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Comment by panick21_ | Hacker News Reader

So don't live with the freedom you have by right, and just live with artificial extra legal boundaries set up by a paranoid cooperation.

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You basically have no rights under modern copyright law. Derivative content is extremely restricted and pretty much arbitrarily controlled by the copyright owner. This is by design.

If you want to change that, don't complain to Nintendo, complain to your representatives who made the system that way to begin with. Nintendo has the rights at the moment, while you, the consumer, don't.

> complain to your representatives who made the system that way to begin with

Ah yes. That should do the trick.

> complain to your representatives who made the system that way to begin with.

I complain with my voice and vote but BigCorps will complain with their dollars, which will buy more than just a handful of votes.

It's not exactly correct to say dollars = votes, but it's about as close to correct as saying we live in a democracy.

You don't have the freedom or right to make money off of other people's stuff.

So could Ford stop me from using footage of a Mustang? Vehicle design and logos are copyrighted. What about a movie wear characters are wearing designer clothing? Those are covered by copyright as well.

> So could Ford stop me from using footage of a Mustang? Vehicle design and logos are copyrighted. What about a movie wear characters are wearing designer clothing? Those are covered by copyright as well.

You may notice how when cars are used in commercials they generally have their logos removed. Likewise when someone wears a shirt with a designer logo or graphic design on TV it'll often be blurred. The line is fuzzy but at least the professional media production world seems to have agreed it's somewhere around there.

This is a somewhat disingenuous statement. If you go back in time you will notice that was not the case, Then Studios got the bright idea of "product placement" so if a brand wanted to be in a show they need to pay for it, if not they would remove the logos.

In some limited circumstances a company might be able to sue over the use copyright in another work but for the most part fair use would protect them.

The reason they remove the logos today is primarily to extort money from brands not fear over copyright

There is actually some case law about this. The car Elenore from gone in 60 seconds has its rights held by some organization that was going around suing people.

Some US district court ruled that cars could not be copyrighted (although this did reverse a previous decision).

I think the major distinction is that the car isn't actually a character in the film (and the previous decision was because the rights holders disingenuously indicated that the car was a character in the movie and the court didn't double check that this was in fact the case iirc).

> In some limited circumstances a company might be able to sue over the use copyright in another work but for the most part fair use would protect them.

Incorrect, or at the very least studios disagree with you, as they act as if the opposite is true. I'm going to trust their (and their lawyers') judgement over that of yours.

For example, Apple is infamously controlling about use of its products by villains in media, and studios listen to them: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/26/apple-wont-let-bad-guys-use-...

There is no indication in that link, or any other links I have read on the topic that Apple is doing this via copyright.

Apple could be paying studio's to keep the products away from villain, Apple could be supplying devices or other services for free as a condition if they agree to those terms, Apple itself is a production company so directors and other people in the industry could be voluntary agreeing to it for their own professional reasons...

I have not read a single legal expert that claims Apple could successfully sue a studio for copyright or even trademark infringement if a bad guy was using an iPhone in a movie.

Yes you do. You are allowed to resell a copyrighted book. You can pillage public-domain works to your heart's content. You can use open-source software commercially.

Very common misconception. There is no law in the US that says that you're not allowed to make money off of other people's stuff, and there are plenty of rights in the US that as a side-effect happen to protect your ability to make money off of other people's stuff. Some of those rights are even embedded within copyright law. Parody allows you to make money off of other people's stuff without their permission.

I really object to the phrasing of copyright law as "you don't have a right to make money off of other people." That's turning copyright law into something much, much broader than it actually is.

I get that this might seem like a trivial or nitpicky distinction, but if you're familiar with Doctorow's writings around concepts like "felony contempt of business model", there is (I believe) an uncoordinated but persistent effort towards rephrasing copyright as if its purpose is to enshrine some fundamental right for a business to make money and to control who can make money around them. And it's a really insidious expansion of what copyright actually protects.

If people aren't violating an actual copyright (which, we can debate if lets plays do), they are in fact allowed to make money off of your stuff, and the fact that your stuff enabled them to make money does not automatically obligate them to compensate you. Not everything that allows someone to profit off of another person's business is a copyright violation.

This is a contentious statement - the large datasets used to train all the new generative AI projects are comprised, at an individual level, of "other people's stuff".

> the freedom you have by right

That's not how law works.

If that's not how law works I want off the ship.

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