Wow that guy died first. How deluded
Demetrious Polychron
holy shit what an incredible name, don’t even care what’s this about, I’m with him. President Polychron 2024.
I’m Demetrious Polychron –
– and you just got cyberpunk’dIDK what Demetrious means, but polychronic means multiple fatal diagnoses, like when you have multiple stage 4 cancers.
Could only be made better with some Mountain Dew.
While this is piracy adjacent, good on Amazon and Tolkien’s estate for shutting down that trash lol
lol, Amazon’s LOTR was trash.
I quite liked it, personally.
I imagine saying that is going to be treated as an admission of heresy here though.
I 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.
We’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 vIsIoNOh 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.
The 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.
To 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.
Yeah, 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.
In my opinion LotR should’ve already entered the public domain but thanks to Disney well have to wait until 2044 for that.
LotR should’ve already entered the public domain
Where is the petition to sign up for?
It may as well be, they’re endorsing all sorts of shit content lately (like the Golem game, or the ring of power)
The 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.
Demand reform.
30 years from publication, no exceptions.
And for commercial purposes only. If you’re not making money off of it, you should be able to use it however you want.
I think an argument could be made to set it to the date of death of the author. I agree with the other guy that it should only apply to commercial works though.
I also don’t think that the copyright should be transferable. The trading of ideas is an absurd concept to me. But then us humans do a lot of absurd things so I guess it’s just par for the course.
People have a right to culture. If you grew up with a story, it’s yours now, no matter how dead the author isn’t. Past works are the foundation for everything you can make.
And if the purpose of copyright is not to encourage new works, burn it to the ground.
That’s an oversimplification. All works are derivative to some extent. There’s a huge difference between taking inspiration from something, to taking the characters and setting from something. Particularly if you’re intending to make a profit.
If an author makes something that a large number of people enjoy, why shouldn’t they be able to make money off it for the rest of their life? Why exactly should an individual give up the rights to their creation simply so that someone else can use their characters and their worlds?
To be clear, I’m talking solely on an individual level. I think the system we have where a corporation can own an idea is very broken. I’m also talking about this from a perspective of the world we currently live in. In an ideal world where money wasn’t the endgame for survival, ideas would flow more freely and nobody would need to care. But that’s not the world we live in.
You can’t sell something to a million people and still own it.
Copyright is a gift, from us to them, to encourage new works, for us. Why would that mean some old fart gets to stop people making new stories for the characters they grew up with? They’re our characters, now. We bought them. That’s what the money was for.
And if thirty years of revenue with zero additional labor required somehow isn’t enough - oh well.
Can you imagine making your argument for any other industry? Why in the name of god would art be the place where doing real good one time is a ticket to retirement? Not farming, not medicine, not engineering. Homeboy wrote a song once, so he gets to ride the gravy train until he fuckin’ dies.
Your buying the stories not the ownership of all the ideas.
Word salad.
Again: the explicit purpose of copyright is to provide the public with new works. After a fixed limited time, all works belong in the public domain. If you want copyright to be anything but that, I would rather not do copyright at all.
It’s not a right. That name is a lie. It’s a monetary incentive. And once someone’s made their money, that’s that. It’s ours now. The deal worked.
Can’t have the already well-off children go without their steady income that they didn’t have to work for…
Well how else are we supposed to encourage people to be related to people who develop intellectual property? It makes sense from a neponomic standpoint.
Believe 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.
Yeah, and that’s why white people are richer than black people today, even though slavery ostensibly ended 200 years ago. It’s time that we outlaw this behaviour.
you’re gonna get downvoted but no amount of downvotes will change the fact that black people weren’t allowed to own things in america until most things were already owned by white people.
Reasonable takes like this hurt daddy’s profits… is u a domestic terrorist?
Worse, a foreign one
Obama 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”
“Axis of evil” was a GWB and Cheney thing. I don’t think Obama ever used the term.
i threw that in to keep satire level headed… this aint about Obama but rather the US government behavior overall.
Don’t worry, they’ll manage to get it extended again before 2044.
Embracer is gonna be the next one to beg for an extension.
Apparently it did for a short while in the US, but not anymore.
Such optimism that it wont be extended again.
Steamboat Willie, the first Mickey Mouse cartoon, will become public domain in literally 13 days.
Only because it’s not as important for them to keep it, they make a lot of money from other properties
No, they can’t extend any further. The copyright has a hard expiration at the end of 2023.
They’ve lobbied before
They 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.
I 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.
Yeah, 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?
It’s not just about money, but their image. Nintendo does the exact same thing with fan games that make $0.
You 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
Works 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.
They already do. Winnie the Pooh is public domain but not Disneys version the one everyone thinks of.
This guy was just deluded to think he was in the right or could win.
What 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?
His motivations are beyond our understanding
First 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…
I’m not a Tolkien fan and even I recognized that, haha.
Wtf.
deleted by creator
Going 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.
Yeah, I’m not sure what this idiot thought would happen…
Tolkien 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.
I dunno, if I build a house, I can leave it to my family for generations. Indeed, barring something interfering with that ownership, it will be passed along. Maybe they’ll sell it, or take out a loan against it and default, or a disaster could strike, or whatever.
Why would any other creation be less portable to my heirs?
Mind you, I’m definitely of the belief that artistic creations like books should eventually go public domain. I’m fine with any number of possible restrictions on that duration. But it is strange that one of the only things that automatically gets removed from a family are things like writing. Ideas, if you want to break it down. We treat them different than other things we create.
Again, I’m fine with there’s being limits on holding ideas restricted. That’s necessary to prevent loss of such things, that are harder to preserve than something like a piece of jewelry, or a statue, or a house. That’s why patents and copyrights need to expire, but I can’t agree that the limits as they exist are fucked up/bad/wrong.
Seriously, I’m a published author, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about such things.
Now, I would love to see the laws change so that any copyright held by a publicly traded company, or that has been sold/abandoned by the actual heirs of the author is shorter than when held by the heirs of the author.
And, any popular work is going to have the issue of who gets to decide what is and isn’t done to the works before or after public domain. You can end up with something wonderful being shat on by asshats. So it isn’t like copyrights expiring is without drawbacks. When what’s at stake is only keeping the works published and available, that’s a clear cut thing that benefits everyone.
But adaptations, expansions, “fanfic”? I would definitely prefer someone that at least has some chance of the author’s intent being known than some shitty company looking to milk the work for every possible dime.
Why shouldn’t authors be able to build generational wealth the way a business can? You’re talking about people profiting off a dead man, but that’s what investments and properties and such are. It’s future generations profiting off a dead person’s work. There’s billionaires out there that are sitting on wealth that was amassed not just decades ago, but sometimes centuries. Why do authors not have that possibility?
Shouldn’t you be paying the people who built your house royalties then?
I understand that at a personal level you would want to share wealth with your children and their children, but that is not what copyright is about. The intention is that the creator gets to make their earnings out of their original product for a limited time only. So that they can continue to make original products and make a living. It is not intended to provide for your family for generations. While this may be what it has become with the help of corporations, in my opinion this is not it’s intended use.
Aside from that I think your works should become public domain after a limited time, prefferedly during your lifetime. So that as much as possible people get to enjoy your original works of art.
You make a good point about generational wealth in business and I think there should be limits to that as well. It doesn’t help the world at all if wealth just stagnates like that and in my opinion it should be shared with those doing the actual work, instead of a select few who were born in it, were extremely lucky, or gained money in immoral ways.
I’ll leave it at that since I am not the right person to go into a discussion with you about all of these things. I do want to thank you for your work and for gifting us with your books entertaining us and giving us an escape of daily problems, expanding our knowledge with educational content or whatever else. Know that you are valued and there are people out there being touched by your work.
A house exists, in order to remove ownership of that hous you would need to physically expell the family living there. A story is fictional, it does not exist and removing the copy protection from it does not require actively harming the inheritors of the person who wrote it.
A house is also not so much generational wealth as it is generational ownership. You don’t get active revenue from a single house if ypu are living in it. And generational wealth is pretty fucked up and should not happen.
Besides if an author really wants to make sure their children are taken care of, teach them to continue the story, the family name will ensure they get more sales than anyone else writing stories in the same universe as the original.
I was going to write a Star Wars sequel and then sue Disney for copyright infringement, until I heard this story.
Don’t let your dreams be dreams! What were you going to spend all that money on anyway, retirement?
More to the point, who’s got a link so we can judge this fanfic for ourselves?
I’ve heard it is utter fucking trash
Well in that case I do believe Rings of Power plagiarised it, because ROP is trash too
meh. Fan fiction. Not a real book. not a real author.
Ah, because you, the god of “real” art say so? Quit gagging on your own bullshit.
Can yall go back to reddit lmao
Heh, 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.
The 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.
Yeah, 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).
Some 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.
Thank goodness. Have those copies resurfaced and gone into the possession of proper archivists and/or research collections?
I 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.
I think his lawsuit is valid and that Amazon really did steal his work, because those titles are derivative mulch and The Rings Of Power is a snoozefest.
