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Can You Really Sue Fortnite For 'Stealing' Your Dance Moves? (theguardian.com)
The creator of the year's biggest game is facing a slew of lawsuits over its alleged use of famous dance moves. But will courts tap to the same tune? From a report: Fresh Prince of Bel-Air star Alfonso Ribeiro alleges that Fornite used his Carlton Dance, devised for a memorable episode of the hit US sitcom, without permission or credit. And earlier this week, Russell Horning, AKA the Backpack Kid, launched his own lawsuit claiming Epic breached copyright laws for including his signature dance move "The Floss." So while the copyright disco fills up and solicitors perform their (wallet) stretching exercises, the big question is: can you realistically copyright a dance move? The answer is yes. Kind of. It's complicated.
"A dance can be protected under copyright law in England under the protection afforded to literary, dramatic or musical works (section 3 (2) of the Copyright, Design and Patents Act)," says Alex Tutty of specialist entertainment law firm Sheridans. "But copyright can subsist in it only when it is recorded in writing or otherwise. It doesn't just exist because you did the dance; it needs to be written down or filmed" This is handy for the Fortnite complainants, because there is video evidence of all of them performing their respective moves. However, it's not quite that easy. "There are all kinds of complexities in practice," says entertainment and tech industry lawyer, Jas Purewal of Purewal & Partners. "For example, who owns the dance -- the original creator, the dancers or the choreographer? How can they prove they actually created something new? How can they show that someone else actually infringed their dance and didn't independently come up with it? The law is pretty archaic, too. It's just not been an area that has had a lot of attention."
"A dance can be protected under copyright law in England under the protection afforded to literary, dramatic or musical works (section 3 (2) of the Copyright, Design and Patents Act)," says Alex Tutty of specialist entertainment law firm Sheridans. "But copyright can subsist in it only when it is recorded in writing or otherwise. It doesn't just exist because you did the dance; it needs to be written down or filmed" This is handy for the Fortnite complainants, because there is video evidence of all of them performing their respective moves. However, it's not quite that easy. "There are all kinds of complexities in practice," says entertainment and tech industry lawyer, Jas Purewal of Purewal & Partners. "For example, who owns the dance -- the original creator, the dancers or the choreographer? How can they prove they actually created something new? How can they show that someone else actually infringed their dance and didn't independently come up with it? The law is pretty archaic, too. It's just not been an area that has had a lot of attention."
Who reads the headline of a post?
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
I don't know, can you do the due?
are the editors awake?
Can You Really Due Fortnite For 'Stealing' Your Dance Moves?
I'm pretty sure if we had a competent editor here this would have said "Sue Fortnite" instead. Granted this isn't as bad as some other "editor" fuck-ups but this is pretty awful being as it's in the damned headline.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Guessing they meant Sue..
This is pretty sad
Might want to correct that title. I believe you meant something else.
No, you can't, because due is not a transitive verb.
He built that IP, he can prove that. Anyone can sue for anything, the question is can he win? Of course they'll settle it, Fortnight has millions of idiot children racking up debits for their parents, write a check and keep stacking.
Obviously you can, because he did.
Are we barred from using them as well?
The kid was happy when the whole world emulated his dance moves. When it was put in a game, and someone else suggested you could sue? He's on the bandwagon.
Im a trump supporter and I have a boypussy
Yup. ;]
Well, why not?
You can sue someone for singing the same bit of doggerel that you did, or for drawing the same cartoon mouse that you did.
Why not for doing the same dance moves?
No, I don't think you can due the service itself. Now if you tried to sue Epic Games... well still probably no, but there might be a at least a chance under patent law. Don't forget, someone was awarded a patent for playing with your cat with a laser pointer. See 'US5443036A - Method of exercising a cat'. Now under patent law you can do these activities on your own without fear of being sued, but given that Epic is making money by including these dances in the game the plaintive might have a case. But it's going to be slim if at all.
I submitted USA's own mass surveillance program 'Hemisphere' and that story NEVER got published. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/...
Does CIA/NSA has / . on its payroll?
The framing of this in the media and everywhere I read about it is very interesting to me. Everyone wants to talk about it like its a copyright issue when I don't believe it is.
Epic Games stole a PERFORMANCE, not a DANCE. what i mean by this is for many of the dance moves in Fortnite, you can clearly tell that the moves were motion captured from source material. All Epic had to do is hire a performer to dance the dance then motion cap that, and keep evidence that that is what they did. but they didn't do that. The Carlton and Poison are both PERFORMANCES FOR HIRE by the actors.
If anything, Epic owes licensing fees of some sort to the rights owners of fresh prince of bel-air and scrubs. and then i would presume those entities should find a way to get some money back to the performers as well, but that would deal with their contracts with the production company.
The Ministry of Silly Walks
Due Fortnite?
Proofread your posts @msmash
I'm gonna copyright a new dance. I call it "Me flipping you the bird".
Now everyone who's ever given someone the middle finger owes me money.
46 out of 46 comments bitching about a simple spelling error, and not one about the subject of the article.
I find it highly unlikely there are any dance moves in existence that are unique, it seems like you could always find "prior form" as it were.
The Carlton Dance it turns out, was after all stolen from Courtney Cox & Eddie Murphy - and I'm sure they saw it somewhere.
P.S. If someone ends up linking to TMZ on Slashdot for relevant information, maybe that's a good indicator the story was not a good fit for the site...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I get dance routines being copyrighted but things like the floss are basically only like 4 similar movements being repeated. Is that enough to copyright? Not only that but it's not even another human performing the dance. They made a digital character perform the dance which is essentially a bunch of drawings on a computer screen tied together to appear like movement. In that case isn't a drawing of something materially different from performing a dance move? Can anyone think of any cases where artwork of a copyrighted movement has been tried?
I'd be interested in knowing how Alfonso Ribeiro can copyright something that has been "published" for 25 years. This isn't a manuscript for a book that sat in a drawer, it's a TV episode that million of people have already seen. The copyright itself would belong to the media company at this point.
He could theoretically have a trademark case. I believe those are sometimes in use before a trademark is filed (pick some random name or symbol, use it for a while, it sticks, then file for trademark). Assuming he's used it over the past 25 years, he could trademark the moves as inherent to his person/career.
I feel like intent matters. The gaming company wanted to pimp their product using pop culture references that they expected people would recognize and feel positively about. This isn't some kid in a restaurant who happens to end up on YouTube performing the move for his friends. Epic tried to add value to their product by stealing the work of others. It's pretty much what copyright, performance and intellectual properly laws were written for.
Can the Porn Acts be affected?
Bruce Springsteen and Courtney Cox can wait to see if Ribeiro gets anything and then sue him for it.
Obviously you have zero understanding of how IP laws actually work in practice, and barely skimmed your TMZ.
"Alfonso walked us through how he took Cox's moves from the Bruce Springsteen "Dancing in the Dark" video and meshed it with Eddie's famous "White Man Dance" -- and voila, Carlton Dance!"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use
His phrasing was bad for his case, but the actual combination of two dances is entirely his own work and he can sue on that basis. Stay in school Kendall.
Will people just stop already, so long john silvers limp gets copyrighted in a new Disney reboot and sues everyone else emulating the limp... Dance with s a socially transferred expression dumbasses some tribe in africa or papua New Guinea should sue those idiots for dancing dince it is a protected act... Oh wait dancing is thousands upon thousands of years old.... Err your honor, we still think we invented it
...as the backslide. Look it up.
I doubt Alfonso Ribeiro is the owner of that dance. I'm sure it is owned whatever company owns the rights to The Fresh Prince of Bel Air show.
That all the guys suing are black? Guess their careers suck and they need government assistance.
There's no denying what they are. Don't pretend you came up with the Carlton dance, assholes. You put that dance in because it's the Carlton dance. They're not just some random dance moves.
One thing that should be included is that the plaintiff has to demonstrate that he/she has somehow been "harmed" by the infringement and have to prove it to a judge before the case gets even accepted for prosecution.
Meaning, even if we grant that they directly copied Ribeiro's dance (and he was the first to do it, which obviously, that's not the case, but let's assume for the moment it is), was he harmed? Did he lose a single penny? Arguably, his profile has been significantly enhanced and he has gained appreciably from it.
creimer!!!
And the result is a unique creation.
Most things that are patented or copyrighted are a combination of inspiration and uniqueness.
So no, that won't do anything to change the argument of his lawsuit.
Work Safe Porn
1) Fortnite literally named the dances after who they stole em from ("Fresh" referencing "Fresh Prince"!?)
2) Nobody gave two shits about all the dances World of Warcraft stole and put into that game. To those paying attention, it was just an extension of meme culture. "Tunak Tunak Tun? AWESOME!!"
https://wiki.teamfortress.com/...
This has been a thing since 2016.
...when everything is a crime, everyone is a criminal.
The first question is whether this is a violation of copyright. That will be determined by the Court.
The second question is whether we SHOULD turn dance moves into private property. The whole idea of only applying after it is in a "fixed medium" becomes pretty meaningless in modern computer terms. Virtually everything is in a fixed medium. Its only a matter of time before AI can be used to determine who first fixed almost any creative idea and therefore can claim ownership. Its going to make patent trolls look like minor annoyances.
Now it's time.
Who first is going to take a rigged model and have a NN work out all the possible interesting human dance moves and chaining permutations.
Rank by novelty and film college students in addition to the animated models just in case they expect an actual human to preform it first.
Sure, most of them will be named by some WBS scheme, but human dance names can come after the legal definition.
Human dance culture locked down. Take that ancestors and your campfire fun!
Now go get rich and ruin everything.
I believe all these paid actors cannot sue that Fortnite stole there dance. That dance belongs to the owners of said show. Carlton is a character in a show, Alfonso played that character and was paid to do it. Alfonso does not own any of the IP associated with the Carlton character he played. So the owners of the show would be the owns to sue/get any money out of Fortnite.
Great, now instead of the league fining players for touchdown dances, it'll be washed up tv actors that will be fining players.
It will be particularly amusing if they then try to sue every child between the ages of 6 and 12, as pretty much all of them have been flossing since Fortnite popularised it.
So they really are controlling our bodies with copyright.
Be thankful that some sensible person decided that ingredient lists and recipes could not be copyrighted.
How is copyright law in England applicable? This is a US company being sued by US citizens in US court.
Why not look at US copyright law pertaining to dance moves?
https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ52.pdf
kewl story bra.
Footloose... lol
[($)]
that he got his start by ripping off Michael Jackson's moves. (In the Pepsi commercial from the 80's.)
You can sue anyone for anything, just like you can ask for anything. Can you send me a million dollars? I could sue you for using a microwave transmitter to control my brain, forcing me to wear a tinfoil hat, with loss of income as nobody will hire me and emotional trauma. I could sue no problem. On the other hand none of us would expect me to win the lawsuit.
After all, surgeons can copyright the way they move their hands when operating on a patient. Seriously, I'm not even joking. If you're a surgeon and come up with a new "procedure" that simply involves wielding your scalpel a little differently, you can copyright it. It's disgusting.
The patent/trademark/copyright regime has gone too far. It was supposed to protect poor, starving artists from having their creations stolen by larger entities. It was NOT supposed to stifle innovation to the point where poor people must die if they can't pay the licensing fees of a rich surgeon who isn't even the one operating on them.
Boring, boring, boring, because it's all they ever talk about.