Honestly think that’s very debatable he was contracted by the company he can’t just rugpull because decides there is an extra different secret ownership he never handed over and has never mentioned during the transaction and never brought up till years later when he got bitter. Don’t think his claims would stand up at all of lawyers were involved.
He needs to take the W, he’ll never have his work in anything as large as MC, he got paid 20k for something no one else would pay for honestly things could be worse, his poem could be removed.
I mean it’s now time to ask if he actually even has the rights to license the poem at all.
Absolutely 100% would stand up. If the US and UK have one thing it's strong copyright protections that favor the copyright holder. You can't accidentally transfer owner of your copyright with an off-handed remark and this is well established. If I commission an artist for a work the artist retains the copyright unless it's explicitly transferred to me or if the artists is my employee -- contractor isn't enough.
> his poem could be removed
That wouldn't stop it in general. It comes down to the specific license terms. Copyright deals with performances and his work has already been performed millions of times. That can't be undone. Pirating a movie, watching it, and then deleting your copy doesn't make it not copyright infringement. If the contract said only for use in Minecraft then any merchandise or Minecraft: Bedrock. Worse, licenses aren't by default transferable. If I give your band a license to play a song I wrote and you leave to join another band it doesn't follow you unless it was explicitly stated in the contract. So if Microsoft did something with the licensed work that wasn't under its legal subsidiary Mojang that might also be a problem.
I'm not saying any of this happened but hopefully it's enough to demonstrate that "obviously a judge would rule that a reasonable person would have assumed the work came with copyright assignment" is very unlikely doubly because the fact that they asked him for assignment later means they knew.
b) If I had wanted to make merch with this text on it last week but had been deterred by fear of M$ lawyers, I wouldn't really feel any different about it after the author 'releasing the poem under CC'. His claim to own the rights in the first place is totally dubious. He seems erratic and will probably go on to perform other stunts and legalistic trolling before he gets bored.
b) INAL, but in the UK: "you automatically get copyright protection when you create: original literary, dramatic, musical and artistic work, including illustration and photography original non-literary written work... ". Assuming it's similar around the world there's nothing dubious about their claim, they didn't sign it away.
Regardless of your opinion of the person or their motives it seems they are within their rights to do what they've done.
Whether you care for him as a human or not is entirely irrelevant to the rights to his work.
If there was no legal agreement, he retains the rights to it.
It’s not ambiguous.
The entire situation is very messy. Mojang fucked up by failing to get the contract signed and failing to even notice it. OTOH the writer seems like a contractor from hell who you wouldn't ever want to deal with, and that's based on his side of the story.
And that is why:
> His claim to own the rights in the first place is totally dubious.
Is flat out wrong.
Not to say they have no case, sure, verbal agreements are agreements too.
HOWEVER, when the written contract is significantly different from the verbal agreement, the case that the written contract is binding, is highly dubious.
What, if I agree to pay you a dollar for a stick figure drawing and you send me a contract saying I agree to give you my house, is it binding if I keep the dollar? Did I implicitly agree to 'whatever you want' in an unwritten contract because I agreed to some verbal agreement?
The answer is definitely not.
There's a reason companies use legal written contracts. ...because they unambiguously assign rights; they did not do that. Therefore, it's Mojang's claim to the rights which is dubious, not the author.
No, and I feel like he made it extremely clear that this story is not really about money and his feelings are not driven by a lack of royalties.
For me, the real issue for an artist that is actually not talking about the money would be the part of the verbal contract that was not fulfilled: Some type of promotional support for the author's other works. Exposure of that work the hundreds of millions of people seems like it would have a staggeringly massive non-monetary value (and in fact could have led to significant monetary gain). Instead though, the author goes to great pains to say it wasn't about the money while mostly talking about the money.
If it wasn't about money, than what was it about? "Fairness"? So money?
They can be money, they can be something more vague like recognition, or truly nebulous like "a sense of human connection," but you've got to have goals. Otherwise you're just a child stumbling in the dark and yelling out.
Reading the post, I don't know what the author's goals are, and I get the impression they don't either.
It sounds like they weren't sure about their goals to begin with, didn't do anything to achieve them, felt robbed because other people's goals were misaligned with theirs, before finally accepting they can't change the past, which
Duh.
Oh I'm sure. But feelings and money aren't mutually exclusive. Why do you think he posts donation links under the heading "THIS IS WHERE YOU GET TO SAVE MY LIFE"?
Yes they got paid for producing the work, yes they were jealous. Yes they reacted like most humans would.
But, that €20k did not cover the copyrights to the work. Just the creating of it. Regardless as to whether you think the original payment was really good. The copyright sits with the artist, not those that commission it, unless the artist signs it away. That didn't happen. That's Mojang's fault not the artist. And the fact they were trying to pressure the artist into doing that shows that that is the real issue.
This post is not about the money or the jealously. It is about the emotional journey the author went on, with their human emotions, and what they thought of as friends. And the different stages of said journey.
If I was more cynical about this piece I would suggest that releasing the poem under CC was easily the worse thing the author could have done from MS/Mojangs point of view. Clearly a decision was made by them that should a lawsuit come about they weren't worried. Releasing it as it has been side steps this completely, leaving the power with the author.
Ultimately though I enjoyed the story.