Disney (Disney!) Accused Of Trying To Lawyer Its Way Out Of Paying Royalties To Alan Dean Foster

from the the-maximalism-only-works-in-one-direction dept

Disney, of course, has quite the reputation as a copyright maximalist. It has been accused of being the leading company in always pushing for more draconian copyright laws. And then, of course, there's the infamous Mickey Mouse curve, first designated a decade ago by Tom Bell, highlighting how copyright term extensions seemed to always happen just as Mickey Mouse was set to go into the public domain (though, hopefully that's about to end):

Whether accurate or not, Disney is synonymous with maximizing copyright law, which the company and its lobbyists always justify with bullshit claims of how they do it "for the artist."

Except that it appears that Disney is not paying artists. While the details are a bit fuzzy, yesterday the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) and famed author Alan Dean Foster announced that Disney was no longer paying him royalties for the various Star Wars books he wrote (including the novelization of the very first film back in 1976), along with his novelizations of the Aliens movies. He claims he'd always received royalties before, but they suddenly disappeared.

Foster wrote a letter (amusingly addressed to "Mickey") in which he lays out his side of the argument, more or less saying that as Disney has gobbled up various other companies and rights, it just stopped paying royalties:

When you purchased Lucasfilm you acquired the rights to some books I wrote. STAR WARS, the novelization of the very first film. SPLINTER OF THE MIND’S EYE, the first sequel novel. You owe me royalties on these books. You stopped paying them.

When you purchased 20th Century Fox, you eventually acquired the rights to other books I had written. The novelizations of ALIEN, ALIENS, and ALIEN 3. You’ve never paid royalties on any of these, or even issued royalty statements for them.

All these books are all still very much in print. They still earn money. For you. When one company buys another, they acquire its liabilities as well as its assets. You’re certainly reaping the benefits of the assets. I’d very much like my miniscule (though it’s not small to me) share.

You want me to sign an NDA (Non-disclosure agreement) before even talking. I’ve signed a lot of NDAs in my 50-year career. Never once did anyone ever ask me to sign one prior to negotiations. For the obvious reason that once you sign, you can no longer talk about the matter at hand. Every one of my representatives in this matter, with many, many decades of experience in such business, echo my bewilderment.

You continue to ignore requests from my agents. You continue to ignore queries from SFWA, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. You continue to ignore my legal representatives. I know this is what gargantuan corporations often do. Ignore requests and inquiries hoping the petitioner will simply go away. Or possibly die. But I’m still here, and I am still entitled to what you owe me. Including not to be ignored, just because I’m only one lone writer. How many other writers and artists out there are you similarly ignoring?

In a video press conference, Foster and SFWA (while admitting that no one on the call were lawyers) said that Disney is claiming that it purchased "the rights but not the obligations" to these works. That's... weird. And I wish there was a lawyer on the call. Because that doesn't make much sense.

As SFWA notes, if it is possible to purchase rights without the obligations, then any company could just do a sham sale of the rights without the obligations and get out of paying any royalties ever.

Of course, the details here matter, and we only have one side (and not their lawyers). There may be something very weird in these contracts (and this is, basically, a contract dispute, not a copyright one). But just at a fundamental facts of the situation look disgusting on Disney's part. If you owe royalties, you pay the royalties. Considering how aggressive Disney is with its own copyrights, you'd think its lawyers would understand that.

Filed Under: alan dean foster, aliens, contracts, copyright, mickey mouse, obligations, rights, royalties, star wars
Companies: disney, sfwa

DailyDirt: All Alone In The Universe With Nowhere To Go...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

People have been looking up into the sky for centuries, wondering what's out there and if we're alone on this world. Astronomers, more recently, have been looking into deep space with some relatively high-tech equipment -- finding some strangely inexplicable phenomena (that could be alien megastructures?!) and still wondering if we're alone in the universe. We may never know for sure if intelligent life exists anywhere else, but it doesn't hurt to look, does it?

• The Breakthrough Prize Foundation is aiming to shoot lasers at a light-propelled nanocraft that could reach Alpha Centauri in a few decades (instead of millennia). This lightsail spacecraft would have a mass of just a few grams, so it could be accelerated to speeds of 100 million miles per hour -- much faster than any existing spacecraft we've ever built (like Voyager I zipping away at about 38,500 mph). [url]
• The Kepler space telescope has gotten plenty of headlines for finding thousands of exoplanets, but the far lesser-known TRAPPIST (TRAnsiting Planets and PlanetesImals Small Telescope) in Belgium is also finding some exoplanets, too. The TRAPPIST telescope is stuck on the ground (unlike KST), but it's looking at a few dozen ultracool dwarf stars and has found 3 planets orbiting a star that's just 0.05 percent as bright as our Sun. [url]
• Kepler 36b and Kepler 36c are two exoplanets orbiting the same star which could possibly harbor some kind of microbial life (but probably not). Still, it's an interesting question whether or not life -- if it exists on either Kepler 36b or 36c -- could be transferred to its neighboring planet. (Though maybe we should focus on looking at Venus and Mars first....) [url]

After you've finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

Filed Under: alien megastructures, aliens, astrobiology, astronomy, breakthrough prize foundation, et, exoplanets, extraterrestrial life, kepler space telescope, life, lightsail, nanocraft, seti, spacecraft, telescopes, trappist

DailyDirt: Aliens Aren't Coming To Visit Anytime Soon, But...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The search for aliens has been pretty fruitless so far, but that doesn't mean we should give up on it. Sure, there's little evidence that points to us ever finding aliens beyond our solar system -- and no way that we'll ever interact with distant aliens given the vastness of space and that darn speed of light limitation. However, if we can find some sign that we're not alone, that would be quite a remarkable discovery that could inspire us to greater goals, knowing that someone else is out there to impress or something? Or it would just be cool to be able to build a Dyson sphere of our own.

• KIC 8462852 is the name of a star system that has unusual features -- with explanations saying that it's a star surrounded by a strange field of debris, to more outlandish suggestions that an alien megastructure (perhaps a partial Dyson sphere) exists. A Dyson sphere (or a Dyson swarm) is a massive technological construction that would allow an extremely advanced civilization to harness an enormous amount of energy from a star. This is far from conclusive evidence for aliens, but it would certainly be a significant discovery if all the more mundane explanations don't pan out. [url]
• Instead of looking for messages from aliens, some folks are looking for evidence of ancient ruins in space. Interstellar archaeologists might find aliens on the Kardashev Scale with unnatural amounts of pollution or other anomalous space objects that might be detected. [url]
• Abiogenesis must have happened at least once here on Earth, right? If we could find some evidence that it's happened here more than once, though, that might improve the odds of life existing elsewhere in the universe. [url]

After you've finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

Filed Under: aliens, dyson sphere, extraterrestrial life

DailyDirt: Hello, World Universe! Hello? (Is This Thing On?)

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) hasn't yielded much, and some of the results are even a bit embarrassing. We don't really know what to look for when we're listening for alien signals. There's growing evidence that planets like ours are not rare in the universe, but that doesn't necessarily mean intelligent life is abundant. Given the vast distances to neighboring star systems, we're also not likely to visit them any time soon.

• Russian billionaire Yuri Milner is spending $100 million on a Breakthrough Listen initiative that will last 10 years and attempt to find alien intelligence. This effort will scan the universe using telescopes that cover more than ten times of the sky compared to previous projects, and the data will be made public for SETI@home distributed analysis. [url]
• NASA has its Nexus for Exoplanet System Science (NExSS) project to look for extraterrestrial life. Identifying exoplanets that might harbor life is a fascinating field that requires an interdisciplinary effort of biologists, physicists, astronomers, geologists and a whole lot of creative thinking. [url]
• No obvious signs of life have been seen after looking at 100,000 galaxies. This probably doesn't mean anything other than we don't know what to look for. [url]

After you've finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

Filed Under: aliens, breakthrough listen, exoplanets, extraterrestrial life, nexss, seti, seti@home, space, yuri milner
Companies: nasa

Tumblr Complies With DMCA Takedown Requests From A Self-Proclaimed Future-Alien From Another Planet

from the he-has-the-GIF dept

We see more than our fair share of bogus DMCA and intellectual property takedowns around these parts. Hell, there are so many that at one point a website was created strictly to keep a running tally of these things, though that site appear to no longer exist. That said, there are bogus takedowns, and then there are bogus takedowns, and this is the story of one example of the latter and the silliness of the take down first and ask questions later attitude sites take these days.

Tumblr is rife with GIFs. We all know this. Tumblr claims that those that have takedowns filed against them will have their material removed first, but will be provided all the relevant information on the takedown so that they can figure out what happened. Tumblr also claims that real-life human beings review each of these requests to ensure they're legitimate. If that's true, then Tumblr needs to explain why a bunch of GIF artists are having their material removed at the behest of the purported true copyright owner, a future-alien being channeled by a present homosapien named Darryl Anka.

Darryl Anka telepathically channels a space alien from the future named Bashar who lives on the planet Essassani; on this basis, he has claimed many copyright infringements in the creations of Tumblr's GIF artists. The "trained members" of Tumblr's Trust and Safety team who "reviewed" these claims decided they were sufficient grounds for action, and promptly removed the offending GIFs, sending emails to the artists who'd posted them explaining what had happened. Each artist received a "strike" against them under Tumblr's three-strikes-and-you're-terminated policy.

Look, I'm the last person who wants to go around offending the sensibilities of the great nation-planet of Essassani. After all, we may need their military assistance to fight against The Reapers years in the future once we've attained intergalactic travel and all that. But still...what the shit? This is almost enough to make me wonder if this whole episode was specifically designed to throw shade on Tumblr and its likely false claims about how and who is reviewing these takedown notices. Some of the GIF artists in question are equally flabbergasted.

The claim is that my work is in fact copyrighted by “Bashar channeled by Darryl Anka” What? I looked it up. Darryl Anka believes that he is channeling information from a space alien from the future named Bashar that lives on a planet called Essassani via telepathy. Cool story bro. What exactly is the legal basis for their claim? Maybe it has something to do with “ ” ? Is that some kind of alien code? Or did Tumblr just auto copy and paste the email they got including stray HTML garbage characters? What is the evidence? “The copyrighted works can be found at www.basharstore.com/.” I clicked that link. There’s no GIFs on it. There’s nothing that resembles anything on my blog. Again, Tumblr’s policy states “Each claim is reviewed by a trained member of our Trust and Safety team.” I find it difficult to impossible to believe that actually happened.

Here’s my conclusion: Tumblr’s DMCA takedown system is fully automated and “trained members” do not in fact review anything. Or, embarrassingly someone did look at all of that “evidence” and decided that aliens from other planets have legal rights on Earth and that even though a copy of the alleged infringing work is not on the site provided, they’ll just take Darryl’s word for it?

Several things went wrong here. First, this is what you get in a "takedown first" scenario: nonsense claims that are given the benefit of the doubt to the detriment of legitimate speech/art/whatever. Add to that the embarrassment of Tumblr's review process claim being completely debunked and you can imagine how pissed off these artists are. And, finally, we have what is either an impressively creative troll or someone with a mind that broke somewhere around the fourth season of The X-Files a decade ago. And, coming full circle, keep in mind that that's the person getting the benefit of the doubt in the DMCA process.

It's time we did this differently, valuing the speech of the many over the restrictions wished for by the few. Even if amongst those few is Bashar, the alien from the future.

Filed Under: aliens, bashar, censorship, darryl anka, dmca, essassani, gifs, takedowns
Companies: tumblr, yahoo

DailyDirt: Mysterious Transmissions From Unknown Origins

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The infamous Wow signal that might have been an extraterrestrial message from aliens from 1977... still hasn't been completely explained. There are actually many mysterious and invisible messages flying around everywhere. Some people have tracked down the origins of a few of these signals, and the answers are probably not as exciting or dramatic as some might have hoped for. Maybe we just haven't been listening long enough....

• Shortwave radio fanatics have been listening to "numbers stations" for decades now. These transmissions come from unlicensed stations that are probably international spies communicating something for years, and these audio one-time pads probably won't be deciphered anytime soon. [url]
• The Russian radio station known as UVB-76 transmitting at 4625 kHz sent its last message from the outskirts of Povarovo in 2010. The station changed locations and its call sign to 'MDZhB' and remains a mystery for what its real purpose is. Or maybe it's all some kind of dream and everyone is actually dead. [url]
• The mystery of terrestrial microwave signals called 'perytons' has been solved. These signals are not related to fast radio bursts from the cosmos, but from a microwave oven door opening before its timer went off. Derp. [url]

After you've finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

Filed Under: aliens, cold war, et, fast radio bursts, mdzhb, microwave, mysteries, numbers stations, one time pad, perytons, radio, shortwave radio, spy tools, uvb-76, wow signal

DailyDirt: To Seek Out New Life And New Civilizations...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The search for extraterrestrial life hasn't yielded much evidence that there's anyone else out there. We could be looking in the wrong places or not looking with the right instruments to detect faint signals -- or maybe we're actually alone. But as they say with the lottery, you can't win if you don't play, so we won't find any aliens if we don't continue looking. (Assuming that aliens aren't already on their way to come and get us.)

• If Dyson spheres actually exist (we're not talking about vacuum cleaners here), they might be harder to detect than previously thought. A Dyson sphere around a white dwarf star might be feasible if an advanced civilization figures out how to survive the red giant and supernova stages of a star -- or travel to an existing white dwarf. [url]
• There are hundreds of billions of stars in our galaxy, and tens of billions with planets in a "Goldilocks' zone" where we think life as we know it could exist. Endless speculation doesn't really explain why we haven't seen any evidence of life yet, but it's fun to try to guess what's going on with aliens and what they might look like. [url]
• Optimists in the space sciences predict that we'll find evidence of alien life forms in the next few decades. We may continue to find evidence that habitable conditions exist elsewhere in the universe, but actually finding life could take a bit longer. [url]

After you've finished checking out those links, if you have some spare change (or more) and would like to support Techdirt, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

Filed Under: aliens, astrobiology, dyson sphere, extraterrestrial life, fermi paradox, goldilocks zone, seti

DailyDirt: We Should Have Written Down ET's Phone Number...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The search for extraterrestrial life has been going on for ages, but we still haven't found much convincing evidence that life on other objects in space exists. There's at least one bold prediction that we'll find signs of intelligent life in outer space within the next 25 years, but that's not a bet too many scientists would likely make. Here are just a few more links on the search for ET -- for those bored with the lifeforms on this planet.

• Out of about 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe, a couple astrophysicists estimate that only 10% are able to support complex life. Apparently, gamma ray bursts are regularly wiping out anything more complex than microbes in the vast majority of space. That is, assuming that other complex life is similar to our own biosphere and vulnerable to gamma radiation. [url]
• If we're expecting life on other worlds to look similar to our own, we might want to check out a Caribbean shrimp species that lives near hydrothermal vents in a symbiotic relationship with extremophile bacteria. The water near these undersea vents can reach 400°C, and similar conditions could be present elsewhere in our solar system (eg. in Europa's subsurface ocean?). [url]
• Alien hunters could hit the jackpot and discover evidence of intelligent life (beyond Earth) by 2040. The SETI Institute has been looking for several decades now, but we're learning more and more about where best to look (not towards the center of the Milky Way galaxy where gamma ray bursts are more common). As long as the funding to keep listening for signals doesn't completely dry up, we could find out that we're not alone in the universe (maybe). [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: aliens, astrobiology, biosphere, et. extraterrestrial, extraterrestrial life, extremophiles, lifeforms, seti, space, space exploration

Iran's FARS: Snowden Documents Finally Detail That The US Government Is Run By Aliens

from the truth-is-out-there dept

Edward Snowden's leaks have offered much in the way of revelation. Each story seems to broaden our understanding of exactly how widespread the government surveillance efforts have gone. They have caused many Americans to rethink their stance on their own government. They've painted several public employees, including those holding the highest offices in the nation, as inhuman power-mongers. And, according to Iran's semi-official FARS news agency, there may be a reason for that.

FARS is reporting that the latest revelation from the Snowden documents is that the American government is actually run by a race of aliens known as "Tall Whites," who have engineered everything in recent history, most notably the rise of Hitler, because all alien intergalactic roads lead back to Hitler.

Pictured: a Tall White

And, no, I'm not making any of this up or exaggerating any of this. That distinction belongs to the website whatdoesthismean.com, best known as being generally insane and specifically crackpot-conspiracy-theory-ish. Prior to FARS deciding that this was, like, totally legit, that website was the only source for this revelation that has FARS stating:

A stunning Federal Security Services (FSB) report on the nearly two million highly classified top-secret documents obtained from the United States Department of Defense (DOD) run National Security Agency-Central Security Service (NSA/CSS) by the American ex-patriot Edward Snowden states that this information is providing “incontrovertible proof” that an “alien/extraterrestrial intelligence agenda” is driving US domestic and international policy, and has been doing so since at least 1945.

They further state that the only reason you haven't heard of these "Tall Whites" running the American government is because they have instituted a global network designed to shut down any information sources about them. Apparently, the FARS news agency and WhatDoesThisMean are somehow out of the reach of these alien masterminds.

Thanks for the laugh, FARS. In the future, if you could just go ahead and return to falling for "news stories" from The Onion, that'd be great.

Filed Under: aliens, ed snowden, fake stories, iran

DailyDirt: Searching For Life Forms

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Discovering an alien life form would be quite an achievement, but we've been burned before by over-eager press releases that claimed to find evidence of life from beyond our planet. NASA might be more careful about making any announcements about life based on peculiar and potentially extra-terrestrial-based life, but NASA seemed to have forgotten about the extraordinary claims over ALH84001. Overall, though, it's probably good that NASA hasn't given up on searching for aliens, so here are a few links on looking for life from outer space.

• Recently, some UK scientists claimed to find evidence of alien life in the Earth's upper atmosphere, suggesting that alien life is just raining down from space all the time. The concept of panspermia is interesting, but the evidence for it isn't quite convincing yet. [url]
• There are a bunch of ways to look for aliens, such as a search for extraterrestrial technology (SETT) to find non-natural shapes in space. Looking for alien crop circles on exoplanets ain't easy, though. [url]
• Some astronomers are looking for evidence of Dyson Spheres -- a massive array solar panels that advanced alien civilizations might use for sustaining enormous energy needs. This search is actually being funded by a grant from the Templeton Foundation. [url]
• NASA's Curiosity rover hasn't detected much methane in the Martian atmosphere, so the odds of finding familiar living organisms seems a bit more distant. Mars was most likely suitable for Earth-like life at some point, but it's looking pretty dead right now. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: alh84001, aliens, astrobiology, biology, curiosity, dyson sphere, et, extraterrestrial, life, mars, nasa, seti, sett, templeton foundation