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Destiny Fan Art: How is this legal? (Off-Topic)

by Mariachi @, Kentucky, Tuesday, August 05, 2014, 11:46 (3553 days ago)

I've been pondering how sites like Redbubble or Zazzle or CafePress work. For instance, Redbubble has many Destiny related items for sale. Not to mention the hundreds of other fandoms that you can buy merchandise for. How is it legal? It seems to me that it would be infringing on the intellectual property rights of the original creators. Can anybody share some insight?

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Because

by MrPadraig08 ⌂ @, Steel City, Tuesday, August 05, 2014, 12:05 (3553 days ago) @ Mariachi

I had a run in with Zazzle the other week where I was trying to buy a Justice (band) shirt and it ordered. I wondered how long it was going to take to ship and checked, the order email was a notification on how they can't make that item due to copyright. Since users can post any design or image for sale, they don't really police it. So, they are very much in the mindset of no complaints means permission. Definitely is uncool for everyone involved.

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The YouTube Defense

by RC ⌂, UK, Tuesday, August 05, 2014, 12:19 (3553 days ago) @ Mariachi
edited by RC, Tuesday, August 05, 2014, 12:29

Basically it's more or less:

"There is so much stuff on there we can't possibly police it. So we stick a line in the TOS that says 'you will not upload anything you don't have permission for" and then wilfully ignore everything our users upload. We will only ever do anything if the real rights holder, themselves (or legal representative) contact us and specifically list each offending item individually."

That's basically how ALL these 'user generated content' sites work.

EDIT: The individual posters don't have enough money to be worth going after (usually). And the sites only get sued if they get large enough (e.g. YouTube) and the suer (is that a word?) has enough content on there worth getting a settlement for (e.g. a record company, or big TV company).

Most rights holders can't be bothered with sending continual DMCA's (only applies in the US anyway), and the sites would whine that it'd be a burden to check the legitimacy of every upload, or to develop a system that'd do it semi-autonomously (like YouTube's ContentID).

Like Mega Upload?

by Blue_Blazer_NZ, Wellington, New Zealand, Tuesday, August 05, 2014, 12:46 (3553 days ago) @ RC

Have you been following the Mega Upload case?

Seems to be a similar argument that Kim Dotcom et al are making.

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I think so

by RC ⌂, UK, Tuesday, August 05, 2014, 13:09 (3553 days ago) @ Blue_Blazer_NZ

Only read a few news articles on it here and there.

MegaUpload got big and rich enough to be noticed and became worth suing.

I think so

by kapowaz, Tuesday, August 05, 2014, 13:24 (3553 days ago) @ RC

MegaUpload got big and rich enough to be noticed and became worth suing.

Not exactly:

Acting upon a US Federal prosecutor's request, the New Zealand Police arrested Dotcom and three other Megaupload executives in a leased $30 million mansion at Coatesville near Auckland on Friday, 20 January 2012. This was pursuant to a request from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation that the four be extradited for racketeering and money laundering.

There's a whole more to it than that, but it's highly political and was far more Pour encourager les autres than a legitimate case of prosecuting wrongdoing (not to say that it was illegitimate, but there's plenty of evidence that the way it went down was highly inappropriate).

The thing with this kind of service is that it's very, very difficult to police the stuff that people upload. Manually reviewing everything that gets uploaded could be thousands of hours’ work. You could invest millions in writing software to automatically detect copyrighted works (as Google has done with Content ID) but that's prohibitively expensive for most businesses, not to mention even when you write something like that, it has a tendency to false-positive on content.

There's no easy way of solving it, basically.

I think so

by Blue_Blazer_NZ, Wellington, New Zealand, Tuesday, August 05, 2014, 16:54 (3553 days ago) @ kapowaz

It is indeed quite political, especially here in New Zealand. In fact, Kim Dotcom has established his own NZ political party (The Internet Party) which is potentially going to win a few seats in parliament in the upcoming New Zealand Election (Sept 20th)!

The MegaUpload case has been constantly delayed due to back and forth arguments over the legality of the police raid, the seizure of Dotcom's hard drives etc, and of course the rumours of corrupt involvement of big Hollywood studios.

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Destiny Fan Art: How is this legal?

by Leviathan ⌂, Hotel Zanzibar, Tuesday, August 05, 2014, 12:34 (3553 days ago) @ Mariachi

In general, most big companies don't try to oppress small-scale fan creations, especially when it isn't using their direct art, though technically, some might be found in court to be infringing. Art/Copyright/Freedom of Speech laws are largely up for interpretation and by a case-by-case basis with a myriad of conflicting precedents. (Though if you're a giant corporation with expensive lawyers, you'll probably win.)

There's plenty of examples in that link you posted of just the straight logo thrown on a shirt, and that's pretty easy to show it's infringing as there was no re-interpretation or alteration. But the vague area begins once you start truly altering or creating your own work/variations with an IP. Where do you draw the line between infringing and freedom of speech? What part of the creation is a reference to something that exists and what percentage is your perspective/expression on it? For example, an anti-corporate painting in a gallery uses the character Ronald MacDonald. Is that illegal if you sell it? Or is that using a common icon in society and culture and expressing a view on it?

More questions: If you create a character named Darkwing that's a duck dressed up like Batman, is it parody or allegory? Is that your own idea or are you actually stealing the idea of Batman? Wasn't Batman a variation of the Shadow and Zorro? On another note, if a shirt jokes about Game of Thrones, is that infringing on that book/show's rights? What about if someone personally commissions me to draw their Guardian - are they paying for the Destiny IP or are they paying for my service?

In many cases, some of these small-scale fan art/creations work in the company's favor. It's marketing and allowing a culture to grow around your IP. It's only when it starts to compete with something the IP is intended to make money off of that you see it shut down. Some contracts with IP-owners also allow for small-run prints and materials using their copyrights. Marvel/DC actually relies on commissions and prints from artists using their characters in a way, as it leads them to find new and popular talent all the time.

So the answer is: It's not. But sometimes it is. And it's all really confusing. But usually it's ultimately up to the IP-owner's discretion and their ability to enforce that discretion.

It's illegal, but apparently Bungie doesn't mind...

by bluvasa, Tuesday, August 05, 2014, 18:49 (3553 days ago) @ Mariachi

Anything that is "confusingly similar" to this logo is infringing on Bungie's trademark rights: Destiny TM

Any creation (and I mean any) that is derived from any of Bungie's IP, runs a risk of copyright infringment due to the breadth of their rights in "derivative works".

If you make it and use it personally, you are okay. If you make it and generate any money from it (even website ad revenue), you are infringing.

However, just because they have the rights doesn't mean that they will choose to enforce them. It often will make better business sense to ignore the small fish and avoid any bad press for beating up on your fanbase.

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Free Publicity is free.

by INSANEdrive, ಥ_ಥ | f(ಠ‿↼)z | ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ| ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, Tuesday, August 05, 2014, 18:59 (3553 days ago) @ bluvasa

Anything that is "confusingly similar" to this logo is infringing on Bungie's trademark rights: Destiny TM

Any creation (and I mean any) that is derived from any of Bungie's IP, runs a risk of copyright infringment due to the breadth of their rights in "derivative works".

If you make it and use it personally, you are okay. If you make it and generate any money from it (even website ad revenue), you are infringing.

However, just because they have the rights doesn't mean that they will choose to enforce them. It often will make better business sense to ignore the small fish and avoid any bad press for beating up on your fanbase.

Adding to this. As long as content is within taste, there is no reason to press unless you are very controlling about your brand. (*cough* Disney *cough*)

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