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As I already said, by publishing your own work you don't give your rights for the work away. Yes, he's suing people who are using his artwork to make money for

by mikkom 12y ago

As I already said, by publishing your own work you don't give your rights for the work away. Yes, he's suing people who are using his artwork to make money for themselves. Why do you think that is a problem and why do you think they shouldn't pay him a cut for using his artwork?

comboy 12y ago
It goes along with how trademark laws in US work (I think), if you don't defend them, you lose rights. IANAL so this could be a bad example. Law is on his side, so they should pay. My problem is just with him changing his mind at some point. Not defending his rights from the start and even being happy about them being broken could suggest that he meant it to be free. And as others mentioned, there's no chance that it would have any value whatsoever if it wasn't. E.g. company X puts some small open source code online (yes, nowadays nobody would touch it without a license). People modify it, improve it, share it, build on top of it. Company X often tweets "awesome to see how our code spreads and all fantastic usages of it". And then after some time it sues. i.e. as others mentioned, this picture would have no value if it would not (assumed to) be in public domain and without all thousands comics and memes done on top of it.
- gamblor956 12y ago
  Why would you make legal arguments about an area of the law you don't know anything about? What is at issue here is the copyright, not the trademark. Trademarks must be actively enforced or they are lost. Copyrights must merely be registered (which was done in this case) and can be enforced essentially whenever the rights owner chooses to enforce. The purpose of copyright is to protect the creator's right to profit from his creation. It's fine that he didn't go after the initial copiers on 4chan--they weren't profiting from copying the troll face. If you had RTFA, you would know that he's only going after those that are earning income (i.e., charging money) from using his creation, which is perfectly fine, legally and morally.

by mikkom 12y ago

comboy 12y ago

It goes along with how trademark laws in US work (I think), if you don't defend them, you lose rights. IANAL so this could be a bad example. Law is on his side, so they should pay. My problem is just with him changing his mind at some point. Not defending his rights from the start and even being happy about them being broken could suggest that he meant it to be free. And as others mentioned, there's no chance that it would have any value whatsoever if it wasn't. E.g. company X puts some small open source code online (yes, nowadays nobody would touch it without a license). People modify it, improve it, share it, build on top of it. Company X often tweets "awesome to see how our code spreads and all fantastic usages of it". And then after some time it sues. i.e. as others mentioned, this picture would have no value if it would not (assumed to) be in public domain and without all thousands comics and memes done on top of it.

gamblor956 12y ago
Why would you make legal arguments about an area of the law you don't know anything about? What is at issue here is the copyright, not the trademark. Trademarks must be actively enforced or they are lost. Copyrights must merely be registered (which was done in this case) and can be enforced essentially whenever the rights owner chooses to enforce. The purpose of copyright is to protect the creator's right to profit from his creation. It's fine that he didn't go after the initial copiers on 4chan--they weren't profiting from copying the troll face. If you had RTFA, you would know that he's only going after those that are earning income (i.e., charging money) from using his creation, which is perfectly fine, legally and morally.