9 ms·

I 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 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 ago
I 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 ago
  It really should not matter. It shouldn't even be allowed to ban non-commercial fan fiction.
  - duskwuff 3y ago
    This 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 ago
      Kind of like patent trolls patenting an invention someone else is already actually using
  - jabroni_salad 3y ago
    https://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 ago
  Even if it was horribly offensive and morally repugnant, I would still say that the court should let private copies exist.
  - ceejayoz 3y ago
    The court is hosting one in the link above.
    - whatshisface 3y ago
      Why are they bothering to ask anyone to destroy it?
      - ceejayoz 3y ago
        Because 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 ago
        No; we take away your hammers. It's quite an old approach.
        ClumsyPilot 3y ago
        Taking away the hammer would placing the fanwork into public domain. Here, we are specifically destroying the hammer as a punishment.
- sugarkjube 3y ago
  This 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 ago
    I 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 ago
  It'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 ago
No 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 ago
  So 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 ago
    It’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 ago
      Or 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 ago
A 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 ago
  Thank 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 ago
    His 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 ago
This 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 ago
  I 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 ago
    Courts 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 ago
      Some folks simply cannot be satisfied with a warning and must stick the fork in the outlet for themselves.
    - Fire-Dragon-DoL 3y ago
      I 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 ago
Pfft. 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 ago
  I'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 ago
    Right? 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 ago

I 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 ago
It really should not matter. It shouldn't even be allowed to ban non-commercial fan fiction.
- duskwuff 3y ago
  This 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 ago
    Kind of like patent trolls patenting an invention someone else is already actually using
- jabroni_salad 3y ago
  https://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 ago
Even if it was horribly offensive and morally repugnant, I would still say that the court should let private copies exist.
- ceejayoz 3y ago
  The court is hosting one in the link above.
  - whatshisface 3y ago
    Why are they bothering to ask anyone to destroy it?
    - ceejayoz 3y ago
      Because 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 ago
        No; we take away your hammers. It's quite an old approach.
        ClumsyPilot 3y ago
        Taking away the hammer would placing the fanwork into public domain. Here, we are specifically destroying the hammer as a punishment.
sugarkjube 3y ago
This 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 ago
  I 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 ago
It'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 ago

No 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 ago
So 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 ago
  It’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 ago
    Or 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 ago

A 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 ago
Thank 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 ago
  His 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 ago

This 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 ago
I 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 ago
  Courts 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 ago
    Some folks simply cannot be satisfied with a warning and must stick the fork in the outlet for themselves.
  - Fire-Dragon-DoL 3y ago
    I 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 ago

Pfft. 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 ago
I'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 ago
  Right? 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.