[HN Gopher] Ashcan Comic
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Ashcan Comic
Author : benbreen
Score : 51 points
Date : 2026-01-30 07:26 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (en.wikipedia.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (en.wikipedia.org)
| komali2 wrote:
| I think it's a bit weird that our society is designed such that
| Palworld can be sued for making a game depicting Pokemon.
|
| For about ten thousand years, humans invented and traded stories
| that often contained characters and environments they didn't
| invent. You've heard of some of these characters - Zeus,
| Persophone, Hades, all recurring characters in stories, mosaics,
| paintings, statues, carvings. Nobody got sued for it, these
| characters just functioned as analogues for emotions and elements
| and conditions, universally recognizable figures that didn't need
| introduction, they could just be used when you needed e.g. a
| horny character that liked to change people into animals and then
| have sex with them.
|
| Just very, very recently we aren't allowed to do this anymore.
| Despite the fact that Pokemon are a shared cultural experience
| for millions of people from different countries and languages, an
| opportunity to have a universal symbolic story telling language
| across borders of nations and languages, we can't do it because
| that would harm the ability of a single corporate entity to
| extract value from it as it sees fit. Never mind that we have our
| own stories we might want to tell from this shared cultural
| heritage.
|
| And do we ever have stories to tell! Look at any fan fiction
| site. Among all the smut you get gems like book 4 of the three
| body problem, written by a different author than the original.
| Look at the incredible art created from out of copyright works,
| like Lies of P for pinnochio or House MD for Sherlock Holmes. I
| want more of these, for things that were invented in my time!
| trhway wrote:
| >You've heard of some of these characters - Zeus, Persophone,
| Hades, ...
|
| >Just very, very recently we aren't allowed to do this anymore.
|
| From the beginning of monotheism we see strong attempts to
| monopolize the character of the right and the only God, dating
| back at least to Samaritans vs. Judeans. Some actually see the
| appearance of monotheism as a result of such a successful
| monopolization attempt. And the last 2000 years that monopoly
| has been enforced by sword and fire.
|
| > Palworld can be sued for making a game depicting Pokemon.
|
| at least not declared heretic and burnt at stake like it was
| 400+ years ago for unlicensed fan-fiction produced by Luther
| and the likes.
| steve1977 wrote:
| I'm not sure if it makes sense to compare the two. Only one
| is openly fiction.
| KK7NIL wrote:
| > From the beginning of monotheism we see strong attempts to
| monopolize the character of the right and the only God,
| dating back at least to Samaritans vs. Judeans.
|
| 1) Samaritans and Judeans do not disagree on which God they
| worship (it's YHWH), they disagree on much more subtle points
| that are largely unique to the Israelite religion like the
| location of the temple mount, the correct version of the
| pentatuch, differences in how to practice some of the
| rituals, etc.
|
| 2) Zoroastrianism predates the Israelite religion and is
| usually considered monotheistic (although some scholars
| disagree). If you loosen your definition to allow henotheism
| then some eastern traditions were first by about a millennia.
|
| 3) WTF does monotheism have to do with trademark law? I'm
| sure you think it's a deep argument but it just came off as a
| total non sequitur to everyone else.
| croes wrote:
| Back then everybody made a little money, now some make a
| shitload and others nearly nothing.
|
| We see that in a lot of businesses especially thanks to the
| internet.
| magpi3 wrote:
| As you noted, fan fiction is legal. You just can't make a
| profit from it, which I think is fair. Also, IP laws force
| people to come up with their own characters and their own
| twists on old stories. I would argue this is a good thing.
| Inventive ideas like Pokemon may not exist if people could just
| reuse other people's IP to make a buck.
| komali2 wrote:
| > Inventive ideas like Pokemon may not exist if people could
| just reuse other people's IP to make a buck.
|
| This doesn't make sense because people invent ideas all the
| time without intention of making money off it - such as the
| plots of fan fiction, which you yourself noted. Fan fiction
| represents untold tens of thousands of human-hours of effort.
| glamourpetz wrote:
| > fan fiction is legal. You just can't make a profit from it,
| which I think is fair.
|
| The term "fair" is intellectually imprecise.
|
| In a policy context, appeals to "fairness" often serve as a
| rhetorical proxy for subjective preferences rather than an
| objective moral framework.
|
| When centralized systems attempt to institutionalize
| "fairness" as a primary directive, the resulting information-
| calculation problems and rent-seeking often lead to
| catastrophic externalities.
|
| Consider the extreme end of state-mandated equity:
|
| - The Henan Plasma Scandal: In the 1990s, a government-backed
| "plasma economy" intended to alleviate rural poverty through
| "fair" compensation led to the pooling and reinjection of
| contaminated blood, infecting an estimated 1.2 million people
| with HIV.
|
| - The One-Child Policy: A "fair" distribution of population
| growth led to forced abortions, mass abandonment of female
| infants, and a 30-million-person gender imbalance.
|
| In the specific context of IP, the "fairness" of restricting
| profit from derivative works is a misnomer. US copyright law
| (17 U.S.C. 107) relies on Fair Use, which is a balancing test
| of market harm and transformative value, not a moral judgment
| on what an author "deserves".
|
| Denying a creator the right to profit from their labor is
| simply a protectionist market intervention; calling it "fair"
| merely obscures the economic trade-off.
| close04 wrote:
| > When centralized systems attempt to institutionalize
| "fairness" as a primary directive, the resulting
| information-calculation problems and rent-seeking often
| lead to catastrophic externalities.
|
| Sounds like you're focusing on Eastern society examples and
| some are a stretch. If you believe "institutionalized
| fairness" is unequivocally wrong, what do you think of the
| more Western "DEI"? It's a standout example of "equity".
|
| Is your opinion that DEI results in the same kind of bad
| outcome? Do you think that Western societies can pull off
| "institutionalized fairness" better than Eastern ones? Are
| you drawing a biased picture by highlighting the failures
| without putting them in the larger context along with any
| possible successes?
| jkollue wrote:
| DEI is fine. The problem isn't the goal of treating
| people well; it's the structural error of trying to
| institutionalize "fairness" as a top-down directive.
|
| Whether it's an AI or a government, centralized systems
| are remarkably bad at optimizing for vague moral proxies
| because they lack the local feedback loops required to
| avoid catastrophe.
|
| Western history is littered with these feedback failures.
| The British government's commitment to an ideological
| "fairness" in market non-interference during the Irish
| Potato Famine led to 1 million deaths. Their wartime
| resource distribution in the 1943 Bengal Famine killed 3
| million more. Even the American eugenics movement was
| framed as a "fair" optimization of the population; it
| sterilized 64,000 citizens and provided the foundational
| model for the Nazi T4 program.
|
| In the context of IP, claiming it's "fair" to deny a
| creator compensation for their labor is just a way to
| subsidize an abstraction at the expense of individual
| incentive. When you replace objective market signals with
| a bureaucrat's (or an algorithm's) definition of equity,
| you don't get a more just system- you just get a system
| that has stopped solving for reality.
| Anonyneko wrote:
| Depends on the country. Many countries don't have fair use
| laws; thus, fan fiction is technically illegal there. In
| practice though you're not likely to be sued unless you're
| making a significant amount of money or damaging the brand
| value somehow.
| kennymeyers wrote:
| Amazing to see this on Hacker News. I've recently begun a startup
| called Sweet Shop, meant to fill the hole that Comixology left
| when they sold out. Comics are amazing, and they continue to hold
| an important place in global culture. Ashcans are still called
| that and most publishers still distribute them at cons.
|
| Comics or graphic novels or manga, or however you were introduced
| to them are becoming the defacto literature for good reason.
| People work hard to create them. Ashcans are a nice way to ease
| that burden of getting someone interested.
|
| (https://sweetshop.app if you're interested)
| Todd wrote:
| An early form of domain squatting
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Am I doing it right [1]?
|
| [1] (LLM-created "Ashcan Comics!") https://imgur.com/a/gTSvSp2
|
| (Hopefully a like-named comic doesn't already exist, ha ha. Also,
| seems the LLM thought "trashcan comics"?)
| BigTTYGothGF wrote:
| > Am I doing it right
|
| No.
| hiccuphippo wrote:
| Trademark trolls
| Triphibian wrote:
| My first ashcan was a mini-comic sized Atari Force promo that
| came, I believe, if you were part of the Atari fan club. Based on
| the size it could have come packed into the box of an Atari game,
| so I could have gotten it that way.
| omoikane wrote:
| > Changes to the United States trademark law in 1946 allowed
| publishers to register a trademark with an intent to use instead
| of a finished product
|
| I wonder if this came with some provision like publishers who
| didn't actually publish within a certain time after registering a
| trademark would have their trademarks invalidated.
|
| Currently it sounds like an unfortunate change, in the same way
| that non-practicing entities are able to get patents and extort
| money from people who actually make stuff.
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(page generated 2026-01-31 23:02 UTC)