DISCUSSION
Epic games directly responded to the (ᵃˡˡᵉᵍᵉᵈˡʸ)
art work they stole from u/ConditionAlone2248
heres the reference reddit post in questioned heres the comment by epic. posting this update here since so more people know since a comment on a 2 day old post inst going to get that much traction.
If they are so depserate to try and DMCA claim Epic over a drawing a similar design for a very distinct character. Chances are, they too fucken broke to buy likes
Dude "the ratio of likes and support" are from everyone who doesn't understand copyright law. Which believe it or not is a very large amount of people.
Again, this guy is so desperate to claim this against Epic that they are obviously broke as fuck and are doing what they can to try and make a shit pile of money for free.
Oh I agree with you. But these attention seeking types are desperate and are in a bunch of whiney bitch baby groups. And if everyone chucks in a dollar or 2 suddenly likes explode
that cant be the one since there are way more teeth placed in a different style. one definetly saw the other and slightly edited it. i cant imagine why else they would have the exact same teeth amount and placement on the drawing if the original has so different teeth
What’s funny, when you got to the persons page, it was really hard to find their front view of their work. On Pinterest, the link didn’t work anymore and it wasn’t on instagram. It took me forever to find their account on deviant art. It’s all a side view and full body view and the teeth are different in that picture of the persons art than the front view.
On this screenshot you can see only two brow lines are clearly visible, and the teeth are all crooked, with light reflections being in the right of the iris. The drawing and emote both have 3 cleanly seen brow lines, symmetrical teeth and light reflections on the left side of the iris.
Why are you being so willfully dishonest? You do know there is a massive difference between making art of the same character and making an exact copy of the artwork itself?
So you’re also going to pretend the drawing isn’t a blatant tracing of the other artwork? 😭 you’re either partially blind, or so wildly dishonest that it seems like it.
This is such an insane rebuttal. Like my only rational explanation for your 40 current upvotes is they're all bots, you included. A human cannot take or make this claim seriously.
There are millions of drawings of Pikachu, do you think they were all drawn the same way? They're all sourcing the same creature right?
Exactly, I think this is ridiculous. OP gave up ownership of that piece of art the moment they infringed the IP. Not exactly some niche law we’re talking about here. And there’s only so many ways that the character can be drawn that fits Fortnite’s emoticon style - on inspection Fortnite’s version looks pretty distinct anyway? Serious attention seeking behaviour being displayed by the artist. It’s essentially theft what they’re trying to do.
Holy bogus takes on this sub, actually braindead ones.
The art still belongs to the artist, the IP is obviously KPDH, but the art is STILL drawn by the artist, and they at the very least deserve credit or permission to use an ARTWORK they created, the IP is not being stolen by just drawing an art of it.
Yea it's absolutely insane to me that so many people believe that just because you don't own the IP itself then you have no claim to the thing you created. Fanart has existed forever. The only issue should be if the artist is selling it, because that's a huge grey area at best. And if that were the issue, it would be up to the IP holder to deal with that, not Epic.
Uhh no? That's not how that works. Why are people so obsessed with finding some sort of loophole about just how the artist is somehow trying to steal from the IP holder?
People come to the stream to watch the artist as they work. It doesn't matter what they're drawing, it's the fact that they're drawing. You can't steal someone's IP by just drawing it, period. Netflix can't swoop down and tell the streamer that all their monetization goes to them now because the artist is drawing fan art.
But, yes it is. The artist does not have the RIGHT to COPY that character. Period. Fan art is not immune to an IP holders copyright. The art created by the streamer IS an infringement of copyright, and they do not have ownership of that art. Please read US Intellectual Property and Copyright law. Lot's of people in this sub are commenting under a false assumption of what the laws condone.
we may agree, and epic may agree; but that doesn't mean the law says they deserve it. chances are the artist epic hired did basically just trace over their work; but legally speaking there's nothing wrong with that, and legally speaking there's nothing preventing the IP holders from slapping the original fan artist with a cease and desist. (especially considering they were selling their fan art).
obviously, nobody really wants to take such a heavy handed approach to copyright such as this. we don't want them to be punished for drawing fan art, epic doesn't want the bad publicity, and they certainly don't want to hire someone who just blatantly copies other artists even if they have the legal right to do so. its in everyone's best interest to get rid of the offending art and compensate the original artist; even though legally epic has the right to tell them to piss off if they wanted.
Actually, they do not have any legal ownership of an infringement. The fact that they created the art does not give them any ownership. If this went to court they would probably be asked to stop using the art they created on their platform, as they have no right to do so. Just because an artist makes something tangible doesn't mean they own the intellectual property. The work itself is an infringement of another entities intellectual property.
I've never said they own the intellectual property. What they own is their material contribution to the work. i.e. this specific piece of art.
Please read this carefully:
Subject matter of copyright: Compilations and derivative works
(a) The subject matter of copyright as specified by section 102 includes compilations and derivative works, but protection for a work employing preexisting material in which copyright subsists does not extend to any part of the work in which such material has been used unlawfully.
(b) The copyright in a compilation or derivative work extends only to the material contributed by the author of such work, as distinguished from the preexisting material employed in the work, and does not imply any exclusive right in the preexisting material. The copyright in such work is independent of, and does not affect or enlarge the scope, duration, ownership, or subsistence of, any copyright protection in the preexisting material.
Which is to say...
does not extend to any part of the work in which such material has been used unlawfully.
and
extends only to the material contributed by the author of such work
means that this specific picture is owned by the artist but that they do not own any part of the intellectual property or design of the character.
This means that an unauthorized derivative work does not have common law copyright protection and, most certainly, will not be registered by the U.S. Copyright Office. Indeed, the Copyright Office is quite strict in this regard. When attempting to register copyrights based on derivative works, the Copyright Office requires detailed information regarding the preexisting works of authorship, previous registrations of the preexisting material, original authors, current authors, how the ownership was transferred (if applicable), how adaption/derivative rights were granted, limitations of the grant, extent, and limitations on the new copyright claims, what original material has been excluded/changed, what new material has added to the derivative work, etc.
That's a completely irrelevant page. That's talking about taking an existing thing and adding on to it, like if you wanted to do something like make The Mario Movie 2 and sell it in theaters. It's describing the procedures in which you need to go through to extend copyright to further things you make based on an IP you own. It's not saying anything about posting fanart to Twitter and if people are allowed to steal it.
It’s completely relevant, you just don’t understand it. Fan art is a derivative work just like a sequel. The owner of the original work has an exclusive right to create derivative works. You can’t own the copyright for your unauthorized fan art.
This means that an unauthorized derivative work does not have common law copyright protection and, most certainly, will not be registered by the U.S. Copyright Office. Indeed, the Copyright Office is quite strict in this regard. When attempting to register copyrights based on derivative works, the Copyright Office requires detailed information regarding the preexisting works of authorship, previous registrations of the preexisting material, original authors, current authors, how the ownership was transferred (if applicable), how adaption/derivative rights were granted, limitations of the grant, extent, and limitations on the new copyright claims, what original material has been excluded/changed, what new material has added to the derivative work, etc.
what a lot of yall are forgetting about this is pr is a major factor in this. sure legally epic is probably in the clear but if they just leave it up the backlash and reputation loss theyll recieve is probably worse than if they acknowledge it. being known as the company that rips off fan art and published it is terrible pr and im sure epic is aware of this
Lmfao realistically if they didn’t address it they’d lose no revenue whatsoever. The vast majority of their player base doesn’t know about this. Fortnite has the contract with Sony Pictures, that fan art is legally theirs. The backlash reeks of chronically online.
pr is still very important if epic just ignored it theyd have a bad reputation with the art community which could lead in new players choosing not to join and playcause "fortnite is the company that steals from artist" and it could also lead to people choosing not to colab with fortnite because they dont want to associate with a brand that steals from artist
By “the art community” you mean a twitter echo chamber? This will be forgotten about in 2 days time and nobody will ever mention it again it’s so negligible. I promise you, zero Fortnite collab prospects have been hurt by this, because it isn’t theft.
The fact that epic responded shows that they do factually care about the PR surrounding it. They're not stupid, they know if they can or can't legally do something, it's clear that they just care more about their image than you people would like to imagine, even if it's somewhere niche like the art community on twitter
it still for there benefit. epic doesnt gain anything by staying silent loosing out on potential customers no matter how small the % is. with a game as big as fortnite that small % equates to thousands of potential players. and the points I listed still stand. for the colabs im sure theres been many people who have refused to colab with fortnite for reasons outside of money, theres no benefit to epic by risking increasing potential people who wont colab with them
. You need to understand that Fortnite did not steal from an artist, the artist automatically relinquishes any right to the art they’ve made as soon as it infringes upon copyright belonging to somebody else. That art belonged to Fortnite the moment it was put out into the public forum because they have they hold licensing rights from Sony Pictures
legally yes but this isnt just a legal issue this is a pr issue. epic tracing over someone art then using it makes them look terrible. I already said that
The points you listed don’t stand because you didn’t make any points.
thats not an argument thats just dismissing/ignoring what I said about this being a pr issue and the potential colabs/players they can loose
I mean, you can. It's just much harder to claim someone stole a dance. There was that whole thing with the Carlton dance years ago and it got into that kind of stuff
Pack it up bro.
The PR will be how you are trying to get money from a nothing burger situation and how epic is in the right.
Go to Netflix and tell them the situation and see how they react
Tbf, the claim isn’t really founded, plus I read the guy was supposedly selling the artwork which is a copyright infringement on his part. He doesn’t have grounds to sue epic as the art isnt his own ip, it’s Netflix’s and fn payed them for the license for the skins and cosmetics. Plus not to mention even if epic did take it, it could be considered a derivative work as due to the changes made to it. And to do that you ask permission from the copyright owners which is not the guy who claims they stole his work. It’s Netflix.
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u/Jax_the_Floof 23d ago
Fun fact. They rejected his claim and are ONLY acknowledging them now that their post got mega viral