Wednesday News: Disney sued, VTech hacked, fox fable wins, and Legos build hell
Publishing Newschildren's fiction / Dante / Disney / Hacking / infringement / internet security / IP rights / Legos / literary awards / V-Tech6 Comments
DISNEY SUED Man Says ‘Wreck-It Ralph’ STOLE HIS IDEAS – Disney, which is responsible for some of the most onerous copyright provisions — because we need to respect the rights holders, right?! — is being sued for — you guessed, it — INFRINGEMENT! The case has been filed in federal court in Texas (copyright is among the limited types of cases over which the federal courts have jurisdiction):
Dyke Robinson tells TMZ he created a book series called “Digiland” and even pitched the idea to Disney execs for a TV show in 2012. But according to the docs, Disney pulled the plug after reading Robinson’s script.
Later that year, Robinson watched ‘Wreck-It Ralph’ and says he was shocked to see it was riddled with his ‘Digiland’ imagery. – TMZ
Toymaker VTech hit by largest-ever hack targeting kids – VTech, which makes both kid and adult toys, was hacked to put the personal information of at least 4.9 million adults and 6.4 million children at risk (think massive identity theft potential here). This hack is particularly frightening because of the unprecedented number of children involved, and will likely catalyze governmental investigation of the company’s security measures.
Chris Wysopal, co-founder of cyber security firm Veracode, said it could be a wake up call for families in the same way that the hack on infidelity website Ashley Madison earlier this year made adults realize online data might not be safe.
VTech said in a statement that children’s profiles included name, gender and birth date. Stolen adult data included name, mailing address, email address, password retrieval questions, IP address and passwords.
The most VTech customers affected were in the United States, followed by France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, Spain, Belgium and the Netherlands. – Yahoo!
Fox fable beats bestsellers to win Waterstones book prize – It should perhaps be no surprise that booksellers would judge a beautifully presented book like The Fox and the Star as winner of the Waterstones book prize. This is Coralie Pickford-Smith’s first book. The author is a senior book designer at Penguin to write and illustrate the book, which she describes as “about love, loss and learning to accept change.”
The full shortlist was
- SPQR by Mary Beard (Profile)
- The Fox and the Star by Coralie Bickford-Smith (Particular Books)
- My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante (Europa Editions)
- Reasons to Stay Alive by Matt Haig (Canongate)
- The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins (Doubleday)
- Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee (William Heinemann)
- The Shepherd’s Life by James Rebanks (Allen Lane)
- A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara (Picador) – BBC News
The nine circles of hell from Dante’s Inferno recreated in Lego by Mihai Michu – This. Is. Amazing. Can we get these in time for the holidays?! I particularly need Limbo for my office (although Lust is an absolute work of genius).
Romanian artist Mihai Marius Mihu spent seven months recreating the hellish visions of the nine circles of hell from Dante’s Divine Comedy using almost 40,000 Lego bricks. – The Telegraph
The Vtech thing has become worse. Children s pictures are now said to have been taken – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-34971337
As terrible as Disney is on copyright, I’m not quite sure I buy the claim they stole his ideas given the time frame involved. CGI is faster than hand drawn animation, but think it would still take way longer than less than a year. Plus most of the design imagery I remember was pretty reminiscent of various existing video games. (Only saw the movie once and that was a while ago.)
Like lost shadows I have a hard time buying his claim – the movie was released in nov 2012 and I vaguely remember seeing ads for it like 6mths previously (I had a friend who was really excited about going); and secondly if he saw it in 2012 and noticed why suing now – over 3yrs later why not then…
For the lawyer types is there a statute of limitations on cases like this?
I agree with LostShadows and Dee. It takes a good two years from the first line drawn to completion of any of Disney’s animated movies (I have a friend who works there) so there is no way this person’s ideas could have been incorporated into the movie within 6 months time and really, if he pitched in 2012, that’s about the time frame we’d be looking at. It was probably rejected because it so mirrored what they’d almost already finished.
As far as the Lego stuff, OMG, that giant peen in Lust is too funny! That and the guy with the Darth Vader helmet which I always thought was pure eroticism couched in a children’s toy anyway. I need Limbo too though, Very apropos for my office right now…
Wikipedia is doing its annual fundraising drive and thanks to your linking to this story about how they purged their feminist editors during GamerGate, I won’t be giving them my dollars this year.
Disney was developing Wreck-It-Ralph under various names at least back to the 1980’s according to Wikipedia (which I know isn’t always 100% correct)…
“The concept of Wreck-It Ralph was first developed at Disney in the late 1980s, under the working title High Score. Since then, it was redeveloped and reconsidered several times: In the late 1990s, it took on the working title Joe Jump, then in the mid-2000s as Reboot Ralph.”