HBO slaps takedown demand on 13-year-old girl's painting because it used 'Winter is coming' It turns out King Joffrey isn't the biggest scumbag at HBO after all. A father says lawyers at the cable TV network demanded his 13-year-old daughter's artwork be taken off the internet after she drew a lovely picture titled "winter is coming" and posted the image to arts'n'craft website RedBubble. "My daughter, who happens …
..is ultimately make companies like HBO look like assholes and harm them. How do they never learn? How can their collection of pointless savant lawyers and marketing folks not understand that this behavior will bite them in their smarmy asses when the (totally 100% predictable) backlash occurs? Doesn't anyone actually vet these requests before they go out, or is there just some spambot used for takedown notices?
Hmmm, for "art/entertainment/poetry/story" purposes, I interpret the phrase "Winter is coming" as referencing the "end of the world/Ragnarök" Fimbulwinter from Norse mythology. There is a REASON its a common phrase for literature/arts and such, even if the majority of the population doesn't understand the significance. Not sure how HBO can issue a takedown on that with a straight face, but I assume their lawyers aren't well versed outside of law classes?
The story by Spider Robinson
http://www.spiderrobinson.com/melancholyelephants.html
is more relevant than ever.
How many three-word phrases that make some kind of sense are there in the English language? (eg. excluding things like "blue weep coffee", but allowing "cake has measles"). Seems like a problem similar to the one discussed in the short story.
Replace Ned Stark with Yoda, and use the phrase "Coming, Winter is."
Or a pic of a buxom Ariel diddling herself, eyes glazed and panting, with the phrase "Winter is cumming"
Or a pic of some jihadis, bundled up in cold weather gear, charging at the viewer, and the caption "Winter. IS coming."
The English language is sufficiently broad enough for us to be able to fuck with their precious trademark/copyright, and they won't be able to do a fucking thing about it.
This is proof of prior art of my trademark phrase for a drama set on a world a bit like our own, but most everybody's gone PTSD or Psychopathic because it really is boring to be stuck in the Iron Age for thousands of years.
The small company which produced my first computer trademarked the phrase "user-friendly" circa 1979, but I guess it didn't stick.
Of Our Discontent.
a lawyers best activity is?, How to prevent people from excising their most valuable rights!
a class action lawsuit against HBO and any other slimy group of trademark holders would suit me just fine.
this is what happens when lawyers/barristers have nothing really important (make money) to do, they sit around, figuring out ways to intimidate the public, squeeze money out of 'the little folks', smoke their fat imported cigars and then give everyone the finger.
give HBO the "cold shoulder" they deserve. little girls lives matter MORE!
... for some enterprising business. Your first product could be seasonal tee-shirts, each bearing an original and appropriate landscape photo to go with simple phrases like -
"It's April: summer is coming"
and
"November now: winter is coming"
and perhaps also a line showing common orifices in buildings, called "Doors" and "Windows".
Stupid laws bring the law itself into disrepute.
to sue every* sodding met office in the world too, as well as amateur meteorologists and almanac publishers and writers?
* not applicable to those in the tropics, and the lower latitudes of the subtropics. Void where prohibited. May contain allergenes. Certainly contains nuts.
OOohh, that would have provided me with months of entertainment at no cost if they'd done that to my daughter.
The "counter-notice" stuff sounds all scary and whatever, but I'd assert a good faith belief that they were talking b*****ks in a heartbeat and make it as expensive for them as I possibly could.
That's the kind of weekend project I like, along with correcting the junk mail that comes through my door, reporting "faith healers" to the advertising authorities when they claim to be able to cure stuff, and taking the smallest of personal complaints to the extreme when companies pull unnecessary junk like "Sorry, can't do that, data protection" when it's not actually anything to do with that.
A lot of companies have learned the hard way that a guy bored on the weekend, with a modicum of legal knowledge, and a desire to REALLY purge the world of this kind of piss-take can cost them more than their notice could ever have provided them. Especially when I add my costs to a running total stated in every letter after a certain point (i.e. we've established my complaint, you've asserted I'm wrong, it's gone back and forth, so from that point on I add on the price of every stamp, envelope and my time to every letter from that points onwards and demand you not only solve my [reasonable or I wouldn't even bother to get this far] complaint but those costs too now that it's gotten silly).
Hell, I just hope they would actually bite and fight to assert their claim, because I hate when companies do what they should on reception of a complaint, it takes all the fun out of it (my father-in-law does the same but he's refused to do it with certain companies because they do just refund/compensate you immediately without question, and it takes all the fun out of it, and then why punish the good guys?).
Hey, HBO. Winter is coming. That's a statement of fact, written in books long before you even existed. You don't own it, even if you have a trademark on it. That trademark is to stop COMPETITORS passing off as you, not to censor little girl's unrelated artwork. Your due diligence in asserting such claims just f***ed up royally, and I'd take you up on every offer of counter-filing, lawsuit, etc. just out of principle.
Here's hoping they are too stupid to spot the bad press and back down from such future endeavours. Where's the fun in that, when they are utterly in the wrong?
Hey, HBO, why don't you pick on Garry Kasparov:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Winter-Coming-Vladimir-Enemies-Stopped/dp/1782397868
Or the Cambridge University Alumni store? Or any of the 13m hits I get for the phrase that have nothing to do with HBO or their TV series at all?
I know the answer. Because they would write back and tell you to f*** off at great expense to yourself, whereas a girl and her father won't.
Winter is coming, people...
"That trademark is to stop COMPETITORS passing off as you, not to censor little girl's unrelated artwork."
Quite.
The site in question can print T-shirts from submitted artwork, and that's covered by the trademark - but while the image bears the phrase, the artwork is nothing whatsoever to do with Game of Thrones, it's a completely independent work, with the phrase added as a title afterwards. The girl is not a competitor, and is not passing off her work as relating to Game of Thrones.
Given other uses of the phrase, what's needed is for someone who has in the past used it in a commercial context - preferably predating the trademark, and where the phrase is used in a significant way and is recognisable from that use (which rules out simply being used in a line in a book or whatever) - to produce T-shirts with it in the context of their work.
Then we could all invest heavily in popcorn companies (or just buy lots of popcorn) and see what happens.
HBO have gone to a lot of time and expense to trademark their highly inventive "Winter is coming" phrase, a phrase which was unknown to the English speaking world before they released their recent historical documentary featuring said phrase.
How people can defend this little girl (who can reasonably be compared to Hitler) is beyond me...
Are they going to do a take-down for the news reader with the name "Jon Snow"? Like the lawyers tried to do with the country formerly known as Java.
Maybe the news reader could issue a defamation claim against HBO - for using the name as absolutely defining someone as a legal bastard.***
*** I've read the first book at the insistence of a young friend. I stalled at page 600 - even before realising the imminent end was merely a pause in a large series of books.
The girl is autistic. Gifted and handicapped in the same package. (Lots of sympathy. Most of us programmers share the same traits in a more diluted form).
Can't HBO be attacked under some sort of disability discrimination law for throwing a clear abuse of the DMCA at a disabled minor? In fact I suspect that might be possible even without any input from this young artist.
There are only 10 episodes each season and so many deaths, penises and boobs I can't even get my head around who is supposed to be in the next one.... seems like winter has been coming for a long time (yes, you can read that as a double entendre because most of the characters seem to come way quicker than winter - 7 seasons, no winter yet... anyone want to buy this summer wear?).
HBO ought to adapt Simon Raven's series of novels "Alms for Oblivion" and "First Born of Egypt" - a similar mix of politics, sex, and the supernatural in the 20th century.
It was said that his friends were wary of any admitted peccadillo appearing in his next novel. His autobiography "Shadows on the Grass" was called by one critic "the filthiest cricket book ever written". The author responded by asking if he could include the quote on the book's cover.
and IIRC you are allowed to quote short passages for review purposes, then perhaps someone on her behalf could counter-sue HBO for suppression of free speech?
*And I am sure there would be a legion of people prepared to affirm that they think this is a helpful review, ahem
It should be noted that the "Use it or lose it" page linked at the bottom of the article is hosted by a firm of IP lawyers, who might well have a rather biased viewpoint given that cases like this are their bread and butter... The EFF has a very different opinion on the issue:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/11/trademark-law-does-not-require-companies-tirelessly-censor-internet
At one time I used to do trademark registration. I had one marketing guy who wanted to trademark a phrase consisting of words in common use in the UK, I argued he couldn't, so eventually I just slapped it in and put the rejection notice on his desk.
I now realise I should have trademarked it in the US, where it would obviously have gone through. Words simply fail me on this, I simply cannot find adequate ones to describe the incompetence (or venality, your choice) of the USPTO.
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