Well, I've seen more than a couple of people say that LFG will be sued for "copying" a bunch of things, namely the "Slaughter Your World" song of late. I saw that no one really gave a definitive answer and those few that do don't give how or why. SO... just so you know, I've been in debate for a good 2 1/2 years now and it's pretty much required to look up laws and such on the topic you're debating about.

(In short, I look up and translate legal mumbo-jumbo for fun.)

So, I figure I might point out some laws and clauses that pretty much say "No, LFG WON'T be sued."

First, the fact that "Slaughter Your World" sounds like the song from Disney's "The Little Mermaid"

Some said that they won't be because it goes under "parody". While the word "parody" is NEVER in the actual copyright law...



those two words are. Many parodies have been thrown in easily under either criticism and comment. SHORT STORY IS while there's nothing in the law that protects parodies, there's stuff to protect critisim and comments on the work. This works well enough for parodies.

In addition, under 117.b of the US Copyright Law...



SHORT STORY IS even if it just SOUNDS like the song, if Disney tries to sue, they fail. Do not pass go, do not collect millions of dollars.

As far as anything else in the comic goes, it easily falls under 107. Comments, criticism, and parody. Someone mentioned the Beholder being owned by Wizards of the Coast? (Or really, Hasbro, the parent company)

102.b...


The idea of a floating monster with one eye isn't copyrighted. (Or, if Hasbro wanted to play hardball, you could still call it a parody easily.) And the idea of a Tauren (Minotaur) Warrior, an Orc Priestess, an Undead (Zombie) Warlock (Wizard) and an Elf Hunter (Ranger) is certainly NOT Blizzard's original work. (Just think if people tried to copyright centuries-old mythological creatures. o_O )

Well, for anyone remotely interested in the whole sueing thing, there's the long and short of it. In short, in the unlikely event that LFG WAS sued, whoever was suing them would fail.

Well, I think I'm finally ready to go to bed now. Good night people. Hope someone finds my rambling interesting. ;;;

Actually, if you think about it, LFG is giving them free advertising because if you hear it enough - you're going to get curious. If they sue, basically, they're not only making themselves look like jackasses they'll be getting rid of any free promotions! FREE!

Heh, since when has that stopped anyone? Again, I remind you of the Spike-Lee-suing-Spike-TV thing. Keep in mind, though, that he lost. Woot!

And The Beatles lost against Apple computers, though they had a better case. In fact, the case was supposedly resolved that so long as Apple never ventured into music -- where they could be stealing The Beatles' concept -- they were green. Unfortunately, the Ipod came along with that big ol' apple on the front, and...still no go.

So it's a lot harder to enforce a copyright infringement than it seems. Sure, they can sue. But they won't win.

Technically, individual words cannot be copyrighted, especially not words that can be found in a dictionary. Beholder is used by Wizards of the Coast now, but prior to that it belonged to other people who sold out their compilations of guides and such to them.

LFG won't be sued no matter what they do cause it was a parody loads of people do it and don't get sued just look at Simpsons most of their episodes came from the twilight zone and did they get sued? Nope

First, a little about me. Last week, a friend posted the Slaughter Your World link on one of the forums I visit, and I loved it. I've checked out the comic in days past, but never read it from start to finish. I did so about a week ago and I'm totally hooked.

Let me also preface with the fact that I am not a lawyer. But I am in my final year of law school, and I have taken both copyright and trademark law. I'll leave it up to you to decide how much weight to give my opinion. Ok, here we go.

Copyright Issues
Slaughter Your World
Basically, LFG can be sued by Disney. Just about anyone can bring a lawsuit regarding just about anything. Being sued is an annoyance, and can sometimes be an expensive annoyance, but it doesn't mean that the plaintiff will ultimately be successful in his or her claim.

The defense to such a claim would be the fair use defense. Parody has been explicitly stated as a fair use under the ruling ste forth by the US Supreme Court in Campbell v. Acuff-Rose. (Some of you may remember or may have heard about 2LiveCrew having a case go to the Supreme Court - this one is it.) Basically in determining if a parody is infringing, four factors are examined:

(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

I don't feel qualified to go through an analysis here, and I certainly don't want to give anyone the impression that I'm licensed to practice law, I just thought I'd give a little background on the copyright claim.

Beholder
It's true that a single word cannot be covered by a copyright, however, copyright can extend to characters. No one can stop you from writing a book about someone with the last name of Potter, but if that person also happens to be a boy wizard who goes to wizard school with his friends and they do things like play games on brooms, go to various classes, and fight an evil wizard, J. K. Rowling might take issue with the character.

Now I honestly can't see the character issue being a problem. The bigger potential problem would be the copyright WotC holds in the drawing of the beholder. Just as the character is covered by a copyright, any drawings would be covered too. Again, the fair use defense comes into play. It's clearly a joke, and a good one at that. It's a nice parody on the whole beholder character, and given its limited appearance in a comic that consistently does brief parodies of other fantasy works, I can't see it being an issue.

My goal is to be an intellectual property lawyer, so I actually enjoy this kind of stuff. It's scary when I go back over class notes to write a forum post, but I'm hoping that's a good sign. Anyway, I hope this was slightly informative, or at least interesting.

Good post and if Disney sues then it will bring a negative view onto the Disney corporation showing that they're money hungry and Disney will lose lots of money

Not really. It's more that places that have strong copyrights and trademarks will vigorously defend them. It's how they retain their rights. It's sort of the same principle that prompts people to get confrontational when someone makes a crack about their mom.

In all reality, Disney probably doesn't care, and even if they did, they probably wouldn't be able to get any damages, just an injunction. And that's probably not worth their money. But you never know, some people latch on hard to some things.

Ooo, yay, someone far more qualified than me. *Clap*

The fact that Disney and WotC don't care is (in my very humble opinion) entirely true. Which is partially why we have fanfiction. The companies/owners see that this is pretty much free advertising and let it be. Of course, there are a few authors who don't like fanfics for one reason or another. (And in my opinion, they have a stick up their ass anyway...)

Well fan fiction is different in that it's not really out to parody anything, so it loses that defense. A lot of fan fiction probably is infringing, but it's up to the author to decide if anything will be done about it. Authors can be fairly attached to their characters and if fan fiction authors start having those characters do things the author doesn't think they should do, the author can get upset. Of course once the anonymity of the internet joins the mix, it becomes hard to stop anyone.

does this really matter?

anyways, i don't like talking about copyrights >.< let's talk about the comic!!

As for the "You'll be sued". I only say: Potter Puppet Pals. They've been around for a while, they've even made a public appearance in 2006 and there's no JK Rowling breathing down their necks with 50 rabid lawyers (and she easily could). However, they're not making any profit and it's a parody, very similar to... LFG. Yes, LFG takes stuff from WotC (and many other places), then again... WotC has taken many things from others, too (I only say... halflings, or what about elves being excellent archers, dwarves running around with hammers and axes? Sounds like Tolkien? It sure does...) For example, I didn't see the Kurosawa family sue the crap out of George Lucas for taking many things from Kurosawa Akira's movies for Star Wars (and the Kurosawa actually did sue NHK for copying and using the famous fight scene in the rain from Seven Samurai in the Taiga drama "Musashi").

Arena Net is firing up their first true expansion for Guild Wars, there's a new NPC in it who's name is Oola and that name reminds me very much of a certain green female Twi'lek in Star Wars Return of the Jedi. Will Lucas sue? Somehow I don't see that coming. Heck, Lucas himself stole so much from so many different movies...

Additionally... I don't think that Disney, WotC or Blizzard would ever behave like Paramount. I remember when Paramount had several Trek fansites closed.

As long as the guys here don't make any profit with it I don't see any real problem... And well... I think Disney, for example, has bigger enemies than LFG... like... copyright pirates who sell bootlegs of Disney movies...

I don't see how Disney would even possibly win a law suit over "Slaughter the world". I only say: Weird Al. This guy's been making parodies of how many copyrighted songs? There are people, possibly, singing the Disney song right now. Are they going to get sued too? Other people made parodies of that song (I'm pretty sure, I made some of other songs myself, just change the lyrics), will they be sued? Will I be sued for changing the lyrics of "Sugar Baby Love" (originally by The Rubettes, most likely too old of a song for most people here) and actually posting them on the net? I did the same with "The ballad of the Green Berets". Well... if LFG is sued for "Slaughter the world", then I have to be sued, too.

BTW... "Slaughter the world", I first thought it would be a parody of that christmas song, you know, the one that starts with "joy to the world".

This is accurate. You can thank 2LiveCrew for ironing out the parody issue. Thanks, Luke Campell!!

LFG will not be suuuued!! da comic is too cool to be removed

What you're forgetting is that LFG is making money from this.

Selling comic books and the song? Yeah. It's no longer nonprofit.

well, come on, it's a comic. comic books cost money.

I'd like to throw in a quick word or two..

Just to try to keep it mostly on topic, when I first found and read this, a whole of... well, about 6 hours ago, I thought that it was a World of Warcraft fancomic. Seriously. It wasn't until the bloo...onde elf went back in time that I even suspected that this wasn't Azeroth.

Regardless of that, the writer has created a world that has intrigued me in a number of places, by means of the story, timeline and characters of the story. He has more than enough in here for it to stand alone.

And on that note, everyone copies off of other people. You can follow a trail of breadcrumbs through Blizzard, Wizards of the Coast, Jordan and Martin back and around and across, zig-zagging in an intricate pattern. What matters is if the borrower is able to mold the borrowed material into something worth reading, until it becomes their own.

What I really wanted to throw in, though, is that I myself am an Author, and I know that if I ever came upon people taking my characters into directions or situations that I do not approve of, I would raise a holy hell about it. Picky picky, I know, and if someone blatantly copied from them and made them their own (as per my previous statements), I would not only be ok with it, but I would be a hypocrite for not condoning it. But if someone were to mess around with my work, the things I have labored on for so long, speaking from the mouths of the characters that I have created.. That would be tremendously disrespectful to me.

Your move.

that was a good explanation.

I'm REALLY not trying to be too off topic here, but this is in response to Nilia.

In a way, I can see where you're coming from. Part of me would be a little miffed if someone took my characters (I am a bit of an author) and completely butchered them. Assuming that the closest example of that would be fanfiction; most fanfiction is written as a labor of love for the story. I would take into consideration that it was written because that person loves my story to the point of obsession. And I would actually appreciate that.

Now, if someone took my story/characters and claimed them as their own, then there would be issues and someone would be very humiliated and very poor. However, as in the case of LFG, they're really not copying anything. (That last comment was in an effort to be on-topic. ^^;;;) Just taking general ideas and making their own version.