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

[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.