Language Creation Society Says Klingon Language Isn't Covered By Copyright

Reader AmiMoJo writes: Earlier this year Paramount Pictures and CBS Studios filed a lawsuit against the makers of a Star Trek inspired fan film, accusing them of copyright infringement. In their amicus brief, which actually uses Klingon language, the Language Creation Society lists many examples of how Klingon has evolved, and it specifically disputes Paramount's earlier claims that there are no human beings who communicate using the Klingon language. "In fact, there are groups of people for whom Klingon is their only common language. There are friends who only speak Klingon to each other. In fact, at least one child was initially raised as a native speaker of Klingon." As such, Paramount should not be allowed to claim copyright over the entire Klingon language, both in written and spoken form. The language is a tool for people to communicate and express ideas, something people should be allowed to do freely under U.S. law, LCS argues.

Comments

Can’t copyright a programming language eithe

[Theovon]

There may or may not be patentable aspects of conlangs, but a language is an idea, and you can’t copyright ideas. You can copyright a BOOK on a language, but not the language itself.

Re:Child abuse

[Anonymous Coward]

Billions of children are raised on the delusion that there's a man in the sky who forbids them to masturbate and tells them to hate gay people. And you worry about something innocent such as this?

First, let's make sure all religious upbringing is classified as child abuse, then think about whether some nerdy shit is actually harmful.

Re:Child abuse

[AmiMoJo]

The father was featured in a documentary I saw a while back, but I can't remember which one. Anyway, he taught his daughter Klingon from birth and she picked it up easily and quickly, as an experiment to study language development in children and see if there was something special about natural languages compared to invented ones. At the age of about 4 she lost interest and stopped using it. Of course she spoke English too.

Re: Elvish

[Anonymous Coward]

Tolkien actually invented the elvish languages himself, in full. A professional linguist was simply hired by the studio to flesh out the bits that James Doohan made up for the star trek movies. I'd be interested in seeing how that distinction plays out legally

Re:Child abuse

[Anonymous Coward]

Genesis 38:8-10
Leviticus 18:22

Side Note

[Anonymous Coward]

FWIW: Klingon is no longer listed as one of the translatable languages on Google's "Translate" site ... no idea when it disappeared.

Paramount?

LCS rep here

[saizai]

See http://conlang.org/axanar for our press release giving background, links to all the case docs, and a formal legal memorandum from Dentons on conlangs & IP law.

Feel free to ask if you have any questions.

Re:LCS rep here

[saizai]

Sorry, but I can't comment on that — both because it's outside of our scope (we're strictly in this for the language aspect) and it'd be speculation.

Re:LCS rep here

[John.Banister]

Have you considered resolving this dispute in a traditional Klingon manner? It would be fun to see a Paramount executive attempting to enforce copyright with a bat'leth.

Re:LCS rep here

[saizai]

I can't comment on any discussions of legal strategy we may or may not have had with counsel. :-)

Re:Child abuse

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

[[Citation]]

It's called "the bible", look it up, specifically Genesis and Leviticus. Also check out the Quran, which is chock-full of the same hateful shit.

Re:Child abuse

[guruevi]

No true Scotsman falacy. If that were the case we wouldn't have laws like the ones in North Carolina and Alabama. Most Christians raise their children similar to Muslims raising theirs; if they had their way we'd all be dead.

Re:Child abuse

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

No true Christians raise their children this way. I said "true" Christians.

Bullshit. That's like saying no "true" slashdot commenter ever uses the word "fuck" in a post.

-

I'm a sinner and I fall short everyday, same as you.

No, you're just deluded. You've been lied to by people you trusted and you accepted the lies they told you, which were no doubt told to them by people they trusted.

I'm not a "sinner", because "sin" is an "offense against god", and you can't offend that which does not exist.

I may or may not "fall short" sometimes, but it's not because of a fairy tale about some woman being convinced to eat a piece of fruit by a talking snake in a magical garden.

Re:Child abuse

[silas_moeckel]

You get bullied less if you stand up to the bullies from the start.

Re: Child abuse

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Every single ethnic group believes in the afterlife in some form or fashion.

At one time, every single ethnic group believed that the Earth was flat. Turns out they were wrong.

-

What will you do if you're wrong?

Ahhh, Pascal's Wager, the lamest of all "arguments" to believe in magical fairy tales.

If I'm wrong, I'll get to hang out with all the cool people- Jimi Hendrix, Christopher Hitchens, most of my friends, family, and lovers, Janis Joplin, Carl Sagan, Bertrand Russell, Douglas Adams, Woody Allen, Mick Jagger, Kevin Bacon, Richard Burton, George Carlin, Jeremy Clarkson, Jimmy Carr, Bruce Lee, Orson Welles, Robin Williams, David Gilmour, Charlie Parker, Steve Wozniak, etc etc etc....the list goes on and on.

If your god is willing to cast those people into the pit of Hell, then fuck your god, okay? Just fuck him.

Re:Children raised on it

[NettiWelho]

Which kind of idiots raise their children on Klingon as their main language?

Klingons.

Re: Elvish

[saizai]

Not really relevant to the arguments in our amicus brief. Same would apply to any conlang.

Re:Can’t copyright a programming language ei

[saizai]

Can't comment on this directly because it's out of scope for us.

However, the API cases are certainly related law. I suggest you google "Charles Duan" + Klingon, Oracle, Lexmark, and/or Cisco. You'll get relevant info; he writes well, both for posts and amicus briefs.

Re: Child abuse

[MightyMartian]

Reality is not a democracy. A bunch of people believing in something is not sufficient to declare its existence. Large numbers of people have believed all manner of absolute fucking garbage.

And to me, Pascal's Wager has to be the worst kind of cynicism. Beyond that, why should you be anything but a decent human being even if you think that when you die, that's the end of the road?

Re: Elvish

[Chas]

The other thing is, Mark Okrand (the guy who fleshed out the Klingon language) has sold books on the Klingon Language.

* The Klingon Dictionary
* Klingon for the Galactic Traveler
* Conversational Klingon (this had an accompanying Audiobook with Michael Dorn).

Unlike Tolkien, an actual effort was made to push Klingon out into the fanbase and public at large.

Now they're trying to take their ball and go home.

TOUGH SHIT.

It's like the estate of L.L. Zamenhof trying to take back Esperanto.

Also, unless Paramount and CBS actually have an actual "work for hire" contract (on paper) with Jim Doohan, the rights to Klingon reside with HIS estate.

Re: Elvish

[saizai]

Simple response to this: you can't assign IP that you don't own to begin with. ("Work for hire" is a sort of presumptive assignment doctrine.)

Our argument is that a language *can't* be copyrighted at all in the first place, so it doesn't really matter who made it or what contracts they had.

Of course, the *books* can be copyrighted, and the movies, and the scripts, etc. And they can use trademark to control what's "official" (mostly). But not the language itself.

Re:Child abuse

[Hognoxious]

Tell that to Latimer & Ridley.

Re:Child abuse

[Jamu]

You've obviously not read it in the original Klingon.

Re: Child abuse

[Megol]

So transsexuals are okay? Sounds like Iran to me.

BTW pederasts are male pedophiles that prefer boys. Gay men aren't attracted to children - but sure, there are gay pedophiles too. The linking of pedophiles with homosexuals was popular for a while but just as phrenology isn't used today that is also seen as unscientific (and false). Well unless you are Russian, they seem to like that kind of thinking over there.
Science have shown that bisexual and homosexual behavior is relatively common in nature just as in humans. That shows that it isn't a danger to the gene pool...

(yeah I took the bait - but it looked so damn tasty!)

Re:Good luck with that!

[ShanghaiBill]

The real problem here is dysfunctional corporate management. Many CEOs tend to let their legal dept run amok and dictate policy, rather than treating them as advisors. Whenever you find yourself suing your own fanbase, you know it is time to rein in the lawyers.

Re: Child abuse

[Maxo-Texas]

Many ethnic groups do not believe in an afterlife. There are many african gods who simply manage a portfolio and have no afterlife. Some don't even have directions for believers except don't mess with their temple or they'll hurt you.

Many agnostics and atheists live lives filled with compassion, love, and a helpful attitude. I give about $2000 to charity per year, I've built houses for the homeless, sorted food at the food bank, donated money to slain police officer's families, rescued people whose cars had died- pushing them out of traffic, and so on.

By christianity, showing compassion, love, and a helpful attitude isn't at all sufficient. Either you have faith in jesus or you are not saved. You can't pretend to have faith. Yahweh is omniscient and will know if you are faking it.

And there are MANY MANY exclusionary religions (including christian sects) which say if you don't believe there way- fail. you are either exiled from yahweh's presence for an eternity of solitary confinement, or to an eternity of torture, or a near eons of torture in purgatory.

Pascal's wager is a major fail.

An even if a god created the universe exists, tying that god to your particular values or what body parts can be stuck where is impossible. There's a huge gap between the position 'a god created the universe' and 'that god cares about humans' and 'that god cares where humans stick body parts and whether they eat shelfish'.

And why would an omniscient, omnipotent being not simultaneously have spoken to all humans all over the planet and kept them on the same religion. The fact that that religion comes from one specific incredibly tiny part of the earth is really good evidence that the people there just happened to make up a religion that became a popular meme.

And have you considered how many inhuman creatures will outnumber humanity in heaven? Every stillbirth, every child that died before it reached 12 months, every miscarriage and every abortion (by the current christian faith) will be there. These beings which were never humanized, have no language, and have no culture will outnumber humanity by 20 to 1 (conservative estimate, it could easily be 100 to 1). So you'll live eternity surrounded by a sea of non-humanity.

And what kind of eternal life? Reading revelations, there's a good chance you'd be standing around for large parts of eternity doing nothing but praising yahweh along with the angels. OTH, other parts of the bible strongly imply (and some christian sects teach) that only your soul will be saved- not your personality. That's great for yahweh but not so great for you as a person.

You can't copyright a language

[swm]

In the Oracle vs. Google Java case, the judge asked the parties, "Can the Java programming language be copyrighted?"
It seemed obvious to me that the answer was no.

The definition of the Java programming language is, "the set of all Java programs".
This is an infinite set.
Therefore it cannot be fixed in a tangible medium.
Therefore it cannot be copyrighted.

It seems like a similar argument should prevail here.

Re:Children raised on it

[__aaclcg7560]

You really think those are in the same league?

You haven't enjoyed Game of Thrones until you heard it in the original Klingon.

Re: Elvish

[Anonymous Coward]

What, are you Klingons or Feringi?! Just declare war on Paramount. This is coming from a Federation native. Even we wouldn't let someone charge us for our language... Ugh!

Re:Child abuse

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

The definition of Sin is what the ancient Christians defined it.
Not what the Vatikan does.

LOL, why don't you take that up with the Pope and see what he says? Or do your opinion outweigh the Pope's?

Too funny- you religious fanatics ALWAYS seem to have your very own interpretation of what the various bible verses mean and what the commandments mean and what god really means...and every one of you lives in your own little Truth Bubble. Too fucking funny!!

But of course you are privy to The One True Interpretation and all those other people- they're just wrong. LOL!!