I think it's a bit weird that our society is designed such that Palworld can be sued for making a game depicting Pokemon.<p>For about ten thousand years, humans invented and traded stories that often contained characters and environments they didn't invent. You've heard of some of these characters - Zeus, Persophone, Hades, all recurring characters in stories, mosaics, paintings, statues, carvings. Nobody got sued for it, these characters just functioned as analogues for emotions and elements and conditions, universally recognizable figures that didn't need introduction, they could just be used when you needed e.g. a horny character that liked to change people into animals and then have sex with them.<p>Just very, very recently we aren't allowed to do this anymore. Despite the fact that Pokemon are a shared cultural experience for millions of people from different countries and languages, an opportunity to have a universal symbolic story telling language across borders of nations and languages, we can't do it because that would harm the ability of a single corporate entity to extract value from it as it sees fit. Never mind that we have our own stories we might want to tell from this shared cultural heritage.<p>And do we ever have stories to tell! Look at any fan fiction site. Among all the smut you get gems like book 4 of the three body problem, written by a different author than the original. Look at the incredible art created from out of copyright works, like Lies of P for pinnochio or House MD for Sherlock Holmes. I want more of these, for things that were invented in my time!
As you noted, fan fiction is legal. You just can't make a profit from it, which I think is fair. Also, IP laws force people to come up with their own characters and their own twists on old stories. I would argue this is a good thing. Inventive ideas like Pokemon may not exist if people could just reuse other people's IP to make a buck.
Depends on the country. Many countries don't have fair use laws; thus, fan fiction is technically illegal there. In practice though you're not likely to be sued unless you're making a significant amount of money or damaging the brand value somehow.
> fan fiction is legal. You just can't make a profit from it, which I think is fair.<p>The term "fair" is intellectually imprecise.<p>In a policy context, appeals to "fairness" often serve as a rhetorical proxy for subjective preferences rather than an objective moral framework.<p>When centralized systems attempt to institutionalize "fairness" as a primary directive, the resulting information-calculation problems and rent-seeking often lead to catastrophic externalities.<p>Consider the extreme end of state-mandated equity:<p>- The Henan Plasma Scandal: In the 1990s, a government-backed "plasma economy" intended to alleviate rural poverty through "fair" compensation led to the pooling and reinjection of contaminated blood, infecting an estimated 1.2 million people with HIV.<p>- The One-Child Policy: A "fair" distribution of population growth led to forced abortions, mass abandonment of female infants, and a 30-million-person gender imbalance.<p>- Surveillance States: The pursuit of social parity frequently necessitates invasive wiretapping and monitoring to enforce compliance.<p>In the specific context of IP, the "fairness" of restricting profit from derivative works is a misnomer. US copyright law (17 U.S.C. 107) relies on Fair Use, which is a balancing test of market harm and transformative value, not a moral judgment on what an author "deserves".<p>Denying a creator the right to profit from their labor is simply a protectionist market intervention; calling it "fair" merely obscures the economic trade-off.
> Inventive ideas like Pokemon may not exist if people could just reuse other people's IP to make a buck.<p>This doesn't make sense because people invent ideas all the time without intention of making money off it - such as the plots of fan fiction, which you yourself noted. Fan fiction represents untold tens of thousands of human-hours of effort.
Back then everybody made a little money, now some make a shitload and others nearly nothing.<p>We see that in a lot of businesses especially thanks to the internet.
>You've heard of some of these characters - Zeus, Persophone, Hades, ...<p>>Just very, very recently we aren't allowed to do this anymore.<p>From the beginning of monotheism we see strong attempts to monopolize the character of the right and the only God, dating back at least to Samaritans vs. Judeans. Some actually see the appearance of monotheism as a result of such a successful monopolization attempt. And the last 2000 years that monopoly has been enforced by sword and fire.<p>> Palworld can be sued for making a game depicting Pokemon.<p>at least not declared heretic and burnt at stake like it was 400+ years ago for unlicensed fan-fiction produced by Luther and the likes.
> From the beginning of monotheism we see strong attempts to monopolize the character of the right and the only God, dating back at least to Samaritans vs. Judeans.<p>1) Samaritans and Judeans do not disagree on which God they worship (it's YHWH), they disagree on much more subtle points that are largely unique to the Israelite religion like the location of the temple mount, the correct version of the pentatuch, differences in how to practice some of the rituals, etc.<p>2) Zoroastrianism predates the Israelite religion and is usually considered monotheistic (although some scholars disagree). If you loosen your definition to allow henotheism then some eastern traditions were first by about a millennia.<p>3) WTF does monotheism have to do with trademark law? I'm sure you think it's a deep argument but it just came off as a total non sequitur to everyone else.
I'm not sure if it makes sense to compare the two. Only one is openly fiction.