Why Is 1 World Trade Center Missing from Spider-Man?
stevenbuccini.com
stevenbuccini.com
You can't remove a building from your daily experience. Buildings have permanence. They seem cultural at a more fundamental level than movies or music.
How is this going to work with all the photogrammetry developments for games? I guess we're forbidden from the wholesale reuse of anything in public eye?
Has this been tested in court?
At some point the tech will mature to a point where it's more work to remove things than to scan them and leave then as is. Can we argue that these laws are an unjust burden?
Here is a comprehensive list with their restrictions: https://helpx.adobe.com/stock/contributor/help/known-image-r...
I must admit I don't. I cannot bring myself to see the Eiffel tower being copyrighted at night as anything but absurd, even for selling photos.
Not everything needs to be profitable or have a price tag. I think we should agree upfront as a society that you shouldn't expect to make money from photos of the exterior of your public building.
Copyrights are hard. Even if you look at public domain works like Sherlock Holmes, whose original stories are in the public domain, you can run into issues by giving him personality traits that are associated with derivative works that are still under copyright.
Whether the pattern of light hitting a building is copyrightable is likely to be an under-explored area of case law. E.g. in the UK it would probably have to be a work of 'artistic craftsmanship' which is not defined in the statute. But the Eiffel tower is in France. So now you have two slightly differing sets of copyright law.
In the end many IP cases come down to bluffing because the actual class of question has never been settled by a judge.
On the other hand you have other cases like Banksy today loosing a case on trademarking one of his paintings. Which was dumb because he'd have got further with copyright infringement.
It might sound unfair, but as an artist, creating a iconic piece of art that will be around for generations should really be worth more than money. Perhaps governments around the world could set up a fund to compensate/honor artists who achieve this.
B) Lots of people find the current rules to be unfair. An enterprising fellow could build a massive structure in NYC and claim royalty rights over any photograph which may contain it.
You might be a-okay with that, but I take it to the extreme and think about what would happen if every building owner in NYC asserted copyrights over images of their building. Then every photo taken in the city would be subject to royalty/licensing requirements. YouTube's content scanners would automatically flag any video with shots of the city, etc.
That's quite insightful in understanding how the concept of intellectual property works in practice. I see, it's about making a claim to convince the other party of its legal ownership.
Whether the actual legality of the claim is proven in court or not, it may not matter if the claim is convincing enough, or too costly to contest.
If it's just part of a crowded the background, though, as in this case, it doesn't make sense. You can't put in the sky an object visible from everywhere and then ask people to pay (or even just ask permission) to use pictures that include it.
The thing with the influencer is, that s/he does that for commercial purposes. The list published by Adobe give you a hint what is allowed and what not. I don't know if the list is a complete list and I didn't verified the details. But it gives you something.
The same thing they would do if you didn't want to pay them: you sue them. For abusive occupation of your pictures.
I am being paradoxical, but the point I want to make is that if you want to make profits or claim any rights on the image you project in a public space (admitted that it should even be allowed, since you didn't pay for said space) then you must also accept the liabilities deriving by the same. You should not be allowed to claim the rights and disown the liabilities.
This would be a great super-villain idea for a fun/dumb movie.
Or that having a trademark in the background of something is implying an endorsement and necessitates payment.
What about taking a picture of a copyrighted text?
No amount of pictures of a building will reproduce it.
Also, if they want to claim ownership of the recording of something clearly visible in public, they should take responsibility and make payment for everyone that views it against their will. Yea, that latter half of that sounds ridiculous. The first half should as well.
So, it’s baffling there would be exceptions, for the reasons you listed and probably more.
So there's Paris Syndrome. Which is a massive sense of dissapointment when going on vacation to Paris. Mostly experienced by Japanese people because their culture really hypes up the Paris experience (or so I hear).
I cant help but think that it's worth it for some hobbyists to create a bunch of free 3d models of famous buildings that are copyrighted. Obviously not exactly the same (you need to avoid a copyright claim), however the difference should be an attempt to make the building feel grander and better.
Eiffel tower at night (mentioned in other places in this thread) is apparently also copyrighted. So the goal there would be to create an Eiffel tower at night that blows the experience of the real Eiffel tower out of the water.
The ultimate goal is to enhance Paris Syndrome as much as possible. When people get to the copyrighted place in real life, we want them to feel like it was overly hyped up and definitely not worth the trip. "Hey Tim how was your trip?" "You know, I just feel it was more impressive in the video game."
If people want to restrict their whatever from public consumption, then I'm more than happy to find a way to direct the public to something more worth their time.
The Mona Lisa is available all over the internet, yet people still flock to see it in person practically every day. Even a perfect replica of it isn’t worth the millions the authentic is worth. I don’t know the name of it, but people tend to prefer the “real thing” even if they can “experience” it elsewhere.
My point is: even if a perfect 1:1 scale replica of the Eiffel Tower existed, people would still flock to see the “authentic” one to “appreciate” it.
It’s long been held that automakers could prevent their automobiles from being used without the makers consent. So games like Burnout have to crash cars that look similar to Ferraris and Lamborghinis.
This seems relatively similar I suppose?
It's the lighting system and its 'likeness' that cannot be reproduced. A brief search and I don't think anyone has been prosecuted[1]. There are plenty of pictures everywhere that probably don't have proper licensing. Perhaps those who want to use it commercially can get permission relatively easily?
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M16CGK1T9MM [1] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/photographs-of-eiffel-towe...
How many lightbulbs does it take to change the copyright?
Microsoft should have just used an enlarged Blackpool Tower instead.
People should steer away from fact checkers. It's a lazy way to confirm your own opinion.
On a side note - is it Spiderman or Spider-man? I grew up with the believe that it was the former.
Well, there's a Spider-man related subreddit called "respect the hyphen" so...
Sam Raimi is a very accomplished director so you don't notice this unless you look, but the CGI buildings in the movie are actually _much worse_ than the ones in the recent PS4 game. It highlights the adage that there's no such thing as bad CGI, just bad filmmaking.
(On the other hand, my daughter pointed out to me that whenever anything exciting happens, every woman screams and no men do and it is impossible to unsee once you notice it.)
I think the better question to ask is: What CGI effects from 20 years ago can't be achieved in real time today?
But yeah, the Mandalorian used real-time rendering in-camera for a ton of its scenes. They fudged it a bit by using wide apertures so the backgrounds were a bit soft, but it obviously worked very well.
https://therealmjp.github.io/posts/sss-intro/
Realtime reflections seem to be on their way too: https://youtu.be/pNmhJx8yPLk
J.T. Spiderman & Sons, Accounting
Susie Spiderman, Age 5
Arnold Spiderman III, MD
They lost.
https://www.si.com/nba/2020/04/06/nba-2k-ruling-tattoo-artis...
The concept of intellectual property is a blight on our society.
Did you know that Apple can notify you that they have revoked your iOS license at any time, without cause, and, under a strict interpretation of copyright law, make it illegal for you to then use or power on the phone that you own?
It’s really crazy how the copyright cartel has consolidated the power over the software and songs and stories and art that belong to every member of our culture.
Modern copyright goes far beyond this original goal, dis-incentivizes or forbids creation sometimes and it used in all kinds of manners where it is a bad fit like software and hardware.
(I understand the position, though, and of course if people copy the tattoo the artist is not getting compensated for that)
The other issue of bringing a document to an independent publisher (akin to having a Chinese factory build your devices) who could steal the IP is a contractual and security matter.
Copyright is the basis for contracts about creative works. Without copyright there is literally nothing to steal or protect.
An actor or singer didn't need this protection in 1800 because there was no film or audio records. You had to hire them to perform. It's no coincidence that the first protected works were books, because there was the printing press.
The only thing people objected to (a famous case is Martial in one of his epigrams) was someone passing off those poems as his own work. That is, there is a stronger case across space and time for disapproval of plagiarism, but the notion of copyright only arose in the West a few centuries ago, and still much of the world does not take it seriously.
That's wild. Imagine a world where sending photos of yourself would require permission from tattoo artists.
For this to be true, "hire" does not just mean pay someone for a service, it has to mean that that person has become an employee of your company.
For example if you "hire" (contract with) a photographer to shoot your event, the photographer retains copyright on those photos unless you negotiate work-for-hire and document it in the contract. But if you have a company with a photographer on staff, the employment contract would typically specify that the company owns the copyright to images taken in the course of work.
Have you got a source / defence for that?
I thought that copyright only applies to reproduction and distribution, not use, hence the term ‘copy’ ‘right’. Once you have acquired something, you are free to use it as you now own it. I would also have thought promissory estoppel would also prevent a company from unilaterally revoking your right to use their product.
0: https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/USCOURTS-flsd-9_19-cv-81...
0: https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/05/04/apple-opposing-us...
You have pointed out that the legality of Apples’ EULA hasn’t been tested, but I’m having a hard time of understanding how an EULA could be used to restrict how a device could be used. Does anyone know of the legal theory behind this?
Can contracts or licence agreements be used to restrict use of something even if you now own it? I’m not a lawyer, obviously, but I thought as long as you buy something up front the contract can be deemed to have been successfully performed and thus ends? I.e. there is no longer an ongoing relationship.
It that actually true? There is this thing called "exhaustion of intellectual property rights" that limits the rights you can enforce after you have sold something. This is also the basis for the First-sale doctrine in the US.
Apple's EULA asserts it has the right to revoke your right to use Apple's software for any reason. Which would include the right to brick your phone.
Those assertions would need most likely need to be scaled back if they were ever challenged in court. It's not clear what the actual legal limits are.
Further, the agreements we signed to license buildings for the first game do not necessarily hold true for sequels, so getting all of the cool buildings in New York City into the game is always, always going to be a hurdle, popularity of the first game be damned.
Freedom Tower == One World Trade Center[1]
Fixed as per PinguTS: trademark law. D'oh.
It seems, you didn't even read until the end of the article:
> Therefore, the most likely answer is that the distinctive shape of 1 World Trade Center is either trademarked (although I could not find it within USPTO databases) or is so recognizable that it is easily defensible via a common law trademark and the game developers were unable to secure a license to use the trademark before their deadline.
In the end Steven guesses its a trademark issue