I think it’s okay to let this one go doesn’t seem like there is any value in his work.
I do think it’s time to open up the rights to older IPs and let the community make their own stories within universes though. I loved all the star wars EU stuff as a kid.
How can you decide that? Have you read his work? Why should only works with “value” matter?
The idea of someone destroying their own work to satisfy a copyright holder is abhorrent. Worse the copyright holders who counter sued contributed absolutely nothing to the original work they hold the copyright over - they’re just inheritors and businesses.
It just shows what a mess the copyright laws are. The writer shouldn’t have sued but he’d probably have been sued anyway because the copyright laws are a tool for right holders to exert control over other people, and go way beyond what is needed due to the influences of corporate greed and lobbying over decades.
I read his summary it was filled with sentences like “Thus begins the War of the Rings to End All Wars of the Rings.” It reeks of shitty fan fiction that should have lived out it’s life in a lost corner of the internet with all the other shitty fan fiction out there. It could easily have stayed there until humanity wipes itself out and the last servers lose power. This troll had to go a poke the bear and sue the rights holders for plagiarizing him in a prequel show loosely based off of existing Tolkien works when his novels are sequels.
As for what has value and why only things that have value matter. I think value is provided if a work of art or piece of media make you feel something, think about something new, or maybe just let you escape for a bit. What does that is going to vary based on the individual. I’m pretty sure this book only provided value to the author.
Copyright’s explicit purpose is to encourage new works.
Any form of “unpublishing” is theft from the public. You wanna say a guy can’t make money on a thing? Great, fine, go nuts. But nothing any human being put effort into deserves to be lost forever.
Yes, copyright exists to encourage new works - which the author ignored by creating content violating copyright law. Never mind the public, this dude stole from the copyright holders. He’s a pirate and he got caught.
It’s mind boggling how anyone could possibly consider otherwise. Aside from your own life, there’s nothing more belonging to oneself than their thoughts.
Once you share your thought, they are no longer yours alone, and the thoughts they spark in others are, in some ways, both yours and theirs. Or, if you prefer to hear it another way, “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”
This entire sub is delusional. You believe in things which are untrue. You make things up to justify theft. It’s funny and it’s sad. I really don’t know where you get these irrational theories or how you’d ever justify them in a court.
If you want to live in literal communism, sure, you can establish that any idea anyone expresses belongs to the world. In the world we actually live in, we have laws protecting people’s intellectual property in order for them to generate content and profit from those original ideas. Otherwise, what’s the point of having an idea at all if anyone can make money from it. This further promotes new original ideas that aren’t derivative of existing ones. This is exactly what the OP stated and I agreed with.
Every now and then I see threads like this on lemmy where people are getting downvoted into negatives despite being objectively correct about something (and the wrong info being upvoted). I think there may be a lot of very young, inexperienced, naive, and gullible children here. At least I hope they’re children.
No there is new work that has been done that you are reducing to “piracy”. As if intellectual and creative processes ever could take place in a vacuum. The only contradiction is that copyright laws as a concept do nothing than stifle innovation and progress. If you do not like how anyone can profit from other people’s ideas you should maybe rethink your stance on monetisation schemes in general instead.
True. To throw my opinion into the mix, if the Rings of Power show did actually copy from his work, they should look to partner with Demetrious instead of all this nonsense. I agree he legally can’t profit off the IP of the Tolkien estate as laws stand, but copywrite also lasts far longer than it has any good reason to. It should be the author’s lifetime plus a decade or so. Finally, it is an affront to creativity everywhere to order the destruction of all physical and electronic copies. That should not happen. Ever.
I’m not getting into how long a copyright should last. I don’t have a meaningful opinion on it.
What it seems people are overlooking (or forgiving?) is that the guy published a book about characters (IP) he doesn’t own. Taking something that doesn’t belong to you is theft.
Whether or not Amazon should option his material is irrelevant if he didn’t get permission to use it in the first place. I mean, fan fiction is one thing. Creative license and educational purposes could be argued. But he published a freaking book!
Do you think Zack Snyder should get to put out a Rebel Moon and call it “Rebel Moon: A Star Wars Story” without getting permission or paying for licensing? Is this the reality this sub believes we live in? If you write a novel and I read it and soon start writing better more successful stories based explicitly on your characters without crediting you or sharing in my profit, how would you feel? Should your work be public domain? Is that what you (collective) feel is best for “the public”?
I don’t really have an opinion on what should happen with the work either. I could see some cases where it would be a major loss for the public to have the work erased. This could be catastrophic for classic literature. For something so new and not having any established cultural significance (as much as you wish it did), I’d go with whatever a judge believes is best under the law. You’re welcome to argue the validity of the law, and I may agree with you, but that’s a different conversation.
Taking something that doesn’t belong to you is theft.
This is the point I wanted to contend and is the main premise I disagree with. In my opinion, nothing was taken, at most borrowed, by the author of the book.
But he published a freaking book!
Yes, is it not great?
Do you think Zack Snyder should get to put out a Rebel Moon and call it “Rebel Moon: A Star Wars Story” without getting permission or paying for licensing?
In my dreams, yes.
Is this the reality this sub believes we live in? If you write a novel and I read it and soon start writing better more successful stories based explicitly on your characters without crediting you or sharing in my profit, how would you feel?
I would be fucking thrilled to be honest. If someone not only cited my research, but actually improved on it I would schedule a meeting to talk with them ASAP.
Should your work be public domain? Is that what you (collective) feel is best for “the public”?
YES. Everything that is published should be publicly available as default. I understand that this would require another method for financing those that actually make new stuff, but that is something that is sorely needed anyway. What usually happens is that the actual creators are left with pennies while legal entities own IP almost indefinitely.
Also, I want to add that had IP laws always been what they are today, much great work from the past (that is now enjoying protection by copyright) could not have existed. I also ask how say the dwarves in Tolkien’s tales could be copyrighted when they are based on stories about dwarves from Norse mythology?
TL;DR there was a special time when all work got copyrighted into oblivion. It has to end so that humanity can create more cool new stuff just as we did back then.
I mean it deserves to be lost forever in that it has no artistic or ideological merit. Mein Kampf deserves to be lost. But we deserve to keep it as a warning so that we do not repeat history. But if humanity could grow to the point that such warnings are never needed again, and if the book could be forgotten due to losing all present and future relevance, that would be a good thing. What a thing deserves is sometimes different to what is necessary or good.
I don’t even like Tolkien (find his writing to be just excessive, I don’t need to know the color of the buttons on the shirt of the dead character with no name), and even I have to agree, lol.
Too many re-interpretations of authors’ works. Tolkien is highly detailed - not reflecting that (or worse, substituting your own details) in a movie or show is just hubris. If you’re so damn good why don’t you write your own shit. Oh, your name doesn’t sell instantly is why.
We've seen this with the Witcher, we've seen it with GoT, we've seen it with LOTR: super artistic production teams which have their heads so deep up their own arses and are entrenched so deeply inside that weird removed-from-reality Hollywood bubble that they legitimately think they know better how to interpret the lore some world renowned author made than the author himself. Always ends in mediocre showsand hilarious interviews with said production teams where
Oh God The Witcher. The production team was handed an incredibly strong female lead character who was smarter, more politically astute, and more feared/respected than almost any other character in the series. And they immediately tore her down and made her a petty whining brat while claiming it was about female empowerment. A pox on Netflix and the entire production team.
Didn’t the show runner say that the dumb public was to blame for the failure of the show?
Edit: he blamed dumb Americans.
Baginski said, “When a series is made for a huge mass of viewers, with different experiences, from different parts of the world, and a large part of them are Americans, these simplifications not only make sense, they are necessary.”
He has a point about simplifications when it comes to media and art being approachable by the masses (and I say this with no insult intended, simplification of anything will always have broader appeal). See popular music vs avante-guard jazz (i.e. Miles Davis, probably the most-approachable of the type!)
But holy cow what a condescending, arrogant, insulting pick.
Thing is: They are working from the basis of media that has been successful already. So the amount of "dumbing down" neccessary to achieve a somewhat broad appeal has already been done by the author of the original, so to speak. Their argument doesn't hold any water whatsoever on no level imaginable.
There is some stuff I don’t dislike about Netflix’s Witcher, but god damn, I feel like they actively set out to do the worst rewriting ever with how they treated/portrayed basically the entire Lodge of Sorceresses
My hopes were so high for the stupid thing. They couldn’t tell the story in front of them that was already loaded with allegirical social justice issues. They had to reinterpret the entire thing and just plain fucked it up. Just sad.
Game of Thrones is an odd one, because what they did was fuck up the characters. All of them. I don’t think a single character who survived to the end was left unscathed by shitty writing outside of a couple minor characters. It doesn’t really help that they obviously rushed the ending out, which only made it worse by making the actions of the characters make absolutely no sense.
My problem is that Galadriel was treated like an impatient, naive child by other characters when in Tolkien’s Lore she is already well-respected and older than most others.
Why? Because female? Bullshit, she was already strong and established by the time the events in Amazon’s LotR take place. They dumbed her down and made her look like an impulsive idiot incapable of seeing evil when that’s literally her whole character.
The showrunners did not give Galadriel the respect she deserved.
I wouldn’t say naive, but definitely reckless. And I would 100% say they portrayed her as strong in the tv series. Hell, it begins with her on an incursion on the remains of angband, which if you know the lore I’d say it’s pretty badass. Her arc in season 1 was about how she was so blinded by revenge and recklessness, that she couldn’t see the evil in front of her. Which is pretty fitting for a noldor elf. It shows that even trying your hardest to make good, your actions can and will have unintended consequences, even ‘evil’ ones. Which perfectly sets up her eventual rejection of the one ring, during the mirror scene in fellowship of the ring. She knew then she’d have good intentions using it, but she also knew more evil will come with that
Galadriel shouldn’t be blinded by revenge and recklessness, because Feanor murdered thousands of his own kin over his stolen Silmarils and Galadriel knew he would do something horrible for his own selfish reasons.
If she can see evil inside another person’s soul, surely she can see the consequences of her own actions 5 minutes before she takes said actions? Like jumping out of a boat hundreds of miles from any land mass? Or maybe she would know how and why the Queen of Numenor felt about helping her, prior to getting upset and yelling?
Nothing about her character in the Rings of Power has any respect for Tolkien’s work, because they dumbed her down and made her act incredibly stupid on multiple occasions, completely ignoring the power and wisdom she already possesses.
I don’t mean to start a discussion here, but this is your interpretation and it’s valid. But galadriel’s character has contradictory history depending on your sources (even regarding the kinslaying). And it’s debated even between Tolkien’s scholars the extend at which she can ‘sense evil’. After all, she herself was deceived by saruman after his corruption during the third age.
In your last paragraph you say ‘nothing about her character in the series has any respect for Tolkien’s work’. That’s simply hyperbole, and arguably not true, as even a surface level reading can prove otherwise. Such words are not Tolkien’s way.
Anyway, I don’t want you to change your mind, just want you to be aware of the possibility of other interpretations. Take care!
The story lines they fabricated were (mostly) formulaic, the effects were (mostly) poor, and the characters were (mostly) unlikable. Apart from that I liked it! :P
It had a few moments that I enjoyed but overall it fell flat because the characters where flat.
To me, it just seemed … dull. Like, the conversations characters were having weren’t interesting. What was happening on screen wasn’t interesting. I felt myself suddenly snapping back to reality several times each episode after my mind aimlessly drifted away from what I was watching. And I’m someone who doesn’t need Michael Bay explosions and constant action to enjoy a tv show. Really hope they turn it around and do something interesting with it. Absolute snooze fest.
Yeah. It had a few moments of character interaction that I liked but it mostly felt forced and dull. Sad really as it could have been much more than flashy.
Should copyright for works that old be expired? Yes!
In the actual world we live in, was this guy ever going to avoid being sued so hard that his grandchildren will be embarrassed for him? No!
You've got to admire the lemming-like devotion to the legal cliff he threw himself off though. Writing a sequel to not only a copyright work, but one that is still in the cultural zeitgeist thanks to a 20-year old wildly successful series of films? Ballsy. Subsequently suing one of the largest companies in the world and the estate that produced the original works as infringing his copyright?
Honestly, I’m surprised he wasn’t embarrassed to claim that any part of that tedious shitheap of storytelling that Amazon produced had been lifted from his work.
The few episodes of that ridiculous black-hole of entertainment are the only things I have ever watched where I truly wanted those hours of my life back.
You felt much more strongly about it than me then. I just found myself not caring about it in the slightest; the only thing I really felt was boredom. Which is arguably the worst possible outcome for any work of art.
I mean, Game of Thrones season 8 made me feel that I’m never watching any content related to it ever again. Not sure they really wanted that kind of hate.
“The Fellowship of the King” title is a combination of the titles of the first book in the LOTR trilogy “The Fellowship of the Ring” and the third book “The Return of the King”.
“The Two Trees” title is similar to the second book in the LOTR trilogy “The Two Towers”
Yeah, this guy didn’t have a leg to stand on. There’s an independently owned cafe opposite sarhole mill (inspiration for “the shire”) on the street JRR Tolkien grew up on called “the hungry hobbit”. It’s been called that since 2005 - before the release of the hobbit film. A production company sued this tiny sandwich shop, sitting on a roundabout 3 miles south of Birmingham for the unauthorised use of the word “hobbit”. That was completely egregious imo. It’s now called “the hungry hobb” - they just took down the last two letters on the sign. I really should grab a sandwich from them one day.
There are 309 million possible ways to combine 6 letters. I would wager only a few million are even remotely pronounceable. The notion that someone can claim a bunch of those words and prevent other people from using them, even in unrelated areas, is completely absurd. There are over 8 billion people on this planet, words get reused. They should just fucking deal with it.
A word isn’t a thought. Thoughts are unique, but a word can be arrived at independently in several different ways by the sea spelled with a C, you see.
I get your point but in this case it’s not JRR Tolkiens estate who’s claiming copyright infringement, it’s a random production company in Sweden or something. A production company in an entirely different country with no real ties to JRRT has decided an independent cafe built on the same street as Tolkien grew up on, opposite the mill he used as inspiration, is harming their asset somehow by calling themselves the hungry hobbit.
Unfortunately, you can sue anyone for any bogus reason you want. And if you have more money than whoever you’re suing, it doesn’t matter how frivolous it is, because you can just bankrupt them by forcing them to pay lawyer fees.
That’s precisely what happened here. The place had been called the hungry hobbit for years under multiple owners. The current owner bought it, updated some official paperwork and within the first 6 months of her ownership got hit with the “unauthorised usage” bs. She couldn’t afford to fight it. Thankfully the “hungry hobb” is still doing enough business to stay open 12 years later.
When it happened I thought the typeface was the issue rather than the word hobbit. But no.Here’s before and this is after. I can’t get my head around the fact that the production company sued this tiny sandwich shop. It’s so ridiculous!
Really where was it used?
Found it but no it was not. One line in one book from 1895 “The whole earth was overrun with ghosts, boggles … hobbits, hobgoblins."
So still think it’s very unlikely it was a word that anyone knew before the Hobbit.
Ballsy? He’s an outright copyright troll and anyone celebrating him here in the comments should read the article…
He wrote a knockoff book and then tried to claim Tolkien’s characters as his own and sue his estate? Does nobody remember the days of BS software patent trolls trying to claim they invented “the app” or “method for clicking on things with the mouse cursor?” Do we remember how mad we were at those shysters?
I read through the article but it doesn’t seem to specify the nature of the book. How do we know it’s a “knock off”? It might very well be fanfiction. Copyright law aside, fanfiction can be original and is a valid artistic expression.
This is quite a nuanced issue. The author is claiming that the Rings of Power copied his ideas. Even if the author didn’t have the legal right to publish this book, he might have put original ideas into his work, and the Tolkien Estate should not automatically own these. The copyright owner “should” (within the current legal framework) be able to make you take down your derivative work, but they don’t own it. The article doesn’t specify why the original lawsuit was dismissed.
The only sane thing to do in response to this is the same thing that SHOULD have been done when Paramount went all sue happy on folks making unofficial Star Trek stuff.
Creators should stop making things related to their works and consumers should stop consuming and giving Paramount money for the official works.
The lesson being if the rights holder for something wants to keep it all to themselves, let them, forget it exists and starve it out of profitable existence. Spend the time and money with content, creators, and consumers that don’t believe sucking up ever dime that’s not nailed down is, or should be, the ultimate goal.
Did you even read the article? This dumbass wrote a book based on LotR characters and then HE tried to sue the Tolkien estate and Amazon. This person actually probably needs mental help if they think this could have worked, it was such an incredibly bad idea that there has to be some kind of mental health crises involved.
Worth also mentioning the Tolkien estate is notoriously letigous. There are piracy sites that specifically ban Tolkiens works from being uploaded for that very reason.
Yeah wow it’s like I thought ( the right holder being able to dick around writers)
It was strikingly clear to the Court that Anderson’s work was a derivative work; that under 17 U.S.C. section 106(2) derivative works are the exclusive privilege of the copyright holder (Stallone, in this case); and that since Anderson’s work is unauthorized, no part of it can be given protection.
After he had meetings with MGM about using that script.
Well if they did plagiarize some independent’s fanfiction, and they can get away with that, it really limits the remedies for independent writers when their unpaid for script drafts end up being used for storylines.
First two books in the series were "Fellowship of the King" and "The Two Trees" so...I'm not entirely convinced they were even very original stories...
The author then filed suit against both Amazon and the Tolkien estate, claiming the streaming series “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” had borrowed from his sequel and infringed his copyright.
I honestly wouldn't even be surprised. What was it, that thing with Star Trek Discovery taking plot points from some adventure game with space-faring tardigrades?
Going after the copyright holder for infringing on your work, which by merely existing commercially infringes on their copyright, is one hell of a way to get sued out the arse...
Having said that, it is a crime that LOTR still hasn't entered the public domain yet.
I mean we all know what about clickbait and titles. The headline here is a perfect example. Because it makes it seem like Gary oldman wasn’t getting offers potentially for movies or didn’t have opportunities for movies. And he was worried about going under or not being able to support himself etc etc. But if you read the actual article, it’s made very clear that he wasn’t sparse for opportunity as an actor, but rather these movies gave him an opportunity to be with his children more while they were all going through a very rough time and still earn an income presumably to support their lifestyle and this is what he feels saved him personally.
Gary oldman is a good dad. And it seems like he wanted to put that first and foremost. Which I think is wonderful. I was raised by a father who was given soul custody of his kids during a very messy divorce. And now that I’m older i can see how much sacrifice he made for me and my sister. Cool that gary oldman seems willing to do the same for his kids.
The title does not need to be a quote to give you information about the article. They use the quote out of context specifically to twist it slightly and get more clicks.
Asking a question as a separated dad which I think I know the answer to. I get my kids every other week. Outside of that I also take them one on one (I have 3 of which 2 are special needs) when it isn’t my week. I have no idea why my ex doesn’t do the same. She comments I never have alone time because I’m using my week off from them, but I love my kids and they deserve one on one time. They also never leave my house early when the week is up but they’re always eager to come to my house even when it’s not time to show up yet.
I’ve always assumed it will pay off in the long run and they’re aware.
As a kid who survived through this maybe not special needs. But a kid who’s arrived through this. The best you can do is just show them how much you love and care for them no matter what. That will mean the world to them. Also, just hope your ex-whaterver e isn’t a bitch who warps and twists your kid’s minds. Cuz I don’t say this lightly. My dad with the way the court systems are was not awarded full custody lightly. The court system in America very much prefers the mother. And my mother was a crazy psychotic bitch who made me go to a fucking two week inpatient facility because she fucked up my head so bad. But my dad is the greatest thing I’ve ever had and he is caring and he has sacrificed more than I think anyone will ever know. And for all of that I said the best you can do is just put love first. Because love is what ultimately prevailed for my father despite my mother’s twisted fucked up words
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