#copyrights lawyers

[rythyme]

so... if i'm not mistaken... gmmtv wrote, filmed, edited, marketed, AND PREMIERED a whole ass show without getting international airing rights?? how the hell does that even happen?? did they simply not read their contract?? did they intentionally ignore it??? did they get a verbal go-ahead and then just forgot to put it in writing? it's a bad look for gmmtv of course but also kind of hilarious to think of how they could have fucked up this badly when they literally had A YEAR to sort it all out

[steakout-05]

hi after the Internet Archive and Vimm's Lair takedowns i conclude that copyright laws are legitimately a plague upon humanity's history, media that isn't being sold anymore should be free for all, and copyright enforcers should be held at the same standards as landlords (scum)

[thegoodduckfan]

Every day I'm reminded Donald Duck canonically fears Disney's lawyers

[aurriearts]

guess who managed to print off the ric art on their home printer /o/

gonna put it up on my wall :3

[museaway]

there are some days when no matter how good the music or the company or the food, no matter how comfortable you are or how much tea you make, no matter what friends are online, you just feel miserable.

[maladaptivewriting]

another day, another tiktoker misunderstanding the fair use doctrine

[kingofdoma]

As soon as the video started playing... I... I had to make this.

(via Make a GIF)

[marokra]

Imagine. You are currently watching season 5 of Lego Monkie Kid. They are making a joke about Sun Wukong’s once—now twice—mentioned lawyer. He reveals who it is. It’s just Phoenix Wright but in lego form

[darling-solaire]

hey i drew this btw

You should put down the pen 😔🤚🏽

[clovreat3r]

My birthday gift for @nssticcman sister (get your balls gargled for not showing her this work of art)

Smh despicable amirite guys

ANYWAYS

FOUR IS AWESOME FOURILOVEFOURISLIFE AND I CAN HEAR HIM IN MY WALLS

[87dvhnk]

here it is. i wasn't aware this even existed. i love the puck scene best. i miss old puck! he was precious.

there are many berserk fan projects, including one, at least, that's live action, but the one i thought of immediately was by studio taka:

aside from having made the executive decision to skip over guts fucking the woman apostle at the very start, i think i prefer studio taka's motion picture book approach, but i will happily watch studio eclypse's if i'm still alive when it drops.

and i love what it says about berserk and berserk fans that we have the unusual blessing to have multiple resource and time-intensive fanworks of this breadth and quality, to the point where fans are often confused about which painstakingly, lovingly wrought amateur adaptation is being discussed.

[festiveferret]

What to do if someone copied/stole/published/sold/plagiarized your fanfiction.

I am not a lawyer. This is merely my personal advice and compiled information from years of interest, activism, and study in this area. This post views things from the perspective of U.S. copyright law as most of the relevant platforms are based in the U.S. Laws in your country may differ. Rules and TOS vary from platform to platform.

Read on for:

Is plagiarism the same as a copyright violation?

Is it even a copyright violation if it’s fanfic?

Someone stole my work or a significant part of my work and reposted it on AO3 under their name. What do I do?

Someone stole my work and posted it on a site that isn’t AO3. What do I do?

Should I tell AO3/The OTW if I find someone on another platform posting/publishing fanfics taken from AO3?

What if I find someone else’s work that was stolen?

How can I prevent my work from being stolen?

Is plagiarism the same as copyright infringement?

Plagiarism is not a legal concept. Plagiarism is taking someone else’s work and claiming it as your own and/or failing to cite the source of ideas or information. Copyright is a legal protection that allows remedies to those who have their intellectual property rights violated. Simply put: if an unauthorized copy is made of something you hold copyright to, your copyright has been violated. Remedies can include having the violating work removed from a platform and/or the ability to sue someone for damages/losses you suffered as a result of the violation.

A platform may disallow plagiarism on their platform as part of their TOS with their own definition of what that entails and the threshold may be lower/simpler or higher than the legal threshold for copyright violations. The TOS will also apply equally to all users of the site, regardless of their own country’s laws.

Plagiarism is often (but not always!) a copyright violation by legal standards as well, though many copyright violations are not plagiarism. I can’t start a blog and post the entirety of The Hunger Games novels on it and claim I wrote it. I also can’t start a blog and post the entirety of The Hunger Games on it and explain that Suzanne Collins wrote it. Both are copyright violations. The first is also plagiarism. Daily Dracula is possible because Dracula is out of copyright. Copyright does not last forever. Once copyright ends, works enter the public domain and are free to be reposted/republished by anyone. Submitting a paper to my university where I do not properly cite where my ideas came from is academic plagiarism, but it’s not a copyright violation. Since it has no legal definition, the thresholds and specifics of what constitutes plagiarism are context, platform, and institution dependent.

Copyright violations are both against civil law and a violation of many sites’ Terms of Service. Even if they are not a violation of a site’s Terms of Service, they are still against civil law and you still have those legal protections (again, country-dependent).

Is it even a copyright violation if it’s fanfic?

Short answer: yes. Slightly longer answer: as U.S. law currently stands, you, by default, own the copyright to the aspects of your fanfic that were created by you and are protectable by copyright laws. You do not need to register for a copyright to hold it, nor to file a claim that it has been infringed, though registration may change how a copyright case plays out in court if it comes to that. Do not feel a need to register a copyright on your fics in the U.S. 

Ideas are not protectable. If someone writes a fic or even a published story with the exact same idea as you, tough cookies. They are allowed to do that. Your actual words that you wrote are protectable. There is a legal threshold for how much constitutes copying. No, it’s not a clear-cut wordcount or percent. Yes, Disney/The CW etc. still owns the characters and other IP that you used. Yes, this is often confusing and complicated. Copyright of characters and concepts is complicated. Odds are, though D.C. owns Batman, you do not own any right to your OCs on their own.

The argument that currently protects fanfic is that it is transformative. This means the same argument protects other people who do transformative things with your work. If someone takes your ideas, OCs, concepts, approaches, and makes their own transformative work with it, they enjoy as much copyright protection as you did with your transformative work. It may annoy you, but it is not a copyright violation and most platforms also will not consider it plagiarism.

Different countries have different copyright laws and some have agreements with other countries and some do not. The global internet makes things even more complicated. You may need to investigate this further for your own country. Laws apply based on countries and regions; Terms of Service apply to all users on a particular platform. Most platforms are also beholden to the laws of the country they are based in.

Someone stole my work or a significant part of my work and reposted it on AO3 under their name. What do I do?

Report it to AO3′s Policy and Abuse Team. Plagiarism is against AO3′s TOS so you do not need to file a DMCA takedown notice, nor do you necessarily need to be the copyright holder under your country’s laws. AO3′s thresholds and rules for plagiarism and how they handle copyright violations are outlined in their TOS. 

There is a report link at the bottom of every page. If you click it from a story page, it will auto-fill in the link to that work. If you click it from another page, be sure to fill in the link to the work you want to report instead. If you are reporting plagiarism, make sure you also provide a link to the thing you are alleging they stole. PAC is a small team that gets a lot of tickets and investigations take time. You may need to be patient. None of PAC’s moderating is automated. Every ticket is investigated by a human. So: provide evidence, be clear, be patient.

Someone stole my work and posted it on a site that isn’t AO3. What do I do?

You need to report it to that site. There are two ways to do this. Some sites have internal reporting tools like AO3 does and copyright violations are also a violation of their TOS, so they’re able to simply take down the offending work if there is enough evidence. 

If they do not have an internal system, or if their internal system denies your claim, they are still required to follow a set process outlined by the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act). You send the platform a DMCA takedown notice which legally claims you as the copyright holder of a work and accuses the other party of violating your copyright. The platform then needs to inform the other party and the other party is given a timeframe to file a counter claim (officially disagree with your claim). If they do, you will be informed. You then have a timeframe to sue them. If you do not, the claim is dropped. The vast majority of the time, when it comes to actual plagiarism of fanfiction, the work is simply removed by the platform or the other party, uncontested.

Some sites have built-in DMCA reporting forms. Many of these forms include fields like your real name and your address. That information may end up being shared with the other party, depending on how the platform handles DMCA takedowns. You can use these forms if you wish. 

Legally, you do not need to use these forms, even if they are provided. You can send your own takedown notice to a platform. It may be tricky on some platforms to find where to send these, as they want you to use the form for ease of internal ticketing. 

There is a set list of what these notices need to provide. If you do not provide these things, the platform may ignore your notice. You can read the requirements  here: https://www.copyright.gov/512/ 

The only requirement for personal identification is a valid way of contacting you. This can be an email address. This could be a PO box or a work phone number. As long as you, personally, can ultimately be reached there, it is valid. It is impossible to file a DMCA and remain totally anonymous, but you can often protect your personal information more than it seems at first glance. It is usually more work to send your own takedown notice instead of using the form, so it is up to you if keeping your contact information private is worth that extra effort.

Should I tell AO3/The OTW if I find someone on another platform posting/publishing fanfics taken from AO3?

No. Report these works to the platform the violating works are posted on, not the platform they were taken from. There is nothing the platform they were taken from can do. You hold the copyright to your fanfiction, AO3 does not. They are a platform, not a publisher. You are the sole holder of your copyright and solely responsible for pursuing violations. If you have a co-author, you each have the right to pursue violations.

What if I find someone else’s work that has been stolen?

If it was someone else’s work that was stolen, inform the person it was stolen from so they can report it appropriately with valid evidence of copyright holding. Keep in mind that if it is not your work, you cannot be sure if copyright infringement occurred or in what direction it occurred. Sometimes copyright holders give permission to repost/publish. Sometimes people publish under multiple names/aliases. Sometime infringing content at first glance appears to be the original. Some platforms will accept internal reports that do not come from the copyright holder, some will not. If you are not the copyright holder or a legal agent of the copyright holder you cannot file a DMCA takedown notice. If the copyright holder will not do anything to pursue the infringement, that is up to them and there’s nothing else you can do as a bystander.

How can I prevent my work from being stolen?

Bluntly, only by not sharing it with anyone, ever. If it is available on the internet or on paper, in any manner, anywhere that other people have access to it, it is possible to have someone violate your copyright or plagiarize you. Obviously, the odds and ease of this varies depending on circumstance. Printing out a copy of your story and mailing it to a trusted friend is less likely to result in a copyright violation than posting it publicly on a site like AO3, but it is not impossible. Account-locking your AO3 works may lower the chances of infringement but it does not remove them. Once you share anything anywhere online you may not lose your legal right to its control, but you do lose actual control over where it may end up. People break civil law and platforms’ TOS all the time. While some platforms may have preventative systems set up to stop copyright violations before they happen (YouTube’s automated striking system) most don’t. It is reactive instead of preventative. The law offers remedies which can only occur after the fact and pursuing those remedies often has downsides like sharing personal information, revealing your identity, or legal fees. This is a risk you need to weigh when you choose to share your creations. If you find a violation of your copyright, you are not required to pursue it; you can make the choice to ignore it if you prefer.

(Is copyright law actually way more complicated than this?)

Yes. It’s wild and I love it. There’s a lot of interesting things happening in U.S. courts right now that could directly affect fanfiction and fandom spaces. It’s worth keeping up to date on. I am not a lawyer, nor am I American, but I have studied U.S. copyright law in particular and it’s insane but very cool.

[djhallyboo]

"IF YOU'RE A FAMOUS TV SHOW HOST, HATE PIZZA, AND CURRENTLY BEIN' VICTIMIZED BY RECENT EVENTS, I'M WILLIN' TO TAKE ON YOUR CASE..."

"PRO BONO."

[vimbry]

I was just scrolling the meme page of tvtropes for moomin and I cannot express the jumpscare I experienced of my peripheral vision registering part of that final paragraph before I read it

[heroicvilliansometimes]

How much trouble would I be in if I posted a graphic novel on Webtoon depicting my adventures with the Weasley twins from my conversations with character ai. Like would I face copyright laws I need to know.

[wingedcatgirl]

i think a lot of the conflation of how copyright and trademark works could be resolved if people remembered their ostensible purposes:

copyright is intended to protect the creator (ensure they can make a living off their creation)

trademark is intended to protect the customer (ensure they're actually getting what they think they are)

(i of course say "ostensible purposes" because in practice both get bent to serve corporate needs over those of the people at large. but you can still see the shadows)

this is why copyright is automatic, while trademarks require registration

why trademarks require active use to retain, while copyright just lasts a set amount of time

why copyright has fair use as an exception and trademark does not

why trademark infringement must be defended, but copyright infringement can be ignored

stuff like that