r/mildlyinfuriating • u/slick7studios • Jul 16 '26

I just wanted a hot dog Apperantly A24 suddenly thinks they own all of the backrooms.

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Many people have been reporting copyright strikes for backrooms fan games, textures, and other references on Google play, Twitter and other spaces. Apparently the company thinks if they make a movie that suddenly they own the source material that existed years before the movie was even conceptualized. For an idea of how ridiculous this is, it's like saying James Cameron owns the Titanic and every survivor's story because of the movie he made.

With how shitty the world is becoming at what point is it enough, it's literally 1984, can't have shit anymore, even decades old community internet creepypastas apparently.

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845

u/Generally_Kenobi-1 Jul 17 '26

Even works after should be fine, I doubt they bought exclusive rights to the source material.

838

u/Scruffylookin13 Jul 17 '26

Can't buy exclusive rights to a 4chan post

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u/alex3omg Donna, this is a HURRICANE Jul 17 '26

It's like trying to copyright the concept of a haunted house or vampires.  Like cool so folklore can't develop anymore because of capitalism?  Awesome awesome what a great timeline

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u/PsyTripper Jul 17 '26

Dumbest thing is that, Copyright was to protect innovation. The idea was, if there is no copyright protection, people will stop to innovate because somebody could just steal there design. The original copyright periode was 14 years, back in 1790.

  • 1790: 14 years + 14-year renewal option.
  • 1831: Extended to 28 years + 14-year renewal.
  • 1909: Extended to 28 years + 28-year renewal.
  • 1976: Shifted to the life of the author plus 50 years.
  • 1998 (Sonny Bono Act): Extended to the life of the author plus 70 years.

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u/alex3omg Donna, this is a HURRICANE Jul 17 '26

What sucks is if we didn't have to worry about survival constantly we'd have more free time to make art, and it wouldn't need to be a commodity.  

Back in the early 00s you could find free assets, tutorials, whatever online for free.  People would just make like a Photoshop brush and post it.  But at some point everything became commercialized and how you can't find anything like that for free.  It's all 'subscribe for $5 a month to have access'.  

We say "pay artists" which is valid, but it's also sad that things are so hard they feel the need to side hustle over every little thing.  

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u/Mr_Bad_Example Jul 17 '26

Oh you can still find that stuff for free...if you know where to look...yar har matey

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u/alex3omg Donna, this is a HURRICANE Jul 17 '26

Sure but it's not the same, and stealing isn't the same as the socialist utopia we had before.  

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u/IllustriousBobcat813 Jul 17 '26

Copyright was made to protect corporations (well, the bourgeoisie to be exact), it was never actually about innovation. There is a reason that the only people fighting for copyright law is megacorporations like adobe and Disney.

It doesn’t make sense from an industry perspective, if your design is simple enough that someone can just straight up copy it without any of the knowledge or experience you gained from inventing it, then it probably wasn’t worth copyrighting in the first place. On the other hand, if it is something like’s a novel medication, you would have to regularly ingest metric tons of glue to not find a way to profit off of the market advantage you get from having the only people on the world who know how to make the medication in practice.

In the case of art, we have been able to make and profit from art without copyright for millennia without copyright. On top of this, mega corporations don’t give a single fuck about the copyright of an individual artist to begin with, the law only works one way. Disney can steal all your art and bury you in legal fees if you try to fight it, but don’t you dare make money from drawing an OC that resembles Mickey Mouse.

10

u/0Davgi0 Jul 17 '26

Someone has to have tried at some point

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u/whitedolphinn Jul 17 '26

People will sit here and defend this shit company and this shit movie too. Roaring and cheering for fascism and capitalism and scumbaggery. But only if it's the "right" people of course.

2

u/SlimDiscipline-69 Jul 17 '26

If capitalism has its way. Everything will be monetized and behind pay walls.

Shit, I'd bet my soul and everything else at least one two of those billionaires would set up a pay wall for after life if they could

1

u/ZeoVII Jul 17 '26

Well, Disney tried to copyright the "Dia de Muertos".... If corpos can, they will try to find a way to do it, and even if they can't, they will still try to find a way....

1

u/zenyattatron Jul 17 '26

Twilight zone has a whole episode about this haha

57

u/Stampyboyz Jul 17 '26 edited Jul 17 '26

Btw this could happen if the author isn't anonymous anymore.

An example is Moto42, the creator of SCP-173. Once he was proven to be the author he suddenly owned the copyright to 173. However in this case he released it under CC-BY-SA 3.0 (the same copyright the SCP wiki uses).

However the author of the original Backrooms post is unknown, which seems to have a similar effect to it being in the public domain due to the movie studio actually picking up Kane Pixel's version of the Backrooms. Mixed with the fact his version doesn't use anything from the Backrooms wikis which both are under CC-BY-SA 3.0

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u/Skydiver860 Jul 17 '26

An example is Moto42, the creator of SCP-173. Once he was proven to be the author he suddenly owned the copyright to 173.

doesn't he only own the picture? he doesn't own the writing about 173 im pretty sure.

21

u/Stampyboyz Jul 17 '26 edited Jul 17 '26

No, Untitled 2004 (image used in 173's original text) was created by and is owned by Izumi Kato which isn't under CC-BY-SA 3.0 and only reluctantly allowed on the wiki since the wiki isn't commercial. It was removed due to wiki staff not wanting to ruin Untitled 2004's story even more and due to the increase of merchandise based on 173 using Untitled 2004's likeness. Also due to it not being under CC-BY-SA 3.0

Moto42 created the 173 article, but not the image.

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u/Skydiver860 Jul 17 '26

Ah ok I misunderstood then.

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u/fonk_pulk Jul 17 '26

Wasnt the original SCP-173 story posted on /x/ without a tripcode (i.e. anonymously)? How did he prove it was him?

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u/smarjorie Jul 17 '26

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills with the way people are talking about the back rooms stuff sometimes. I get why Parsons gets so much credit, his work is great and incredibly impressive for his age, but he didn't invent this! The backrooms and their imagery existed before him. It's like saying that JK Rowling owns the concept of wizards or something

85

u/thedylannorwood Jul 17 '26

They can buy exclusive rights to a specific version. If they own Kane Parsons’ version (I don’t think they do) and if these games use things from Parsons’ version (they absolutely do) then they would hypothetically have legal grounds to stand on

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u/Scruffylookin13 Jul 17 '26

What is it that they use that is exclusively from Parson's version?

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u/SFWBryon Jul 17 '26

Anything that is specifically related to ASYNC, or uses any of the soundtrack, any of the entities’ designs that were debuted in his work, any iconic imagery that originated from his version (the backwards stop signs for example, if no one had used them before his version), etc.

I don’t know the specifics of this case, but there’s tons of stuff that could be unique to Kane’s version and thus the version they own

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u/Scruffylookin13 Jul 17 '26

I have played a ton of backroom games and never seen anything related to ASYNC. The monster design (from the youtube) probably, music... idk, backwards stop sign seems like a stretch.

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u/SFWBryon Jul 17 '26

Yeah it all depends on what these specific ones are infringing, it’s hard to say with just a screenshot. It also could just be a 3rd party situation where the company hired to protect A24 IP is overstepping.

I’m just saying inclusions from Kane’s work that could potentially be infringing, not that they did it

0

u/dysfunctionalbrat Jul 17 '26

I'm not sure the backwards stop sign would fall into this category, as this is something that appears in the wild and isn't that unique. Possibly appearing in a backrooms context, but since he has 0 ownership over backrooms, I'm not sure how what a judge would say. Unlike something like Disney's Snow White (which adapts folklore, but uses absolutely copyrightable animation), Kane's Backrooms is live action and uses imagery that was well established in a copyright-free environment, so except for characters, ASYNC, and very specific situations, they can't protect much.

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u/MeasureDoEventThing Jul 17 '26

Just because they own a specific version, that doesn't mean they own everything in that version. Anything in that version that was from the public domain, they don't own. Like if there's a giant wooden horse in the Odysseus movie, that doesn't mean that they own giant wooden horses.

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u/rezwrrd IllIlIlIlIlIlIlI Jul 17 '26

Or the website from a small local business where the original photos were first published.

1

u/Connect_Detail98 Jul 17 '26

But they can abuse a YouTube algorithm to steal monetization from creators. 

5

u/SomeBoxofSpoons Jul 17 '26

Especially since the director has really gone out of his way not to give himself credit for the concept.

1

u/PhantomTissue Jul 17 '26

Can’t buy rights to public domain content.