Tolkien Estate Wins Court Order To Destroy Fan's 'Lord of the Rings' Sequel (nytimes.com) 136
Remy Tumin reports via the New York Times: It was supposed to be what a fan described as a "loving homage" to his hero, the author J.R.R. Tolkien, and to "The Lord of the Rings," which he called "one of the most defining experiences of his life." A judge in California had another view. The fan, Demetrious Polychron of Santa Monica, Calif., violated copyright protections this year when he wrote and published a sequel to the epic "Rings" series, U.S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson of the Central District of California ruled last week. In a summary judgment, Judge Wilson found "direct evidence of copying" and barred Polychron from further distributing the book or any others in a planned series. He also ordered Polychron to destroy all electronic and physical copies of the published work, "The Fellowship of the King," by Sunday. As of Wednesday, Amazon and Barnes & Noble were no longer listing the book for sale online. Steven Maier, a lawyer for the Tolkien estate, said the injunction was "an important success" for protecting Tolkien's work. "This case involved a serious infringement of The Lord of the Rings copyright, undertaken on a commercial basis," he said. "The estate hopes that the award of a permanent injunction and attorneys' fees will be sufficient to dissuade others who may have similar intentions."
Good old copyright (Score:2, Insightful)
Come back in 2044 and make your fan stuff. It's not public domain yet and it still belongs to someone. If you don't like it, then call your legislature and demand they overhaul copyright law in your respective country.
Re:Good old copyright (Score:5, Insightful)
>buy your legislature
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That's always been the case, bought with money or blood.
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While knee-jerk reaction would be positive, in reality it's too short.
I am all for maintaining copyright until the author's passing. Many great works were written with large pauses in between, or over a long period of time (a decade or more).
Re:Good old copyright (Score:4, Interesting)
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Quite a few people with a life insurance policy are worth dead more than alive. :)
Your point being?
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Just make it able to be renewed, but make it costly. So if you think you can still make a fortune off it, pay the public for the privilege of withholding the ability to create.
Re:Good old copyright (Score:4, Insightful)
That's a great idea that in no way obvoiusly bennifits big corperations with lots of money versus everyone else.
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That's a great idea that in no way obvoiusly bennifits big corperations with lots of money versus everyone else.
What renewal would do is eliminate the problem of "orphan works"-- that is, works that now are statutorialy still in copyright, but nobody has any idea who the copyright owner is and there's no way to find them to get permission.
We're lucky in some cases; for example we know that Robert E. Howard's copyrights passed to his father, who gave them to his friend, who transferred them to his wife, who passed them to her daughter. So we know who to pay to reprint Conan the Barbairan. But the majority of works f
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That's a great idea that in no way obvoiusly bennifits big corperations with lots of money versus everyone else.
You missed the point that copyright already mostly benefits big corporations.
You want to fix it to make things more reasonable? Renewals must be registered every five years. Miss the renewal deadline and it's public domain forever. No recovery. Renewal cost doubles each time. Fifty years maximum. If you can't squeeze enough money out in fifty years, it isn't worth copyright. If it's still extremely valuable after fifty years, those big corporations are getting screwed over at expiration in exchange
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You failed to inform me why I give a fuck about what big corporations want.
As far as I am concerned, they can fuck off and die a fiery death.
Re: Good old copyright (Score:2)
Re:Good old copyright (Score:5, Informative)
In this case, the fan sued the Tolkien estate first, the copyright action was in retribution.
As much as I dislike excessive copyright, if you kick a sleeping dragon then you don't get to complain if it decides you are crunchy and would taste good with ketchup.
Re:Good old copyright (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah - I am glad you mentioned that. It made me read the actually artical
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
Sadly (Score:4, Insightful)
I haven't read Polychron's work, but it's probably more faithful to Tolkien's than Rings of Power.
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That was the problem. Plus he didn't get permission to expand upon that work from the Tolkien estate.
As a bonus, he tried suing Amazon saying that RoP infringed _his_ copyright.
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Wow that takes some balls. And/or raw stupidity.
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Rings of Power is the least faithful non-pornographic adaptation of Tolkien.
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From what I've seen, a random text generation device would produce something more faithful to Tolkien's work than Rings of Power.
Re: Sadly (Score:2)
So.... (Score:4, Funny)
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Search & Replace (Score:3)
Seems like an easy enough fix, just rename the story and any characters and locations from LOTR, then re-publish. Or just add a bunch of dick and fart jokes and claim it's now a parody.
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"Bored of the Rings" is an existing parody.
Re:Search & Replace (Score:5, Interesting)
A couple decades ago, Donald Kingsbury wrote an excellent sequel to Isaac Asimov's Foundation series - it takes place after the second galactic empire has been established. Since Kingsbury did not have permission from Asimov's estate to do this, he used different names for the planets and historical people - the Mule becomes "The Clown" I believe, Hari Seldon is just "Founder", etc.). The backstory was still obviously recognizable.
This is probably what this particular Tolkien fan should've done.
Side note - I've mentioned it here before, but I think Kingsbury's story is significantly better than any of the "official" follow-ups. It's long and dense, but worth the time.
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Six years ago, I could not find a legitimate (and decent quality) digital version - just a bad-quality PDF on archive.org . But I did find it in hardcover via an Amazon third-party seller. Funny thing is, I only paid five or six bucks at the time - now it's almost $40.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/prod... [amazon.com]
The book is thick and the print is rather small - which is why my old eyes much prefer digital books nowadays, since you can control the font! But, even now, sometimes you don't have a choice.
Copyright (Score:4, Insightful)
The idea of copyright was to grant the author an income while the researched/wrote/etc another book. Some books take years to write. For this I have zero problems with copyright.
However the author once dead can no longer create any other works, this is now just an unearned income stream for the later generations.
Re:Copyright (Score:5, Insightful)
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Plus add a requirement to re-register the copyright after 20 years if you want to claim statutory damages.
Re:Copyright (Score:5, Interesting)
The content creator can hold the copyright indefinitely. The moment the copyright is transferred to anyone else - person or corporation, the clock starts with a hard ten year run out. This gives the content creator an income as long as they are alive, and then there is a ten year window after they die while someone else holds the copyright.
And yes, that means for big companies like Disney - they have to make the choice - does the copyright stay with the person who created it, or do they take then and start the ten year countdown.
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"And yes, that means for big companies ... does the copyright stay with the person who created it, or do they take ..."
Where I have worked all my life in software development, the company IS the original copyright holder, because the software is being written by employees acting as part of the company and not as private individuals (refer employment contract, including remuneration for said writing). I guess that is pretty standard for the vast majority of the software industry worldwide.
I don't see that it
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So that just means the ten year countdown starts immediately from the date of publication.
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Yes, the company isn't the creator on a work-for-hire, they just get the rights which would start the clock here. The creator still has to be a good old human in all cases.
Speaking of work-for-hire, anyone else notice that photographers don't seem to understand the concept.
Authors Generally Keep Copyrights (Score:3)
The content creator can hold the copyright indefinitely. The moment the copyright is transferred to anyone else - person or corporation, the clock starts with a hard ten year run out.
In that case copyrights would all be indefinite. Authors generally do not sign over their copyrights to publish. Instead, they grant a publisher the exclusive right to publish their work while retaining the copyright themselves..
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But it wouldn't be. The death of the author then becomes the trigger for the countdown as his ownership of the copyright gets passed to his heirs, granting them a ten year income as part of the inheritance (for however much or little the stories may be worth by then), and after that it's all public domain forever.
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Provided the "author" isn't a shell company that's kept alive artificially forever to perpetuate copyright.
Remember: Corporations are people. Just not as tasty when put into Soylent Barf.
Re: Authors Generally Keep Copyrights (Score:2)
Existing copyright law already differentiates between corporations as people and individuals as people, there is no reason to assume that would stop when adjusting term duration.
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You have a really defeatist attitude towards remaking a law that isn't working as it should.
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I'm also okay with a reasonable minimum copyright time even if you die shortly after publication; if you're still writing at 80, or die at a young age, it's okay to have the proceeds of your work act as a small part of your inheritance and/or as a form of life insurance. Something like the greater of 10-20 years (pick your favorite number in that range) from date of publication or the lifespan of the author (if you're a corporation, you only get the 10-20 years, period), not a guaranteed 70+. There is no justification for your great-grandchildren to still be gatekeeping your works for profit.
I'd argue going one further.
A lot of the reason "rights holders" want to keep their back catalogues locked up is that free access to classics will me fewer people will buy the latest dross they've excreted out.
So I'd say you get a 3 (or maybe 5) year copyright for a minimal fee to cover processing, then a yearly fee increasing each year (I'd say doubling per year is not unreasonable) up to a maximum of 20 years including the initial period.
This would be applicable to a corporation or individual.
Fixed Period, No Derivatives while Alive (Score:4, Insightful)
Copyright should end when the author dies.
I disagree - copyrights should be for a fixed term, say 25 years, regardless of the author's lifespan. The entire point of copyright is to encourage and promote the creation and publication of material. If an author can write one good book and then live off it for the rest of their lives there is zero incentive to write more works. Conversely, if they write a book and then get hit by a bus their family should still be allowed to get the earnings from the work they did writing the book.
Having a fixed term of a couple of decades means that like any job you get to make money based on the continuous effort you are putting in and the quality of the work you do. What would be reasonable though is to prevent derivative works during the lifespan of the author. This would preserve the author's control of their "universe" to allow future works and would also require things like movies of a book to be under the author's control if they are still alive.
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I agree with you generally, except that this would incentivise, for lack of a better term, "copyright assassination" - the deliberate termination of someone in order to release lucrative copyright.
A reasonable amount of time (a decade or less) after an author's passing should mitigate this for the most part, or tie copyright to expected lifespan (eg, "100 years after the author's birth")
This wouldn't apply to corporate-owned copyrights, of course. A hard time limit should be fine there because the interest
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I think a limited copyright for each work should be sufficient: 25 years or so, that start ticking when the work is first published (or when the author first asserts their copyright, for instance when they claim infringement before the work is published). But that pertains to specific works. The author's moral rights should lapse upon the author's death, and others should then be free to create der
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A flat 25 years makes sense though sure. Moral rights absolutely should lapse at death, where they even exist (they're not universally accepted to begin with)
I agree with the absurdity over the Tolkien estate absolutely.
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Copyright should end when the author dies.
The idea of copyright was to grant the author an income while the researched/wrote/etc another book. Some books take years to write. For this I have zero problems with copyright.
However the author once dead can no longer create any other works, this is now just an unearned income stream for the later generations.
I'd go even further, and say we should do it like the founding fathers did: copyright lasts 7 years, renewable to 14.
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You're off by a factor of two. It was 14 years, renewable for an additional 14 years.
And frankly, given how slow the transmission of information was back then compared to how quick it is today, it seems to me that copyright is far too excessively long today.
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art, the one and only thing copyright exists to protect.
copyright was invented by kings to enforce censorship, and was later adapted by corporations to perpetuate wealth.
"teh poor artists" and their revenues were just figurants in the narrative to push this adaptation, "protection of art" was never even an excuse. that's too dumb even for the average consumer drone.
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art, the one and only thing copyright exists to protect.
copyright was invented by kings to enforce censorship.
Inaccurate. Kings just censored, period. They didn't need copyright laws to do so. And it was pretty much ubiquitous; free speech wasn't invented yet.
The US copyright law is in the constitution, which explicitly states what it is for:
(and, for those stating "70 years after death of author is too long:"-- I'd say yes, the c
Monarchs [Re:Copyright] (Score:2)
The original idea behind copyright was to allow the ruling monarch to determine what books could be published. That's why the money earned through them is called "a royalty".
Sigh. No, not true. Monarchs didn't need or use copyright to do that. In England, a license to publish was required. This was not the same as copyright, it was basically a statement that the censors agreed that the publication didn't have anything seditious in it or anything affronting public morals or advocating immoral behavior.
An essay on the details procedure in Spain can be found here. https://www.lehman.cuny.edu/ci... [cuny.edu]
The rabbit hole goes even deeper (Score:5, Informative)
After this guy published his "homage" , this guy had the gall to sue the Tolkien Staten AND Amazon over Copyright Ingringement over "the rings of power series":
But the following April, Polychron attempted to sue the Tolkien estate and Amazon over the spin-off TV series The Rings of Power, which he claimed infringed the copyright in his book. A California court dismissed the case after the judge ruled that Polychron’s text was, in fact, infringing on Amazon’s prequel, released in September 2022.
Of course, he lost, he got countersuied, and here we are...
By the way, this more complete article IS NOT behind a paywall
https://www.theguardian.com/bo... [theguardian.com]
Re: The rabbit hole goes even deeper (Score:2)
I'm guessing the book is awful. Not that Tolkein wasa great writer. World-builder, yes. Writer, no.
Re:The rabbit hole goes even deeper (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah. This stinks of cherry-picking on NYT/Slashdot's part.
Guy experienced fuck around/find out.
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this guy had the gall to sue the Tolkien Staten AND Amazon over Copyright Ingringement over "the rings of power series":
Are you sure he was not suing for mental damage caused by watching it? The writing on that show was so bad it is hard to imagine anyone ever wanting to claim it was based on something they wrote.
Wow, that is misleading. (Score:5, Informative)
The key point here isn't that he wrote a fic, and it wasn't "a loving homage", he was claiming that he owned the rights to LoTR and suing over it. His suit against Amazon was what brought him to the Tolkein estate's attention.
I think if he'd made the fan work and not actively gone trying to pick a fight with them, they'd likely not have cared.
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What balls, verging on psychosis.
Reminds me of the episode of Portlandia where Matt Groening sues a guy for making Bart Simpson tshirts. "I'm not suing because he is bootlegging Bart, I'm suing because they suck."
Re:Wow, that is misleading. (Score:5, Insightful)
So everybody sucks here:
- The "Tolkein Estate" should not exist - Tolkein is dead, and anyway, LoTR was written 70 years ago, so the copyrights should have long since ended.
- The fanfic author was an idiot for actually suing people as though he had any rights to the original works.
Greed. It's greed all the way down.
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If it's actually any good I think destroying it (even if you could do that) is the wrong call. In the worst case the copyright should become owned by the Tolkien estate, despite that I also do not think it should really exist.
Try 'The Last Ring Bearer' (Score:3, Interesting)
What if the wizards and the elves were actually the bad guys?
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That was an amazing book and really enjoyed the perspective. I highly recommend reading it.
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Electronic copies (Score:3)
>destroy all electronic and physical copies of the published work
This judge doesn't appear to be familiar with how the internet works.
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This judge doesn't appear to be familiar with how the internet works.
Now that's one shocking revelation nobody expected...
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I think there's a good chance that it will be unavailable in 10 years, maybe even 1 year.
It's apparently pretty terrible, and of little interest except as a curiosity. If the DMCA the Internet Archive and other sites hosting it, any torrents will probably die, and eventually it will fall off Usenet.
There is a lot of stuff you just can't find online anymore.
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No, and despite the silliness of the case, I question the wisdom of the judge that doesn't understand primitives like branching and entropy. Unenforceable is unenforceable.
Misleading title (Score:4, Informative)
This clown tried to sell his fanfic and later was suing the Tolkien state over Tolkien's books rights. And naturally, got crushed like a bug.
The so-called "IPR" is the worst creativity kille (Score:2)
It is beyond ridiculous that an original work is a "copyright" violation.
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Copyright was invented for both, actually, but certainly not for feeding author's random heirs four generations down the road.
Tolkien is dead. His rights are dead. (Score:2)
Not a cash cow to be milked for generations.
Link to encourage creativity:
https://play.google.com/store/books/details/The_Fellowship_Of_The_King_The_War_Of_The_Rings_Bo?id=iH6iEAAAQBAJ&gl=US
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The loony sued Amazon because he was upset his fanfic was made non-canon by their series. Fuck around/find out distilled to its most bitter dregs.
Re: Tolkien is dead. His rights are dead. (Score:3)
Here, as usual, grossly over-extended copyright terms are being used to stifle creativity.
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You didn't really address what the grandparent comment said. Apparently the Tolkien estate has never sued for fan-fiction up till now, loud and offensive though their rejection of it may be.
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Any creative challenging the Tolkien parasites deserves support.
Bad Source (Score:5, Informative)
For shame, Slashdot. You linked the "big bad evil stopping the underdog" version.
For those interested, the events happened:
- Guy writes LotR fanfic prequel, with a lot of detail to make it fit in the official canon
- Amazon makes LotR prequel with official permission
- Guy gets miffed that his fanfic is now non-canon
- Guy sues Amazon for copyright infringement
- Fuck around/find out closes the loop
A far better source that doesn't try to reshape events for a specific narrative. [theguardian.com]
Re:Bad Source (Score:5, Interesting)
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"as long as you don't distribute it"
-1, offtopic
Polychron was distributing copies, so your "question" is moot.
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The guy is upset that his frequent and excessively detailed description of dwarf cocks is now non-canon.
Fun with Estates and Trusts (Score:2)
Apparently the Tolkien Estate is a corporate zombie designed to extract money from anyone who tries to use Tolkein's work now that he's been dead a while. If a project tries to use Tolkein's work, they sue, until they settle out of court and collect a tidy sum. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
The Tolkien Trust is the family's trust designed to donate the Tolkien Estate's money.
So basically it's a typical aristocratic vampire family, sucking off grandad's legacy, making sure nobody can use his work without
It has been long enough (Score:2)
That copyright has been going more than long enough, how much more money could the modern day Tolkien clan possibly want to make? 6 movies and Hollywood bent a whole country over backwards during production. This really has been going on long enough.
Copyright needs an overhaul (Score:3)
I guess we can agree that someone who puts work into something should have the right to benefit from it. If you create something, you should have the right to market it, and you shouldn't have to worry that some dickhead goes and steals your work to market it instead because he has the better facilities and can easily outpace your ability to market it. Think what would happen if you wrote the next "White Christmas", some large recording studio hears it and could press copies without paying you a dime.
I guess we can at least agree that this would not be fair, and that this would go against the spirit of how innovation and profiting from innovation should work: Whoever invents should benefit from it.
Since works where the majority of the value resides in its idea are nontrivial to protect against multiplication (or, in simpler terms, if copying is a trivial matter because you don't have to multiply the molecules), some kind of legal protection is the only way to ensure this is the case. So yes, I do agree that some sort of copyright should be in place, if only to protect the creators of a work against organizations that could easily surpass the creator's ability to reproduce it and rip him off.
But the current lengths are simply and plainly insane. An example: "Love me do" by the Beatles was released in October 1962, written by Lennon/McCartney. John Lennon is dead, but Paul is still alive (hush, conspiracy loons!). Provided Paul dies today, the copyright would expire just shy of the year 2100. Almost 150 YEARS after the song was released for the first time.
To put that in perspective, in 1882, 150 years ago, the 1812 overture [youtube.com] was debuted.
As a funny side note, the copyright of "Mein Kampf" expired only in 2015, and before that the state of Bavaria had the rights to the book (and used them to prohibit its printing where it could). So... yeah, there are good arguments for an insanely long copyright...
In most other cases, I think we can agree that it's more detrimental to invention than it is to further it by aiding the creator. Because a copyright that expires 3 generations after the creator's death doesn't help him. It's like saying I should be allowed to collect rent from the houses my grandfather who was a bricklayer built. Why the hell would I work if I could just do that?
Perpetual copyright is not sensible as an encouragement to create. When I can milk a single successful invention forever, I have no reason to keep inventing. If I can milk a single successful song for royalties forever, why continue writing songs? One could argue that it enables me to write the songs I want instead of the ones that sell because i'm not dependent on that anymore but: Should it be that way? Last I checked our society, and our economy, was meant to demand you produce what society and economy wants, not what fancies you.
Give people an incentive to produce. Let them benefit from creating, but don't make it forever plus 70 years. That's not encouraging, if anything, it's detrimental to the alleged purpose.
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As a funny side note, the copyright of "Mein Kampf" expired only in 2015, and before that the state of Bavaria had the rights to the book (and used them to prohibit its printing where it could). So... yeah, there are good arguments for an insanely long copyright...
So copyright is good in that it can be a tool of censorship? Oh my. You are a potential dictator. I do not like that.
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The fuck you talking about? Care to elaborate?
Is the book good?? (Score:2)
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Polychron was foolish for suing because of Amazon's Rings Of Power; it was a prequel that was at least founded in canon.
Fellowship of the King, OTOH:
""Publisher Description (https://fable.co/book/the-fellowship-of-the-king-by-demetrious-polychron-9798986410456#about)
Long before Annatar, the original Rings of Power were forged by the Elven Lord Celebrimbor and the Dwarven smith Narvi in Eregion near the Misty Mountains. These first magic Rings were far more powerful than those that came after and were corrup
Better luck in 20 years (Score:2)
Tolkien died in 1973, so his copyright ends (in most countries) on 2043-12-31.
Nosferatu (Score:2)
Fun fact: Bram Stoker's heirs sued the producers of Nosferatu and obtained a judgement ordering all copies of that film to be destroyed. Fortunately, at least a few copies survived.
Can they do this? (Score:2)
Isn't an author generally allowed to write "in the universe' of $FAMOUS_PERSON so long as he writes under his own name, distinct from the original?
When did copyright become this? (Score:2)
I'm sure I'm displaying my ignorance to one and all here, but I've got to ask. . . Copyright originally covered only the actual published works, I think? When did it come to include such abstractions as characters, character names and similar descriptions, settings, etc? (And how, if at all, does that tie into trademark law?)
Re:end all patents and copyrights (Score:5, Insightful)
In the decades you've been railing against intellectual property protections, did you ever take a moment to think about the consequences of your libertarian nonsense?
Patents, copyrights, and trademarks are absolutely necessary. Trademarks protect the consumer as much as the companies that hold them. For every patent troll, there are countless small inventors that wouldn't reap any reward for their effort without it. Even if you're convinced that larger companies would still spend billions in R&D, being forced to protect their investments as trade secrets would slow progress dramatically. I can only imagine the DRM hell we'd be in without copyright, to say nothing of the fact that few authors or other creators could survive without those protections.
Software patents probably shouldn't be a thing and copyright terms should be shortened significantly, probably to the original 14 +14. Throwing it out entirely, however, is the dumbest thing I've read here all week.
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no software patents in europe and the world didn't end!
ohh. some companies may not want to invest... too bab, universities and public research centers also do that, that in turn benefit everyone not just one company. If companies do not want to be overshadowed by others, they have to invest in R&D or will fade away
copyright is way too long, 95 years is huge, blame disney and corrupted politicians
real patents may have their merits (but even those only sometimes), but usually are too long
software patents
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no software patents in europe and the world didn't end!
Learn how to read.
Don't waste my time with your nonsense again.
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For every patent troll, there are countless small inventors that wouldn't reap any reward for their effort without it.
I have seen this argument thrown around many times, yet it seems impossible to get hard numbers. How much money is going to these "small inventors"? How much to patent trolls? How much to attorneys? Without those figures, there is no way to have a reasonable argument.
Re:end all patents and copyrights (Score:4, Insightful)
It doesn't matter how many patent trolls there are. Without patent protection, no small inventors can benefit from their effort.
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That's pretty delusional, even for a libertarian!
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Ha, how convenient, you are taking one particular case - trademark
Outright lying is pathetic, even for you. Though I suppose it's also possible that you're just stupid and illiterate. I talked about patents, copyrights, and trademarks because, as you said "the government shouldn't be protecting anyone's monopoly on anything".
Not that I expected better from the average libertarian. You have to be both completely delusional and unusually stupid to believe that nonsense.
Let's take a quick look at some of your insanity:
[...] it is a completely different thing to use the government laws, weapons, prisons, police of protect business practices.
How, exactly, do you think governments enforce tradema
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Well there goes the GPL.