Ah, copyright. Eric Goldman alerts us to to a new bit of copyright nonsense. Jieun Kiaer, an Oxford professor of Korean linguistics, recently published an academic book called Emoji Speak: Communic…
  • qwen@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    14·
    2 years ago

    Of course I assume the scientist contacted the lawyers who know the copyright laws better than me, but shouldn’t this be under fair use as providing commentary? It’s not like it’s just an album of emojis, it’s a book that describes them in great detail, which is transformative.

    • BrikoX@lemmy.zipOPEnglish
      14·
      2 years ago

      Article mentions that.

      Now, my first reaction to this is that using the emoji and stickers and whatnot in the book seems like a very clear fair use situation. But… that requires a publisher willing to take up the fight (and an insurance company behind the publisher willing to finance that fight). And, that often doesn’t happen. Publishers are notoriously averse to supporting fair use, because they don’t want to get sued.

      • qwen@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        12·
        2 years ago

        How dare you suggest I read the article and not just comment on the post title!

        Jokes aside, that’s the worst part of the legal system. What good are the laws, if you need to be wealthy to take up the fight to get them enforced?

      • lasagna@programming.devEnglish
        3·
        2 years ago

        And probably because if they do use it and someone else does the same to their work they won’t be able to harass them with a team of lawyers.

  • Nukemin Herttua@sopuli.xyz
    12·
    2 years ago

    Some time ago I read about a similar situation with copyright preventing use of pictures of 70+ year old paintings in a doctoral dissertation. The dissertation was all about analyzing those paintings so the situation was sort of ridiculous.

    Even worse, the owner of the paintings (the artist’s heirs) had given their permission for the use, but the the high quality photographs of the paintings were owned by institution that requested thousands of euros for their use. While 100% lawful and I understand cultural institutions also need money, the whole situation felt really wrong and against common sense and decency.

    I understand requesting money from a commercial project, but for and academic dissertation that’s not fair. Same goes for emoji’s that are anyways used by millions of people every day. No one is going to profit directly from a dissertation anyways.It’s just stupid and should be changed.

  • Kalash@lemmy.world
    14·
    2 years ago

    What invaluable scientific insights might be lost because of this? Tragic.