My morning laugh or snorfle....

[shadowkat]

Okay...this made me laugh, really really hard this morning.

You may have to be a lawyer to totally appreciate it. Or rather a lawyer who knows something about copyright law. I don't know.

But here it is - grabbed from fandom lawyers:

Here: http://community.livejournal.com/fandom_lawyers/50914.html

and

here: http://www.fanhistory.com/index.php/Meyshi

The scoop? Apparently some Harry Potter fanfic writer out there, called Meyshi thought they could sue other fanfic writers for parodying their work and filed DMCA claims against them with LJ - telling LJ/6 Apart that these writers should have their entries deleted. (The gal is allegedly under the age of 18 - which makes me wonder about her parents.) At any rate - 6 Apart in their ultimate wisdom - sent notices to the writers Meyshi complained about - telling them that they needed to delete their entries or that LJ would do it for them since they were in violation of US Copyright law. One of the writers being told he had to delete his story and was being sued by Meyshi for his parody of her work, directly contacted J.K. Rowling's attorneys and told them about it. Rowling's attorneys got really interested in the matter. Not in the whole fanfic thing, interestingly enough - they don't care about that given JKR's public stance on it - but, on the fact that a fanfiction writer thinks they have the same rights the JKR does regarding Potter fic and Potter characters. Meyshi, since being contacted by JKR's attorneys, has submitted apologies to all concerned and even asked the person who contacted the attorney's for help with characterization.

ROFL!!!

Yes, I'm probably evil to find this hilarous, this I know.;-) Ohhh, I love fandom lawyers, really love them. My favorite community by far. (It's basically a community of non-practicing, semi-practicing, and practicing attorneys who like cult stuff and are fans.)

Comments

[atpolittlebit.livejournal.com]

When I read about this when it happened my first thought was, "hold on, did 6A/LJ just tacitly give HP copyright to a fanficcer?!?"

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Yep. And they got blasted by JKR's lawyers for it. LOL!!!

[atpolittlebit.livejournal.com]

This is so wonderfully sniggerlicious!

[atpolittlebit.livejournal.com]

Also makes me wonder about the legality of the attempted DMCA takedown notice since the girl who filed it is 16, and not legally 'responsible' -- I bet her parents aren't going to be very happy when they get served!

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

LOL! Yep.

Would love to be a fly on the wall of that scenario. Bwaahahaa!

My take? Her parents probably knew what she was doing and possibly encouraged it - which makes it even more entertaining.

[embers-log.livejournal.com]

I'm very curious about the term 'sporking' in this context...

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Don't ask me - have no clue. First time I've seen that word - figured it meant screwing? (At least in context) Internet speak gotta love it.

[embers-log.livejournal.com]

yeah, I ended up looking things up... 'spork' is that plastic spoon/fork combo thing... but it has come to refer to lampooning:
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=sporked
It is so funny that 6Apart decided to act of the ravings of some 16 year old loonie... it goes to show how clueless they are.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Yep on 6 Apart. LOL! They have been providing fandom lawyers with endless hours of entertainment and discussion material.

They really need to find a good intellectual property attorney to consult with or at least one who knows Internet Copyright Law and Trademark Law before they find themselves sued. I'm hoping JKR's lawyers lit a fire under them on that score.

Although, I will state that when it comes to copyright, trademark, defamation, libel and slander laws - the internet is akin to the wild wild west or a no man's land. As far back as 1998, when I was heavily involved in tracking this stuff - lawmakers, copyright owners, security agencies, publishers, and governments were attempting to find ways to police the internet or at the very least control some of the traffic on it. You've seen the results of that yourself. I find the attempts ranging from hilarious to just plain annoying.

The thing of it is - people can disguise their IPO address pretty easily.
And it is not hard to hack into systems. You cannot stop somebody from scanning an entire book into their computer and sharing it with friends, any more than you could stop them from copying a CD on a tape and sharing that with all their friends. And you certainly can't stop people from writing stories based on someone else's ideas, characters, or property - all writer's do that to some degree anyhow. We borrow from each other and are inspired by each other - we don't write in a vaccume.

So as a result - copyright law by its very nature is an inexact field of law and constantly in flux and constantly open to interpretation. Which is why it is impossible for an amatuer lawyer or someone who has not been trained in the legal profession to even grasp half of it. Heck most copyright attorneys are floundering.

If I were Six Apart? I'd find a good copyright attorney to send these questions to. Not attempt to handle them myself. (Heck maybe they have found a copyright attorney? If so, they might want to consider firing them, because their advice has been less than stellar.)

As an aside, is it just me or is the Harry Potter fandom a bit on the wonky side? Some of their kerfuffles make the Buffy/Star Trek fandom kerfuffles I've seen, seem tame by comparison.

[embers-log.livejournal.com]

6Apart's behavior does seem strange, and it would be funny to learn that it was all w/advice from Legal Council!
A friend online said to me:
"Personally, I've no idea why they're doing this: the one bright side of the DMCA was that it specifically protected ISPs and website owners from being held liable for their content."
But since 6Apart HAS made it their mission to 'clean up' live journal, then it might make them more responsible for the things they have permitted to go on. And if they are cracking down on copyright/trademark violations w/regard to some written material, then what about all the icons which are clearly violations too? Seems like they would have been wiser to have never gotten into all of this at all.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Icons aren't really a violation of copyright - it's covered under the "fair use" loop-hole. All you are doing is putting it up in your journal - no money is made off of it and in some ways you are advertising the product you ripping off of. And often changing it. Plus - think about it, how much money would it take to crack down on every person on the internet who has cropped and played with a photo or piece of art? And 6 Apart even crazier - because that would cost them about 90% of their users.

Vids on the other hand...but even those are permissible depending on the situation or YouTube would be in trouble.

Like I said - the internet is the wild wild west when it comes to copyright law. You can only police so far. What most attorneys have done is adopted a stance of going after the *obvious* infractions - such as Meyshi's claims, the posting of entire books, television scripts, and magazine articles, spoiler pages of scripts of tv shows that have not aired yet or books that haven't been published yet, downloading of games, movies, music or tv shows that are protected from free distribution. That stuff they will and have to go after. Same deal with obvious infractions of fan art - ie. mass producing t-shirts, coffee cups, etc with pictures and logos from a tv show or movie for your own profit and sold at fan conventions often in competition with actual licensed producers of the same items.

It's mostly common sense, which an alarmingly number of people appear to be lacking for some reason. LOL! Meyshi clearly has none. I mean you don't have to be a lawyer to know that you don't own the Harry Potter characters Rowlings does. Hello! And I'm beginning to wonder about Six Apart which also doesn't appear to have much in the way of common sense.

[cynesthesia.livejournal.com]

Funny stuff! If it weren't for all sorts of loose copyright violations--fanfic, icons, etc.--LJ wouldn't exist.

It's amazing how many industries are trying to make strict ownership claims, even outside the digital realm. I bought a not very special pelargonium plant in a 4" pot that informed me on the stick that all unauthorized propagation was prohibited, so if I make a few cuttings that take root, presumably I'm infringing something or other.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Loose is the operative word here. Fanfiction in of itself really isn't a copyright violation unless you are publishing it for profit or mass distribution so that it is in competition with the author's original work. Icons? Same deal. Mostly they serve as great advertisments for the original work. Vids? A little more dicey. But same general analysis applies. A commericial for both the tune and the original work.

Now - scanning entire comics into a file to be downloaded? Entire Magazine articles? Books? Or sharing albums or songs? That is a copyright violation and people do it a lot on lj. They are smart enough to do it via friends locked posts however... But it's a still a huge violation.

Regarding the plant? I doubt they'll care if you make multiple plants in your backyard. But - if you make cuttings and start selling them? Or giving to a lot of people - then you may have problem. LOL!

[cynesthesia.livejournal.com]

IANAL and copyright seems to be one big minefield. I make art myself and while I certainly want to see creative expression encouraged and rewarded, for me the balance has tipped far away from notions of fair use and too far toward excessively lengthy corporate rights of ownership in works. And sometimes the hammer comes down pretty hard even on "loose" usage. Time-Warner made YouTube take down a 29 second clip a woman made of her toddler dancing around to Prince's "Let's Go Crazy". The Spoiler Slayer ran into problems over the ads he had linking to BtVS products on Amazon while to me he was providing Fox with free advertising.

I volunteer preparing e-texts for Project Gutenberg and right now pretty much anything (with a few exceptions) published after 1923 is locked up tighter than a drum until 2018. Unfortunately, a lot of genre books that are out of print are probably going to be lost before those 95 years are up.

The patent office recently rejected claims by Monsanto (http://www.pubpat.org/monsantorejections.htm) that farmers were injuring Monsanto by saving seed from one year's crop to replant the next. Putting on my gardener's hat here, seed saving is as old as agriculture itself.

Oops, didn't mean to go off on you. Obviously copyright is one of my peeves. :)

[(Anonymous)]

It's like anything else - go too far one way? No one owns anything and it is a free-for-all (laizzez faire economy), go too far the other way (creativity is stymied and you can't move.)

Since the advent of the internet - copyright law has been even more in flux than usual. The pendlum keeps swinging back and forth. And the law suits seem almost like random hits depending on how much the owner cares about the issue and the degree to which they are willing to spend time and money fighting it. Also the degree to which they think they have a case.
Making the field somewhat unpredictable.

The Let's Go Crazy YouTube deletion is surprising - since my sisinlaw posted a similar video of my neice singing Sabateoge on YouTube and to my knowledge was okay. Curious to know the whole story on that one. Often there's more going on behind the scenes than we are told. SpoilerSlayer has had troubles for quite a while = but he is doing something that a lot of people in the industry take issue with - distributing spoilers and copyright owned information. He used to provide links to full tv scripts back in the day - that were on a German site that fell beneath the radar and because it was German got away with distributing US owned property for free.

Copyright Law in of itself isn't evil. It's the extremes that a couple of people like to take it too that is. Extremists - ACK! They make life impossible for the rest of us. ;-)

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Sigh. The above is me.