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Tolkien estate wins court order to destroy fan's 'Lord of the Rings' sequel
- sickofparadox 3y agoI think it is unconscionable that we can use the force of the state to coerce someone to delete ALL copies of a work they created. I'm fairly anti-copyright but I get that they probably shouldn't be able to sell the books (even though the author has been in the ground for decades), fine. Give them a fine, write up a ticket, community service or whatever, but deleting everything just seems so brutish.
- duskwuff 3y agoI agree that it's an extreme step, but given that the creator of the work was trying to use it to extort both the Tolkien estate and Amazon, confiscating the work to prevent further abuse is understandable. Also, the book was submitted as an exhibit in the court case, so you can read it there. It's genuinely awful. Nothing of value is being lost here. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cacd.881511/gov.uscourts.cacd.881511.37.6.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cacd.88...
- tuscen 3y agoIt really should not matter. It shouldn't even be allowed to ban non-commercial fan fiction.
- duskwuff 3y agoThis wasn't non-commercial. The author was selling his book, and was trying to extort Amazon into paying licensing fees for it as well.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- acchow 3y agoKind of like patent trolls patenting an invention someone else is already actually using
- jabroni_salad 3y agohttps://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:pG0fNw74CaAJ:https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/book/1142895065&hl=en&gl=us https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:pG0fNw...
- sickofparadox 3y agoEven if it was horribly offensive and morally repugnant, I would still say that the court should let private copies exist.
- ceejayoz 3y agoThe court is hosting one in the link above.
- whatshisface 3y agoWhy are they bothering to ask anyone to destroy it?
- ceejayoz 3y agoBecause he egregiously misbehaved with his, and this is the resulting punishment. You and I can keep whatever copies we may have.
- ClumsyPilot 3y ago> Because he egregiously misbehaved with his, and this is the resulting punishment This is like some new form of justice, where, if you hit someone with a hammer we punish the hammer?
- ceejayoz 3y agoNo; we take away your hammers. It's quite an old approach.
- ClumsyPilot 3y agoTaking away the hammer would placing the fanwork into public domain. Here, we are specifically destroying the hammer as a punishment.
- sugarkjube 3y agoThis is hilarious. So the judge forbids him to further distribute the book he wrote, but now publishes and distributes it on his behalf. For free. Go figure. Can the court now be considered guilty of violating copyright ?
- ceejayoz 3y ago> Can the court now be considered guilty of violating copyright ? No. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_immunity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_immunity
- autoexec 3y agoI have a copy now, and I'd never even heard of this fanfic before today. Not sure that the system is working as intended...
- squidbeak 3y agoIt's literary merits are irrelevant. This is someone's work, and they are being denied the right to even keep a backup up in the attic. If one party's control over a creative work can be extended to strip another party of any control over his, something's fucked up with the system.
- jdksmdbtbdnmsm 3y agoNo aspect of copryright is morally defensible, which is why the lawmakers who created it merely defended it on the grounds of encouraging innovation in science and art.
- toss1 3y agoSo you are perfectly OK with laboring for years to conceive, design, and build as unique work of art, writing, or software, from which you could earn a living, and then it being OK for me to just slap my name/label on it and out-market you, taking all the gains and leaving you destitute? Or, are you just someone who does not expect to ever create anything of value?
- NewsyHacker 3y agoIt’s important to keep in mind that intellectual property is a notion that arose in Western Europe in the early modern period and can still seem foreign to much of the globe. Even if nearly all countries have now implemented IP legislation for trade reasons, in practice it might go unenforced unless the plaintiff is politically connected. The cutthroat environment that you describe above is still how things often work in Asia, but people go on creating works of their imagination regardless.
- jdksmdbtbdnmsm 3y agoOr just read the Copyright Act of 1790. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Act_of_1790 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Act_of_1790
- ClumsyPilot 3y ago> So you are perfectly OK with laboring for years to conceive Then why doesn't Einstein get a patent on Theory of relativity? Why is it okay for scientists to work for decades and have no IP rights over it? Why does is our system designed so that only corporations can afford the cost of a patent, and most people in the developing world could never afford them? And after paying all that money we get patents on blatantly fake inventions, like the Antigravity Machine? https://patents.google.com/patent/US20040070299A1/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US20040070299A1/en
- chasil 3y agoA similar action was taken with the 1922 film Nosferatu, but prints of the film survived. I would wager that the current work will also avoid destruction. "Even with several details altered, Stoker's heirs sued over the adaptation, and a court ruling ordered all copies of the film to be destroyed. However, several prints of Nosferatu survived, and the film came to be regarded as an influential masterpiece of cinema and the horror genre." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosferatu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosferatu
- wageslave99 3y agoThank you! I'm a fan of the Nosferatu type of vampire and didn't know that they were sued by the Stoker Estate!
- chasil 3y agoHis widow, Florence Balcombe, spent much of her later life enforcing the copyright. https://swands.medium.com/florence-stoker-the-woman-who-copyrighted-dracula-492968c95fb1 https://swands.medium.com/florence-stoker-the-woman-who-copy... https://www.express.co.uk/news/history/1692222/bram-stoker-birthday-oscar-wilde-wife-dracula-florence-balcombe-spt https://www.express.co.uk/news/history/1692222/bram-stoker-b...
- jabroni_salad 3y agoThis person tried to sue the estate for copyright infringement to the tune of $250M because he thinks think they lifted something out of his fanfiction for Rings of Power, as if he somehow had ownership of Tolkien's setting. This was just a countersuit because he put himself on their radar in the dumbest way possible. play stupid games win stupid prizes. There are plenty of fanfictions that go to market safely by filing off the serial numbers, just do that. I'm generally in favor of derivative works and I enjoy spending time on AO3. I'm not in favor of being an idiot about it, though. Maybe you should not bite the hand that feeds you: https://i.imgur.com/2wwbson.png https://i.imgur.com/2wwbson.png
- s1artibartfast 3y agoI don't think us courts for courts should be in the business of handing out stupid prizes. Instead, they should be measured and consistent with our longstanding social agreements. Someone has to be the adult in the room and seek the moral high ground.
- ToucanLoucan 3y agoCourts aren't moral entities, they're legal ones. This person went out of their way to put a completely unnecessary legal target on their back. This is absolutely 100% a stupid prizes scenario. I love fan creation and believe it should be enshrined properly in fair use doctrine, but god damn, I cannot imagine being stupid enough to make fan work of an IP and then sue the IP holder because I think they took my idea. Holy fuck.
- forgetfreeman 3y agoSome folks simply cannot be satisfied with a warning and must stick the fork in the outlet for themselves.
- Fire-Dragon-DoL 3y agoI hear you but, if you love fan fiction, it shouldn't even be POSSIBLE to request to delete all copies of the derivative work. In the end copyright was meant to protect new ideas and while this is a follow-up to an existing story, it clearly has new ideas inside
- forgetfreeman 3y agoPfft. This is a classic example of fuck around and find out. Dude decided to try to sidecar one of the most beloved canons in recorded history instead of coming up with his own IP, then decided suing the estate that controls said IP was his ticket to a life of luxury. Biting the hand that feeds doesn't even begin, they should have been profoundly grateful that the estate tolerated their existence up until that point.
- autoexec 3y agoI'd have a lot more sympathy for the guy if he wasn't selling his fanfic. On the other hand, I'm not sure if we should be thrilled with the idea of companies searching though all the fanfic they can find with the intention of stealing fan's original ideas and storylines and then suing anyone who complains about it either. In the end, it's copyright that needs significant reform. Under a sane system of copyright tolkien's works would already be in the public domain and this guy would have been well within his rights to sell his story and sue if his original contributions were used without his permission. Given how things are currently though I can't see things playing out any differently.
- forgetfreeman 3y agoRight? Like the guy said, "If there's a new way I'll be the first in line, but it better work this time."
- charonn0 3y ago> He also ordered Polychron to destroy all electronic and physical copies of the published work, “The Fellowship of the King,” by Sunday. It sounds to me like the order applies to published copies rather than to his original manuscript.
- duskwuff 3y agoPrevious discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38689852 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38689852
- dang 3y agoThanks! Macroexpanded: Copyright claim against Tolkien estate backfires on LOTR fanfiction author - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38689852 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38689852 - Dec 2023 (121 comments)
- zanfr 3y agoleak to torrents, good luck deleted every copy then
- junipertea 3y agoWould you download and host an awful book out of principle?
- ndsipa_pomu 3y agoI certainly do for certain film and tv series that have been banned or cancelled (e.g. Disney's Song of the South).
- ShamelessC 3y agoThat’s quite strange.
- jaywalk 3y agoIt's really not. At all.
- ndsipa_pomu 3y agoIt's kind of a hobby, but generally known as datahoarding. Just this morning, I've been trying to find a copy of the "Science Fiction" series (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1380838/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1380838/) that has Cliff Stoll's "Cuckoo Egg" tale for the first episode. Unfortunately, can't find it and it may well disappear as "Yorkshire Television" no longer exists as a separate entity. (It's not banned - just obscure enough to vanish)
- Cthulhu_ 3y agoYeah. In some cases it's so bad it's good. Have you ever heard of a character called "Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way"? https://myimmortal.fandom.com/wiki/Ebony_Dark%27ness_Dementia_Raven_Way https://myimmortal.fandom.com/wiki/Ebony_Dark%27ness_Dementi...
- 3y ago
- ycombinatrix 3y agothis is really depressing to read
- luma 3y agoRead the facts of the case, I am strongly anti-copyright but this dude is just an asshole and has earned every bit of this.
- ycombinatrix 3y agothat's fair. on the other hand, the copyright really should have expired by now.
- spywaregorilla 3y agothe problem here is that the non copyright holder is trying to abuse copyright. the problem is still in copyright
- AdamJacobMuller 3y agohttps://archive.is/jgb5S https://archive.is/jgb5S
- underseacables 3y agoSomeone upload it to the internet before it’s gone forever!
- tmottabr 3y agoit was entered as evidence in the process.. you can forever get it from there..
- Ekaros 3y agoJust have to last until 1st of January and then host it in New Zealand and other life+50 countries.
- pavel_lishin 3y ago> In April, Polychron sued the Tolkien estate and Amazon. He claimed that “Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power,” an Amazon Prime Video prequel series that was released last year and is one of the few adaptations authorized by the Tolkien estate, infringed on the copyright of his book. He asked for $250 million in compensation. > Polychron said in court documents that he was inspired by Tolkien and the original “Rings” series, but he argued that he created a “wholly original book and concept” for the sequel, including “separate characters and story lines that compose as much as one-half of the 8-episode series” released by Amazon. Has anyone both read Polychron's work, and watched the Amazon series? Is there even a shadow of truth in this allegation?
- sambeau 3y agoThe claim to separate characters is somewhat undermined by chapter 1, page 1 which features Samwise and Rosie Gamgee, and mentions Bilbo and Frodo Baggins.
- RecycledEle 3y agoThese allegations sound similar to the Mexican Inn Cafe Tragedy. Details deleted, sorry. Thank You, American Courts. \s Who is right does not matter in court if someone who is rich enough stands to lose enough money.
- upon_drumhead 3y ago[citation needed]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- rocmcd 3y agoDo you have any citations for this case? I haven't been able to find anything that mentions such a court case (or anything mentioning connections between the Mexican Inn and the Frito Company).
- 3y ago
- RecycledEle 3y agoSo copyright demands the destruction of creative works... But creative works only exist because of ex-post-facto extensions to copyright after they were created, and if we do not hurry up an place Shakespeare's works under copyright for the profit of Sony, they will no ponger exist because Shakespeare has no motivation to write them. All this is especially true outside "Science the the Useful Arts," which is where corporate profits are most Constitutionally protected in the USA. \s
- remram 3y agoBetter (accurate) title from IGN: > The Lord of the Rings fan fiction writer who sued Amazon and the Tolkien Estate, claiming The Rings of Power infringed on his copyrighted novel, has lost.
- hohu 3y ago[dead]
- wageslave99 3y agoApart from the author being a peculiar man... Is the book good? Has anyone read it?
- duskwuff 3y agoIt's incredibly bad. It was also submitted as an exhibit in the court case, so you can see for yourself. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cacd.881511/gov.uscourts.cacd.881511.37.6.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cacd.88...
- wageslave99 3y agoWhat's the status of a work done without permission? I read that it is illegal and the court order it to be destroyed, but if it would not be destroyed, would the author regain the copyright after Tolkien works are in the public domain? Would it forever forbidden to be publicly available?
- ChrisArchitect 3y ago[dupe] More over here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38689852 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38689852
- neonate 3y agohttps://web.archive.org/web/20231221130921/https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/21/arts/lord-of-the-rings-sequel-lawsuit.html https://web.archive.org/web/20231221130921/https://www.nytim...