This with the other article doing some troll logic mental gymnastics trying to convince us that dance moves/choreography should be copyrightable[1] (or intellectual property) really brings out the point how absurd the notion of IP/copyright is.
When will we see that the whole thing is a sham and needs to be abandoned?
Honestly if I'm playing a Basketball game the last thing I care about is the detail on tattoos, just parody them...
This isn't such a crucial issue at the end of the day, I don't think you should be able to copyright a tattoo, the design may change as the person ages, or gets into a crazy accident, or whatever. Heck, when they die and decompose / get cremated it's all gone.
> “My tattoos are a part of my persona and identity,” Mr. James wrote in a declaration of support for Take-Two and 2K Games. “If I am not shown with my tattoos, it wouldn’t really be a depiction of me.”
It comes down to how realistic you want the game to be. With games that pitch themselves as the pinnacle of being realistic with improvements made every year, not having the correct tattoos would break the realism. Especially when the most important athlete of his sports generation says that too.
That's a bit crazy to me, but if that's how he feels, it's not like any other game will get any closer to it, that or they can blur the tattoo can't they?
On another note, if I buy a canvas painting from another artist, and then I sell it for millions, but only paid $500 for said painting, can the painter sue me for copyright despite the painting being my property? If not... why are tattoos any different?
No, what's happening here is the same as if you had a painting in your house, but for some reason pictures of your house were very popular and seen by millions of people - and they all included the painting. You never made a copy of the painting, but it's now featured on a lot of different media that the original author never agreed to.
I still think it's BS, the tattoo on your body is YOU - not a separate thing to you.
No idea, but it seems like the news is allowed an exemption from royalties because of "fair use" or whatever they call it in Europe now (maybe "protected use" or something).
"Lawyers generally agree that an implied license allows people to freely display their tattoos in public, including on television broadcasts or magazine covers. "
Seems to me that the digital representation of someone is just another way of displaying themselves. If it's legal to do it in photos and videos, it's legal to do it in 3D models.
But even without that, I think it's unethical to claim ownership to any part of someone else's body and tell them what they can and can't do with it. (Laws are an obvious exception to this.)
Definitely, if they agree that they maintain freedom of their likeness for photos and video, how does that not extend to any medium where the person is expressly licensing their likeness? You aren't reproducing Lionel Messi's tattoo, you are reproducing Lionel Messi.
I'm also not surprised it largely isn't the artists themselves, it seemed weird that a tattoo artist would go after high profile clients after the fact.
A tattoo artist doing this seems to me to be a good way to damage that artist's reputation. Why get a tattoo from an artist who has demonstrated willingness to sue over representations of you??
From the article, the artists claim that they were approached by a firm to buy the copyright to the tattoos for a clothing line and then once the deal was done, the firm went after 2K, they say they didn't actually intend for this to happen, and they don't own the copyright anymore.
So basically the firm acted really scummy, and probably intended to go after 2k the entire time, but sold it to the artists as 'clothing line'...Is anyone really surprised?
Right, we just need to have a sane court agree that this is the case. Some people saw dollar signs and were able to use the absence of precedent on this question to snag some of them.
If it's legal to do it in photos and videos,
it's legal to do it in 3D models.
Perhaps it ought to be by extension but apparently it's far from a settled matter.
I mean, our copyright laws are full of weird seeming-contradictions. Games companies pay to license an athlete's likeness, but photographers don't? Photographs of a sculpture are copyright-protected, but photographs of tattoos aren't? Architecture with an expired copyright can be lit up with lights to regain copyright protection?
Copyright law isn't really amenable to deducing that one thing is legal just because another very similar thing is legal.
Not just copyright law. Look at the difference in laws being recording a video of a person and recording sound of the same person. I would love for law to be consistent, but as of yet there is no such requirement.
You can. You record a high definition video of items and can possibly determine the sound waves from the movement of the items. I've already seen demos of this tech where you can restore the majority of a transcript of a visually recorded conversation.
Is there any case law on this? Given it is a recording of video, not audio, how does the law treat the ability to convert video into audio? This would make most video recordings where audio is illegal to also be illegal, if it is so directly applied.
Another fun legal question is what happens if I add fake audio to a video where the video is legal but the audio isn't, but I use legal audio recordings to fake the voice of the person I videotaped? Does it matter if the injected audio is close enough to what was originally said (say I remembered the words while I recorded the video)?
I assumed the post I responded to discussing actually converting it to audio rather than merely recording something that could theoretically be converted to audio. In that case, it's just a different type of photo-microphone, which is well established as audio recording.
You are suggesting that since it’s legal for me to share a fanphoto of myself and Mike Tyson, then by extension I should be allowed to use his likeness in a 3D model in a computer game. If rights did really get passed on that loosely, then celebrities would have no way of monetizing their own brand.
>You are suggesting that since it’s legal for me to share a fanphoto of myself and Mike Tyson, then by extension I should be allowed to use his likeness in a 3D model in a computer game.
No, that's not what they're suggesting at all, and you're conflating two separate things here. Using someone's likeness in a commercial work is already legally protected (in the most economically important jurisdictions anyway) and is different from mere publishing of a legal photo for which the copyright is owned (for which no permission is needed by default). The argument is that if you received Mike Tyson's agreement (or that of his authorized legal agent of course) to use his likeness in a game, then a 3rd party should not have veto over Mike Tyson's ability to allow use simply because they were paid to make a tattoo for him. It'd be his likeness, and he should be the sole decider of that absent compelling public interest otherwise (such as political commentary or criticism).
If somebody else does some work with our bodies, their interest in that should be exhausted instantly by the payment they receive for that service (or by nothing if they volunteered). It's our bodies we're talking about here, one of the most personal things about a human. At the very least this should be the default, though personally I'd lean towards this being something that is immutable as well and cannot be contractually signed away either. I don't think the can of worms it opens is worth any possible public gain from body royalties.
It doesn't seem that simple. If I get a tattoo of Star Wars or R2D2 or Iron Man there's arguably something not 100% "It's now mine to do whatever I want with". I'll get a tattoo of Darth Vader on my back, take a picture, print it on a cereal box and sell Darth Vader cereal.
If you agree (maybe you don't) that I shouldn't be able to sell cereal with a picture of my Darth Vader tattoo on the box then what's the difference? That Darth Vader belongs to someone other than the tattoo artist? If that's the argument then why does the tattoo artist have to give up their design but Disney does not when it's drawn on someone?
>If I get a tattoo of Star Wars or R2D2 or Iron Man
Did you have a license to get those as tattoos in the first place? My understanding would be that the original sin there would be getting that tattoo of an IP at all without permission, even if such things commonly fly under the radar (unless there is some legal right to get any tattoo regardless of IP). The remedy there would presumably be to get sued and have to pay a judgement as a result of a lost civil action [1]. Future separate damages could result in future suits.
>"It's now mine to do whatever I want with"
Be specific about what you're referring to with "it's" there. Are you arguing that an instance trademark infringement would mean the infringer no longer owned their whole body any longer? Is that actually justified by the damage caused by an unauthorized tattoo? Of course it wouldn't allow any other usage beyond that incidental to using their body and likeness overall. But I'd be really, really wary of allowing IP infringement to enter into this area, and try to game theory out the costs even for restricted implementations. Imagine for example you argued "well, we'll only restrict it for commercial usage!" But now consider the case of a person with an infringing tattoo who commits some act of public notoriety, say a politician who is significantly corrupt. News organizations want to cover this, and they're clearly commercial, but that would mean if they show the politician in question they'd be showing the infringing tattoo as well. Is this allowed? Does it require a court case to determine as an affirmative defense or is it innate, and what are the chilling effects if the former? What's the line?
I'm not saying you can't come up with answers for all this, but it also gets awfully complicated awfully quickly vs just defining bodies as a special area of law. Exactly what damages is that Star Wars tattoo really causing?
>If you agree (maybe you don't) that I shouldn't be able to sell cereal with a picture of my Darth Vader tattoo on the box then what's the difference?
Are you seriously confused about the difference between a cereal box and a human's control of their own body and the public's interest in the representation of humans? It is both perfectly legitimate and standard practice to weigh different things differently and consider how remedies impact conflicting parties. IP in general only exists for the public interest after all.
>That Darth Vader belongs to someone other than the tattoo artist?
Well yeah, that matters in that the tattoo artist could themselves be committing an act of infringement against a third party. Whereas an original design for hire does not involve any other parties besides those part of the transaction. That's not irrelevant.
>If that's the argument then why does the tattoo artist have to give up their design but Disney does not when it's drawn on someone?
Why do you assume the tattoo artist should own their design on a person? The natural default is no IP. How is the public interest advanced by giving tattoo artists a perpetual right over any human they work on vs declaring that all commercial compensation should be part of the actual transaction? We exhaust rights (such as with first sale doctrine) elsewhere all the time.
----
1: Maybe removal would be offered as a settlement, but I'm not sure a US court would ever require that as a judgement since performative actions are not usual in civil cases, plus it'd constitute a painful medical procedure which is its own can of worms.
Wow, you completely and utterly missed the entire point of everything I wrote and just made up strawmen
Disney creates design (action 1). Someone puts it on human skin (action 2). Someone uses that image of the tattoo on a person as promotion (action 3).
Most people would agree even if you tattoo Darth Vader on your body you can't use Darth Vader on your body for promotion it belongs to Disney
Change action 1 to the same person as action 2. Why does the tattoo artists not get the same rights as Disney? Nothing changed except replacing Disney with Tattoo artist. In fact let's add a 3rd case. Tattoo artist hires friend to design tatoo. Why is this friend not afforded the same rights as Disney?
AFAICT the law is on the side of the person that created the art (or owns the copyright in the art if the person that created it transffered their rights). If you tattoo Darth Vader on yourself the person who owns the rights to Darth Vader doesn't suddenly lose their rights. Instead, you irresponsibly used someone else's IP. Nothing changes if that IP holder is suddenly not Disney.
This is true for normal contracts, at least in the USA. If you contract an artist to draw something for you, unless you specifically get them to sign away all their rights in the art via the contract they retain those rights.
You could argue the person paying for the tattoo as a reasonable expectation that the tattoo now belongs to them, not the tattoo artist. But that doesn't seem to fit with normal case law. If you pay your buddy $100 to make a logo for your new youtube video you may think you're done. The logo is yours. But AFAICT unless you specifically signed a contract your buddy would actually still own the rights to that logo regardless of the fact that you paid him. See all the links that google search brings up. Even though most poeple would say common sense says the artist has no rights, you paid them, case law says otherwise. Without a specific contract saying otherwise you don't own it even if you paid.
> But even without that, I think it's unethical to claim ownership to any part of someone else's body and tell them what they can and can't do with it.
No one's claiming ownership of the athletes body (because, first sale doctrine.) If they want to cut their skin off and sell the tattoo, that's not an issue.
Ownership of the copyright on the tattoo is not ownership of any part of the athlete's body.
But purchasing the time for a person to create a work for you generally does give you the rights, as a work for hire. Thus temporary tattoos would be copyrightable, but permanent ones that are created only once should not.
> But purchasing the time for a person to create a work for you generally does give you the rights, as a work for hire
AFAIK, this still needs to be explicitly stated in the agreement/contract. by default the creator always owns the IP they create (in the US). this is why software companies have to explicitly state that they will own the product of your work when they hire you.
As a developer I also have to have rights to code transferred to company in contract even though company pays me for that code. So you basically have to have contract for it, it is not by default you pay for it you own rights.
Though it is kind of funny when it goes for a tattoo, just never thought about it. It is not like you want to have contract for a tattoo unless you are LeBron...
If you hire an artist to paint a landscape for you, do you have total ownership of that painting? Could you recreate it digitally and sell it? Assume no extra rights were explicitly transferred, just a standard commission of a piece of art, whatever that entails.
I would have assumed that the answers to these were both yes, but this article makes me think not.
All of the statet rights belong to the artist and better be explicitly transferred to you in a contract. Including the formats and the right to edit. Just about everything you can Imagen...
Between a wedding, maternity and newborn photos (x2), I can tell you that just because you're paying somebody to take pictures, does not mean you have any copyright. People (esp. small-time people) are starting to sell the rights but it's far from a given and it has to be stated in the contract.
You don't. It's a common topic in game development that if you hire a contract artist that the contract needs to explicitly state that you retain the rights of the work they produce for your project, otherwise they can yank those rights should you have a falling out.
At least here in BC, something like this applies to code as well. It's considered written work in the same way as a novel, so any developers hired or contracted need to explicitly sign over their "moral rights" to the work.
Disregarding the insanity of being able to wave your rights to a commissioned piece of artwork, that you paid for, that's attached to your body...I think we really need to rethink how video game content licencing works in the context of copyright law. This is just the current iteration of a debacle that has been ongoing since the first days of video games. Depictions of everyday things are suddenly the property of the original creator of those things, even if they are commodity items or very simplistic depictions. A good example is when video game developers have to pay gun makers to depict their weapons in games. I love FPS games but I would rather not have my money ultimately funneled into the NRA lobbying machine.
Yea, I'm really frustrated with this situation as it relates to racing games. Apparently it's ok to shoot photos and movies with real cars in them, but you need to get a license to sell a game that models real cars? Nnngh. I think it's insane. And these games vanish from stores as licenses expire.
I'm thinking of the same way that land you owned is taxed even if it isn't being used for anything, with a tax partially based on how much the market values the land (so land that is nowhere interesting is barely taxed while land that is highly desired is highly taxed).
This way, a company couldn't just hold onto an IP and no do anything unless it wanted to keep paying the taxes, and the higher the demand for the IP the higher the taxes.
I do not notice that space at the beginning of the line act like a pre tag. Sorry for that. For the rest I do not think having posted anything more "flamebait" than the article itself and certainly not violating any site guideline.
Few times I use all capitals to emphasis a single world more than simple '' or '_', veeeery rarely I use all caps for very few worlds as I do in the real world when I civilly and polity I raise my voice a little bit.
I do not* find that nor impolite nor flamebait. Also to my European eye certain kind of news like "copyrighted tattoos" sound really a joke. I understand that the world is vary so something normal in a country may not be normal in another, and I do my best in general to respect others, as others respect me.
I do not think HN is a diplomat discussion platforms like G7 o similar high-level meetings so I assume that in any country of the world, on a formally free speech platform, especially if it's named after Hacker cultures, one of the most free modern cultures we have seen in human history certain kind of relaxed expressions are ok.
I do not buy the idea to be all silent, to ban all "strong" concepts, to say that anything is ok etc typical of certain dictatorial regimes. Hacker culture is free and remain free even on a proprietary platform with certainly not free communication model by it's nature.
Also I do not see anything disturbing in remark how certain kind of use of "gamification" are not proper to a free culture nor can be considered positive or kind.
By HN standards, that comment was unsubstantive ideological flamebait. We have a lot of experience with what kinds of comment degrade discussion quality here, and that is one of the worst kinds. We ban accounts that post like that, so please just don't.
On HN the idea is: if you have a substantive point to make, make it thoughtfully; if you don't, please don't comment until you do.
IMO sometimes a bit of "flame" is needed. Imaging a society that works only with kind interactions with anyone perfectly working "in the system" toward an excellent life is the real basic step on any dictatorship movement. And these are not my own ideas, perhaps the Candid by Voltaire depict perfectly well that scenario. Perhaps Victorian era prove it really well at society scale.
However I know that I'm on a proprietary platform so not a democracy, not a really free shared place (regardless of efforts HN stuff can put in appear to be free and friendly) and than I can choose to comply or go. I consider this really sad for our society at a whole.
So sorry, perhaps I'll keep commenting on in case I do not have to "flame" a bit, perhaps I'll stop commenting at all. I have no doubt that you work hard to keep HN informative and clean and I can imaging how hard it can be in the present time when anyone, being essentially powerless so without responsibilities, leave any brake apart and simply vent frustration in inflammatory text just "to fight".
However it's a fight not toward a better world but toward windmills because the sole way of being really in harmony is being really free, no enlightened dictator with no matter how good it's intentions are, and even in that case sometimes not-so-clean confrontation will still happen.
No game developer or otherwise is including an athlete's Tattoo as a selling or differentiation point for a game. Said another way, nobody is buying a game in order to see Lebron's Crown tattoo. If the artwork was original and not-player specific such that a user could purchase it as DLC or something similar to place on a custom character there would certainly be a case.
Seems like the legal construct of body artwork not being owned, but rather licensed to the person who it was tattooed on is the problem.
>No game developer or otherwise is including an athlete's Tattoo as a selling or differentiation point for a game. Said another way, nobody is buying a game in order to see Lebron's Crown tattoo.
There seems to be an appreciation of it by those who play the game. The linked video in the article showing Mike Evans tattoos seemed to be newsworthy.
I think that only applies to a "work for hire", which means it was done under regular employment for a company so the company owns it.
If you commission a single work from an artist, then he retains the copyright (unless your contract says otherwise).
So before you spend that $5 million commissioning a painting, have your lawyer look over the contract... likewise, before you get that $50 tattooed bunny on your ankle, read the paperwork, if the artist hasn't signed over the copyright to you, then he owns it.
The whole point of copyright protection was to prevent someone from freely duplicating a work and thereby depriving the original artist of profit, but in the case of a tattoo, I'd argue that every artistic tattoo is so slightly different from each other and labour-intensive to create that it should really be treated as "work for hire" and the human who owns the skin also owns the tattoo on it.
When I got a tattoo, I literally hired an artist to take my general design, make it look nice (and tweak it for the medium), and apply it. There's not part of that process that isn't work for hire.
One of the problems is that a lot of athletes are massively tattooed currently.
Tattoos were used since thousands of years for a particular job (apart of decorative purposes): They excel hiding needle marks. Tattoos with a pattern of multiple repeated x6 or x5 darkened areas arranged in a star or a circle could be particularly useful to mask a weekly routine of steroids delivered around some point of interest. In that sense some designs could be better than other and became equivalent to any other industrial secret for their owner.
And this is only a part of the history. Tattoos showing trade marks or copyrighted art are another problem.
By this line of reasoning, companies don't own the code their engineers write either. Art collectors don't own the art they paid for. Etc. What a bunch of bullshit. Have these people not heard of work for hire? The artists were paid for their copyright (in addition to the actual manual work). They no longer own the copyright. That's the whole point of the transaction. That's the only reason money was exchanged. No one in their right mind would get a tattoo they couldn't display; something the artist could really demand if they held the copyright. Does something this obvious seriously need litigation? That is some serious misinterpretation of copyright law. As bad as our copyright laws are, they can't possibly be this bad to allow these obviously bullshit cases to stand, can they?
It seems like it might be a gray area (and, unfortunately as such, something the courts need to resolve) but it's disappointing that NYT did not at least broach the topic and possible applicability of the Work for Hire exception.
I feel intent should matter, is the intent to show the tattoo art? or to make a likeness recognizeable? Mike Tyson has a tattoo on his head, is the intent to convey a likeness of Tyson? or to sell the tattoo as a brand in itself(t shirts and such as a logo)? I mean is it fair use?
89 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 149 ms ] threadWhen will we see that the whole thing is a sham and needs to be abandoned?
https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/20/18149869/fortnite-dance-...
Never, as long as there's enough people getting $$$ from it (and have the power to influence such decisions.)
That has happened before at very least once when Commodore Perry came a-knocking with a gunship to Japan.
This isn't such a crucial issue at the end of the day, I don't think you should be able to copyright a tattoo, the design may change as the person ages, or gets into a crazy accident, or whatever. Heck, when they die and decompose / get cremated it's all gone.
It comes down to how realistic you want the game to be. With games that pitch themselves as the pinnacle of being realistic with improvements made every year, not having the correct tattoos would break the realism. Especially when the most important athlete of his sports generation says that too.
On another note, if I buy a canvas painting from another artist, and then I sell it for millions, but only paid $500 for said painting, can the painter sue me for copyright despite the painting being my property? If not... why are tattoos any different?
I still think it's BS, the tattoo on your body is YOU - not a separate thing to you.
He has enough money for that.
So if someone snaps a photo of him or he is on TV the tattooist is going to get royalties? That goes for anyone else that is tattooed as well.
Seems to me that the digital representation of someone is just another way of displaying themselves. If it's legal to do it in photos and videos, it's legal to do it in 3D models.
But even without that, I think it's unethical to claim ownership to any part of someone else's body and tell them what they can and can't do with it. (Laws are an obvious exception to this.)
I'm also not surprised it largely isn't the artists themselves, it seemed weird that a tattoo artist would go after high profile clients after the fact.
I mean, our copyright laws are full of weird seeming-contradictions. Games companies pay to license an athlete's likeness, but photographers don't? Photographs of a sculpture are copyright-protected, but photographs of tattoos aren't? Architecture with an expired copyright can be lit up with lights to regain copyright protection?
Copyright law isn't really amenable to deducing that one thing is legal just because another very similar thing is legal.
Another fun legal question is what happens if I add fake audio to a video where the video is legal but the audio isn't, but I use legal audio recordings to fake the voice of the person I videotaped? Does it matter if the injected audio is close enough to what was originally said (say I remembered the words while I recorded the video)?
No, that's not what they're suggesting at all, and you're conflating two separate things here. Using someone's likeness in a commercial work is already legally protected (in the most economically important jurisdictions anyway) and is different from mere publishing of a legal photo for which the copyright is owned (for which no permission is needed by default). The argument is that if you received Mike Tyson's agreement (or that of his authorized legal agent of course) to use his likeness in a game, then a 3rd party should not have veto over Mike Tyson's ability to allow use simply because they were paid to make a tattoo for him. It'd be his likeness, and he should be the sole decider of that absent compelling public interest otherwise (such as political commentary or criticism).
If somebody else does some work with our bodies, their interest in that should be exhausted instantly by the payment they receive for that service (or by nothing if they volunteered). It's our bodies we're talking about here, one of the most personal things about a human. At the very least this should be the default, though personally I'd lean towards this being something that is immutable as well and cannot be contractually signed away either. I don't think the can of worms it opens is worth any possible public gain from body royalties.
If you agree (maybe you don't) that I shouldn't be able to sell cereal with a picture of my Darth Vader tattoo on the box then what's the difference? That Darth Vader belongs to someone other than the tattoo artist? If that's the argument then why does the tattoo artist have to give up their design but Disney does not when it's drawn on someone?
Did you have a license to get those as tattoos in the first place? My understanding would be that the original sin there would be getting that tattoo of an IP at all without permission, even if such things commonly fly under the radar (unless there is some legal right to get any tattoo regardless of IP). The remedy there would presumably be to get sued and have to pay a judgement as a result of a lost civil action [1]. Future separate damages could result in future suits.
>"It's now mine to do whatever I want with"
Be specific about what you're referring to with "it's" there. Are you arguing that an instance trademark infringement would mean the infringer no longer owned their whole body any longer? Is that actually justified by the damage caused by an unauthorized tattoo? Of course it wouldn't allow any other usage beyond that incidental to using their body and likeness overall. But I'd be really, really wary of allowing IP infringement to enter into this area, and try to game theory out the costs even for restricted implementations. Imagine for example you argued "well, we'll only restrict it for commercial usage!" But now consider the case of a person with an infringing tattoo who commits some act of public notoriety, say a politician who is significantly corrupt. News organizations want to cover this, and they're clearly commercial, but that would mean if they show the politician in question they'd be showing the infringing tattoo as well. Is this allowed? Does it require a court case to determine as an affirmative defense or is it innate, and what are the chilling effects if the former? What's the line?
I'm not saying you can't come up with answers for all this, but it also gets awfully complicated awfully quickly vs just defining bodies as a special area of law. Exactly what damages is that Star Wars tattoo really causing?
>If you agree (maybe you don't) that I shouldn't be able to sell cereal with a picture of my Darth Vader tattoo on the box then what's the difference?
Are you seriously confused about the difference between a cereal box and a human's control of their own body and the public's interest in the representation of humans? It is both perfectly legitimate and standard practice to weigh different things differently and consider how remedies impact conflicting parties. IP in general only exists for the public interest after all.
>That Darth Vader belongs to someone other than the tattoo artist?
Well yeah, that matters in that the tattoo artist could themselves be committing an act of infringement against a third party. Whereas an original design for hire does not involve any other parties besides those part of the transaction. That's not irrelevant.
>If that's the argument then why does the tattoo artist have to give up their design but Disney does not when it's drawn on someone?
Why do you assume the tattoo artist should own their design on a person? The natural default is no IP. How is the public interest advanced by giving tattoo artists a perpetual right over any human they work on vs declaring that all commercial compensation should be part of the actual transaction? We exhaust rights (such as with first sale doctrine) elsewhere all the time.
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1: Maybe removal would be offered as a settlement, but I'm not sure a US court would ever require that as a judgement since performative actions are not usual in civil cases, plus it'd constitute a painful medical procedure which is its own can of worms.
Disney creates design (action 1). Someone puts it on human skin (action 2). Someone uses that image of the tattoo on a person as promotion (action 3).
Most people would agree even if you tattoo Darth Vader on your body you can't use Darth Vader on your body for promotion it belongs to Disney
Change action 1 to the same person as action 2. Why does the tattoo artists not get the same rights as Disney? Nothing changed except replacing Disney with Tattoo artist. In fact let's add a 3rd case. Tattoo artist hires friend to design tatoo. Why is this friend not afforded the same rights as Disney?
AFAICT the law is on the side of the person that created the art (or owns the copyright in the art if the person that created it transffered their rights). If you tattoo Darth Vader on yourself the person who owns the rights to Darth Vader doesn't suddenly lose their rights. Instead, you irresponsibly used someone else's IP. Nothing changes if that IP holder is suddenly not Disney.
This is true for normal contracts, at least in the USA. If you contract an artist to draw something for you, unless you specifically get them to sign away all their rights in the art via the contract they retain those rights.
https://www.google.com/search?q=artist+retain+rights+unless+...
You could argue the person paying for the tattoo as a reasonable expectation that the tattoo now belongs to them, not the tattoo artist. But that doesn't seem to fit with normal case law. If you pay your buddy $100 to make a logo for your new youtube video you may think you're done. The logo is yours. But AFAICT unless you specifically signed a contract your buddy would actually still own the rights to that logo regardless of the fact that you paid him. See all the links that google search brings up. Even though most poeple would say common sense says the artist has no rights, you paid them, case law says otherwise. Without a specific contract saying otherwise you don't own it even if you paid.
No one's claiming ownership of the athletes body (because, first sale doctrine.) If they want to cut their skin off and sell the tattoo, that's not an issue.
Ownership of the copyright on the tattoo is not ownership of any part of the athlete's body.
AFAIK, this still needs to be explicitly stated in the agreement/contract. by default the creator always owns the IP they create (in the US). this is why software companies have to explicitly state that they will own the product of your work when they hire you.
Though it is kind of funny when it goes for a tattoo, just never thought about it. It is not like you want to have contract for a tattoo unless you are LeBron...
I would have assumed that the answers to these were both yes, but this article makes me think not.
Or are you saying that the contract must explicitly state what formats are included in the contract?
The artificial limitations on creativity are impeding economic growth and need to be removed
This way, a company couldn't just hold onto an IP and no do anything unless it wanted to keep paying the taxes, and the higher the demand for the IP the higher the taxes.
Welcome in post-capitalistic absurd world. End there are still some people who say "hey we are in a free market"...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18770963 also breaks the site guidelines. If you could please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and follow the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful.
Few times I use all capitals to emphasis a single world more than simple '' or '_', veeeery rarely I use all caps for very few worlds as I do in the real world when I civilly and polity I raise my voice a little bit.
I do not* find that nor impolite nor flamebait. Also to my European eye certain kind of news like "copyrighted tattoos" sound really a joke. I understand that the world is vary so something normal in a country may not be normal in another, and I do my best in general to respect others, as others respect me.
I do not think HN is a diplomat discussion platforms like G7 o similar high-level meetings so I assume that in any country of the world, on a formally free speech platform, especially if it's named after Hacker cultures, one of the most free modern cultures we have seen in human history certain kind of relaxed expressions are ok.
I do not buy the idea to be all silent, to ban all "strong" concepts, to say that anything is ok etc typical of certain dictatorial regimes. Hacker culture is free and remain free even on a proprietary platform with certainly not free communication model by it's nature.
Also I do not see anything disturbing in remark how certain kind of use of "gamification" are not proper to a free culture nor can be considered positive or kind.
On HN the idea is: if you have a substantive point to make, make it thoughtfully; if you don't, please don't comment until you do.
However I know that I'm on a proprietary platform so not a democracy, not a really free shared place (regardless of efforts HN stuff can put in appear to be free and friendly) and than I can choose to comply or go. I consider this really sad for our society at a whole.
So sorry, perhaps I'll keep commenting on in case I do not have to "flame" a bit, perhaps I'll stop commenting at all. I have no doubt that you work hard to keep HN informative and clean and I can imaging how hard it can be in the present time when anyone, being essentially powerless so without responsibilities, leave any brake apart and simply vent frustration in inflammatory text just "to fight".
However it's a fight not toward a better world but toward windmills because the sole way of being really in harmony is being really free, no enlightened dictator with no matter how good it's intentions are, and even in that case sometimes not-so-clean confrontation will still happen.
Have a nice day.
This is silly.
No game developer or otherwise is including an athlete's Tattoo as a selling or differentiation point for a game. Said another way, nobody is buying a game in order to see Lebron's Crown tattoo. If the artwork was original and not-player specific such that a user could purchase it as DLC or something similar to place on a custom character there would certainly be a case.
Seems like the legal construct of body artwork not being owned, but rather licensed to the person who it was tattooed on is the problem.
There seems to be an appreciation of it by those who play the game. The linked video in the article showing Mike Evans tattoos seemed to be newsworthy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvzTrtXXJ5I
Why is the tattoo any different?
https://www.thoughtco.com/who-owns-copyright-of-a-painting-2...
The reality of copyright law is that strictly applied pretty much everyone breaks it. Some infractions are worth enforcing, most are not.
If you commission a single work from an artist, then he retains the copyright (unless your contract says otherwise).
So before you spend that $5 million commissioning a painting, have your lawyer look over the contract... likewise, before you get that $50 tattooed bunny on your ankle, read the paperwork, if the artist hasn't signed over the copyright to you, then he owns it.
Now this will be my argument against having tattoos :)
https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=DannyBee
Tattoos were used since thousands of years for a particular job (apart of decorative purposes): They excel hiding needle marks. Tattoos with a pattern of multiple repeated x6 or x5 darkened areas arranged in a star or a circle could be particularly useful to mask a weekly routine of steroids delivered around some point of interest. In that sense some designs could be better than other and became equivalent to any other industrial secret for their owner.
And this is only a part of the history. Tattoos showing trade marks or copyrighted art are another problem.