar conversations. That’s not how this works.
There’s what I call a diva effect happening and it’s what happens with artists when they see their work absorbed by popular culture (ie tattoos) in relation to another work (ie game, movie, tv show, etc.) it’s an illusion.
The poem is good but people love it because it comes at the end of an emotional journey created by the product itself. Had this person simply posted it on a website, it’s demonstrably true very few would’ve noticed.
There are not 1,700 Microsoft lawyers reading his post. There’s maybe one marketing intern rolling their eyes and logging in a spreadsheet of mentions and moving on.
This person probably put themselves in more legal hot water, if at all, by giving away something they don’t really own (sorry!).
The fact that he admits that he sat on this for eight years (regardless of reason) means he was not actively defending his intellectual property.
To make matters worse, this would be a matter of international copyright law, which is a mess.
If you’re reading this Julian, you gotta move on bud. Maybe writing this was an important step. Great. You did it. Now you’re better off deleting the post because it’s going to cause anyone who makes any deals in writing walk the opposite direction.
- ballenf 4y agoI'm going to charitably guess you didn't read most of the post. He did move on. He is at peace, finally. He's the opposite of a diva and has humbly accepted that his reward for his work doesn't take monetary form.
- warinukraine 4y agoI don't know much about this person, other than that he did NOT move on.
- TomBombadildoze 4y ago"Moving on" and recounting a story can be, and often are, entirely different things.
- tkahnoski 4y agoOr precisely the exact same thing. I take this as their final act to bring closure.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- kabes 4y agoI read the whole post and he doesn't give me the impression of being at piece. If you're truly at piece you wouldn't be writing such a long and bitter post to begin with. He pretends he doesn't care for money, but all the examples where he felt he's not being treated fairly revolve around money. And he clearly still sees himself as one of the original Minecraft creators while he's not.
- sbst32 4y agoWell that's called introspection. And the post is his way of a telling a story. He is a storyteller, that is what he does.
- ziml77 4y agoAt peace? The fact that he wrote this long post shows that he is not at peace. And it's not like it was just a vent piece that he didn't expect to get attention, he posted a link to it on /r/minecraft.
- mistermann 4y ago> The fact that he wrote this long post shows that he is not at peace. Nitpick: technically/scientifically, facts do not have volition.
- squirtlebonflow 4y agoAre you saying because "facts" are not sentient beings, they cannot be the subject for the verb "to show"?
- mistermann 4y agoThey have an involvement in the process/phenomenon, but it is the mind that is doing the majority of the work (the actual implementation of "shows"). And, as science has well demonstrated, the mind is a highly unreliable instrument, and is a particularly important one in that it renders "reality" itself. I'm a big fan of this essay, mainly for this one line: >> There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?” https://fs.blog/david-foster-wallace-this-is-water/ https://fs.blog/david-foster-wallace-this-is-water/
- darkarmani 4y ago> The fact that he admits that he sat on this for eight years (regardless of reason) means he was not actively defending his intellectual property. I'm not sure what this means. Copyright doesn't need to be defended. In any case copyright is a big mess without a signed contract. This just muddles the waters even more.
- bo1024 4y agoThis is talking right past the important higher level message in the post. A lot of it is a rejection of the entire way of thinking you present here.
- adamrezich 4y agoand this is why I stopped reading partway through when the post started turning in that direction (and I saw how long it was)—what's the point in reading something so detached from reality?
- lukas099 4y agoI think that if Notch had just tweeted something like "big shoutout to my friend Whatever who wrote the end poem to Minecraft! Check out his other works at www.blah.com" he would have been totally satisfied.