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Comment by duskwuff | Hacker News Reader

I agree that it's an extreme step, but given that the creator of the work was trying to use it to extort both the Tolkien estate and Amazon, confiscating the work to prevent further abuse is understandable.

Also, the book was submitted as an exhibit in the court case, so you can read it there. It's genuinely awful. Nothing of value is being lost here.

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cacd.88...

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Even if it was horribly offensive and morally repugnant, I would still say that the court should let private copies exist.

The court is hosting one in the link above.

Why are they bothering to ask anyone to destroy it?

Because he egregiously misbehaved with his, and this is the resulting punishment.

You and I can keep whatever copies we may have.

> Because he egregiously misbehaved with his, and this is the resulting punishment

This is like some new form of justice, where, if you hit someone with a hammer we punish the hammer?

No; we take away your hammers. It's quite an old approach.

Taking away the hammer would placing the fanwork into public domain.

Here, we are specifically destroying the hammer as a punishment.

It woudl be odd for the court to resolve a copyright infringement case by more copyright infringement. It's not theirs to put in the public domain; it's the Tolkien estate's IP.

It is, for all practical purposes. The court posted the whole thing in an official document.

It seems like you're saying "IP claims" are a hammer.

So, yes, I favor destroying all hammers.

Because he self-published and had some printed; he is able to have those recalled and destroyed still.

It really should not matter. It shouldn't even be allowed to ban non-commercial fan fiction.

This wasn't non-commercial. The author was selling his book, and was trying to extort Amazon into paying licensing fees for it as well.

Kind of like patent trolls patenting an invention someone else is already actually using

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:pG0fNw...

It's literary merits are irrelevant. This is someone's work, and they are being denied the right to even keep a backup up in the attic. If one party's control over a creative work can be extended to strip another party of any control over his, something's fucked up with the system.

This is hilarious. So the judge forbids him to further distribute the book he wrote, but now publishes and distributes it on his behalf. For free. Go figure. Can the court now be considered guilty of violating copyright ?

> Can the court now be considered guilty of violating copyright ?

No. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_immunity

I have a copy now, and I'd never even heard of this fanfic before today. Not sure that the system is working as intended...

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