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

[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.