• yamanii@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Nintendo filled some vague ass patents after the game launched, they are a disgusting company that already did the same to white cat project because of some virtual analogue because they were releasing their own Dragalia Lost.

    • BruceTwarzen@lemm.ee
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      2 months ago

      Oh no, they actually made a good rectangle, our rectangle is cheap and boring. Instead of making an effort, we sue their rectangle

  • callouscomic@lemm.ee
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    2 months ago

    Decided to finally go watch gameplay of this game.

    It’s definitely a fan ripoff mashing up Breath of the Wild with the newer open world pokemon games.

    I’m not saying nobody else is allowed to make these kinds of games. But this absolutely is just trying to rip those off. Looks as unimaginative, boring, and empty as all of Nintendo’s adventure games.

    They’ve stolen Nintendos IP of providing half-assed garbage and watching people eat it up.

    • Zorsith@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      2 months ago

      More like a (much more polished) ripoff of a game that came out a couple years before Breath of the Wild.

      Ark with pokemon and fortnite graphics.

    • TowardsTheFuture@lemmy.zip
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      2 months ago

      I mean, it also has very distinct gameplay from Pokemon? The newer open world games but like sword and shield released the same year pal world opened it’s early access (2019). Legends, which is the closest, was 3 years later.

      Also, definitely adds FPS gameplay, survival gameplay with base building, and etc.

      While it’s still not a great game, it’s definitely A: still early access and B: not just a Pokemon game.

      Definitely took more than BotW and Ark than it did from anything else.

    • Hawk@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      2 months ago

      I wonder if people actually played Palworld here.

      It’s an obvious mash-up of existing games, ripping straight from games like Breath of the World, Pokemon and Fortnite, even up to the music chimes.

      I don’t think Nintendo should be suing, but people here defending how original the game is should really take a closer look at it.

      • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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        2 months ago

        The original part is the specific formulation. Pretty much all games are mashups of other games anyway. Palworld found a formula among popular games that really struck a chord with people, and they executed on it pretty well.

        And yeah, I’ve seen extensive portions of Palworld since my SO is really into it. My SO doesn’t care much at all about Pokemon, Breath of the Wild, or Fortnite, though they really like Palworld. That alone is a pretty good argument for Palworld being distinct.

        Nintendo is mad that Palworld did a great job with some of their ideas, and I think they want a piece of the action. I don’t think they’re concerned that anyone would mistake Palworld for any of their IPs, they just want some cash. I’m interested to know which patents they claim Palworld violated, because it’s honestly really rare in video games for patents to actually be enforceable because there’s so much prior art and a lot of variations in how mechanics can be used.

  • sorrybookbroke@sh.itjust.works
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    2 months ago

    Normally I’d say fuck Nintendo but palworld obviously stole the designs and artistic direction for many of their characters.

    Most of the pals I saw at first were modified versions of an already existant pokemon with little to seperate it from fan art of that pokemon. This is particularly agregoous as they clashed against the rest of this games aesthetic. Nothing that was original fit with the design of the pokemon rip offs.

    Many other games have a pokemon esque aesthetic without direct copying. It looking similar is not my issue. My issue is that while playing I could easily name most pals to a pokemon. Seriously, look up comparisons. It’s blatant.

    They’ve moved away from thisbrecently but fuck man if it ain’t obvious. If they did the same to some small project I’d assume people would be much more up in arms, rightfully so.

    Still though, I won’t cry if Nintendo loses. I hope they pay an insane amount in lawyers fees either way and never see a dime out of the case

    • Franklin@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      sharing aesthetic shouldn’t be enough to prosecute, especially in the case of patents.

      My biggest defense against any claim like that is that they’re identifiably distinct. You put two of them side by side and not a single fan of either will be confused which is which.

      • _NetNomad@fedia.io
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        2 months ago

        any fan could tell the difference, but i can see parents being confused, and they’re the ones footing the bill for the vast majority of pokemon fans. pair that with the guns and back in the day if my parents caught wind of it, Pokémon would be banned in my household no matter how hard i tried to explain Palworld was different

        for the record i am very anti-copyright and think Pokémon should be in the public domain by now, and generally hate Nintendo’s over-ligitous practices. i also don’t understand the patent angle of this action. but i ln this one specific case i can see where they’re coming from, as opposed to if they were going after good-faith tributes like Coromon or Cassette Beasts or a ROM hack

        • Franklin@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          This is very fair, but then again, my parents would get confused over the difference between an Xbox and a PlayStation, so take that for what you will.

    • ShinkanTrain@lemmy.ml
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      2 months ago

      Were this to happen with games with an actual aesthetic that actually tried to do their own thing (like, say, Casette Beasts), I’d be upset.

      PocketPair though? If they die, they die. They clearly have a pattern of profitting off of other people’s work, just look at their totally not Hollow Knight game

      People are treating them like the underdog fighting for the little guy against the scumbag corporations. They’re both scumbag corporations.

      PS: Play Casette Beasts. And Monster Sanctuary.

      • MoogleMaestro@lemmy.zip
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        2 months ago

        PS: Play Casette Beasts. And Monster Sanctuary.

        Yeah, fuck Pocket Pair they can kick rocks. Play Caseette Beasts which made a better pokemon with unique designs and are truly independent, not just some AI grift company locking for a quick buck.

      • Noxy@yiffit.net
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        2 months ago

        Upvoted for Monster Sanctuary. Outstanding game that deserves so much more recognition!

    • NineMileTower@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      I am typically anti-capitalist and usually root for the underdog. Palworld is a blatant ripoff of Pokemon and those denying it are delusional. Reverse the situation, where Nintendo releases Pokemon after Pocketpair releases Palworld and everyone would be calling it a ripoff.

      Yeah, Nintendo’s legal department does some shitty stuff, but their likeness was stolen. Also, they are suing for patents, not copyright. The fact that the monsters are caught in a sphere is damning Pocketpair, while other Pokemon copies like Digimon avoid this.

      It’s just my opinion. I’m often wrong.

      • Franklin@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        It might be a ripoff, but my question to you is should that be illegal? The entirety of humanity is monkey see monkey do iteration on our previous ideas. It’s a dubious thing to litigate.

        To add to that, no fan of either is going to confuse one for the other, so where’s the issue?

        • NineMileTower@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          Again, this isn’t a copyright lawsuit. Making a game with monsters that look similar to theirs is not what the lawsuit is about. It’s about patents. Likely design patents like I mentioned before. If I made a country song with Eminem’s lyrics, of course you wouldn’t confuse it with Slim’s music, but I would need his permission first.

          • amelore@slrpnk.net
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            2 months ago

            Marshall has copyright on his lyrics, you just said yourself patents and copyright are different things.

            Sufficiently different rip-offs that don’t confuse consumers as being the original should be legal. They already are as far as copyright is concerned.

            Many design patents should never have been registered, and should lose when defended in court. Design trademarks are a third similar issue.

          • Hominine@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            I’m just going to shove these words into your mouth because I cannot grasp the obvious.

            • NineMileTower@lemmy.world
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              2 months ago

              It was wrong for Nintendo to copy someone, but it’s not wrong for Pocketpair to copy someone. That’s what you are saying?

              • FaceDeer@fedia.io
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                2 months ago

                It’s not wrong for either to draw inspiration from the other. It’s the hypocrisy that’s wrong.

                • NineMileTower@lemmy.world
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                  2 months ago

                  You can either explain your position, or you can be a pretentious ass. Like I said before, I’m often wrong. I’m willing to hear your point, but you refuse to make it and act pompous.

                • NineMileTower@lemmy.world
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                  2 months ago

                  I don’t disagree with that, but the line that is drawn between inspiration and imitation is blurred and the courts will probably rule in favor of those with the most money, unfortunately.

        • stormesp@lemm.ee
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          2 months ago

          Cant know if you are for real, most of those designs are barely the same despite being based on the same creatures, against how palworld straight up copied designs with a few changes? Seriously, fuck Nintendo and their shitty and buggy Pokemon games, but the Dragon Quest vs Pokemon designs are not even close to what Pocket Pair, masters of copying games did here.


          • Bassman1805@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            Most of those are just based on the same real-world animal.

            How DARE you also put a wolf in your game!

      • TowardsTheFuture@lemmy.zip
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        2 months ago

        Palworld is a rip off of Ark and BotW with Pokemon aesthetics. It opened early access the same year sword and shield came out. Before that Pokemon was not a big 3D open world type game. It also doesn’t include the survival/base building or FPS features in Pokemon. While palworld may be a derivative game, it is for sure different enough.

        There is stuff like the palbox or the pokeball things that I could see them be dinged for though.

    • stormesp@lemm.ee
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      2 months ago

      For real, its fun to see people shitting on Nintendo on this one, i dislike them as the most, but its absurd here. Pocket Pair just releases copies of other games, they also released a Hollow Knight copy just before Palworld, and on Palworld they almost copied the design 1 to 1 in some creatures. There is a reason you dont see Nintendo suing the other million pokemon clones, which is because they dont went of and almost even used the same geometry for some models. They straight up copied Pokemon like Lucario, Luxray, Cinderace, Cobalion and a bunch of others to the point where people showed their triangles and it was pretty certain they used ripped assets as the base for them.

      • TachyonTele@lemm.ee
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        2 months ago

        Copied characters is not what the lawsuit is about. It’s like nobody ‘defending’ the lawsuit has read anything about it.

        • Josie@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          2 months ago

          you say that like you know what the lawsuit is about, which as far as I’ve read isn’t yet known. copied characters seems most likely since people were talking about it as an issue since the game’s launch

          • TachyonTele@lemm.ee
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            2 months ago

            Palworld developer Pocketpair has responded to this morning’s dramatic decision by Nintendo to file a patent infringement lawsuit against the company.

            First paragraph of the article, dude. Patent infringement is not IP.

            • Josie@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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              2 months ago

              girl, I’m not a lawyer, i don’t know the intricacies of IP vs patent law and whether you can patent a character model/design.

        • stormesp@lemm.ee
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          2 months ago

          Im not defending the lawsuit, im talking about what most people is talking about here without knowing shit about the case, the companies or the games. PocketPair whole schtick has been copying other games, from visual aesthethics to mechanics, you can look at their steam. Also, btw. that article doesnt even talk about what Nintendo is suing for or not, https://www.eurogamer.net/nintendo-sues-palworld-developer-for-infringement-of-multiple-patents that article is on the response of PocketPair to this link, and all nintendo has said pretty much is: “Nintendo will continue to take necessary actions against any infringement of its intellectual property rights including the Nintendo brand itself,” the company’s statement today concludes, “to protect the intellectual properties it has worked hard to establish over the years.” Pretty much they broadly have talked about intelectual property and multiple patent infringements.

    • CosmoNova@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Except they didn’t steal designs and I’m pretty sure art direction can’t be protected. Even if it could, it would be morally questionable at best. The whole lawsuit also isn’t about that but about some really fringe patents on Nintendo’s part. Patents that Nintendo certainly didn’t come up with, shouldn’t have and last but not least threaten smaller studios in the game industry. Since Pocketpal teamed up with Sony, I don’t consider them indie anymore but it’s true that they have to win this lawsuit for indie devs regardless. If Nintendo gets away with this you can say farewell to smaller game studios in Japan.

      • dan@upvote.au
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        2 months ago

        The fact that Nintendo are going for a patent claim rather than a copyright claim makes me think that they don’t think a copyright claim would be successful.

        • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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          2 months ago

          Nor should it be. The standard for copyright violation is pretty high, things don’t have to just look similar, they need to actually match, so there’s no copyright over the idea of cute, Japanese-themed monsters, especially with other Japanese-themed monster games/shows like Digimon. Even if they matched the art style, you can’t copyright art style, you can only copyright the art itself.

          • dan@upvote.au
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            2 months ago

            Right. I just feel like they’ll find it even harder to successfully sue over patents, especially if the patents are fairly generic. The defendants just need to find prior art that predates Nintendo’s patents. It’s weird that Nintendo aren’t saying which patents are being violated.

  • Rob200@lemmy.autism.place
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    2 months ago

    You know Nintendo is just weird.

    They file a patent lawsuit against an indie game, just because someone finally got popular. But why don’t thay sue digimon or blue dragon, and while their at it, howtotrain a dragon while their at it.

    This whole thing is just weird.

    • Gormadt@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      2 months ago

      The really odd but is being unaware of which patents they’re allegedly infringing on

      That should be part of the filing shouldn’t it?

      Also are they going to sue Square Enix for Dragon Quest Monsters while they’re at it?

    • Scrollone@feddit.it
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      2 months ago

      Well, they waited for Pocketpair to become big enough to give them money, and not too big to risk losing against them.

  • ozoned@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Welp, I had no plans of buying Palworld. I’ve been playing Enshrouded instead. But I’ll be picking it up now. Screw you Nintendo and your anticompetitive ways.

    • zalgotext@sh.itjust.works
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      2 months ago

      Thank you for reminding me about Enshrouded. I started playing that a few months ago, but a week into it my gamer friends wanted to start a new Valheim playthrough, and that was that. I should revisit it though

    • 🐋 Color 🔱 ♀@lemm.ee
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      1 month ago

      Palworld has to be the most addicted I’ve ever been to a game in years, and that was back at launch in January. I’m not going to spoil anything, but they’ve added a ton of new things since!

  • PenisDuckCuck9001@lemmynsfw.com
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    2 months ago

    Fuck Nintendo. I think Palworld is a stupid game that I wouldn’t ever bother to play but Nintendo is pure evil and they NEED to lose. They do not deserve a monopoly on whatever type of genre that is.

    • Ragincloo@lemmy.one
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      2 months ago

      Idk about that, maybe indefinite copyrights would be but limited term is entirely fair. Like imagine you spend 5 years and $50M to develop something (random numbers here), then the next day someone just copies it and sells it cheaper since they had no overhead in copying your product. There’s no incentive to create if all it does is put you in debt, so we do need copyrights if we want things. However Pokemon came out in 96, that’s 28 years. There’s been very little innovation in their games since. And seeing as Digimon wasn’t sued it’s not about the monsters, it’s about the balls. But those balls haven’t changed in almost three decades so I don’t think the really have a case to complain

      • blazera@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        The people spending 5 years to develop something arent the ones that own the rights to the end product. Like I said, copyright exists so rich people can own more. The people that own the rights to pokemon are not game developers, artists, writers, anyone that put actual work into creating the games and other media. Its people that had a lot of money, shareholders and executives. And then they receive the biggest share of the profits off others work and the feedback loop continues.

      • BaldManGoomba@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        How about no. Let people create if your only incentive is money fuck you. If someone spent $50 million to develop something the labor has been paid. You will be first to the market and you can make money if your invention isn’t that unique oh well.

        • Womble@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          Thats a great way to make companies spend 0 on r&d that has longterm benefits and instead focus on squeezing out every penny from current assets.

          • interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml
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            2 months ago

            Want to make something, the people eho want it pay to make it happen, once it’s done and paid for, it belongs to everyone. I rather live in the star citizen dystopia than the Disney vampire dystopia.

            Making an unlimited reproducible resource artificially scarce for 160 years is really fucking evil parasiticism.

            • Womble@lemmy.world
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              2 months ago

              I dont think anyone here thinks that the ridiculous terms on current IP laws make sense (at least I havent seen anyone defending them), but there is a big difference between a short term of 5-10 years for you to get the earned benefits of an innovation you created and zero protection where a larger more well funded company can swoop in copy your invention and bury you in marketing so they get the reward.

              • interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml
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                2 months ago

                Intellectual property has been abused beyond recovery, we need an entirely new paradigm. Duration of right is just a tiny part of it. Any system that turns the infinite resource into an artificial scarcity is fundamentally evil.

          • RubberDuck@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            So you tax the fuck out of them and fund invention though schools and unis. But the fact companies won’t is not a sure thing… it just means they will be more pickey.

      • Syrc@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        However Pokemon came out in 96, that’s 28 years. There’s been very little innovation in their games since.

        First, not really, there’s been a LOT of innovation in Pokémon, as much as people want to deny it.

        And second, 28 years is really not that much. We’re not in the Disney realm of copyright-hogging, I think 50 years is a fair amount of time. The issue is that it’s often way too broad: it should protect only extremely blatant copies (i.e. the guy who literally rereleased Pokémon Yellow as a mobile game), not concepts or general mechanics. Palworld has a completely different gameplay from any Pokémon game so far, and (most of) the creatures are distinct enough. That should suffice to make it rightfully exist (maybe removing the 4/5 Pals that are absolute ripoffs, sure).

        • pjwestin@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          I agree with you almost entirely, but if we’re being honest, there really hasn’t been a lot of innovation in their games since Gen 4, and that was almost 20 years ago. Once they figured out the physical/special split, nothing really changed in the major mechanics. They have a new gimmick mechanic every game, like Z-Moves or Dynamax, but they’re always dropped by the next game. I guess camping/picnics are evolving into a new feature, but that’s about it.

          • Syrc@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            If we’re talking PvP, battling has constantly evolved through new abilities, even without gimmicks the way the game is played changed a lot through the years.

            In single player they also changed a lot of stuff since gen 4, although the positive changes were mostly in gen 5/6 and the later ones like wild areas and the switch to “””open world””” were… not as well received.

            • pjwestin@lemmy.world
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              2 months ago

              Well, I think we’ll just have to agree to disagree. To me, most of the updates have been set dressing, not significant changes to the formula or gameplay. But I guess that’s a matter of opinion, not fact.

        • RubberDuck@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          50 years… 5 maybe. If you have not earned back your investment by then you are just squatting on it.

        • Teils13@lemmy.eco.br
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          2 months ago

          50 years is already excessive, dude or dudette. The north american law originally gave 14 years, plus another 14 years if the creators actively sought after and were approved (most did not even ask, and approval was not guaranteed). This is comparable time to patents, which serve the exact same function, but without the absurd time scales (Imagine if Computers were still a private tech of IBM … those sweet mainframes the size of a room). 28 years, or lets put 30 years fixed at once, is more than sufficient time for making profit for the quasi totality of IPs that would make a profit (and creators can invest the money received to gain more, or have 30 years to think of something else). 30 years ago was 1994, think of everything the Star Wars prequels have sold, now remeber the 1st film was from 1999, would star wars prequels ventures really suffer if they started losing the IP from 2029 onwards ?

          • Syrc@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            I still think if copyright laws weren’t so oppressive, 50 years would be fair (And still a huge improvement from the current situation).

            Maybe have it in tiers or something? First 10 years: full copyright - until 30: similar products allowed, but no blatant reproduction - until 50: reproduction allowed as long as it’s not for-profit - post 50: public domain?

            • Teils13@lemmy.eco.br
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              2 months ago

              Humm…, i don’t think this scheme would work out in practice. The definitions of several concepts are fuzzy, and therefore can be circumvented or challenged or abused by all sides of the equation. What is a ‘similar product’ that is allowed after 30 years (and therefore what is a ‘dissimilar product’ that would be forbidden before), how would a non-profit that just pays high salaries to its managers fare between the marks of 30 and 50 years (and just gives some little money to research or charity). And again, why give artists and creative companies so much more time of IP protection than we give STEM inventors and companies time in patents (this random site claims patents last 15 to 20 years only) ?

        • Petter1@lemm.ee
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          2 months ago

          I think 50 is generally too much, but I think it should depend on categories, so that it is based upon the efforts put into an idea to create and how much it value (like in expected ROI).

          I fear, that is hard to define

          • TachyonTele@lemm.ee
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            2 months ago

            As an artist 20-50 depending on context is where I’m hovering. It is very hard to define.

      • TheObviousSolution@lemm.ee
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        2 months ago

        The problem is that IP laws eventually are lobbied by the big copyright holders into being excessively long. How long did Steamboat Willie really have to be copyrighted for, and has their release into the public domain really affected Disney?

        Eventually after you get back the money you invested, it’s just free money, and people like free money so much they pay lawyers and lobbyists that free money so that they can keep it coming.

    • pjwestin@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      No, Copyright exists to protect creators. It’s just been perverted and abused by the wealthy so that they can indefinitely retain IP. Disney holding on to an IP for 70 years after an author dies is messed up, but Disney taking your art and selling it to a mass audience without giving you a dime is worse.

      • Doomsider@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Copyright cannot protect 99% of creators because enforcing it takes enormous amounts of time and money. This isn’t really a big deal though because 99% of people who create don’t need these supposed protections.

        That’s right, the amount of writing, art, and music that is created for non-commercial purposes dwarfs what is created for profit.

        Your last tidbit is highly accurate. Big business almost exclusively uses copyright to control others work to the detriment of society.

        • pjwestin@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          Right, but as I said to someone else in this thread, the fact thar copyright can’t protect 99% of creators is a problem with capitalism, not copyright. The fact that our courts favor the wealthy isn’t the fault of copyright law itself.

          Also, you’re correct that most art is created for pleasure, not profit, but that doesn’t mean the need to protect artists’ rights to their creations isn’t necessary, even beyond capitalistic reasons. Bill Waterson, the creator of Calvin & Hobbes, refused to merchandise his art simply because he didn’t want to ruin the image of his characters for a licensing deal. Without copyright law, any company could have slapped his characters on t-shirts and coffee mugs to make a quick buck off of his labor. But because of copyright law, he was able to refuse his publisher’s attempts to franchise his characters (reportedly, he even turned down Spielberg and Lucas’ pitch for an animated series based on the strip).

          • Doomsider@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            I think you have bought into the lie about copyright that has been fed to us. It is really hard to look at something objectively when you have been propagandized about it your entire life.

            Currently copyright and the bigger category of intellectual property only exist to benefit commercial interests, this is self-evident. It is not a natural right by any means and is a perversion of the way art and science has existed for all of human history.

            We have to face the reality that in a world of billions of people nothing is really unique. If you are anything like me you would have had many great thoughts, ideas, and projects and seen many other people throughout your life with similar or sometimes identical concepts.

            Who should get to rent seek for these? If I create a very similar painting or song without ever seeing or hearing of another similar one who is the first? Well the current system is first come first serve, but is that really right?

            What about teachers. Should not your teacher get a portion of your creation since they inspired you? What about exposure to other art, should you pay a portion of your earnings if you were inspired by other artist?

            Even when looking at case law with derivative works, what is or is not okay is hardly settled and constantly changes based on the whims of ill-informed judges.

            These questions only begin to scratch the complexity of the situation because of the artificial constraints put on us by intellectual property. I don’t pretend to have the answers except to say there really is no need for any of this.

            Even when looking at something you may think is relatively simple like putting a characters likeness on merchandise it is never cut and dry. I have often wondered if Tigger inspired Hobbes. The likeness including even behavior is rather startling.

            Who has the rights is sometimes not even the person that created it originally. This is especially evident in productions that require lots of people like movies. This leads to interesting facts like most major recording artist don’t even own their own songs.

            Commercial interests love to have it both ways as well. Microsoft used piracy to its advantage to spread its OS across the globe and only cracked down on it after becoming a monopoly.

            I am not trying to muddy the waters here but I want to make it clear that intellectual property, including copyright was created by and for monied interests. It was ill-conceived from the start, based on false premises, and has been pushed to the breaking point from years of coordinated legal tactics.

            • pjwestin@lemmy.world
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              1 month ago

              intellectual property, including copyright was created by and for monied interests.

              It’s literally the opposite. The first copyright law was passed in 1709 in England to give authors rights to their works instead of publishing companies. The Stationers’ Company, a guild of publishers, had a monopoly over the printing industry, and they we’re deciding amongst themselves who would get to reproduce and publish books. They took the labor of authors, changed it however they saw fit, and reproduced them for profit. Authors never saw a dime, and instead had to find wealthy patrons to subsidize their work.

              Yes, for the majority of human history, people used to create art with no expectation of ownership, but for the majority of human history, there weren’t methods to mass reproduce art. Owning the rights to your books didn’t matter when the only way a second could get made is if a monk decided to hand copy it and bind it himself. When the only way to reproduce your painting was to have someone create a forgery, ownership of the physical copy was all that really mattered. If the only way you could get paid for a song was to sing it at the local tavern, it didn’t really matter if you got writing credits.

              We’ve already seen a world where the cooperations that control media production can use any work they want. They carved up artists’ works like mobsters dividing up a town and kept all the profits for themselves. Maybe if we lived in a post need, post currency society, you could make an argument for abolishing copyright, but in the system we have, copyright is the only protection artists have against cooperations.

              • Doomsider@lemmy.world
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                1 month ago

                The commoner could not read or write in 1709. Even back then the law was meant for the upper class hence monied interests. So not the opposite at all. Wealthy using the law to protect their profits seems to be what has always happened. Hard to look at this as a some sort of positive for people like you and me.

                What you describe is exactly what is happening in the majority of commercial writing nowadays. The corporations still have complete control. Strange how the law didn’t change the status quo rather just carved out an exception for wealthy writers to be rent seekers. Once again, anyone without the means would have their work copied with no recourse.

                Copying is not a bad thing as it is the foundation of all human culture. Trying to create a artificial system of scarcity perhaps made some sense to commercial interests when publishing cost so much. With the Internet though and our fast past culture it really is a ridiculous concept nowadays.

                Once again owning the rights to your work doesn’t matter unless a corporation wants to reprint, distribute your material, or in modern times allow you on their platform. Copyright would never stop this.

                Even to this day the majority of those who create art don’t expect compensation. Most do it for fun as a creative outlet. This obsession with trying to conflate art with profit has always been a lie. Only an extreme minority of people will ever make money from their art. So we are all to bow down to them copying our culture?

                They did not create anything in a vacuum and they refuse to recognize this. This is what I mean when I say it is a flawed premise. We don’t need to commercialize art to promote it.

                We don’t need to concentrate wealth for rent seekers and lawyers by creating a system of artificial scarcity. This does not promote the arts or protect them in any meaningful way.

                Copyright does not protect the vast majority of artists because they don’t need it and if they did would not have the resources or time to access our dubious legal frameworks in a court of law. It is a broken idea turned into a broken system.

                • pjwestin@lemmy.world
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                  1 month ago

                  First of all, literacy rates were about 70% in 1710, so the average commoner could absolutely read (at least among men, but copyright law isn’t to blame for patriarchy). This is about 300 years after the printing press, literacy had gone up.

                  Second…I just don’t know what to say to this anymore. You’ve created a strawman artist who believes their work is entirely original, even though no artist would claim they had no influences. You’re pretending that copyright is an edict that says ideas can never be shared, as though the Public Domain, Creative Commons, and fair use didn’t exist, or Substantial Similarity didn’t have to be proved (which, by the way, is the reason that Hobbes isn’t infringing on Tigger). And worst of all, you’re acting like artists who want to be paid for their art are greedy capitalists, not artists that live under capitalism. How is an artist who wants make a living by creating art all day, every day, somehow less worthy than an artist who works 9 to 5 at a crappy job and then does art when they have free time?

                  You seem to think abolishing copyright will lead to some sort of artists’ uptopia, but it’s pretty much the opposite. Let’s say copyright disappeared tomorrow. First, anyone making a living on Patreon will basically be done. If their videos or podcasts are now public property, there’s nothing to stop anyone from uploading their Premium Content to YouTube within minutes of publishing, so no one’s going to subscribe. Some of them will keep producing things, but since they’ll need a new source of income, they’ll definitely produce less.

                  Then there’s the cooperations. They’ll gobble up everything they can. Sure, you’ll be able to make your own Spider-Man comics, but if any publisher likes them, they’ll just sell them, along with any original IP you have. Of course you’ll be able to sell them too, but since they can afford more advertising, higher quality printing, and merchandising, they’ll out-sell you easily. You’ll be lucky it anyone’s even seen or heard of your version, even though you’re the author. It’d be like trying to compete with Coca-Cola by opening a lemonade stand, and Coke is allowed to use your lemonade recipe.

                  I’m not saying copyright is being done well now; cooperations have an outsized ability to enforce copyright claims, they’ve manipulated the law to retain IP for an insane amount of time, and they have far more power in negotiations over licensing and rights than artists do. But your solution to that is, “What if artists had no rights? That would be better!” and I’ve just…I’ve run out of ways to react to that. It’s truly insane to me.

        • nomous@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          Holy fuck I see some stupid takes posted here but this might be the stupidest.

        • pjwestin@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          Literally everyone who’s ever written a book, recorded a song, painted a painting, or created any other artwork.

          • blazera@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            Books and song rights go to the publisher. Graphic artists generally dont own their art they make money from, I.E. illustrations or concept art for various things like shows, movies, games.

            • pjwestin@lemmy.world
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              2 months ago

              First of all, no, publishers don’t necessarily own the copyright. Most authors do a licensing deal with a publisher, but they retain the copyright to their work. My understanding is that music industry contracts vary a lot more, since music is usually more collaborative, but lots of artists still own the rights to their songs. But even if that were true, artists being forced to sell their rights to cooperations isn’t an issue with copyright, it’s an issue with capitalism. It’s like blaming America’s shitty healthcare on doctors instead of a for-profit system controlled by the insurance and pharmaceutical industries.

              • blazera@lemmy.world
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                2 months ago

                A licensing deal for rights to make money off an intellectual property. I.E. a way to use their wealth to profit even more off something they didnt make. Music industry has fun examples of musicians having to rerecord songs because an ex-record label still owned rights to the original. So there’s situations where a musician entirely created and recorded a song and isnt allowed to sell that recording. And authors and musicians are the closest to owning their work they make a living off of. Any kind of industry visual artist has no ownership of anything.

                Copyright is an issue with capitalism. It only exists for wealthy to profit off of.

                • pjwestin@lemmy.world
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                  2 months ago

                  I’ve run out of ways to tell you that’s not correct. The explicit purpose of the copyright law in the constitution is to allow creators to profit from their work. If you’re arguing that we should live in a pure communist society, where the products of all labor, including intellectual property, belong to community, fine, but we don’t live in a communist utopia. We live in a capitalist hellscape, and you’re looking at one of the only protections artists have, seeing how it’s been exploited by capitalism, and claiming the protection is the problem. It’s like looking at the minimum wage, seeing how cooperations have lobbied Congress to keep it so low it’s now starvation wage, and coming to the conclusion that the minimum wage needs to be abolished.

        • ShinkanTrain@lemmy.ml
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          2 months ago

          Anyone who creates anything? If not for copyright Steam would be a sea of games named Undertale Stardew Valley Elsa Spider-Man

          • Doomsider@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            You would deprive everyone of the joy of playing this game mashup!?

            I know you are joking, but honestly we would have a lot better games if we were allowed to openly borrow and build off of other concepts including characters and storylines.

            Simply put commercial interests don’t produce the best games. Instead of innovative gameplay we get loot boxes and micro transactions.

            A great example of this is Pokemon. You know damn well that fans could make a better Pokemon game than Nintendo ever could.

        • leopold@lemmy.kde.social
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          2 months ago

          Dunno, I think I prefer patents. Unlike copyright, patents usually last a flat twenty years. Copyright expires either after 95 years or 70 years after the death of the author, which is ludicrous. Both are constantly abused, but at least patents expire in a reasonable amount of time.

          • Dr. Moose@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            patents and copyright are pretty different though. IMO both are bad but you can at least make a case for protecting intelectual work from copying. Patents protect replication of ideas and ideas don’t have to be unique at all. If I say it was my idea to call variables a,b,c,d,e in that order that means anyone who wants to do that in their creations needs my permission which is fucking bonkers.

            I’m convinced that software patents exist purely for regulatory capture.

    • Summzashi@lemmy.one
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      2 months ago

      This isn’t about copyright. Is there anybody here that has actually read the article? It’s absolutely insane how everyone just opens their mouths without understanding anything.

      • blazera@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Consider it a catch all term for “copying intellectual property”. Patents, copyrights, trademarks, its different words for the same idea.

  • OutrageousUmpire@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Rooting for Nintendo on this one. Palworld was dumb, you can’t just steal others’ IP without consequences. They could have made things just different enough… But they didn’t, they were dumb.

  • mlg@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    I’d support anything to see NIntendo get kicked in the nuts for shutting down yuzu, which could have easily continued legally by removing like 2 paragraphs and probably a few lines of code.

    Also Citra which was 100% legal.