Interesting Links for 19-09-2024

[andrewducker]

1. How crypto bros wrested Flappy Bird from its creator

(tags:games Blockchain OhForFucksSake )

2. John Peralta Explodes Historic Technology into Three-Dimensional Diagrams

(tags:Technology visualisation 3d )

3. LBC: Soldier's seven-year-old son refused passport by Home Office because of 'copyright' issues over blockbuster name (they then thankfully changed their minds)

(tags:copyright names passport UK OhForFucksSake children )

4. The trailer for "Mickey 17" looks like a lot of fun.

(tags:scifi trailer )

Comments

[calimac]

3) Here are some things I've understood as true:

1, that names cannot be copyrighted, only trademarked.

2, that a trademark is only applicable to uses that might be confused with the trademark user's use. Apple is a trademark of Apple Computer, but that doesn't mean grocers can't sell apples.

[andrewducker]

That would align with my understanding

Perhaps not the clearest example ...

[bens_dad]

Apple is a trademark of Apple Computer

True, but they have paid Apple Records (the Beatles) half a billion for the rights

... which suggests that Apple Records may have had rights to the name.

Re: Perhaps not the clearest example ...

[calimac]

A trademark is only applicable to uses that might be confused with the trademark user's use, remember? Apple Computer's trademark for Apple on computers didn't conflict with Apple Records' trademark for Apple on music recordings until Apple Computer got into the music business. That's when they paid.

Re: Perhaps not the clearest example ...

[andrewducker]

Yup, that's my understanding too.

Re: Perhaps not the clearest example ...

[redbird]

That's partly because, early in its history, Apple Computer assured Apple Records that they weren't going into the music business, so there was no risk of confusion. When they decided they did want to go into the music business, the record company had the documents, which would have made it harder for the computer company to convince a court that their use wasn't infringing.

[bugshaw]

There was a court case that Open University law students like to recount, that establishes it is legal to call your goldfish "Elvis". But I guess no one had tried to get the fish a passport.

[andrewducker]

It does seem really odd that there are any rules for passports beyond "Are they a citizen and is that their name/photo?"

[adrian_turtle]

I could actually have understood it if something like this happened 7 years ago. If the family had tried to register the birth and the government said, "No. Pick another name."

It's really shocking that the government would accept a name when issuing a birth certificate, but then object to it many years later. What's the cutoff point? Are there people walking around the UK who will be denied retirement benefits next year because the government suddenly declares their names are unacceptable?

[andrewducker]

Exactly. If people can have any name they like then you need to issue documents in those names and you need to be able to process them.

[calimac]

On the other hand, there are countries - I think France is one - where the government does tell new parents, "No, you can't name your child that," and it seems really fascist.

[adrian_turtle]

I think it depends how restrictive the rules are. California says you have to register a baby name using only the 26 letters of the alphabet. So rejecting "X AE: A-12" because of the ligature, the punctuation, and the number seemed entirely reasonable to me. A country where parents have to choose from a long list of baby names or go to court to ask for an exception? I don't like it, but at least they're clear and up-front about it, which makes it a lot better than what's happening now with the Skywalker kid.

[andrewducker]

Yeah. Mandating the character set doesn't seem unreasonable.

[magedragonfire]

Maybe, but expanding the character set also needs to be necessary, because there's always going to be names in languages who use different orthographies to consider. We've got First Nations folks in Canada who for a long time couldn't (and maybe, in some provinces, still can't) get their kids' names registered on birth certificates because of diacritics that English doesn't use, but their languages do.

A rule of 'no numbers', for example, might prevent some Sḵwx̱wú7mesh names from being properly spelled, as 7 represents a glottal stop in that language.

[andrewducker]

True. If your nation has multiple official languages then it needs to support them all.

[redbird]

I think it really depends on what is/isn't allowed. "You must select a name from this list" feels significantly different from either a New Zealand judge deciding that a man couldn't name his daughter "Talula Does the Hula from Hawaii," or New Jersey court not letting a couple name their child after Hitler (unmistakably so).

I also continue to think that if someone thinks a name like "Talula Does the Hula from Hawaii" is a good choice, they can change their own name.

LBC: Soldier's seven-year-old son refused passport by Home Office because of 'copyright' issues over

[jack]

What everyone else said. I'm almost surprised they didn't have some internal guidance for this kind of thing. Which I would expect to be "Don't worry about copyright/trademark [common examples] unless it's [really exceptional examples]. If it's wacky [non-unicode, deliberately offensive, deliberate efforts to obscure identity] then [talk to boss]" People named after famous characters has always happened. I don't know if they DO have, and someone ignored it in favour of "common sense", or if it used to be passed down by training and got disrupted, or if "you (generally) can't copyright names" was so obvious it didn't get written down before.

ETA: I'm also suspicious of the reference to "copyright issues" plural. Even if you think "Skywalker" is sufficiently creative invention to be copyrightable all by itself (E.g. the netflix chime is shorter and I think SHOULD be copyrightable (AND trademarkable)), surely "Loki" is (a) not especially creative as a word and (b) waaaaaay waaaaay waaaaaay past copyright expirey.

I looked to see if anywhere had more original details but only saw news sites repeating the same story.

I'm also reminded from Tumblr that one of norse loki's many appellations was sky traveller, now sometimes playfully translated as "Skywalker". So claiming copyright infringement, you need to know that this is a geek not a pagan. And/or have your ducks in a row religious-discrimination-wise.

Re: LBC: Soldier's seven-year-old son refused passport by Home Office because of 'copyright' issues

[calimac]

That's why it's trademark and not copyright. You can trademark a previously existing word so long as it doesn't conflict with existing usage of the word. You can't copyright a single word, even if it is new.

Re: LBC: Soldier's seven-year-old son refused passport by Home Office because of 'copyright' issues

[andrewducker]

Yeah, I'm fine with Netflix trademarking their sound, but it seems much too short to be copyrightable. (Not legal advice, and I may well be entirely wrong on that front)

Re: LBC: Soldier's seven-year-old son refused passport by Home Office because of 'copyright' issues

[jack]

it seems much too short to be copyrightable

I mean, I was going a bit hyperbole with the netflix chime. I suspect that it probably wouldn't be copyrightable in practice. But I picked it because although *in general* half a second of sound is never going to be copyrightable, it seemed like that one did unexpectedly come surprisingly close, fulfilling implicit criteria like presumably taking a lot of effort to create, and provide value to listeners.

Re: LBC: Soldier's seven-year-old son refused passport by Home Office because of 'copyright' issues

[jack]

That's why it's trademark and not copyright.

I agree that a word is more likely to be trademarked than copyrighted, but isn't "it is trademark not copyright" misleading for Loki, if both claims are ridiculous, even if copyright is *more* ridiculous.

[conuly]

Okay, but that's the third worst baby name I've seen in the news ever, excepting those people with famous parents.

[suncani]

4. I am ... broadly optimistic about this? I quite like the book as long as I don't think too hard about it. However I am kinda apprehensive about how certain elements would translate on screen so, we'll see and I'll probably read a ton of reviews beforehand :D

[andrewducker]

I didn't even know where was a book! Is it good?

[suncani]

I liked it, as it is very much a lets tell a fun sci-fi action story. The world it exists in is bleak and miserable but it doesn't really focus on that, and the societal implications of having disposable people is not really addressed and that's the point. Think movie version of The Martian, with a bit less optimism and a bit more sarcasm.

[suncani]

however the book has Mickey dying in lots of horrible ways and there's something I don't quite remember between two Mickeys and one of the women crew members, both of which will rely a hell of a lot on tone.

[andrewducker]

I hope they can pull it off