
Fortnite keeps stealing dances – and no one knows if it’s illegal - Tomte
https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/20/18149869/fortnite-dance-emote-lawsuit-milly-rock-floss-carlton
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cwkoss
I find disturbing the idea that a human body movement could be copyrighted.

"I own taking 13 steps, looking to the right and shrugging. If you do this in
any film I want a royalty!"

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astine
It is not the movement that itself that is protected but the public
performance. You can dance any dance you want but you can't charge people to
see it if someone else opens the copyright. You also can't make a little
animation of a dance that someone else created and sell it to millions of
people without givinge creator royalties.

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A2017U1
I completely disagree, as long as you aren't selling the original content
people are free to make their own versions. This happens constantly with music
and other media. Some of the most popular songs are covers of others work and
not a cent of royalties is paid.

For example the Simpsons has copied scene by scene dozens of famous movies and
made billions doing so.

Backpack kid didn't even "create" the dance, it's just a cheap litigious money
grab.

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astine
This is not how copyright law works. You cannot reuse other people's
copyrighted performance unless your work counts as a parody and the standards
for parody are well documented. For example, Weird Al Yankovich needs to get
permission for most of his parody songs because most of them don't actually
qualify as parody under the law. Some do, but not all. Musical covers are
generally done with permission from the rights holder.
[https://www.legalzoom.com/articles/posting-cover-songs-on-
yo...](https://www.legalzoom.com/articles/posting-cover-songs-on-youtube-what-
you-need-to-know)

Also, the question as to whether any of the songs in question meets with the
minimal creativity threshold to qualify for a copyright is a different
question as to whether choreography can be copyrighted. The later is
definitely the case, but the former is an open question that will answered in
these court cases.

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elliekelly
> According to Ferguson’s complaint, Epic is copying videos frame-by-frame to
> create the dances, a case of straightforward copying. “Epic creates emotes
> by copying and coding dances and movements directly from popular videos,
> movies, and television shows without consent,” alleges the complaint. “Epic
> does so by coding still frames of the source material. For example, upon and
> information and belief, Epic coded the ‘Ride the Pony’ emote, frame-by-
> frame, from the ‘Gangnam Style’ dance made famous by the Korean entertainer,
> Psy. The Ride the Pony emote and Psy’s dance are identical in every
> respect.”

Does anyone know if this is the process Epic actually uses when coding the
emotes?

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russley
I think it's important to note that all 3 of the major cases about this
(Backpack Boy, 2 Milly, Alfonso) all are represented by the same law firm.

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oregontechninja
Epic has been putting these cheesy dances in their games since the time of
Unreal. I wonder if those dances were also "stolen" (as much as a dance can
be).

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cwkoss
The idea that dance could be owned and "stolen" is farcical. Culture is not a
commodity.

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curioussavage
Intellectual property is a racket. I don’t see how it will ever get better
too. Acquiring a valuable piece of IP is like finding a golden ticket.

