honestly, I hate to say it but Warner Brothers has a point. and they way IP law works they either have to protect the IP or lose the rights to do so. something this massive in scope was worth shutting down.
It's true, I really have no problem with Warner Bros doing what they are required to do by law. It's not like they're some evil flaming eye at the top of a gothic tower forever scouring the land for people they can fuck over.
Yeah, let's get this straight, people, the law is the cause of this shit. Because it sucks.
Oh, you can't blame Warner Bros. for any of that. In particular, they haven't "bought up" the rights to LotR so much as bought the film rights (and probably some videogame rights) and with them some trademarks. That's really where it looks like MERP's getting hit, too: the trademarks, which is a whole different mess of laws than copyright.
And, given the litigious nature of Tolkien's estate, if they ever found out about the mod they'd shut it down, too, but from a copyright stance.
In that case, fuck the Tolkien Estate just as hardly. That they named themselves after said couple of bones in that graveyard, doesn't give them any more moral authority to limit creative rights.
Just to chime in pretty quick Tolkien Estate and Tolkien Enterprises/Middle Earth enterprises are two different entities and the "who-holds-which"-copyrights is fairly confusing.
Tolkien Estate is actually run by Christopher Tolkien and his wife (probably their son as well now) and they (together with several sub-holdings I suppose) hold the copyright to the written works of Tolkien. The only two lawsuits they were engaged with that I can think of are the New Line Cinema lawsuit about royalties and the lawsuit against an auther who used Tolkien's name in the title.
Middle Earth Enterprises (Tolkien Enterprises formerly) is the company through which Saul Zaentz manages the film/merchandising/media rights to LotR and The Hobbit which Tolkien sold him decades ago (obviously while still alive). They are also the guys who sued the "The Hungry Hobbit" cafe recently.
WB did not buy any of those (Middle Earth Enterprises would be rather stupid to sell their rights) but they are licensed by SZC to use LotR and The Hobbit.
I think my reaction has to amount to: I sympathize, you clearly put a lot of work into this mod and your doing so makes your love for the franchise quite evident, however, if you thought this result was much less than inevitable you were operating under a delusion, and likewise if you think your petition is going to make the earth move.
The LoTR movies were a billion-dollar franchise. Even if they got 80,000 signatures (which would presently be about 16 times as many signatures as they have), that would still be more of less a drop in the bucket.
It's not even an independent product, you need Skyrim in order to play it. A team that has worked themselves to death with this project which they -charge no money for- gets it all taken away because a corporation thinks it will compete with it's own products? If you think a -mod- is a serious threat to your ability to make profits you are incredibly ignorant, or just pathetic.
You don't like people putting actual -effort- into something, making a better job than whatever lazy job your studios do with a decent budget? Then the blame is on YOU, Warner Bros.. You don't get to punish others for your OWN incompetence.
This is just as ridiculous as videos being taken down on Youtube because of some copyrighted music piece being heard in it's background. Corporations seem to get all the rights and priviliges and the people nothing but prosecution if they try to be anything else than mindless consumers.
Ugh, I do hope they continue working on this in secret.
Legal action, as they're doing. They can attempt to stop any work, even the fanfic in the shoebox under your bed. Of course, the real key here is distribution. But if they have a C&D on it, then all further actions are...Well, actionable. Lawsuits and legal issues abound.
Mods and fanworks have always occupied a rather grey area. They largely exist at the mercy of the rights holders, and many get away with it simply by being beneath the notice of the rights holders.
I think my reaction has to amount to: I sympathize, you clearly put a lot of work into this mod and your doing so makes your love for the franchise quite evident, however, if you thought this result was much less than inevitable you were operating under a delusion, and likewise if you think your petition is going to make the earth move.
To be fair, the rights holders used to be a LOT cooler about this stuff. This is a major turn from even a few years ago, so they may not have seen it as an inevitability.
Granted, you still take your chances when you do such a work, but it wasn't inevitable at the beginning of the project (I'm pretty sure), and they did try and work with the guys trying to stop them.
Haha, don't pretend like that's the final point my argument, or you're right and I've been cowed into submission, or I've nothing to counter your arguments.
I'm just sick of the total lack of respect for or appreciation of content creators and, while I can't leave the planet, I can leave this thread! My blood pressure will probably be healthier for it [http://xkcd.com/386/].
Goodbye! May your views never become the law!
(I would rather live in a world where copyright was permanent and IP owners had to explicitly release their works into the public domain than in a world where copyright ran out before the creator was even dead.)
Tolkien is dead. . . And honestly, the world would be worse off without fan-content. Sometimes what multibillion-dollar corporations chug out is shit and it needs some good honest fan-art to kick it back up.
J.R.R. Tolkien was a great artistic and academic mind who, if he was still alive today, would most likely wholly support the MERP project and be very glad that people love the world, story, cultures and characters he created so much to undertake such a vast and difficult journey.
Lord of the Rings is not a product.
...and Middle Earth is not merchandise to be bought up and hawked by Warner like a cheap movie brand tshirt/poster/lunchbox/etc.
It is an imaginary world and hugely influential fantasy legendarium that exists outside of commercialism and legal licensing red tape. It exists in all our minds and will exist in the minds of countless others in the future.
It belongs to everyone.
The people making MERP are doing so out of love for LotR and for free. Warner's argument is that it will distract from their own endeavors on the video game front and confuse people even though they are making Triple A console titles and MERP is a mod for Skyrim on the PC. If Warner with their massive developing and marketing budgets can't compete with a small team of die-hard fans making custom user-created content for no profit they shouldn't be allowed to make LotR games in the first place.
Well, of course it is. Tolkien himself sold the film and merchandising rights. If he didn't want merchandising to appear around his works, he could have kept those rights in the first place. Or, in fact, adopt a "free to use" license in the first place.
Rusty X57 said:
J.R.R. Tolkien was a great artistic and academic mind who, if he was still alive today, would most likely wholly support the MERP project and be very glad that people love the world, story, cultures and characters he created so much to undertake such a vast and difficult journey.
While he wanted other people to be inspired by him, he was also prone to nit-pick and right out hate adaptations of his work. If you read through his letters (for example 207 on a screenplay) it would also be entirely possible that he considers the complete art design of this project "rubbish". I find it very hard to decide what someone would like whom neither of us know.
My opinion? He probably would say nothing, because the public attention he would get nowadays would caused him to move somewhere in solitude long ago where he could have his peace.
you never know the mod could be 'leaked' just like the 40k damnatus movie that a german production group poured £30K into just to have GW send a cease-and-desist order.
in my opinion better then official GW film Ultramarines.
honestly, I hate to say it but Warner Brothers has a point. and they way IP law works they either have to protect the IP or lose the rights to do so. something this massive in scope was worth shutting down.
Even if it's true that Warner Bros. is trying to shut down this mod because they have to in order to keep the rights, the very least that they could do is admit that was the reason for it, instead of WB coming up with BS excuses making it look like they're just being dicks.
It's not even an independent product, you need Skyrim in order to play it. A team that has worked themselves to death with this project which they -charge no money for- gets it all taken away because a corporation thinks it will compete with it's own products? If you think a -mod- is a serious threat to your ability to make profits you are incredibly ignorant, or just pathetic.
You don't like people putting actual -effort- into something, making a better job than whatever lazy job your studios do with a decent budget? Then the blame is on YOU, Warner Bros.. You don't get to punish others for your OWN incompetence.
This is just as ridiculous as videos being taken down on Youtube because of some copyrighted music piece being heard in it's background. Corporations seem to get all the rights and priviliges and the people nothing but prosecution if they try to be anything else than mindless consumers.
Ugh, I do hope they continue working on this in secret.
"While the modders will not benefit from it financially, Bethesda will. I mean, just for reference - http://www.vg247.com/2012/05/17/day-z-mod-drives-arma-2-sales-up-500/ .
I know, I know. "DayZ wasn't IP!" That is not my point.
DayZ, a mod for ARMAII, drove sales of ARMAII up five fold. And it was a FREE mod as well.
So I believe WB are in the right with this. Someone else is using its IP, and although the people using it wont benefit, the company that sells the base product you need to use it will."
I hope the Lord Inquisitor will manage to get released before GW stamps it out. i know its taken the guy like 1 and half years but its also better then ultramarines.
No, it IS bullshit. Someone making a superior product and distributing it for free is not "stealing". It's COMPETITION.
If you want to spend your valuable time designing hobbit costumes and distributing them , it should be your right to do so. Then, the onus is on the commercial rights holders to invest their time and money into MAKING SUPERIOR PRODUCTS that people are willing to pay for. You know, because THEY'RE SUPERIOR. If they can't do that, then they're INCOMPETENT.
That's the problem I have with copyright law. It's giving the rightsholders free reign to be INCOMPETENT. The fan-made Sonic game was what the fans wanted. The fan-made Chrono Trigger sequel was what the fans wanted. The freespace Battlestar Mod is what the fans want now and so is the LoTR mod. The question is "why aren't the rights-holders producing these products themselves"? If the rights-holders don't know or care what games the fans actually want to play, the fans should be able to grind them into the dirt with free stuff all day long.
I'm sorry, but if you and your millions of dollars, legions of developers and artists, and scads of marketers and researchers CAN'T FUCKING COMPETE WITH PRODUCTS BEING MADE BY UNPAID HOBBYISTS, THEN YOU ARE INCOMPETENT AND DESERVE TO HAVE YOUR PRODUCTS FAIL WHETHER YOU HOLD THE RIGHTS OR NOT.
Non-commercial use should be UNIVERSALLY protected. I DARE you to convince me otherwise, if only so I have a reason to accept the current system and not be so FUCKING PISSED about this anymore.
Firstly, copyright exists to protect all creators, not just giant corporations with "millions of dollars, legions of developers and artists, and scads of marketers and researchers", and it has to give everyone equal protection.
Secondly, "unpaid hobbyists" and "non-commercial" are not the same thing, and what you're proposing would result in corporations making "non-commercial" copies of their competitors products (including indie competitors) to undercut their competitors' market. Everyone hates Zynga for blatantly remaking successful indie games, and what you're proposing would make that legal as long as they don't sell anything in it.
Finally, and most importantly, creators need to have exclusive rights to their ideas or, in many cases, they won't create them. Sure, Tolkien probably would have created Lord of the Rings regardless of whether it got dumped immediately into the public domain or not because that's just the kind of guy he was, but most authors, directors, developers, programmers, and artists need to get paid. Without exclusive control over their ideas, nothing's stopping another person from making a "sequel" to their book or game or movie and distributing it to the public before the actual sequel comes out. Then, when the real sequel does come out, people are going to be confused. "The Wise Man's Fear, sequel to The Name of the Wind? I already read that sequel, but it was called The Name of the Forest."
And you know who will profit the most from this state of affairs? Corporations. Corporations that can see something that's becoming the next big thing, like Harry Potter, then hire thirty hack writers to pump out thirty "sequels" and drop them in the market for free and kill the series. Or EA could make an Amnesia "sequel" and give it away to flood the market just before the actual Amnesia sequel comes out.
You say it's giving creators free reign to be incompetent? Well, it is, but it's also giving them free reign to be excellent; that's the thing about free reign, it has to be free. Your stranglehold "competition" scenario would choke the creativity out of every discipline and result in all the worst things we hate about movies (endless remakes, writing by the marketing department), videogames (no new IPs, but copy our competitor's IPs...), and books (most fantasy series are already way too close to Lord of the Rings) becoming not just mainstream, but the only way to do things.
Creative professionals cannot be creative professionals without copyright protection. And, morally, taking someone else's idea without permission is wrong, it's theft, and it is not okay.
You bring up some valid concerns, but I'm still not convinced.
First of all, part of your argument contradicts itself. If a corporation were to produce a sequel to a franchise to undercut the legitimate owner's market, that doesn't exactly constitute a "non-commercial" use of the IP, since it's pretty clear they're doing it for some sort of commercial gain. It's like distributing advertising materials, or selling door-to-door. Just because you're not charging people money for it, doesn't mean it isn't a commercial activity.
If the law were changed, I think this sort of thing would have to be decided by legal precedent. I will grant you that companies that are unscrupulous enough to try this might find ways to get away with it, but the difference between deliberately trying to undercut someone else's market with a free product and what the modders are doing seems pretty clear-cut to me.
Secondly, the example you gave about hiring hack writers to create unauthorized sequels to popular novels/comic books/whatever is still hyperbolic. Basically, if what you're saying was true, fanfiction would have totally eclipsed commercial fiction by this point (spoiler alert: it hasn't). You say there would be nothing stopping people from squelching legitimate original works under floods of free rip-offs. Turns out, there's actually a lot of things stopping them, most of them having to do with basic economics.
Take the book example. In the publication of a book, except perhaps in the case of very famous authors like Stephen King or whoever, hiring an author is the cheapest part of producing a book. Everything else: advertising, printing, distribution, and promotion--that's the expensive part. Even if the hack you hired to write your rip-off made less money than the legitimate author, do you really think it's a good investment to blow all that money on actually getting the book out to people if you can't sell it?
On top of that, where would people go to find your book? Brick and mortar bookstores aren't going to stock it; they need the shelf space for products they can SELL. Online stores are a negative for basically the same reasons. All that bandwidth ain't free either. For reasons mentioned above, you might not even be able to advertise your rip-off without attracting unwanted legal attention.
The argument gets even less reasonable when you talk about games, movies, TV shows, and music, since to produce a product that's anywhere near the quality of a commercial product in those arenas, you have to pay a comparable investment. Ubisoft could spend fifty million dollars to create "Battlefield 4" and give it away to users for nothing, but I think that's something they're only going to try once before their investors smack the CEO so hard his eyeballs switch places.
Your point about Amnesia is completely bunk for this reason. Yeah, it was probably cheaper to make than a triple-A game, but it still wasn't cheap. People might hear about "Amnesia 2: the Re-Forgettening" by EA through the grapevine, but they won't see any ads for it, and they sure as hell aren't going to find it on Steam. The several thousand or hundred-thousand dollars it took to make Amnesia may not be a lot of money for a company like EA to invest in a commercial product, but it becomes a hell of a lot of money to ANY company if they're basically flushing it down the toilet.
Bottom line, protecting non-commercial use doesn't allow companies to flood the markets with cheap sequels and crap products to confuse people and drive competitors under, because you can't put a product on the market (you know, where people go to SELL things) and still call it non-commercial use. Companies would have to do--well--you said it yourself:
Everyone hates Zynga for blatantly remaking successful indie games, and what you're proposing would make that legal as long as they don't sell anything in it.
You basically shot your argument in the foot right there. What Zynga does already IS legal because they're not ripping off IP. They're knocking it off instead. You just change the characters and the art assets around (make it similar enough to the original to be recognizable, but different enough that you don't get in trouble) and now you can sell your knock-off at full price. So why would any company choose to rip off a popular franchise and get nothing in return when they can knock off a franchise instead and maybe make some money? Any amount of revenue > zero revenue. That's why we have Call of Duty, Medal of Honor, Battlefield, Frontlines: Fuel of War, ARMA, and a bazillion other modern war games that all make money in one way or another. Why? Because they come at varying levels of cost, and have varying levels of quality.
For the reasons above, free products don't--I would argue, can't--compete with commercial products. The shortcoming of the current IP law is that letting this sort of thing go could allow other companies to challenge the owners of the IP for the commercial rights.
My final thought is this: if the bedroom programmers have made a non-commercial product out of your rights, why don't you just rip THEM off? Take their idea, and use your crap-tons of resources to make a commercial version that blows the free guys out of the water? You've got the rights, why not use them for something constructive?
Oh, right, I forgot: BECAUSE YOU'RE FUCKING INCOMPETENT!
To be fair, the rights holders used to be a LOT cooler about this stuff. This is a major turn from even a few years ago, so they may not have seen it as an inevitability.
Granted, you still take your chances when you do such a work, but it wasn't inevitable at the beginning of the project (I'm pretty sure), and they did try and work with the guys trying to stop them.
If you don't mind indulging my curiosity: by "the rights holders", do you mean Time Warner or Tolkein's heirs? And did you have specific projects in mind that were the beneficiaries of a more lenient attitude?
Shouldn't have called it MERP, that's the acronym for Middle Earth Roleplaying by Iron Crown Enterprises (a version of Rulemaster), an old official licensed product (until ICE lost the licence). One of the better RPG's I've tried, still have the rulebook.
EDIT and all they need to do is rename the hobbits halflings, elves elfs and Middle Earth Grayhawk and they are good to go.
"The release of MERP into the marketplace will likely result in customer confusion and cannibalization with respect to such legitimately licensed LOTR/Hobbit games and will detract from the value proposition bargained and paid for by legitimate licensees of the LOTR/Hobbit properties. Furthermore, projects and games like MERP will diminish and erode Warner Bros.' ability to manage and protect the brand, reputation and quality of the LOTR/Hobbit properties that it has invested significant resources to cultivate over the years."
Okay, here's a thought. Why doesn't Warner Brothers offer to BUY the mod and set up a contract with Bethesda to sell it? On disks? As a branded LotR/Hobbit legitimate license?
I'd buy it. Fuck yeah, I'd buy it. I'd pay 60 bucks for this, new, and buy DLC for it.
To Warner Brothers: Don't stop these people. Employ them.
"The release of MERP into the marketplace will likely result in customer confusion and cannibalization with respect to such legitimately licensed LOTR/Hobbit games and will detract from the value proposition bargained and paid for by legitimate licensees of the LOTR/Hobbit properties. Furthermore, projects and games like MERP will diminish and erode Warner Bros.' ability to manage and protect the brand, reputation and quality of the LOTR/Hobbit properties that it has invested significant resources to cultivate over the years."
Okay, here's a thought. Why doesn't Warner Brothers offer to BUY the mod and set up a contract with Bethesda to sell it? On disks? As a branded LotR/Hobbit legitimate license?
I'd buy it. Fuck yeah, I'd buy it. I'd pay 60 bucks for this, new, and buy DLC for it.
To Warner Brothers: Don't stop these people. Employ them.
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