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Would love to hear a a lawyer's take on this, but would be very funny if it works as Willingham lays it out here.
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Sep 14, 2023 22:18
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Didn't he do the same with Elementals not a few years ago? It's a Willingham fire sale. Everything must 'fic.
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Sep 14, 2023 23:04
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That's kind of the beauty of it, if anyone does anything with it it's up to DC to try and sue them and let the lawyers sort it out. It's a big complicated mess that is going to cause DC headaches and I'm pretty sure that was more his intention than whatever else he claims
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Sep 14, 2023 23:05
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Something just occurred to me that would make perfect thematic sense. As of January 1st, you could do your own version of Fables where the Adversary is Mickey Mouse...
Random Stranger fucked around with this message at 00:01 on Sep 15, 2023 |
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Sep 14, 2023 23:41
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Inkspot posted:Didn't he do the same with Elementals not a few years ago? The story always was Willingham didn't own the rights to Elementals but the owner of Comico did who apparently dropped off the face of the earth. Jim Lee and others attempted to buy them but they couldn't find the guy named Andrew Rev who, the same story goes, was possibly homeless somewhere in Chicago.
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Sep 14, 2023 23:50
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Andrew Rev seems to come up in this thread every year or so. I've never heard that he's homeless or 'impossible to contact', he just seems like a really shady businessman/copyright troll who dodges everyone until he can try to sue someone for violating his 'property'. He had nothing to do with the original Comico publishing company, he just bought the company when they were facing bankruptcy in 1990. The contracts written up by the original Comico people were not super precise or clear, and lots of Comico projects had left for other publishers before the 1990 sale, but Rev as the new owner chose to interpret most/all of them as "well I own this property now". Kind of like what Todd McFarlane tried when he bought Eclipse. The most significant project/creator who got hosed by this was Matt Wagner, whose Grendel projects (including an announced-for-1990 "Grendel vs. Batman" crossover mini) were delayed and tied up in legal fights for several years before he got the rights back. Mage took even longer, but eventually was back in Wagner's possession. Elementals is possibly even more complicated because A) The original contracts were not with Comico, but the short-lived Texas Comics B) Whatever transpired, Rev started cranking out Elementals comics without Willingham's involvement As I found out when I made fun of Bill Willingham on Twitter for writing a comic about one of his heroines loving a super smart dolphin and then promoting a shirt you could buy of them loving: while is not happy about what happened to Elementals, he's kind of washed his hands of it, and he was very polite about correcting my belief he had anything to do with the Dolphin Sex story/shirt. He appears to be over Elementals, and it's possible he tried a similar "I surrender any claim I have to this IP" move. Andrew Rev meanwhile was back in the news a few years ago where through some complicated loan scam that also involved serial comics scammer Scott Rosenberg (likely the reason we will never see an Ultraverse character again) wherein Andrew Rev declared that he owned Youngblood now and was going to publish Youngblood without Rob Liefeld and make it sell a million copies and he will sue Rob Liefeld forever if he tries to make his own Youngblood comics. All because Rosenberg allegedly lent some money to Liefeld and Loeb when they launched Awesome Comics, and did not pay it back/pay it back properly and if they didn't do everything just right after like ten years Rosenberg believes he would get the movie rights to all of Liefeld's characters. And then he sold the his alleged movie rights to Youngblood to Andrew Rev, who took it one step further and asserts that the movie rights give him all of the rights to the comics of Youngblood as well. Neither party has made any Youngblood comics since this hit the news/this thread back in August 2019. I have no idea who is legally right or wrong and it's possible none of the parties involved do either. But that is Andrew Rev, basically. Edge & Christian fucked around with this message at 00:19 on Sep 15, 2023 |
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Sep 15, 2023 00:16
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Random Stranger posted:Something just occurred to me that would make perfect thematic sense. As of January 1st, you could do your own version of Fables where the Adversary is Mickey Mouse... I can finally make my Adversary guess the correct answer!
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Sep 15, 2023 02:35
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Other than being conservative, what kind of stuff has he said before to get the hate he does. Conservatives are not good people as is, but I was wondering what exactly put him into the "hey gently caress that guy" group.
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Sep 15, 2023 03:22
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Lucifunk posted:Other than being conservative, what kind of stuff has he said before to get the hate he does. Conservatives are not good people as is, but I was wondering what exactly put him into the "hey gently caress that guy" group. He's not conservative as in like "oh he said some iffy stuff on Bill Maher", he's conservative as in he was a columnist for Breitbart
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Sep 15, 2023 04:51
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Lucifunk posted:Other than being conservative, what kind of stuff has he said before to get the hate he does. Conservatives are not good people as is, but I was wondering what exactly put him into the "hey gently caress that guy" group. n-word alert 
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Sep 15, 2023 05:55
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Willingham may suck absolute poo poo as a human being, but he just went nuclear and hosed with WB’s IP library and that loving rules. I wonder if it strikes him that it’s a sword that cuts both ways, though? If Fables is public domain now, surely DC doesn’t need his permission to get new writers or license it to Telltale again. After all, he doesn’t own it.
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Sep 15, 2023 08:16
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Jesus. Thanks for the context, and hey gently caress that guy.
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Sep 15, 2023 10:57
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CapnAndy posted:I wonder if it strikes him that it’s a sword that cuts both ways, though? If Fables is public domain now, surely DC doesn’t need his permission to get new writers or license it to Telltale again. After all, he doesn’t own it. Bill said his contract prevents him from publishing outside DC, so I wonder if it goes both ways. I guess it would depend on the wording of the contract. It seems like DC was doing whatever they wanted anyway, so I assume he doesn't care at this point.
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Sep 15, 2023 12:26
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CapnAndy posted:Willingham may suck absolute poo poo as a human being, but he just went nuclear and hosed with WB’s IP library and that loving rules. Telltale wouldn't need to license it from DC, they could just do it. Something that gets missed in a lot of the "gently caress copyright!" talk is that copyright doesn't just mean media conglomerates can hoard IP seek rent, it means that those media conglomerates also can't just steal something that belongs to some little guy and make a billion dollars off it. It does happen because in the centuries that publishers of media in any format have existed, there hasn't been a single one that you should trust, but it does make it a lot harder for them to get away with it. I strongly suspect that DC will now be able to do things with Fables and just cut out Willingham. It'll depend on the exact wording of the contracts, but now that the IP is in the public domain there's a shitton of wiggle room. And DC as a publisher is in a position to just do it; they own a lot of the stuff around Fables that's part of selling it as a comic. If someone wanted to make a new Fables series at Image, they'd have to be careful not to step on anything that was separate from what Willingham made and DC would have lawyers watching like hawks.
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Sep 15, 2023 12:39
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DC is still bound by whatever contract they have with Willingham, which certainly still pays him royalties for already published material. This does mean they can make more Fables comics without discussing with him at all and wouldn't have to pay him anything for it.
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Sep 15, 2023 13:02
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Opopanax posted:He's not conservative as in like "oh he said some iffy stuff on Bill Maher", he's conservative as in he was a columnist for Breitbart Here's Bill complaining Tim Drake's boyfriend wasn't gay when Bill wrote him: https://billwillingham.substack.com/p/when-our-hearts-were-young-and-gay
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Sep 15, 2023 13:58
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Dawgstar posted:Here's Bill complaining Tim Drake's boyfriend wasn't gay when Bill wrote him: https://billwillingham.substack.com/p/when-our-hearts-were-young-and-gay God what an absolute pussy. He doesn’t even have the guts to actually say he’s unhappy they changed the character he created. Instead he’s acting like he’s totally neutrally observing something interesting. What a loser.
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Sep 15, 2023 16:32
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Random Stranger posted:It's a little more complicated and messy than just "now you can scan in the comics and print your own". It's the characters and concepts of Fables that are available to anyone. If Marvel decided to make a new Fables series, they could. The funniest possible thing would be Disney coming along and making a Once Upon A Time sequel series that's literally just Fables.
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Sep 15, 2023 19:15
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People are getting very excited about this but it's becoming apparent Willingham can't actually do what he's claiming. There is no mechanism for putting something under copyright into the public domain. It's the literary equivalent of Michael Scott yelling "I DECLARE BANKRUPTCY!" Other people might get in a lot of trouble for acting on it, though.
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Sep 16, 2023 13:48
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Dawgstar posted:People are getting very excited about this but it's becoming apparent Willingham can't actually do what he's claiming. There is no mechanism for putting something under copyright into the public domain. It's the literary equivalent of Michael Scott yelling "I DECLARE BANKRUPTCY!" Other people might get in a lot of trouble for acting on it, though. Except people can release their work to the public domain and do so all the time. And, yes, all that is required to do so is for the copyright holder to publicly say, "I DECLARE Warners is claiming it's not valid but by their own legal paperwork, they say that Willingham owned Fables. So by everything that said up until this week, he could do this.
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Sep 16, 2023 20:52
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willingham himself is saying "i'm releasing my fables stuff into the public domain, but, uh, dc's contracts still hold so you can't just like reprint fables or re-use fables material for whatever" -- he's effectively told everyone that they can do new stories with... snow white. and cinderella. and the big bad wolf. lol
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Sep 16, 2023 20:57
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Random Stranger posted:Except people can release their work to the public domain and do so all the time. And, yes, all that is required to do so is for the copyright holder to publicly say, "I DECLARE Yeah, Tom Lehrer relinquished copyright on his work last year though that case is a bit simpler (no WB level IP hoarding involved) and he is really clear about what this covers and what it doesn't. feel kinda bad for the new-Telltale guys who HAD licensed the series again and are doing a sequel. It never got news past a teaser though, so I don't know how development is going or how this might disrupt anything.
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Sep 16, 2023 21:08
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very risky blowjob posted:willingham himself is saying "i'm releasing my fables stuff into the public domain, but, uh, dc's contracts still hold so you can't just like reprint fables or re-use fables material for whatever" -- he's effectively told everyone that they can do new stories with... snow white. and cinderella. and the big bad wolf. lol Specifically the interpretation of those characters found in Fables, so it's a little less meaningless than it sounds. You can't copyright Sleeping Beauty, but you can copyright the Good Fairies, Maleficent, and Aurora as drawn and written specifically in Disney's Sleeping Beauty. You could do your own version but if you had a purple and green evil fairy with black horns that turned into a dragon that breathed green fire, that would be harder to defend.
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Sep 16, 2023 21:18
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Harvey Birdman posted:Yeah, Tom Lehrer relinquished copyright on his work last year though that case is a bit simpler (no WB level IP hoarding involved) and he is really clear about what this covers and what it doesn't. Holy poo poo, Tom Lehrer is still alive!
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Sep 16, 2023 21:20
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very risky blowjob posted:willingham himself is saying "i'm releasing my fables stuff into the public domain, but, uh, dc's contracts still hold so you can't just like reprint fables or re-use fables material for whatever" -- he's effectively told everyone that they can do new stories with... snow white. and cinderella. and the big bad wolf. lol A really simple example is that Disney made a cartoon of the (public domain) story of Robin Hood, where Robin Hood and Maid Marion were foxes, Little John was a bear, etc. Anyone can (and many have) done retellings of Robin Hood since that cartoon and that's fine, but Disney has successfully shut down other companies making cartoons, storybooks, etc. of Robin Hood where he's a fox and everyone else are talking animals. In this case it's a pretty clearcut "Disney owns the concept of Robin Hood as an Anthropomorphic Fox", but it gets a lot hazier for other stories, though there are clear "things added by Disney" in a lot of the stories, from giving the Seven Dwarfs the specific names they have in the Disney film to having Beauty & the Beast lean heavily on anthropomorphized household items, or any of the identifying details of Ursula in the Little Mermaid. I have read very little of Fables so I'm not very familiar with the distinctive traits of any of the characters contained in it, but while The Big Bad Wolf is a public domain fairy tale character, if Fables does in fact get released into the public domain, it means no one (whether Willingham or WBD) could try to stop someone else from doing Fables's distinctive twist on The Big Bad Wolf: i.e. that he's basically a werewolf named Bigby who used to be married to Snow White or whatever. And again, just because the concepts/IP are public domain doesn't mean that someone can't own/hold copyright to distinct translations/interpretations of the underlying work: just because Shakespeare and Dickens have been in the public domain forever doesn't mean you're authorized to sell your own Blu-Rays of Baz Luhrman's Romeo + Juliet or a Muppets Christmas Carol. Dracula and Santa Claus and Thor are all public domain characters who have been the title characters of comics protected by copyright, etc. Edge & Christian fucked around with this message at 21:31 on Sep 16, 2023 |
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Sep 16, 2023 21:26
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Random Stranger posted:Except people can release their work to the public domain and do so all the time. And, yes, all that is required to do so is for the copyright holder to publicly say, "I DECLARE Talking with a friend who actually does copyright law you'd need something like this: 'To the greatest extent permitted by, but not in contravention of, applicable law, Affirmer hereby overtly, fully, permanently, irrevocably and unconditionally waives, abandons, and surrenders all of Affirmer’s Copyright and Related Rights and associated claims and causes of action, whether now known or unknown (including existing as well as future claims and causes of action), in the Work (i) in all territories worldwide, (ii) for the maximum duration provided by applicable law or treaty (including future time extensions), (iii) in any current or future medium and for any number of copies, and (iv) for any purpose whatsoever, including without limitation commercial, advertising or promotional purposes (the “Waiver”). Affirmer makes the Waiver for the benefit of each member of the public at large and to the detriment of Affirmer’s heirs and successors, fully intending that such Waiver shall not be subject to revocation, rescission, cancellation, termination, or any other legal or equitable action to disrupt the quiet enjoyment of the Work by the public as contemplated by Affirmer’s express Statement of Purpose.' Even this is creating an open/permissive contract. If Willingham does that - if he's legally allowed to do that, which is in dispute as Stuart Moore who oversaw those contracts from then says they are a lot more complicated - then we might have something but just 'public domain, y'all' no that doesn't work. Even looking at Lehrer's statement he says you can do anything you want with his music and Willingham's put riders on it (no reprinting DC's stuff) which means it is not public domain.
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Sep 16, 2023 22:50
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IANAL, and I'm reading between some lines, but it sounds like the contacts gave WBD a lot of control over licensing, even though Willingham has ownership. This is based on my reading that WBD was involved in the Telltale license and Willingham was not getting a cut. What does it mean to own IP but not have full control over the license? I don't know, it seems like a dumb, ugly situation. Especially odd to see someone say 'it was better when DiDio ran things'
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Sep 17, 2023 04:06
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Dawgstar posted:Talking with a friend who actually does copyright law you'd need something like this: That just sounds like some attorney wants to get paid.  More seriously, I get his approach since it removes all ambiguity. I think there's a good argument for people to interpret Willingham's non-legalese statement that way, but it can be messy. And yeah, one of the key complications is that Willingham didn't own everything around Fables. He had a large chunk of it; the concepts, characters, and story, but not things like the art or the printed volumes or the videogame. What Willingham owned is rather firmly now public domain, but that isn't everything and DC will watch any Fables stuff that comes to make sure it doesn't infringe on what they do own.
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Sep 17, 2023 04:34
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Presumably you could take the scripts for Fable, do your own art for them, and then sell your new Fable comics?
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Sep 17, 2023 13:56
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Gripweed posted:Presumably you could take the scripts for Fable, do your own art for them, and then sell your new Fable comics? The writing is as copywritable as the art. You'd at minimum need your own scripts as well.
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Sep 17, 2023 14:19
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I imagine it'd also be a bit like trying to adapt a TV show without having the rights to use any likenesses of the actors -- your Bigby Wolf would have to look just different enough from Mark Buckingham's, etc
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Sep 17, 2023 18:44
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mycatscrimes posted:The writing is as copywritable as the art. You'd at minimum need your own scripts as well. The writing is by Willingham though, presumably part of what he’s offering up to the public domain.
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Sep 17, 2023 20:19
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very risky blowjob posted:I imagine it'd also be a bit like trying to adapt a TV show without having the rights to use any likenesses of the actors -- your Bigby Wolf would have to look just different enough from Mark Buckingham's, etc I think that's only a problem the other way around, like if you make a cartoon of a live action thing you can't make the cartoon character look too much like the actor unless you have likeness rights, but I can't imagine an actor being unable to be hired because they looked too much like a drawing. Might need to change the outfit, but doesn't Bigby wear a basic suit and a trench coat? Pretty hard to sue over the most common outfit for a PI character if you're already allowed to have a character named Bigby Wolf who is basically a PI.
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Sep 17, 2023 20:32
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Air Skwirl posted:I think that's only a problem the other way around, like if you make a cartoon of a live action thing you can't make the cartoon character look too much like the actor unless you have likeness rights, but I can't imagine an actor being unable to be hired because they looked too much like a drawing. Might need to change the outfit, but doesn't Bigby wear a basic suit and a trench coat? Pretty hard to sue over the most common outfit for a PI character if you're already allowed to have a character named Bigby Wolf who is basically a PI. no what i was saying is, if you make your own Fables Sex Special Starring Bigby "Emphasis on BIG Bad Wolf" Wolf, you or your artist would probably have to draw him differently enough to avoid a legal slapfight (like how the norse god thor in dc's sandman stuff is a bearded redhead, because having a blonde clean-shaven thor is asking for trouble) edit to fix typo very risky blowjob fucked around with this message at 20:40 on Sep 17, 2023 |
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Sep 17, 2023 20:37
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Air Skwirl posted:I think that's only a problem the other way around, like if you make a cartoon of a live action thing you can't make the cartoon character look too much like the actor unless you have likeness rights, but I can't imagine an actor being unable to be hired because they looked too much like a drawing. Might need to change the outfit, but doesn't Bigby wear a basic suit and a trench coat? Pretty hard to sue over the most common outfit for a PI character if you're already allowed to have a character named Bigby Wolf who is basically a PI. Wait the character is the big bad wolf and his name is literally “Bigby Wolf”? Ok maybe we won’t use the existing scripts.
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Sep 17, 2023 20:49
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Jordan7hm posted:The writing is by Willingham though, presumably part of what he’s offering up to the public domain. My instinct is still no, because DC still owns the rights to sell and distribute those specific stories that he wrote, which would probably hold up even with new art. You could use the setting and characters the way you could use the visual designs of the Fables characters he invented but not sell the specific panels he drew for DC. Mind you, I'm not a lawyer and this feels like something you'd want a copyright law expert to weigh in on. I expect DC would give you as much legal trouble as they can regardless unless they were certain they'd lose and set a bad precent over that loss in court. Like if someone wants to publish their Fables fanfiction for profit now and catches DC's eye, I imagine they will still try to prevent that.
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Sep 17, 2023 21:18
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very risky blowjob posted:no what i was saying is, if you make your own Fables Sex Special Starring Bigby "Emphasis on BIG Bad Wolf" Wolf, you or your artist would probably have to draw him differently enough to avoid a legal slapfight (like how the norse god thor in dc's sandman stuff is a bearded redhead, because having a blonde clean-shaven thor is asking for trouble) In that specific case he’s red headed because that’s what the mythological deity Thor looked like
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Sep 17, 2023 23:51
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thor was the first example to come to mind but a better one would probably be the public domain characters that femforce uses -- the 1940s matt baker/fox studios phantom lady stories are public domain, able to be reprinted by whoever gives a poo poo, and while the characters within them can be used, it became in the interests of femforce's publisher to change her costume a bit and rename her "blue bulleteer" to avoid dc's wrath edit: though now i'm curious if the 1980s phantom lady revival in action comics weekly was timed as a trademark grab on using her name in a title etc., relative to femforce using the golden-age public-domain version of the character, etc.
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Sep 18, 2023 00:56
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For those that missed it, DC already put out a release saying, nope.quote:The Fables comic books and graphic novels published by DC, and the storylines, characters and elements therein, are owned by DC and protected under the copyright laws of the United States and throughout the world in accordance with applicable law, and are not in the public domain. DC reserves all rights and will take such action as DC deems necessary or appropriate to protect its intellectual property rights. Good luck to anyone that tries to publish Fable stuff.
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Sep 18, 2023 01:06
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very risky blowjob posted:thor was the first example to come to mind but a better one would probably be the public domain characters that femforce uses -- the 1940s matt baker/fox studios phantom lady stories are public domain, able to be reprinted by whoever gives a poo poo, and while the characters within them can be used, it became in the interests of femforce's publisher to change her costume a bit and rename her "blue bulleteer" to avoid dc's wrath did some digging: https://www.cbr.com/comic-book-urban-legends-revealed-37/ Phantom Lady debuted as a Quality Comics character in 1941, but when she stopped being used by Quality, she was transferred to Fox Comics. It was at Fox (and as drawn by Matt Baker), that Phantom Lady became probably her most famous. It was at Fox that the following cover was published, which was later included as a prime exhibit in Fredric Wertham's Seduction of the Innocent. Well, Fox eventually went under as well. In 1956, DC purchased the rights to Quality's characters, but Phantom Lady continued to be printed in reprints of the Fox Comics (not counting Israel Waldman's infamous unauthorized reprints). DC, however, felt that the transfer to Fox was illegitimate, and that DC owned the rights to the Phantom Lady character, just as it owned all the other Quality characters. Here is where the trademark problem comes into play - the works were clearly now out of copyright, as they had not been renewed in the years between when they stopped being printed and when DC purchased the rights (1956) and the time DC told Black to cease and desist (which would be the early 80s). However, since the comics had been printed (via reprints) during this time, DC could not claim a so-called "traditional" trademark on the character, which is what someone would avail themselves of if they never bothered to register their trademark. DC could not use this because DC was not publishing the character during these years, and one of the hallmarks of trademark law is that, to be effective, you have to actual USE the trademark, and not just in a comic, but on the market (for instance, you would have to publish a comic using the trademark). DC did not do this. In addition, DC never tried to register Phantom Lady as a trademark, either, which it DID do with Plastic Man and Blackhawk. Therefore, when it informed Bill Black that he could not use the name Phantom Lady, it was most likely in error. Black, of course, as he says above, did not wish to risk a big legal battle, so he relented, and Nightveil was born! just a big whoopsie-doodle on dc's part. though it's interesting that they didn't get around to making a DC's Very Own Fully Owned Phantom Lady until 1989 (with art by everyone ever's favorite X-Men writer, Chuck Austen!) (edit: phantom lady appeared in a bunch of dc freedom fighter comics in the 1970s and all-star squadron in the 1980s, but 1989 was the debut of a new modern age phantom lady with her own trademarked cover logo and all that poo poo) very risky blowjob fucked around with this message at 01:20 on Sep 18, 2023 |
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Sep 18, 2023 01:15
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