In Case You Were Wondering: James Cameron Is Still Winning Cases Over Avatar

from the neverending-story dept

The legacy of the movie Avatar was supposed to be about bringing the 3D movie era back. Or perhaps it was supposed to be strictly about box office numbers. It perhaps even should have been about James Cameron's place in the Hollywood pantheon. Too bad, then, that it's more likely the legacy of Avatar will be about just how many people attempted to sue claiming the movie copied everything from everyone ever.

Given that this has been going on for roughly half a decade, perhaps you thought the course had been run. You'd be wrong, as it was only recently that yet another lawsuit was dismissed over claims that the movie world of Pandora was copied from the artwork of William Roger Dean.

The defendants, including Cameron, Twentieth Century Fox, and Lightstorm Entertainment, moved to dismiss Dean's amended complaint, which a federal judge granted Wednesday. U.S. District Judge Jesse M. Furman called Dean's attempts to show substantial similarity between the works "plainly misguided."

"Many of the 'Avatar images' he includes are not from the film itself, but are taken from books about or derived from Avatar (including, for example, 'The Making of Avatar' and 'The Art of Avatar)," Furman wrote. "By plaintiff's own admission, those books are 'not part of the claims in this case.'"

It's an interesting strategy to sue someone for copying your work on the basis of images not from the movie you claim is infringing. Sort of like if I got mad at my brother for stealing my chicken wing and demonstrated the chicken wing's worth by pointing to a live chicken. Or something. Look, I don't know, but the misapplication of the works in question isn't even the point, because what Dean is suing over is essentially the concept of floating land masses in a fictional world, which is an idea, not a specific expression. Judge Furman noted as much when commenting on Dean's manipulation of the images in question.

Furman called several of Dean's claims "misguided," noting that as evidence, the artist included images from "books about or derived from Avatar" rather than the film. The judge also noted that images from the film were cropped, rotated and otherwise taken "out of context" in an attempt to make them look similar to Dean's paintings, which were in turn also manipulated by the artist.

Here's a nice little tip for any of you out there that might be considering filing this kind of lawsuit: if you have to twist and turn and crop and tweek every image on both sides of your copyright case, you're essentially disproving the infringement in the first place. Probably best to just not file the lawsuit and get back to making art, yes?

Filed Under: avatar, ideas, james cameron, lawsuits

DailyDirt: Discovering More Life On Earth

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

While some environmentalists complain about the rate at which known species are dying, the absolute amount of biodiversity on Earth is actually not well known. There could be 100 million different species, but we've only identified about 2 million so far. Here are just a few recent developments that could help expand our databases of living species.

• James Cameron has recently donated his custom-built submarine to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (a year after his record-setting dive to the bottom of the Mariana Trench). Last year, Cameron observed about 68 specimens of life on the ocean floor, and future dives could possibly turn up more discoveries. [url]
• DNA characterization techniques promise to speed up the identification of new species. Ecogenomics will be used to survey biodiversity and could lead to finding hundreds of new species in a matter of months. [url]
• The Dead Sea looks devoid of life on the surface, but biologists since the 1930s have known that the salty body of water is teeming with microbes that thrive in water that is over 8 times saltier than the ocean. More recently, life has been discovered at the bottom of the Dead Sea, about 100 feet down, where mats of bacteria survive near freshwater springs. [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: biology, dead sea, dna, ecogenomics, james cameron, life, species
Companies: woods hole oceanographic institution

DailyDirt: Getting To The Bottom Of It All

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

If you're a billionaire, what better way to spend your pocket change than to explore the deepest parts of the ocean? Deep sea diving is almost like being an astronaut, but you're more likely to find strange new lifeforms that no one has ever seen before. And so far, more people have been to the moon than to the bottom of the Mariana Trench. But that bit of trivia will likely change in the next few years.

• James Cameron has been down to the bottom of the Mariana Trench and back -- filming a documentary for National Geographic. Are privately funded scientific efforts going to be a trend (like 3D movies)? [url]
• Sir Richard Branson has created Virgin Oceanic to explore the Earth's oceans. And it's not an April Fools joke like Virgin Volcanic. [url]
• Jeff Bezos has a privately funded team of deep-sea explorers, and they found discarded Apollo 11 rocket engines at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. Bezos plans to bring at least one of these NASA artifacts of space exploration back to dry land. [url]
• To discover more interesting tech-related content, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]  

By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

Filed Under: apollo, billionaires, deep sea, exploration, james cameron, jeff bezos, mariana trench, oceans, richard branson, science

Big Hollywood Directors Seem To Think People Will Actually Pay $30 To Watch Movies At Home

from the reality-calling... dept

We still can't figure out why anyone is "worried" about Hollywood's silly plan to offer $30 video-on-demand rentals 10 weeks after films are in the theaters. Yet, theater owners who are effectively admitting that their service sucks are all complaining and now a bunch of big Hollywood directors are joining them. James Cameron, Peter Jackson, Robert Zemeckis, Michael Mann, Kathryn Bigelow and many others have apparently written a letter to the studios protesting the plan. Do they not yet realize that very few people are likely to pay $30 to watch these movies? And their basic argument doesn't make any sense: they say this is a threat to theaters (it's not) and that this will harm the movie industry as a whole (it won't).

And, as stupid as $30 movies at home are, what this really foreshadows is the ridiculous levels to which the industry will go to block the real innovation that the industry needs: day and date release on all formats on the same day. If they're so scared of massively overpriced video at home ten weeks after the theater debut, you can bet they'll go absolutely ballistic when anyone tries to release video on demand and in the theater at the same time.

It seems that, once again, we have people focusing on the "tradition" of the way things were done, rather than actually providing what consumers want. How many times does this need to happen before industry folks realize this doesn't work?

Filed Under: directors, james cameron, kathryn bigelow, michael mann, movies, peter jackson, robert zemeckis, video on demand

Yet Another Person Sues, Claiming James Cameron Copied The Idea For Avatar

from the and-on-and-on-and-on dept

People really have an incredible ability to assume that only they could possibly have a very common idea. Lots of people have pointed out that James Cameron's Avatar seems similar to all sorts of stories. In fact, the site io9 put together a giant list of books and movies that some claimed were copied by Cameron. And, of course, we've already mentioned two separate lawsuits. Well, now we can add a third one to the list, and it has just as much a chance to succeed as the others. In this case, it's made even more ridiculous by the fact that the book in question was written after Cameron was already working on Avatar.

In most of the cases with these types of lawsuits, it seems like those suing are really just filing what they likely know is a bogus lawsuit to get publicity for their book/movie/etc. (which is why we're not naming the book in this case). But, it does highlight an important point that we've discussed plenty of times in the past: lots of people have ideas that are similar. Ideas, by themselves, are neither unique nor protectable. It's the execution or (within the copyright realm) the expression that is unique. Yet, too many people overvalue the idea and assume that only they could possibly have had it. The idea behind the story of Avatar is pretty simplistic and common, really. It's been done plenty of times before. The reason the movie is getting so much attention is because of the execution.

Filed Under: avatar, copyright, expression, ideas, james cameron, stories

James Cameron: Innovation Trumps Any Piracy Threat

from the ain't-nothing-to-worry-about dept

Nearly a year ago, Techdirt reader Parker Mason had submitted a story to us, suggesting that the amazing visuals and 3D + IMAX aspect of Avatar was a perfect example of adding value to movies that would give people a real reason to go to the theater. I actually kept that story open in a tab for months, intending to write it up, and I never got around to it -- and, to be honest, I wasn't entirely convinced that Avatar would really get a huge reception. Don't I look foolish? Yes, Avatar obviously has been a blockbuster of blockbuster proportions -- in part because of exactly those points. People want that greater experience and I was certainly among those who ponied up for the full 3D IMAX version (and not the fake IMAX version either -- thanks to a friend who reminded me of that bit of deception).

It looks like James Cameron recognizes all this as well. Nastybutler77 was the first of a bunch of you to point to Cameron's claim that innovation trumps "piracy," which he made onstage at CTIA:

"In film we have definitely felt threatened by piracy," he said. "We saw the music industry crash and burn in its efforts to stop it. But with G4 (I think he meant 4G wireless) and Moore's Law, you can't fight it...."

"The music industry saw it coming, they tried to stop it, and they got rolled over," he said. "Then they started suing everybody. And now it is what it is."

Instead, Cameron said he has tried to innovate to give movie goers a reason to go to theater. And in creating a rich, "reinvigorated cinema experience," Cameron said he discovered that people are willing to pay money to experience the same content in different ways. Not only are they willing to pay $10 or more to see Avatar on the big screen in 3D, but they also will pay to own the DVD and to take it with them on their phone or portable device.

"People are discriminating about the experience," he said. "They want to own it, have it on a iPhone when they want it, and they want the social experience of going to the cinema. These are really different experiences. And I think they can all co-exist in the same eco-system."

Indeed. It's great that he's recognizing this. The other interesting point he made was that they're going to release the Avatar DVD while the film is still showing in the theaters -- in part because the show is still doing well in the theaters. Of course, many theaters have complained about how they don't want shorter release windows (or, horror of horrors, the idea of releasing a movie in the theater and on DVD at the same time). However, it will be interesting to see whether the DVD release, while the movie is still in some theaters, leads to at least a little bump in box office sales for the movie, as people who watch it on DVD decide they want to see it on the big screen.

Filed Under: avatar, james cameron, piracy