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Comment by SonOfLilit | Hacker News Reader

If I were a DC executive, and if he is not badly misinterpreting their contract, I would be very mad at the lawyer that drafted said contract. So I'm confused. What's going on? How did this happen?

Was the DC contract drafted sloppily to allow this because no-one could imagine the edge case of him throwing away money?

Is he creatively interpreting it ("it doesn't say anywhere that dogs can't play basketball" wouldn't really stand in court, and I'm suspicious about "I am not allowed to authorize anyone else to print fanfics of Fables but I am allowed to authorize everyone else to authorize anyone else to print them)?

Is he reneging on an obligation towards them that they can and will sue him for (or maybe the way the contract dealt with this was saying he can't do this and if he does the contract is void and he pays a small fine, and he doesn't care about the small fine or the contract)?

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> I would be very mad at the lawyer that drafted said contract.

It actually sounds like the standard contract DC use with "author-owned" material at least since Watchmen (and possibly before): creators maintain ownership of the IP, but publication/distribution rights of certain amounts of material are granted exclusively to DC - as long as such material is made available for sale.

This is famously how they locked away Watchmen: they kept reprinting the original run in paperbacks every year, so that the publication clause would never expire and Moore/Gibbons would never be able to take it elsewhere (and never be able to claim full royalties rather than a determined, reduced rate). I think there were lawsuits at some point, but the outcome was just a little more money for authors.

Willingham seems to have decided to take the nuclear option instead, by releasing the IP in the public domain. This means the already-published material will remain the preserve of DC, but anyone is supposedly free to write and publish new stories with the same characters. As others stated, it's unlikely to happen on a large scale, because of the chilling effect of potentially having to go against DC/Warner in court; but it should ensure fanfic and other creative expressions can flourish.

To be fair for Watchmen, the Watchmen deal was made at a time where paperback reprints were rare, and they obviously kept reprinting it because they genuinely wanted to make money from directly selling it, not because they were reprinting 10 copies a year just to keep the contract from expiring.

I don't think that's verifiable without receipts. I'm pretty sure at some point (late '90s) you could get such paperbacks on the secondhand market for pennies, and everyone had one already.

You've misunderstood something.

He owns the copyright for Fables. He has released the copyright for Fables into the public domain. He does not have the right to release the official comic series into the public domain because DC Comics has partial ownership of that. His contract with DC Comics is still in effect and has not been broken. He is not creating new Fables comics but is not preventing the official series from being sold.

I think fundamental to Willingham's action, and his intent, is that there now is no "official" Fables comic series. There's DC's version of Fables, but now anyone can make one with equal legitimacy.

If people treat the DC version as "official", then that has some (not all) of the same effects as claiming that Willingham gave DC the copyrights in the first place. DC can't sue anyone if they aren't the owner, but they can take advantage of fandom's desire for an "official" version to crowd out anyone else writing such a comic, and threaten competitors with lawsuits to get them to stay away (IANAL and don't know exactly how much they could do).

Thanks. Edited to replace "copies" with "fanfics".

However, my questions still remain just as strong.

I would be very surprised if his contract didn't have the word "exclusive" in key places, which this change of ownership will now make incorrect, creating an actionable tort (in my layperson understanding). I like what the author is trying to do here but I expect it to fail when inevitably challenged.

That’s the thing with the public domain; it’s irrevocable. He’s already done it. What he has done cannot be undone. Unless a court decides that because he have an exclusive license to DC he cannot release his rights to the public domain, the worst that can happen is that the copyright is in the public domain and he has broken his contract with DC and thus is liable.

A judge could take it out of the public domain.

A judge could not take it out of the public domain. A judge could decide it was never in the public domain to begin with.

... in their jurisdiction.

> If I were a DC executive

Your reaction is why you are not a DC executive. Shareholders, your board would not stand for your concern for employee/contractor over profit.

You read my comment wrong. I'm asking "how come the contract allows for this outcome, which is very bad for DC?"

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