You think that's cynical? I must be some avatar curmudgeonliness then.
I'm pretty sure that what's actually going on is that everything we think of as a 'profession' is that way, and that people are in fact dying because of it.
If he's the "creator" of record, then he can give away characters, setting, plots &c. The words and concepts, as you suggest. So derivative works based on the concepts would be kosher, photocopies of the existing books wouldn't. New art based on old scripts might fly, though my gut instinct says it wouldn't, but rewrites with new art probably would, that sort of thing.
My question is how can he give away a character in a legal sense? Can characters be copyrighted? Mickey Mouse is a Disney Trademark, same with Spiderman and other name-brand 'on the cover' characters.
But what about if I make up a novel and sell it starring the character Peter Parker beat in the match ring in the early aughts film? I say this character is the same character, make up a story of how he recovered from his injury, opened a hot dog launching factory as a novelty theme park, then died of cancer.
The story is set in Earth 616 ostensibly, but I don't use Spider-man beyond that being the past of this main character.
Is that a derivative work? Can you copyright a name/character traits without using trademark law to focus on customer confusion?
EDIT: I think this is laudable what he did, I'm just curious if he even needed to do so in the first place, or if the law already allowed you to do this, in the same way that the Open Gaming License of DND 5E only gave you rights to use the rules system of 5E that copyright law already allowed you to do in the first place?
The current legal status of "Winnie the Pooh" provides examples for all of this.
The original book has entered the public domain and can be reproduced, in whole or in part, by anyone. This includes the characters.
The Disney created works (books, animated, etc.) are still under copyright.
The original Pooh did not wear clothes; the Disney Pooh wears a red shirt. I could write a story based on the original Milne book and it would be legal; if I put Pooh in a red shirt, I would be violating Disney's copyright.
Many of the character names are trademarked by Disney; however, it is not a violation to use those names for new works that are not based on Disney works.
> The original Pooh did not wear clothes; the Disney Pooh wears a red shirt.
Actually, Pooh wears just such a top in chapter three, perhaps because it’s cold, and although all I can actually check at present is https://www.gutenberg.org/files/67098/67098-h/67098-h.htm#CH... which clearly shows it in the original black and white line art, I believe that it was red in colourised versions (though I’m not actually certain when colourisation happened or what its status is).
No, without seeing his contract, you can't know what ownership he retained even if he's nominally the copyright holder. He can be the "copyright holder" of record and have exclusively licensed away the characters, settings, and plots in the contract. He obviously thinks he has not done this, but who is the "creator" of record tells you nothing.
I think he's pointing out that an anticompetitive cabal already exists, so assuming it would continue to follow anticompetitive practices is not a leap of any kind.
> I think he's pointing out that an anticompetitive cabal already exists,
Of course, they're called _unions_, which prevent companies from hiring or contracting anyone who isn't part of their cabal -- I mean union.
Disney and Comcast and WB/Discovery are _competitors_ who would cut each other's throats for a nickel. Would they collude for profit? Sure, but they treat this as a zero-sum game, so they don't want to help their competition too much.
It really isn't. As long as you can watch YouTube and maintain the confidence to ruin some material while you're learning, it isn't difficult to pick up.
And once I tell that to whichever zoomers or younger person I'm talking to (this talk usually happens while we're at whichever Home Depot-analogous store is physically closest to their home, while I'm getting them set up with a Starter Toolbox), they usually take to it just fine.
Thank you for saying it. Bed bugs can go literally three years without eating. Using the mixed-toxin (different bedbug poison for each treatment, minimum 2 treatments) approach usually works, but the only way to definitely kill existing bugs and eggs is to get every part of an object to over 125f. AFAIK, 125f is the instant-death point. That is, any bug or egg the hits 125f at all is dead. Otoh, 113f requires 90 minutes of exposure before the bugs are killed, and the eggs require 118f for 90 minutes.
I've done that (maybe it was fizzbuzz, now that I'm thinking about it) and boy howdy does that get the people you're interviewing with agitated. Saying "I'm interviewing for a architect level container orchestration position. If I'm reinventing the wheel writing algorithms, something is terribly wrong" shuts them up, but doesn't make them any happier.
what does and container orchestration architect do ? Something like this cluster should use envoy and Prometheus. The new clusters rate isn’t usually high enough for the stack to change.
Real question I love these non conventional (swe, sre, pm, manager ) roles in tech
Lots of examples. 'Thorsons Introductory Guide to Medical Herbalism' is, for example, both required reading for many modern medical degrees and a collection of hundreds (of documented; more realistically, thousands) of years of the medical practice of herbalism.
And if you want some anecdata, I've used plenty of preparations from that text for nausea, fever, menstrual cramps (not mine, clearly), poor clotting, sinus congestion, and likely some things that are slipping my mind.
Plants are where we get a lot of medicines from, and while modern pharmaceutical companies may prefer that information not get spread around (it's basically the whole reason we don't have a widespread practice of western medical herbalism in the US), but the fact remains that if you know how to get the medicine out of the plant, it's still totally possible to do so.
> No, its because the west rejects the "wooo" and makes a pill out of the part that works.
No, the west makes a pill out of the part that's commercially profitable, which is a very different set of criteria than "works". Things like shelf life/stability, cost and availability, dose:response curves that are very predictable for the entire human population, etc.
What goes into pills has far more to do with what works for business than what works for people.
It's overly reductionist to assume that all herbal remedies are the result of 1, maybe 2 active ingredients. The incentive for making a pill is less about efficacy and more about patentability. I can't patent camphor, but I can patent a 3% menthol & 3% camphor ointment suspended in a gel base (Fast Freeze).
I don't think it's fair to say the west as a supposed monolith rejects "woo", especially given the popularity of pseudoscience re: vaccines, homeopathy, Reiki, acupuncture, cleanses, etc.
It sounds like you’re implying there is Western medicine and “pseudoscience”.
In other parts of the world they call this crap “white people medicine” and stick with the natural remedies. It just lacks a shiny seal of approval from the FDA/EU regulatory body, which makes it “pseudoscience”. We all know that science is totally incorruptible and always true though!
Why take a thing that’s been known for thousands of years to be perfectly safe, when you can take this thing invented in a lab and tested on mice for 10?
> George Washington woke up at 2 a.m. on Dec. 14, 1799, with a sore throat. After a series of medical procedures, including the draining of nearly 40 percent of his blood, he died that evening.
Old medicine and medical treatments were absolutely lethal compared to what we have in modern times.
We certainly improved, but in 1799 I think it was already the age of pseudoscientific medicine, where people thought they were superior to traditional herbalist, simply because they read some books. In other words, I don't think any traditional medicine man would have done that treatment.
(Apart from that, I surely go to a hospital if I am really sick, but for everything light, I rather find something else, than some drug, where I don't know if it is helping me, or the doctors pension fund)
Iatrogenic deaths are still incredibly high today. Modern medicine is the evolution of the doctors regarded highly enough to treat the president, not the people who filled their prescriptions in the woods.
Earth has been known to be flat, women and POC have been known to be inferior and homosexuality has been known to be a sin.
But thankfully, humanity moves on, and among other innovations, came up with such things as statistical methods and drug testing. But if you so desire, you're absolutely free to distrust modern western medicine — after all, a lot of prominent people do, for example, late Steve Jobs.
America doesn't prescribe some remedies, herbal or otherwise, because they aren't FDA approved due to an unnecessarily burdensome approval process that costs tens of millions of dollars to navigate, alongside a culture of civil lawsuits that causes doctors to act with excessive caution.
