4 ms·

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 Ring

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
    - ToucanLoucan 3y ago
      It's definitely a consequence I never considered as possible and frankly am not a fan of, to be clear. But fan created works are still very legally gray basically across the board. If I had heard about this sooner, I likely would've been following the case closely as I wouldn't have any clue what to expect in terms of outcome. Ultimately though, at least insofar as the current system exists and operates, fan creations are not protected and in fact seem to be legally unprotected. In the odd event this person was correct, that one of the writers for Rings of Power adapted their work without compensation... well... it isn't entirely theirs, by definition, even if you have fan creations enshrined as fair use. There would probably have to be some legislation covering intellectual property that's derived from other intellectual property, and how that ownership then is calculated. Certainly, expecting the Tolkien estate and a company the size of Amazon to have to pay royalties to a fan writer is just, and I'm sorry, but it's fucking absurd.
      - Fire-Dragon-DoL 3y ago
        Agreed. My point is specific about deleting work, that's wrong from the perspective of copyright. A law could be put in place where derivative work cannot be commercialized. It would be nice
  - ClumsyPilot 3y ago
    > Courts aren't moral entities, they're legal ones. This is totally wrong. We have standards of behaviour and ethics throughout the legal system, and you could lose in court because: 1. You act in a manner that is arbitrary and capricious 2. You show contempt of the court 3. You act in bad faith 4. The contract Shocks the conscience 5. You have mens rea, or guilty mind
  - s1artibartfast 3y ago
    Stupid prizes are not a good thing, and we should not be excited out our public institutions handing them out. Stupid prizes are a predictable but negative response. Like mouthing off to the police and then getting a beating - a predictable and stupid prize. But that doesn't mean we should endorse and accept that as an appropriate response from our institutions.
    - ToucanLoucan 3y ago
      I wouldn't say they are good at all, in fact this one included, they're often quite bad, but they are also quite predictable. They're the result of inadvisable actions taken on usually against some combination of understood law, common sense, or pro-social practices resulting in a set of consequences, the severity of which runs the gamut, that most people upon thinking about it could've outlined for you ahead of time. Hence the saying: Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. One could argue you couldn't even really get rid of them entirely if you wanted. No matter how understanding and accommodating you make a given system, it would doubtlessly remain possible to act so entirely devoid of reason that you could inflict upon yourself consequences that most people would say are not fit to your offenses, but nevertheless happen because of the aforementioned acts. For example, if you were to under-pay your taxes by $20 and simply refused any and all compliance with the resulting process, the IRS will eventually go about spending several thousand dollars of various employee's and legal resources to collect that $20 plus any and all interest, fees, etc. that resulted. Most people would be correct I feel to say that expending all those resources and all that time and such to collect a measly $20 is stupid, especially if the balance ended up being many hundreds if not thousands of dollars by the time the fines and interest were tabulated. But this is a classic play-stupid-games situation: you refused to pay the $20 for whatever odd reason, and the system in turn acts how it would for anyone else refusing to pay taxes because building a special system for weirdos who only underpay by $20 would also be a really huge waste of time and resources.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
_nalply 3y ago
So a case of reformatio in peius [0]? [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reformatio_in_peius https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reformatio_in_peius EDIT: in some (or perhaps many) countries this is explicitly forbidden in many cases. One explicit legal norm in Germany: § 331 StPO: Verbot der Verschlechterung (Penal rules of procedure: prohibition of pejoration) Switzerland also knows the prohibition of reformatio in peius in many cases but it stems from the legal maxime that in some trial types the judge never goes beyond what the party has requested, but this is a double-edged sword: on one hand you are protected from reformatio in peius but on the other hand you miss out on opportunities you did not think about and therefore did not request. Sometimes the judge even maliciously adds to the decision that there was a right to something but it won't be granted because it was not requested.

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
  - ToucanLoucan 3y ago
    It's definitely a consequence I never considered as possible and frankly am not a fan of, to be clear. But fan created works are still very legally gray basically across the board. If I had heard about this sooner, I likely would've been following the case closely as I wouldn't have any clue what to expect in terms of outcome. Ultimately though, at least insofar as the current system exists and operates, fan creations are not protected and in fact seem to be legally unprotected. In the odd event this person was correct, that one of the writers for Rings of Power adapted their work without compensation... well... it isn't entirely theirs, by definition, even if you have fan creations enshrined as fair use. There would probably have to be some legislation covering intellectual property that's derived from other intellectual property, and how that ownership then is calculated. Certainly, expecting the Tolkien estate and a company the size of Amazon to have to pay royalties to a fan writer is just, and I'm sorry, but it's fucking absurd.
    - Fire-Dragon-DoL 3y ago
      Agreed. My point is specific about deleting work, that's wrong from the perspective of copyright. A law could be put in place where derivative work cannot be commercialized. It would be nice
- ClumsyPilot 3y ago
  > Courts aren't moral entities, they're legal ones. This is totally wrong. We have standards of behaviour and ethics throughout the legal system, and you could lose in court because: 1. You act in a manner that is arbitrary and capricious 2. You show contempt of the court 3. You act in bad faith 4. The contract Shocks the conscience 5. You have mens rea, or guilty mind
- s1artibartfast 3y ago
  Stupid prizes are not a good thing, and we should not be excited out our public institutions handing them out. Stupid prizes are a predictable but negative response. Like mouthing off to the police and then getting a beating - a predictable and stupid prize. But that doesn't mean we should endorse and accept that as an appropriate response from our institutions.
  - ToucanLoucan 3y ago
    I wouldn't say they are good at all, in fact this one included, they're often quite bad, but they are also quite predictable. They're the result of inadvisable actions taken on usually against some combination of understood law, common sense, or pro-social practices resulting in a set of consequences, the severity of which runs the gamut, that most people upon thinking about it could've outlined for you ahead of time. Hence the saying: Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. One could argue you couldn't even really get rid of them entirely if you wanted. No matter how understanding and accommodating you make a given system, it would doubtlessly remain possible to act so entirely devoid of reason that you could inflict upon yourself consequences that most people would say are not fit to your offenses, but nevertheless happen because of the aforementioned acts. For example, if you were to under-pay your taxes by $20 and simply refused any and all compliance with the resulting process, the IRS will eventually go about spending several thousand dollars of various employee's and legal resources to collect that $20 plus any and all interest, fees, etc. that resulted. Most people would be correct I feel to say that expending all those resources and all that time and such to collect a measly $20 is stupid, especially if the balance ended up being many hundreds if not thousands of dollars by the time the fines and interest were tabulated. But this is a classic play-stupid-games situation: you refused to pay the $20 for whatever odd reason, and the system in turn acts how it would for anyone else refusing to pay taxes because building a special system for weirdos who only underpay by $20 would also be a really huge waste of time and resources.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

_nalply 3y ago

So a case of reformatio in peius [0]? [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reformatio_in_peius https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reformatio_in_peius EDIT: in some (or perhaps many) countries this is explicitly forbidden in many cases. One explicit legal norm in Germany: § 331 StPO: Verbot der Verschlechterung (Penal rules of procedure: prohibition of pejoration) Switzerland also knows the prohibition of reformatio in peius in many cases but it stems from the legal maxime that in some trial types the judge never goes beyond what the party has requested, but this is a double-edged sword: on one hand you are protected from reformatio in peius but on the other hand you miss out on opportunities you did not think about and therefore did not request. Sometimes the judge even maliciously adds to the decision that there was a right to something but it won't be granted because it was not requested.