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Caradman Sturnn wrote:


Crucially, what is the motivation to protect a negative review, but not let's say a questionable meme if, and only if, it can be determined that the former causes more harm for the creator, like customers turning away, than the latter? I have several explanations of my own, but they mostly come down to value judgement of reviews over memes, and the quality, meaning tone they're generally associated with.

The principle behind fair use is to prevent rights holders using it as a blunt instrument to stifle things like criticism and education. That's why exceptions exist in IP law for those purposes. It's generally accepted that criticism is valid free speech and allowing it is an overall good thing for society, mainly because the consequences of not allowing it are so bad. However, in order to claim fair use you would have to demonstrate the thing you have written/filmed is actually a review or parody, or genuinely for educational purposes and there are other criteria you need to meet, such as only using as much of the source material as is necessary to review or critique it. Reproducing an entire book or movie then tacking on a comment at the end saying "10/10, would totes recommend" doesn't get you a free pass to do what you want. It's possible some memes may be protected under satire/parody fair use but they have to be satirising the thing depicted. This is all a legally well-tested, if grey and murky, area. A very important point in IP law is that generally the creator of a thing holds all the rights to that thing unless stated otherwise (either in a legal contract or through existing law like the fair use doctrine). It's not the case that a creator has no rights and then gets a long list of rights assigned to them.

The crucial difference is the scope of the fair use definitions above are very small and refer to very specific things. They're also seen as being reasonable limitations on the rights of IP creators. None of your suggestions fall into those categories, either objectively or subjectively. Objectively you've not explained how allowing free rein for anyone to create anything based on another's IP is a reasonable limitation of the creator's rights. The reasons why you shouldn't allow this have been gone over before, but all revolve around the rights of a creator to control how their content is used in order to preserve its quality or their own reputation. From a subjective viewpoint you've not clearly explained what fan content would and wouldn't be permissible and how that determination is made. I think that's why a lot of people are viewing your arguments as "I like some stuff, I don't want it to be taken away", which isn't the best basis for formulating laws.

Slipspace wrote:
The principle behind fair use is to prevent rights holders using it as a blunt instrument to stifle things like criticism and education. That's why exceptions exist in IP law for those purposes. It's generally accepted that criticism is valid free speech and allowing it is an overall good thing for society, mainly because the consequences of not allowing it are so bad. However, in order to claim fair use you would have to demonstrate the thing you have written/filmed is actually a review or parody, or genuinely for educational purposes and there are other criteria you need to meet, such as only using as much of the source material as is necessary to review or critique it. Reproducing an entire book or movie then tacking on a comment at the end saying "10/10, would totes recommend" doesn't get you a free pass to do what you want. It's possible some memes may be protected under satire/parody fair use but they have to be satirising the thing depicted. This is all a legally well-tested, if grey and murky, area. A very important point in IP law is that generally the creator of a thing holds all the rights to that thing unless stated otherwise (either in a legal contract or through existing law like the fair use doctrine). It's not the case that a creator has no rights and then gets a long list of rights assigned to them.

I agree, the argument that concepts like criticism and education are protected because they are universally and socially desirable is exactly mine but only with different concepts. Again this is not self-interest but rather an affirmation of the status quo, fan communities thrive and produce all sorts of fantastic and not so fantatsic content. when the community produces a product of critical value (like a thematic analysis of 40k) it is very much safe (unless it contains abject lies, slander, etc.) even when the setting's creator has misgivings. Now when out of the community comes aproduct of craftsmanship such as piece of visual art (like a portrait of a Rogal dorn) that is not commerical, it is mostly safe as the setting's creator we'll likely not acknowledge it, Still, there's a chance that for whatever reason the owner's ire will be drawn to them. When it comes to legal protection I'd much rather be author than the painter. My main issue is that their trades are being valued differently, if not in practice than at least in law.

The crucial difference is the scope of the fair use definitions above are very small and refer to very specific things. They're also seen as being reasonable limitations on the rights of IP creators. None of your suggestions fall into those categories, either objectively or subjectively. Objectively you've not explained how allowing free rein for anyone to create anything based on another's IP is a reasonable limitation of the creator's rights. The reasons why you shouldn't allow this have been gone over before, but all revolve around the rights of a creator to control how their content is used in order to preserve its quality or their own reputation. From a subjective viewpoint you've not clearly explained what fan content would and wouldn't be permissible and how that determination is made. I think that's why a lot of people are viewing your arguments as "I like some stuff, I don't want it to be taken away", which isn't the best basis for formulating laws.

And here is were we split. I'm not advocating for an intellectual wasteland. Creators are many cases already impaired in their ability to take legal action against content that is not strictly fair use. The reality is that I'd be content for now if the laws were updated to reflect the status quo. Differently put, I belief that in principle painting a portrait of Rogal Dorn and displaying it non commerically is as reasonable thing to do as writing and publishing a critical thematic analysis of the 40k setting.

Caradman Sturnn wrote:

And here is were we split. I'm not advocating for an intellectual wasteland. Creators are many cases already impaired in their ability to take legal action against content that is not strictly fair use. The reality is that I'd be content for now if the laws were updated to reflect the status quo. Differently put, I belief that in principle painting a portrait of Rogal Dorn and displaying it non commerically is as reasonable thing to do as writing and publishing a critical thematic analysis of the 40k setting.

Both of these things are already allowed though. The only time at which the portrait of Rogal Dorn becomes a problem is if that portrait begins to benefit someone commercially (such as by way of youtube advertising revenue or a Patreon that collects $20,000 monthly from subscribers) or if it proves harmful to the IP creators business (i.e. it achieves unprecedented levels of viewership and aligns itself in direct competition with a product that the IP holder has on offer/will soon have on offer) - even then there are certain criteria that said portrait would need to meet for a takedown notice to actually be seen as legitimate and upheld by the courts (e.g., if the non-commercial display of the portrait of Rogal Dorn was occurring at a free public art gallery across the street from a paid-admission art gallery operated by GW which housed a portrait of Lion'El Johnson). The existing legal system is more than equipped to manage and settle these matters without needing to convene a special panel of experts. If the fan in question disagrees with the C&D then they simply refuse to comply and wait to be served legal notice and have the courts hear the case, or even proactively serve legal notice to GW under certain conditions if they are so inclined.

And GW is launching their own channel / platform - Warhammer+

Warhammer Animation Preview WarCom article and Dakka thread.

O God, it is worse than I thought.

I hope all the copyright crusaders are proud of their warring for the faith in the name of Disney, GW, and the family of Sonny Bono.

I am.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 RaptorusRex wrote:
I hope all the copyright crusaders are proud of their warring for the faith in the name of Disney, GW, and the family of Sonny Bono.

Screw them and your loaded religious language. I'm happy to support creators (artists, writers, musicians, etc) in being able to hold on to their own work, regardless of who they are or how I feel about them.

Its one thing to have short ownership limits on scientific or engineering breakthroughs. Innovating on science benefits everyone.

It does NOT matter if 'everyone' can suddenly profit off drawings of a cartoon mouse, Superman or anybody can write stories about Sigmar or Picard or Gandalf. Do your own fething legwork and sell your own ideas. Artistic works belong solely to their creator, or whoever they willingly agreed to contract with. Nobody else gets it. Not strangers, not fans, not even their own kids (like the talentless Herbert brat).

Voss wrote:

 RaptorusRex wrote:
I hope all the copyright crusaders are proud of their warring for the faith in the name of Disney, GW, and the family of Sonny Bono.

Screw them and your loaded religious language. I'm happy to support creators (artists, writers, musicians, etc) in being able to hold on to their own work, regardless of who they are or how I feel about them.

Its one thing to have short ownership limits on scientific or engineering breakthroughs. Innovating on science benefits everyone.

It does NOT matter if 'everyone' can suddenly profit off drawings of a cartoon mouse, Superman or anybody can write stories about Sigmar or Picard or Gandalf. Do your own fething legwork and sell your own ideas. Artistic works belong solely to their creator, or whoever they willingly agreed to contract with. Nobody else gets it. Not strangers, not fans, not even their own kids (like the talentless Herbert brat).

Who do you think you’re protecting by defending the way things are? It ain’t Tolkien or Herbert. It’s profit-seekers like the Herbert brat.

 RaptorusRex wrote:

Voss wrote:

 RaptorusRex wrote:
I hope all the copyright crusaders are proud of their warring for the faith in the name of Disney, GW, and the family of Sonny Bono.

Screw them and your loaded religious language. I'm happy to support creators (artists, writers, musicians, etc) in being able to hold on to their own work, regardless of who they are or how I feel about them.

Its one thing to have short ownership limits on scientific or engineering breakthroughs. Innovating on science benefits everyone.

It does NOT matter if 'everyone' can suddenly profit off drawings of a cartoon mouse, Superman or anybody can write stories about Sigmar or Picard or Gandalf. Do your own fething legwork and sell your own ideas. Artistic works belong solely to their creator, or whoever they willingly agreed to contract with. Nobody else gets it. Not strangers, not fans, not even their own kids (like the talentless Herbert brat).

Who do you think you’re protecting by defending the way things are? It ain’t Tolkien or Herbert. It’s profit-seekers like the Herbert brat.

And all the creators Disney has in employment just thrown under the tracks? There work should not be protected since they work for Disney?
One of the big reasons people choose to work for these company’s is for there work to be protected, and the support a big company can provide. Even with the current laws, it can be a hell to keep your work protected.

 RaptorusRex wrote:

Voss wrote:

 RaptorusRex wrote:
I hope all the copyright crusaders are proud of their warring for the faith in the name of Disney, GW, and the family of Sonny Bono.

Screw them and your loaded religious language. I'm happy to support creators (artists, writers, musicians, etc) in being able to hold on to their own work, regardless of who they are or how I feel about them.

Its one thing to have short ownership limits on scientific or engineering breakthroughs. Innovating on science benefits everyone.

It does NOT matter if 'everyone' can suddenly profit off drawings of a cartoon mouse, Superman or anybody can write stories about Sigmar or Picard or Gandalf. Do your own fething legwork and sell your own ideas. Artistic works belong solely to their creator, or whoever they willingly agreed to contract with. Nobody else gets it. Not strangers, not fans, not even their own kids (like the talentless Herbert brat).

Who do you think you’re protecting by defending the way things are? It ain’t Tolkien or Herbert. It’s profit-seekers like the Herbert brat.

Who are we protecting?

Photographers, authors, artists, sculptors, poets, musicians, composers. We are protecting the people who make the music we listen too; write the books we read; the models we buy; the stls we print; the computer games we play; the board games we play with the family. We are protecting the individual creators and the industries within which they work. We allow firms like Disney and Ghibli to grow to a size where they can invest serious money into animations. Where we can have films like Avatar. To provide an income to the point where people like the person behind Astartes, have an industry which means they can get training and earn an income enough that they've the skill and the disposable time to even consider investing into creating a fan project like Astartes in the first place.

You want fan creations? You want quality fan creations? Then how are you going to establish the skill base if there is no value in creativity?



And yes right now the general rough rule is that copyright extends 70years past the creators death (rough value it might vary a bit nation to nation). Granted its big firms like Disney pushing for that and if they could they've have it perpetual, however there is also value in allowing creative works to continue to provide for families. An author who dies at 30 who supported their family with their writing, whilst rare in the writing world, is none the less a thing. It's good that their family can continue to benefit from those creative works. Sure it also means big firms like Disney get a stranglehold on some concepts and ideas too and perhaps in time copyright will have to be adapted to service both the need for protection at the small end and release of rights at the top end. It's a fine line to walk, but at its core the overall concept is sound.


It provides a safety net that permits creators to benefit from what they have created and prevents people from openly and outright stealing those ideas and creations. It prevents rampant greed being the only driving force in creativity. You argue that its "protecting the Herbert brat" ; but it was also protecting Brian Herbert throughout his life. It allowed him to make Dune and its sequels. It allowed him to spend the time and energy creating that book and then to share it with the world at large. If there was no protection chances are he might never have spent the days writing it; nor shared it with the world if he did.

Seen on reddit:

Sodaz has been bullied out of 40k due to toxic fans

I honestly wish I was exaggerating but it is truly a sad day for the 40k community. As many of you know 2 months ago sodaz, a great animator who has done some of the best 40k animations to date, was offered to work at gw. He also took down all his 40k videos. Sadly a minor but very vocal part of the community took it upon themselves to continually harass him for 2 months for “betraying them and working for gw”. Sodaz having put up with the huge amount of harassment decided to call it quits, turned down the offer from gw, and announced he was moving away from warhammer. He will be missed. (Valrak video for more context) https://youtu.be/ZWWOKBw_KVs

Bago wrote:
Seen on reddit:

Sodaz has been bullied out of 40k due to toxic fans

I honestly wish I was exaggerating but it is truly a sad day for the 40k community. As many of you know 2 months ago sodaz, a great animator who has done some of the best 40k animations to date, was offered to work at gw. He also took down all his 40k videos. Sadly a minor but very vocal part of the community took it upon themselves to continually harass him for 2 months for “betraying them and working for gw”. Sodaz having put up with the huge amount of harassment decided to call it quits, turned down the offer from gw, and announced he was moving away from warhammer. He will be missed. (Valrak video for more context) https://youtu.be/ZWWOKBw_KVs

This is despicable. Those trolls don't represent the warhammer community, they're straight scum. How dare they.

They maybe dont represent It but the truth IS that the amount of debate and vitriol that this brought over the por Guy surely enabled them to do It.

Not evej with the astartes or HELLSREACH Guy dos the community became so toxic about It.

guess that vocal minority were the ones who paid him before he got the offer from GW and fell betrayed because the videos were removed

Not an excuse to harrass someone for doing what's best for them. Freelance work is never as good as a consistent job, especially when that freelance work might not even get you the same amount of money each month.

Isn't Patreon's whole shtick that it's not technically payment it's just donations, honest.

Unless that's been challenged in court at some point in that last few years?

I can understand why someone would be mad about the situation when they've (as they see it) been paying for it. But that's not excuse to be so cruel.

 kirotheavenger wrote:
Isn't Patreon's whole shtick that it's not technically payment it's just donations, honest.

Unless that's been challenged in court at some point in that last few years?

I can understand why someone would be mad about the situation when they've (as they see it) been paying for it. But that's not excuse to be so cruel.

Patreon provides everything needed for it as a business, maybe people say it is otherwise. But even donations often need to be reported as income unless for specific circumstance in most places I have looked into it.

Maybe the donation thing isn't important then, but I think the core issue is/was employment protections and such.
Youtube was being looked at the same, I remember there was a class action lawsuit started, haven't heard from it since, anyone know anything more?

This is the original post, by the way:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Grimdank/comments/okzt8a/sodaz_being_harrassed_out_of_animation/

 kirotheavenger wrote:
Maybe the donation thing isn't important then, but I think the core issue is/was employment protections and such.
Youtube was being looked at the same, I remember there was a class action lawsuit started, haven't heard from it since, anyone know anything more?

You would be employed by yourself, patreon/YouTube have always been effectively a payment provider. It could be people thinking donations are not payment, but I cannot really think patreon or YouTube would.
Unless you are a nonprofit, it’s income for the most part.

I had a quick look, and if it’s the sorta big one that was on in 2020. It’s mostly false or BS driven by groups of people that want to create a narrative. Little to do with this but it could be something seperate you are thinking.

 kirotheavenger wrote:
Isn't Patreon's whole shtick that it's not technically payment it's just donations, honest.

Unless that's been challenged in court at some point in that last few years?

I can understand why someone would be mad about the situation when they've (as they see it) been paying for it. But that's not excuse to be so cruel.

people not understand that their payment was a donation and that the own nothing

same way as so many companies using Kickstarter as pre-order platform that people forget that they are investing in a business with the risk of failure (and they end with nothing for their money)

and of course those people get angry because they thought they own something wth the person they donated to being the target

I don't know him so don't know what he advertised or communicated, but that a minority is so vocal about it is usually related to people being upset because they lost money (and it does not matter if it was their own fault or not)

 kodos wrote:

 kirotheavenger wrote:
Isn't Patreon's whole shtick that it's not technically payment it's just donations, honest.

Unless that's been challenged in court at some point in that last few years?

I can understand why someone would be mad about the situation when they've (as they see it) been paying for it. But that's not excuse to be so cruel.

people not understand that their payment was a donation and that the own nothing

same way as so many companies using Kickstarter as pre-order platform that people forget that they are investing in a business with the risk of failure (and they end with nothing for their money)

and of course those people get angry because they thought they own something wth the person they donated to being the target

I don't know him so don't know what he advertised or communicated, but that a minority is so vocal about it is usually related to people being upset because they lost money (and it does not matter if it was their own fault or not)

I agree.
Patreon I think really presents itself as more than donations though, at least all the patreons I've seen have "tiers" that "unlock" stuff, to me that's straight up purchasing a benefit.

Kickstarter at least has reasonably prominently displayed small print, but people abuse the hell out of kickstarter with outright scams.

 kirotheavenger wrote:

 kodos wrote:

 kirotheavenger wrote:
Isn't Patreon's whole shtick that it's not technically payment it's just donations, honest.

Unless that's been challenged in court at some point in that last few years?

I can understand why someone would be mad about the situation when they've (as they see it) been paying for it. But that's not excuse to be so cruel.

people not understand that their payment was a donation and that the own nothing

same way as so many companies using Kickstarter as pre-order platform that people forget that they are investing in a business with the risk of failure (and they end with nothing for their money)

and of course those people get angry because they thought they own something wth the person they donated to being the target

I don't know him so don't know what he advertised or communicated, but that a minority is so vocal about it is usually related to people being upset because they lost money (and it does not matter if it was their own fault or not)

I agree.
Patreon I think really presents itself as more than donations though, at least all the patreons I've seen have "tiers" that "unlock" stuff, to me that's straight up purchasing a benefit.

Kickstarter at least has reasonably prominently displayed small print, but people abuse the hell out of kickstarter with outright scams.

Donations for rewards are fine, even if you get donations it’s still a income. It just depends what those donations are for, if you say you are giving rewards then you have to do that. Just another way for business and after concluded each month a new payment is taken for what ever that month.
They can remove you if you don’t hold up your side of the donation.
In this case, people seem to think there payments though donations can hold him on patreon it seems.

Not impressed and not surprised either. It's too easy and mostly free of repercussions to be human trash on the internet.

Wholly unsurprised by this - also wouldn't be surprised to learn that some of the individuals posting in this thread were part of the community of harassers that drove SODAZ away, given their apparent feelings of entitlement to those animations and the anger displayed over SODAZ getting a job at GW.

Looks like the outrage blew up in their face though, not only are they not getting the animations from GW any longer, but they are also not getting them from youtube either since they called it quits on the Warhammer IP entirely.

Some people are just unbelievable

Wow that is horrible

Then again I recall some of the authors who wrote those kids warhammer books also got death threats and other insults. There is indeed a vocal and abusive small group (and I truly hope its small) who do this; but their impacts can be huge and only ever make things worse for everyone.

Oh the internetz . . . that's so dumb. What a shame.

chaos0xomega wrote:
Wholly unsurprised by this - also wouldn't be surprised to learn that some of the individuals posting in this thread were part of the community of harassers that drove SODAZ away, given their apparent feelings of entitlement to those animations and the anger displayed over SODAZ getting a job at GW.

Looks like the outrage blew up in their face though, not only are they not getting the animations from GW any longer, but they are also not getting them from youtube either since they called it quits on the Warhammer IP entirely.

some almost certainly are here, i'm willing to bet they were some of the more vocal ones in the female space marine threads that got locked down .