seaturtle ( @seaturtle@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) English208•7 months agoHeh, more of this shit.
Remember, the only reason we can still watch the highly influential 1922 vampire movie Nosferatu today is because some people didn’t destroy all their copies despite a court saying they had to.
DISOBEY DESTRUCTION ORDERS.
COPY ALL THE THINGS.
frezik ( @frezik@midwest.social ) English41•6 months agoThe author in question here was pretty shitty. He wrote his own sequel to called “Fellowship of the King”, and then sued Amazon and the Tolkien estate saying they stole elements from his book. He lost, and the Tolkien estate countersued.
The guy played stupid games and won stupid prizes.
seaturtle ( @seaturtle@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) English3•6 months agoYeah, I read. I don’t have much sympathy for him. He sounds like a jerk.
IMO preserving the content is more important than honoring him (or, for that matter, humiliating him).
NaoPb ( @NaoPb@eviltoast.org ) English10•6 months agoSome older dutch movies were released as rentals to the theaters that had to be returned after they stopped playing the movie. These copies were all destroyed and re-releases on DVD now look worse than what it looked like in movie theatres.
The good news is that some theatres hung on to some movies.
seaturtle ( @seaturtle@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) English3•6 months agoThank goodness. Have those copies resurfaced and gone into the possession of proper archivists and/or research collections?
NaoPb ( @NaoPb@eviltoast.org ) English2•6 months agoI don’t know how many might be still be around, but I know for a couple of movies where they are. I don’t think they have been properly archived and/or converted to digital media yet. I would like to see if there are people in The Netherlands that can do these things and if the current owners of the rolls of film are willing to.
ninjan ( @ninjan@lemmy.mildgrim.com ) English163•7 months agoIn my opinion LotR should’ve already entered the public domain but thanks to Disney well have to wait until 2044 for that.
hh93 ( @hh93@lemm.ee ) English60•7 months agoCan’t have the already well-off children go without their steady income that they didn’t have to work for…
Alien Nathan Edward ( @reverendsteveii@lemm.ee ) English27•7 months agoWell how else are we supposed to encourage people to be related to people who develop intellectual property? It makes sense from a neponomic standpoint.
sqgl ( @sqgl@beehaw.org ) English8•7 months agoBelieve it or not, some people do work extra hard in order to ensure their descendants have an easy life. I’m not weighing in on whether that is wise or not but it is definitely a thing.
sadreality ( @sadreality@kbin.social ) 28•7 months agoReasonable takes like this hurt daddy’s profits… is u a domestic terrorist?
ninjan ( @ninjan@lemmy.mildgrim.com ) English16•7 months agoWorse, a foreign one
sadreality ( @sadreality@kbin.social ) 12•7 months agoObama coming out of retirement to authorize this drone strike!
“We will not stand by while our national security interests are being assaulted by the axis of evil”
squiblet ( @squiblet@kbin.social ) 6•7 months ago“Axis of evil” was a GWB and Cheney thing. I don’t think Obama ever used the term.
sadreality ( @sadreality@kbin.social ) 11•7 months agoi threw that in to keep satire level headed… this aint about Obama but rather the US government behavior overall.
EmergMemeHologram ( @EmergMemeHologram@startrek.website ) English26•7 months agoIt may as well be, they’re endorsing all sorts of shit content lately (like the Golem game, or the ring of power)
frezik ( @frezik@midwest.social ) English5•6 months agoThe books go into public domain in 20 years. Now that Christopher Tolkien is out of the way (who tended to block a lot of stuff, for better or worse) , the current heirs want as much out of it as they can.
20 years might sound like a lot, but that’s about as much time as between the Peter Jackson movies and now.
kingthrillgore ( @KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml ) English14•7 months agoEmbracer is gonna be the next one to beg for an extension.
pbjamm ( @pbjamm@beehaw.org ) English13•7 months agoSuch optimism that it wont be extended again.
BraveSirZaphod ( @BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social ) 21•7 months agoSteamboat Willie, the first Mickey Mouse cartoon, will become public domain in literally 13 days.
Crit ( @crit@links.hackliberty.org ) English13•7 months agoOnly because it’s not as important for them to keep it, they make a lot of money from other properties
DrPop ( @DrPop@lemmy.ml ) English11•7 months agoIt’s not just about money, but their image. Nintendo does the exact same thing with fan games that make $0.
Telorand ( @Telorand@reddthat.com ) English1•7 months agoNo, they can’t extend any further. The copyright has a hard expiration at the end of 2023.
pbjamm ( @pbjamm@beehaw.org ) English7•7 months agoI remember thinking that in 1998 too. It is too late to extend copyright for Steamboat Willie before it expires but that does not mean that corps like Disney won be fighting tooth and nail to extend it again in a few years when things they actually care about are expiring.
Telorand ( @Telorand@reddthat.com ) English8•7 months agoYeah, Mickey is definitely going to be something they’ll fight for in the future.
I don’t find it probable they’ll succeed in convincing Congress that copyright life should be significantly greater than a century, since that’s nice and round and excessive, but we live in a corporation-first capitalist hellscape, so who knows?
Crit ( @crit@links.hackliberty.org ) English3•7 months agoThey’ve lobbied before
Telorand ( @Telorand@reddthat.com ) English5•7 months agoThey have, but they didn’t. And it’s not a foregone conclusion that they’d succeed. The longest copyright lifespan is currently 105 years from what I read, and I wonder if they could grease enough palms to convince people it should be longer than a century.
We’re already in “excessively long” territory, and Congress still has a few reasonable people left, so I’m not convinced it would happen.
Telorand ( @Telorand@reddthat.com ) English13•7 months agoYou can’t just extend copyright indefinitely. It’s not like a patent, where you can make minute changes and claim it’s a new product. The original works have a copyright limit of 95 years after the first date of publish (thanks Disney and other corporate lobbyists).
If we go by The Return of the King, it was published in 1955. That means the words, the story, the settings, and the characters will be public domain in 2050. Steamboat Willie, on the other hand, was published in 1928. That means it expires at the end of this year. Unless Disney can convince Congress to change copyright law again, these copyrights all have hard expiration dates.
ETA: Disney might have a case where they can claim copyright on the information they added or changed from the original works, just like how they can still claim copyright over Mickey after losing Steamboat Willie.
And I’m sure they will, because fuck society, amirite? /s
frezik ( @frezik@midwest.social ) English4•6 months agoWorks made for hire are 95 years from publication. LotR is not a work for hire, so it goes by life of the author plus 75 years. It goes public domain in 2044.
Auli ( @Auli@lemmy.ca ) English3•6 months agoThey already do. Winnie the Pooh is public domain but not Disneys version the one everyone thinks of.
PoisonedPrisonPanda ( @PoisonedPrisonPanda@discuss.tchncs.de ) English2•7 months agoLotR should’ve already entered the public domain
Where is the petition to sign up for?
TheMongoose ( @TheMongoose@kbin.social ) 111•7 months agoShould 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?
Chutzpa, I believe the term is.
SomeoneElse ( @SomeoneElse@lemmy.ca ) English20•7 months agoYeah, 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.
AeroLemming ( @AeroLemming@lemm.ee ) English3•7 months agoThere 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.
evranch ( @evranch@lemmy.ca ) English14•7 months agoBallsy? 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?
This guy deserves whatever he gets.
sqgl ( @sqgl@beehaw.org ) English6•7 months agoSpeaking of Chutzpah…
“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”
Darkassassin07 ( @Darkassassin07@lemmy.ca ) English73•7 months agoLook, I agree his works shouldn’t be destroyed, just not monetizable.
But the dude poked a bear with a sharp stick… Suing the creators of the story/characters you’ve built your content on for copyright infringement? Brilliant move…
Kwakigra ( @Kwakigra@beehaw.org ) English5•6 months agoThis is more like smacking a warhead with a hammer until it blows like in Loony Tunes. It is a shockingly suicidal decision with predictable results. He’ll be in debt for the rest of his life and should be thankful the Tolkien estate didn’t have him flayed for his impudence. Learning about how out of touch with reality the author is does make me curious how unhinged his book might be, though. If it turns out to be “The Room” of lotr fanficfiction I’d like to see it fan canonized just to spite the most litigious family in literature.
Th4tGuyII ( @Th4tGuyII@kbin.social ) 54•7 months agoGoing 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.
DarkGamer ( @DarkGamer@kbin.social ) 16•7 months agoYeah, I’m not sure what this idiot thought would happen…
NaoPb ( @NaoPb@eviltoast.org ) English32•6 months agoTolkien Estate? What’s that? People profiting off of the work of an author who has been dead for 50 years?
Copyright law is fucked up.
dangblingus ( @dangblingus@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) English23•7 months agoWhile this is piracy adjacent, good on Amazon and Tolkien’s estate for shutting down that trash lol
RobotToaster ( @RobotToaster@mander.xyz ) English34•7 months agolol, Amazon’s LOTR was trash.
BearOfaTime ( @BearOfaTime@lemm.ee ) English10•7 months agoI 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.
Norgur ( @Norgur@kbin.social ) 12•7 months agoWe’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
a) everybody is wrong but them
b) bUt OuR vIsIoN Dr. Bob ( @DrBob@lemmy.ca ) English7•7 months agoOh 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.
BraveSirZaphod ( @BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social ) 9•7 months agoI quite liked it, personally.
I imagine saying that is going to be treated as an admission of heresy here though.
pbjamm ( @pbjamm@beehaw.org ) English4•7 months agoThe 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.
Xer0 ( @Xer0@lemmy.ml ) English5•7 months agoTo 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.
pbjamm ( @pbjamm@beehaw.org ) English1•7 months agoYeah. 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.
Karlos_Cantana ( @Karlos_Cantana@kbin.social ) 22•7 months agoI was going to write a Star Wars sequel and then sue Disney for copyright infringement, until I heard this story.
BearOfaTime ( @BearOfaTime@lemm.ee ) English16•7 months agoWhat was this guy thinking? He was clearly violating copyright.
Is he just soft in the head, or is he up to something us not crazy people can’t see?
ConstableJelly ( @ConstableJelly@kbin.social ) 14•7 months agoFirst 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…
BearOfaTime ( @BearOfaTime@lemm.ee ) English5•7 months agoI’m not a Tolkien fan and even I recognized that, haha.
Wtf.
KinNectar ( @KinNectar@kbin.run ) 13•7 months agoMore to the point, who’s got a link so we can judge this fanfic for ourselves?
nicetriangle ( @nicetriangle@kbin.social ) 4•7 months agoI’ve heard it is utter fucking trash
PlasmaDistortion ( @PlasmaDistortion@lemm.ee ) English12•7 months agoThis guy was just deluded to think he was in the right or could win.
Digital_Prophet ( @Digital_Prophet@kbin.social ) 6•7 months agomeh. Fan fiction. Not a real book. not a real author.
Lettuce eat lettuce ( @Lettuceeatlettuce@lemmy.ml ) English9•7 months agoAh, because you, the god of “real” art say so? Quit gagging on your own bullshit.
Steal Wool ( @h3mlocke@lemm.ee ) English8•7 months agoCan yall go back to reddit lmao
MxM111 ( @MxM111@kbin.social ) 4•7 months agoPurchased paper books will survive too.
ExLisper ( @ExLisper@linux.community ) English2•7 months agoNot if the author finds and destroys it.
XYZinferno ( @XYZinferno@lemmy.basedcount.com ) English4•7 months agoYeah, the article itself makes me a lot less sympathetic towards the author than the headline would suggest, given he instigated this whole legal dispute on frankly idiotic premises.
plain_and_simply ( @plain_and_simply@feddit.uk ) English1•7 months agoWow that guy died first. How deluded