Hacker News Reader

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

View on HN

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com