What if there was a contingent of anti jaeger scientists
They want to scare people away from the PPDC and so someone comes up with this theory that drifting could be dangerous to individuals; they could get stuck in the drift and fall into a coma like state. Either unable ore unwilling to return to their bodies.
This ‘scientific’ article is published and the PPDC sees a drop in applicants for the academy that year. There are no documented cases of it happening, but just because the article is out there the Drift Science labs are afraid that some idiot will try to prove the point.
Because fighting giant alien sea monsters isn’t bad enough on its own, mankind creates more problems for itself all the time.
What if drifting changes your body chemistry? Like drifting changes the glands and hormones out put, so two people can end up chemically balancing out each other. Or on the other end of the spectrum, someone outrageously disproportionate can un balance their relatively normal partner. Brain chemistry isn't my expertise, but I thought it an interesting concept.
Synethesia and the drift, any ideas on how that might work out?
I have a few.
Bearing in mind my own experience with synesthesia is somewhat limited to the sound = color axis (and it took me an embarrassingly long time to realize, even after learning synesthesia was a thing, that my experience wasn’t the same as everyone else’s), I suspect that it’s not really a problem.
Like, the drift to me already seems like something of a synesthetic experience already, no two people have the exact same sensory experience of the world and it seems a hell of a lot like copilots are sharing sensory input through the drift anyway. Putting aside my private theory that Jaeger pilots have a higher incidence of full or partial synesthesia than the population average anyway, it’s probably a lot like being colorblind and drifting with someone who isn’t, and the mishmash of suddenly seeing the world in more/less color. Inside the drift, I imagine it's not really a problem. Where it'd get interesting would be with the drift hangover later, with the hypothetical non-synesthete copilot experiencing some limited sensory crossover for however long it takes for the hangover to settle down.
But that thar's my theory! (Some of it, anyway. IT'S A CONSTANT WORK IN PROGRESS.)
Creative Commons (CC) licenses, copyright, and fair use.
Hi again,
I’m going to make this into a separate post because the previous one was getting quite big and I think it’s something worth addressing separately.
Also, please see this note regarding fanfiction / fanwork and fair use. Thank you!
confabulatrix
You wrote on this post:
"Actually, this information is incorrect. We’ve come a long way since the fandom dark ages of long, please-god-don’t-sue-me disclaimers! One IS allowed to apply a creative commons license to a work even “if it incorporates material used under fair use or another exception or limitation to copyright.” I am absolutely not making this up, it’s on creativecommons.org.
“The CC license only applies to the rights you have in the work,” and as I don’t claim to own Pacific Rim or the concept of PPDC IDs that’s not grounds for prosecution. If I were attempting to make financial gains from the content entire, which includes the bits protected by copyright which I incorporated into my derivative work via Fair Use, that’d be a different story entirely.
Again, I’ll quote from creativecommons.org:
"CC offers its licenses, code, and tools to the public free of charge, without obligation. You do not need to register with Creative Commons to apply a CC license to your material; it is legally valid as soon as you apply it to any material you have the legal right to license.
CC does not require or provide any means for creators or other rights holders to register use of a CC license, nor does CC maintain a database of works distributed under Creative Commons licenses. CC also does not require registration of the work with a national copyright agency.”
They actually offer high-res copies of the logo for use, and it goes into effect immediately upon application to the work to which the creative commons license applies, along with the name, URL or identifying mark of the content creator/signee.
While I do appreciate your concerns in addressing the legality of claiming Creative Commons protection for a fanwork, allow me to assure you that I did do my homework, I did fully research the implications, legal issues and whether claiming such a license might be a wise course of action before I considered applying it to my drift science theory. I’m fully aware that as a fandom and a community, we only exist on the goodwill (and occasional permission) of the original creators, and not abusing that goodwill is absolutely paramount to our continued existence.
I get it, believe me. And yeah, I know, without knowing the full motivation and reasoning behind my posting it “to the fandom for free, no catch, under a creative commons license… so long as no profit is involved,” that sounds pretentious as hell . I AM AWARE, I PROMISE. The important message to take away here is, don’t monetize this, for the love of god .
A significant part of being allowed to continue on our merry tra-la-la fandom way of creating and sharing derivative content is not profiting fiscally from it .
In my experience, most studios and creators are quite okay with fandom activity because it’s free promotion for their product, but the second some enterprising soul comes up with a way to monetize fandom in such a way that a buyer might give preferential treatment to the fan creator’s product over something officially licensed and be-logo’d, the copyright owners start coming down on what is and is not allowed, and it’s all because someone didn’t follow the rules and sold something that wasn’t wholly theirs to sell.
Slapping a non-commercial CC license on my drift theory accomplishes several goals. Firstly, it wards off that hypothetical enterprising soul somewhere from getting a bright idea to somehow sell this, by, I don’t know… Suppose this person wants to make ranger dog tags based on this theory to sell for profit (I know, not the greatest example, but for the purpose of this exercise it works just fine). One can purchase Pacific Rim dog tags from authorised vendors, who’ve paid applicable licensing fees to the studio for permission to produce Pacific Rim merchandise. Take a potential sale out of that vendor’s pocket, though, and hoo buddy, everyone’s in hot water.
Secondly, if the noncommercial warning doesn’t scare off the hypothetical someone who reeeeeeeally wants to make ranger dog tags, it still protects my butt from potential litigation because I clearly stated from outset that the content was not-for-profit. Thirdly, it creates attribution that always comes back to me, which has the bonus of promoting my URL, true, but it also prevents my content from being plagiarized. (If there are things I’m explicitly sharing, people are more likely to use those things instead of the things I don’t want to share.)
I have this awesome (translation: super not-awesome, actually really wince-inducting) track record of being plagiarized. It feels really shitty when someone you thought was a friend makes off with your idea, sends it to Threadless and makes a few thousand dollars, because “oh, well, you weren’t doing anything with it,” and you don’t feel comfortable consulting someone with legal pull because you’re afraid to defend a fanfic. Or when your cowriter on what was originally a fanwork that evolved beyond its fannish roots gives away a large chunk of your worldbuilding to her RP group and the DM works it into his terrible thinly-veiled novelization of their campaign.”
Except you are not just referencing copyrighted material, you are integrating it as part of your original theory that is based on pre-existing copyrighted material.
The name of the movie, the concept of the Drift between two co-pilots, the names of the characters, their ID numbers; all of this is owned by a third party that has the actual copyrights to the material.
[Edit: To my knowledge, they did not allow the fans to use any of these as part of their own work, under a Creative Commons license.
Because yes, you could incorporate other people's work into your theory if it falls under the banner of fair use (other fans' texts, interpretations, analysis of the characters, art, gifs, etc.).
And you could incorporate copyrighted work into your own theory, and then put a CC license on it of your own, as long as THEY (rights holders) put a Creative Commons license on it, too.
In which case you need to reference them clearly in your work as well.
*and/or whoever else owns the rights because I'm not sure it's solely Legendary Pictures, I went with the most obvious I could think of.
But if that Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license does not exist, because the right holders chose not to put a CC on their work, then you can't license your theory without contacting the right holders and asking them for permission to do so.]
You are not stating “My theory is similar to what happens in the movie Pacific Rim, between Mako Mori and Raleigh Becket…”
This would be referencing copyrighted work, and it would (to my understanding) not infringe on the possibility of putting a non-commercial CC license on your own original work / intellectual property.
But here, you are building directly from something that someone else created. You are using and incorporating those names, numbers, and concepts into a fan theory, and then putting a license on it.
For example:
"Harlowe-Sheehan-Parker Compatibility Index : Ranging from 100 to 999, the HSP index indicates range of compatibility with other drift-capable individuals. The lower the number, the smaller the range of potential drift partners for the individual in question. A person with a lower HSP score is less flexible in dealing with dramatically different brainstyles, and requires a drift partner with either significant shared life experience, a high mutual degree of trust, or a close CORO pattern. Someone with a higher HSP score is significantly more adaptable to drift partners of disparate backgrounds, experience, and CORO profiles. Observe above how Stacker Pentecost and Herc Hansen have extraordinarily broad indices and thus may drift with nearly anyone."
Everything you see in this example in bold is material from Pacific Rim that you do not own the rights to.
The creators came up with what the Drift is. They came up with the notion of “Drift compatibility”, they stated that “Drift compatibility” required absolute trust in your partner. That's someone else's intellectual property.
Fans will come up with their interpretation of what Drift compatibility truly means for them, and how they wish to apply it. But the concept does not belong to them.
Since the concept of Drift science and Drift compatibility are already copyrighted material; all of your indexes also become tied to this. So, based on this, the only rights you would own, are essentially the names of the indexes. Alone. With no definition. Because the definitions are something interpreted and adapted from Pacific Rim.
You did not come up with the concept of what the Drift or Drift compatibility is, and you did not ask the copyright holders for the permission to adapt their work/concept and put a license on your own interpretation.
You did not ask for their permission to create a theory that would tie the ID numbers of the Rangers and K-science officers with the science behind the Drift.
Therefore, you can't claim owning the rights to this.
Using a Creative Commons license means: I own the rights to what is seen here, and I am sharing them with those who do not, according to these rules.
“Copyright is the legal concept that works—art, writing, images, music, and more—belong to the people who create them. According to copyright law, any original content you create and record in a lasting form is your own intellectual property. This means other people can't legally copy your work and pretend it's their own. They can't make money from the things you create either.
You can still cite and refer to other sources (including copyrighted materials) in your work . But to use, copy, or change a copyrighted work, you need permission from the person who holds the copyright. This permission is called a license.
Although everyone has the right to require that others respect their copyright and ask permission to use their work, some people and organizations choose to license their content more freely. They do this by giving their work a Creative Commons license, or by placing their work in the public domain.”
You are using copyrighted work, and therefore need to get permission (license) from the third party.
This table here is for copyright holders.
If the people holding the rights to Pacific Rim were to put a Creative Commons license on their work; then it would mean that they would allow third parties that do not hold the copyright to use their work without needing to come to them to require permission.
And they would set the rules. See here for the different types of licenses.
The very first thing you must ask yourself before putting a creative commons license to your work is: am I holding the copyrights?
You do not. The moment you actively use and incorporate copyrighted material from a third party, you lose the rights to your theory.
I am about 99.5% certain about this. Just to be sure, I have sent them an e-mail, being careful not to identify you (I even kept it gender neutral).
I may never get an answer, because their website clearly states that they do not offer legal counsel . Still, I thought it was worth a shot, because this truly does trouble me.
And if I’m sadly right, then it is a dangerous trend and I’d rather people had access to the correct information in order to avoid them getting into trouble for something that could be so easily avoided.
Here is the e-mail I sent:
I am not sure I am reading this right and would be extremely grateful if you could clarify this for me...
[email protected]
fév 3 à 10:00 AM
Hi,
I hope this will not be considered legal advice per say, but more a clear "yes or no", straight out question.
I have a friend who created a fan theory (fanwork) based on an already copyrighted material (a movie).
They use the name of the movie, the names of the characters, and a few numbers found in that copyrighted material.
They do not own any rights to the movie, those characters' names, or those numbers.
However the fan theory itself is an entirely original creation - exactly like fanart or fanfiction. It is something that is adapted from an already copyrighted source material, and would normally fall under the banner of fair use.
That friend did not ask the copyright holders for the permission to adapt their work. They took the liberty of adapting it by coming up with a theory that is intended to be complimentary to the copyrighted work ( movie, books, official extended universe material), and ‘canon-compliant’ until canon proves otherwise.
When sharing that theory with the rest of that particular movie's fandom; they said that they offered it:
- free of charge;
- suggested that fanfiction writers used their theory in their own work as long as no monetary gain was made for it;
- and claimed it was shared under a creative commons license.
When I questioned them on the validity of that statement/license, and the legality of that claim; they answered that a work can both be shared under the banner of fair use (i.e. fanfiction, fanart, fanwork) AND a creative commons license.
So my question is this:
Can someone legally claim to own a creative commons license to a piece of fanwork (something falling under the banner of fair use); if they have not asked the copyright holders of the source material (movie, books, and official extended universe material) the permission to adapt their work and/or use the movie title, characters' names, and numbers that they are using in their fanwork?
My understanding, while reading your website, was that in order to apply for a creative commons license, my work needed to be an entirely original creation (i.e. not adapted from previous copyrighted material); and/or I needed to have asked the copyright holders for permission to adapt their work, and then put a creative commons license on it; but I could be wrong.
So, before I continue giving other fans false information, and telling them that claiming to own a creative commons license to fanwork that is adapted from copyrighted material without having asked the copyright holders for permission is illegal; I wanted to confirm with you.
Thank you so much for your time,
I am currently waiting for an answer, that I am not sure will come (since they clearly said they do not give legal advices ). But if it ever does, then I will promptly share it with you.
Otherwise, I can also refer you to this quote from the website:
“Who gives permission to use material offered under Creative Commons licenses?
Our licenses and legal tools are intended for use by anyone who holds copyright in the material. This is often, but not always, the creator.
Creative Commons offers licenses and tools to the public free of charge and does not require that creators or other rights holders register with CC in order to apply a CC license to a work. This means that CC does not have special knowledge of who uses the licenses and for what purposes, nor does CC have a way to contact creators beyond means generally available to the public. CC has no authority to grant permission on behalf of those persons, nor does CC manage those rights on behalf of others.
If you would like to obtain additional permissions to use the work beyond those granted by the license that has been applied, or if you’re not sure if your intended use is permitted by the license, you should contact the rights holder .”
Like I previously said, you do not hold copyright in the material. The moment you integrate/use third party copyrighted work as part of your theory you lose the ability to copyright that material unless you contact the right holders and ask for a license to do so.
Although you say you do not claim the rights to the movie's name, the characters’ names, their ID numbers, the concept of the Drift and drift compatibility; you are still actively integrating those elements as part of your theory. It’s even named “Drift Science and Compatibility”.
This, I believe, would outright legally ban you from putting a Creative Commons license on it. Unless you have the permission from the copyright holder(s).
Plagiarism sucks, I get that. It’s happened to me, it’s happened to people I know, and it’s not fun to have your ideas, writings, or fanwork stolen No arguments there.
But here’s the thing, there’s nothing legal we can do if we do not own the rights to the material.
We’re already using material from a third party. It is simply not ours.
The only power I have, as a fan who is creating something based on someone else’s work, is to write:
“Guys, first remember that this theory is shared under the banner of fair use, and anyone trying to make a monetary gain out of this could be in hot water. Simply put: do not do it.
And please, given how much time and efforts went into creating this, if you want to use freely in your own fanfiction and/or fanart, I would appreciate if you offered me the credits and linked it back to the source.
This is common courtesy, and I’d sincerely appreciate it.”
That’s it! Unless I’m wrong ( and trust me, if I am then I will be extremely glad to not only share it with you, but do my best to make sure that people know they can put a Creative Commons license on their fanwork, because that sure is awesome and a great way to prevent plagiarism! ), this is all we can do.
I have no doubt you did your homework, but I think we are simply not reading the text in the same way, and either you or I (or both, since you could get some elements right and other wrong, and I could get some elements right, and others wrong) might be misinterpreting it.
For example this:
"CC offers its licenses, code, and tools to the public free of charge, without obligation. You do not need to register with Creative Commons to apply a CC license to your material; it is legally valid as soon as you apply it to any material you have the legal right to license.
CC does not require or provide any means for creators or other rights holders to register use of a CC license, nor does CC maintain a database of works distributed under Creative Commons licenses. CC also does not require registration of the work with a national copyright agency.”
in my understanding only applies to people that are copyright holders, and who are wishing to allow easy third party access and sharing of their work.
Not said third parties that do not own the copyrights and are integrating copyrighted work into their original creations.
I understand your intent, and it is indeed a very noble one.
And I swear to you, if my interpretation is wrong, I will have absolutely no shame in very publicly admitting my mistake, and letting people know that you are indeed the proud owner of a legal non-commercial CC license to your “Drift Science and Compatibility” theory.
I will even gladly repost the original theory on my blog, in order to use it as a good example of fanwork that can be copyrighted by the fans under a Creative Commons license.
I don’t really care whether I’m right or wrong here, I just want to know if it’s legal or not; and especially, if I’ve been misleading people with my own claims that it is in my belief very much illegal.
In which case, it would be very important for me to have the opportunity to correct that mistake; and encourage fans to protect themselves by putting a CC license on the work they create.
Hey if you wanted to make a pacific rim uid for yourself, how would you scale the numbers/letters for the rating scales
I've been thinking about this ask for a few days now, because I hadn't quite gotten around to figuring out the exact particulars, to be honest.
I haven't quite figured out CORO profiles yet, but I suspect it's a sliding scale, potentially from most non-linear/free-associative/lateral-thinking at the low end of the scale, to most linear/analytical/vertical-thinking at the high end. DON'T QUOTE ME ON THIS AS THE FINAL VERDICT, I'm not completely married to this chunk of theory yet because I could really go any number of ways on what people with similar scores have in common, but I'm rolling with that for the purposes of this question.
So far as HSP goes, basically, how well do you work with others? How easily do you trust others? Can you read other people well, can you reliably tell how someone else is feeling whether they're openly broadcasting it or not, are you empathetic? Can you compromise with people you don't agree with, or that you find distasteful? How well do you handle social stresses? How successful are you at gauging and navigating crowds of strangers? (Note: this is not pertaining to gifts or limitations of physical ability. It's more in adapting to the flow of human traffic, stepping aside before nearly colliding with a distracted person on the sidewalk, matching the stride of the person in front of oneself, watching for gaps to escape the crush of people... if anything, people with disabilities, whether physical or otherwise, have to be better at navigating groups than the fully-able because they always need be on the lookout for a way through or a way out.)
The easier a time you have with the above, the higher your theoretical score and range of compatibility with others. I'm pretty sure one's HSP also isn't a static number, it can change over the course of one's life. (Working at a high-stress job that absolutely requires cooperation with others in order to make it through the workday, sink or swim, would broaden one's index substantially.)
With your Keeler rating, it basically boils down to your fight-or-flight response. How easily do you panic? How high (or low) is your threshold for threat perception? Are you easily triggered? This isn't a measure of how you handle your stressors, it's a measure of how quickly or easily your stress response kicks on. It isn't a character flaw or a sign of weakness to have a letter nearer to the end of the alphabet than the front, it just means being aware of and watching out for the possibility of more hiccups in the drift than someone closer to the beginning.
SO KEEPING ALL THAT IN MIND, how would I rate myself? What's Confab's UID? I don't have to guess if there's curiosity out there, I read the tags on reblogs of my drift sci post, a lot of people were wondering what their UIDs would be.
J-ESAT_760.14-T
How do I figure?
J: Process of elimination. I'm not a scientist, and I don't have the personality to be a ranger, much less the physical hardiness. I'm twenty-nine and I already have early-onset osteoarthritis in my knees, and I dislocated a tendon in my shoulder three months ago lifting something that weighed less than a bottle of soda. Plus I'm not aggressive enough to beat a monster to death.
ESAT: Estee Saturn, at your service. (Hell naw, I'm not giving out my real last name in a public forum.)
760: I might be a hardcore introvert who simultaneously loathes and fears people in general, but I've worked in retail my entire adult life; the loudness I use to hide just how quiet I actually am also does a fantastic job of concealing the fact that I'm a monster who only needs an hour and a conversation to figure out how to unravel and/or otherwise totally dismantle another human. I read people frighteningly well. Also, I work in a busy-as-fuck coffeeshop, where my being able to read my coworkers emotionally and physically is absolutely consonant in not injuring myself or anyone else. We're dodging sharp objects and boiling liquids at high speed, y'all.
Buuuuuuuuuuuut I have a temper, and my mechanism for handling it is to go silent and closed off, so I don't say whatever springs to mind, and/or throw a pitcher of scalded milk at anyone. I can, in theory, work with anyone, but there are people I wouldn't let near my head because I'd happily shred them.
14: My brain is reeeeeeeeeeeeeally full of ADHD. I cross areas of interest all willy-nilly because I see connections everywhere. Logic is not my friend.
T: See above re: my hideous temper, but see also my ADHD and associated emotional lability, plus also being one wheaty incident from literal psychosis or dissociation at any given moment. And just for grins, the Nervous Collapse of 2006 and a tendency toward anxiety attacks. I can reason my way through a lot, but I could easily rip the floor out from underneath someone else.
How much of drift compatibility is pre-disposed/ part of your genetic make-up and how much is due to your environments influence on your choices and actions?
Without Knifehead would Raleigh have been drift compatible with Mako or not?
DRIFT SCIENCE APPENDIX A: PPDC Officers and UIDs, 2016-2020
The people have spoken! Everyone who liked and reblogged my post about drift science, THANK YOU, I am so flattered! I do read every single comment and a large number of the tags and I couldn't help but notice a trend: y'all want to know UID numbers for canon characters that didn't have one published.
Okay! I wrote up more than a few for my own works-in-progress, and I see no reason not to share. Organized by guesstimated start of service/Academy year, then by surname, I present the complete list of canon PPDC officers thus far, including canon UIDs for any and all inclined parties. Enjoy!
2014/2015
D'ONOFRIO, Sergio // R-SDON_410.31-F*
GAGE, Bruce // R-BGAG_214.46*
GAGE, Trevin // R-TGAG_200.49*
GOTTLIEB, Hermann // S-HGOT_471.120-V
HANSEN, Hercules // R-HHAN_832.84-G
HANSEN, Scott // R-SHAN_401.98-E*
JESSOP, Duc // R-DJES_548.90-C*
KAIDANOVSKY, Aleksis // R-AKAI_443.22-F
KALASHNIKOVA**, Sasha // R-SKAL_440.94-K
KOYAMADA Kaori // R-KKOY_602.59-N*
LIGHTCAP, Caitlin // S-CLIG_611.40-W*
LO Hin Shen // R-LHIN_491.33-D*
PENTECOST, Stacker // M-SPEN_970.89-Q
PO Xichi // R-PXIC_677.05-B*
SEVIER, Tamsin // R-TSEV_360.68-L*
WEI Cheung // R-CWEI_559.20-I***
WEI Hu // R-HWEI_556.21-G***
WEI Jin // R-JWEI_561.20-H***
AN Yuna // R-YAN_386.52-M*
LANPHIER,Stephanie // R-SLAN_192.27-B*
LARUE, Kennedy // R-KLAR_808.34-H*
PANG So-Yi // R-SPAN_640.86-R*
2020****
HANSEN, Chuck // R-CHAN_512.66-D
MORI Mako // R-MMOR_204.19-V*****
. . .
NOTES
*Speculative guess, non-canon
**Sasha's canon UID is SKAL. This could be a typo, but I have interpreted that she entered the PPDC before she and Aleksis married
***Canon assigned one number to the triplets; I gave this number to Cheung and extrapolated for Hu and Jin's UIDs.
****Mako's canon age is inconsistent across different media; I have chosen the April '03 date of birth and the same Academy class as Chuck.
*****Mako's canon UID seems to follow 'surname's first letter, given name's first three letters' format. This seems likely to be a typo, based on observation of the original UID assigned to the Wei brothers, but arguably could be intentional, in respect of her being a woman of East Asian descent, belonging to a culture wherein surname is stated first. I have chosen to realign Mako's Ranger ID to match the format of other PPDC officers', and written original IDs for the other East Asian rangers in the same style. That being said, I am not Asian, and if told this course of action is inappropriate I will immediately revise the post to better align aforementioned UIDs with Eastern naming conventions.
As with the drift science, this reference is free for fandom use according to Creative Commons Usage. If you want to use it, please tell me, I like seeing how my ideas travel!
