PippenFTS – We’re Being Sued By An Architect For Building The Earth in Minecraft

We live in a society and as much as we try to encourage positivity kindness and prosperity very often the byproducts of humans existing yields the will of evil or mental illness or evil acts done in the name of good a quick rational analysis of the situation calls for a

Justice system and its foundations are really good innocent until proven guilty this idiom is particularly effective against the societal danger less guarded against and more prevalent in our modern setting mob justice when parading moral righteousness becomes the encouraged social currency and proving guilt becomes a mission to satiate emotional vindication rather than selflessly

Serving cautiousness and rationality for the sake of it but the litigious soul-sucking nature of the entire culture of law has plenty of problems the amount of absurd lawsuits in the last 40 years have been too many to mention well i mean okay look at this one these 17 year olds trespass on a

Railroad severely burn themselves on electrical wires and the court deems the property owners responsible for the damages or this lady who sued a weatherman for a weather report that turned out to be wrong they settled out of court for a thousand dollars and if you want to bake cookies for your

Neighbors forget it a couple of colorado teens decided to do exactly that and left cookies on their neighbor’s porch with a nice note rang the doorbell then ran away the neighbor was so scared by these shadowy figures that she called the police and suffered an anxiety

Attack so bad that she was admitted to the hospital the next day the teens apologized profusely over the incident and instead of forgiving them the neighbor decided to sue them the teens ended up getting fined just to serve oh wait wait wait how about how about this

One this one we’re getting sued for building the earth in minecraft because the earth isn’t free you’re actually viable to copyright claims for depicting it or at least the buildings that stand on top of it no this is not a joke and it’s all because of customer service

Confused me too so there’s this support bot inbox in the build the earth discord where if you’re having serious trouble with any aspect of our project you can essentially open up a channel between yourself and our team we’ve gotten some weird messages over the years but most

Of these tickets opened are people with anywhere from simple questions on this or that to astronomical bugs so insanely unsolvable that the weight of their chaos energy begins to suck our normal universe into its ultra dense vortex there’s also a lot of people who give a crash report that basically shows that

They’re using a hacked or cracked version of minecraft meaning they didn’t pay for it don’t do that guys but a few months ago we received probably the most interesting ticket yet a discord user let’s just call him strange opens a support ticket with the following statement y’all are you serious y’all aware that

Buildings built after december 1st 1990 in the united states are copyrighted that’s why all games that depict real life cities minus flight sims using sat imagery have different designs to buildings i will be talking with my lawyers i am an architect myself and i’m displeased with your lack of credit to

Those who design these buildings if you wish not to go to court over this i suggest you remove all buildings built after that date by the end of the month thank you upon hearing this our entire staff team imploded realizing that build the earth is done it was fun while it lasted thank

You everyone for coming maybe next time we’ll build uranus as long as that isn’t copyrighted either it probably is though we then asked him to link the necessary sources that back up his claim to which he links to government copyright law page in the united states as well as a

Pdf that outlines copyright regarding architectural works so after a quick review of this we determined that the depiction of buildings in minecraft is sufficiently different as to not actually qualify for a copyright claim and encouraged strange to look at the examples of this in the channel showcase

I then asked staff not to close this ticket so i can get his response later so of course staff closes the ticket before i can screenshot his response but we didn’t lose it we just don’t have the rest of the conversation in fancy discord format but it’s here in this law

Strange says the authorship in an architectural work includes the overall form of the building the exterior elevations of the building when viewed from the front rear and sides sorry see you in court wow that was terrifying i just pissed myself and i just got out of

Bed i’m not even wearing pants so we’re getting sued for building the earth in minecraft or are we i mean should we be worried the only way to know for sure is to take a serious look at the claims and copyright law this pdf he linked to talks about all

Buildings built since 1990 being copyrighted it reads an architectural work is the design of a building as embodied in any tangible medium of expression including a building architectural plans or drawings copyright protects architectural works created on or after december 1st 1990. so lawyer speak is basically another

Language i have to read this like five to seven times before i completely understand exactly what’s being said architectural works are what’s being protected by the copyright claim and here they’re defining what constitutes an architectural work namely designs drawings etc that specificity is gonna be really important later the copyright

Office may register a claim to copyright in an architectural work if the work is a humanly habitable structure that is intended to be both permanent and stationary this means that the drawings that constitute a permanent stationary and humanly habitable structure are the ones protected by the copyright now

Here’s where strange thinks he has the high ground the authorship in an architectural work includes the overall form of the building and then it goes on to describe what is technically included regarding form the sleight of hand going on here with strange’s implication is that we are meant to think this means

The general form of the building but that’s not what overall means overall just means total which means there is no expanding vagueness attached to the definition of what the form is law uses specific words to be very clear about definitions and this is why that matters here’s a good example let’s just talk

About the walls of a building walls are anywhere from a foot to two feet thick generally and this would be detailed in an architect’s plans we do not and cannot build walls accurately we’re awkwardly making meteor thick walls out of minecraft blocks which already before we even count anything else

Substantially transforms the building sufficient to the point where it cannot be categorized as the same thing but that’s not where it ends we also don’t build building outlines in a neat square shape we build them like this does that look like a normal building to you accurately mimicking a building’s

Original architectural plans let’s not forget something else the further distortion of the shape of the building afforded by the projection we used put together by the original tara 1 1 developers and mathematicians which adds further distortion to the original form of the building as detailed in real life

Plans and last but not least minecraft detailing every minecraft block or item is chosen to represent a real-life detail of the building but over 99 of them will not match perfectly every single block half slab cobblestone wall or item chosen to illustrate the detail of the building is of a different

Material color or both in comparison to real life culminating in something so completely different it would be just as absurd as suing someone who built your building out of sand on the beach our jagged meter thick walled buildings where everything is significantly different in comparison to the real

Thing voids any claim that it matches the original architectural work because you know what’s an even closer match other video games and to an even closer degree google 3d you know how much more google 3d resembles the original architectural works then these absurd trapeze artist minecraft lego constructions we’ve put together that

Look like wacko crazy town when you look closely enough but it is an interesting question if google’s 3d and other video games much more accurately resemble the architectural plans of these buildings how come they haven’t been sued if we somehow found a way to make these buildings look like perfect replicas in

Minecraft without the world projection distortion without meteor thick walls jagged outlines and all the incorrect details would this guy win this crazy lawsuit battle of minecraft builders vs angry architect destroying the entire project in a major upset leaving everyone frazzled and shocked i feel shocked no actually video games have

Been sued over this before and it’s established legal precedent we could go into those cases but here’s the important thing you need to know number 17 us code 120. the copyright in an architectural work that has been constructed does not include the right to prevent them making distributing or

Public display of pictures paintings photographs or other pictorial representations of the work if the building in which the work is embodied is located in or ordinarily visible from a public place and there you have it if the building is visible from a public place it can be recreated in any of the

Above including other pictorial representations of the work so all you have to do is convince a jury that minecraft falls under that criteria which it does and the case falls flat no matter how accurate or inaccurate the building is let’s get real here this guy was almost

Certainly a troll especially with how he was implying that he would be suing us not for a specific building that he designed but rather on the basis of all buildings on behalf of all architects he’s like architect jesus but in the my newt case that he was an architect and

Being completely serious it felt like my civic duty short of lawyering up myself to represent myself as myself in defense of myself presenting what is hopefully a convincing legal case to allow kids in minecraft to keep building in a block game safe from litigious trolls who want to on the picnic thanks for

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