Are spoilers protected by copyright law?
August 16, 2016 10:21 AM   Subscribe

The last scene of the sixth season of The Walking Dead was a cliffhanger in its purest (if not most literal) sense -- the newly introduced villain Negan (played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan) bashed his barbed-wire-wrapped baseball bat (a.k.a. "Lucille") repeatedly into one of the good guy's heads, presumably killing that person. But who was it? AMC doesn't want you to know, arguing that it is "the most critical plot information in the unreleased next season of The Walking Dead" and sending at least one cease-and-desist letter to a fan site, claiming copyright protection against the release of spoilers.
posted by Etrigan (42 comments total) 4 users marked this as a favorite
 
nobody told them that Kirkman spoiled it a few years back in issue 100?
posted by entropicamericana at 10:25 AM on August 16, 2016 [11 favorites]


AV Club's copyright analysis is terrible. I think they quote one lawyer in support of a position she actually opposes (because the language she's citing doesn't actually support the position).
posted by praemunire at 10:29 AM on August 16, 2016 [2 favorites]


Ha, I was about to say the same. Is the comic infringing on the series's copyright?

(In reply to #1).
posted by Captain Fetid at 10:29 AM on August 16, 2016


I'm calling it: a bashing with Lucille is the new jumping the shark.
posted by Pendragon at 10:31 AM on August 16, 2016 [4 favorites]


It's too bad. I really like Jeffrey Dean Morgan.
posted by maxsparber at 10:32 AM on August 16, 2016 [4 favorites]


Would they dare pull the ol' bait-and-switch with a certain character a second time?


Would they dare
?
posted by gottabefunky at 10:32 AM on August 16, 2016 [3 favorites]


TV Execs: "You are forbidden from discussing our hit show when it's not on the air." OK, if you insist.

I can't decide if getting an MBA makes you stupid, or if only stupid people get MBA's.
posted by sbutler at 10:33 AM on August 16, 2016 [8 favorites]


I can't decide if getting an MBA makes you stupid, or if only stupid people get MBA's.

yes
posted by entropicamericana at 10:34 AM on August 16, 2016 [26 favorites]


SPOILER: negan is actually beating a dead horse while shouting 'this show treats its viewers poorly'
posted by beerperson at 10:37 AM on August 16, 2016 [41 favorites]


Are spoilers protected by copyright law?

Spoiler: No.
posted by Zonker at 10:39 AM on August 16, 2016 [6 favorites]


what if they really decide to change it up and have negan beat himself to death while shouting "this is what happens when you meet a stranger in the alps?"
posted by entropicamericana at 10:39 AM on August 16, 2016 [14 favorites]


I can tell you who they beat to death with the bat:

Everybody. And nobody. It's Schrodinger's bat right now, and they have spent the summer checking the web to see how people react to various scenarios. They won't make their decision until the day of, secure in the knowledge that they picked the right person, the person they would get the least flack about.

So probably Negan's going to just beat himself to death and Maggie and Glen will hug and the show runners will wonder why the audience is angry anyway.
posted by maxsparber at 10:42 AM on August 16, 2016 [3 favorites]


Maybe it was just a walker than snuck in unannounced at the last second.
posted by gottabefunky at 10:43 AM on August 16, 2016 [2 favorites]


a bashing with Lucille is the new jumping the shark.

Wait, is this a spoiler for the Walking Dead or the new season of Arrested Development?
posted by FJT at 10:44 AM on August 16, 2016 [16 favorites]


something something lost a hand to a loose seal?
posted by some loser at 10:45 AM on August 16, 2016 [3 favorites]


This Washington Post Article seems a little better researched.
posted by gryftir at 10:45 AM on August 16, 2016


Naming either guitars or baseball bats after girls is pretty cornball stuff, really.
posted by thelonius at 10:45 AM on August 16, 2016 [2 favorites]


I'm calling it: a bashing with Lucille is the new jumping the shark.

It definitely was the tipping point for me with the comics - I hung on grimly up to that point, but the Lucille scene made me stop and ask why the heck I was doing it to myself. Whatever interesting character development and interaction the series had, by the point of the Lucille scene the suffering porn just overwhelmed everything else for me. I'm okay with violent stories, but the author needs to give us reason to believe s/he is using that violence judiciously, that the payoff requires it. I finally lost faith in Kirkman at that scene.

Still, though I haven't been watching the show I have been occasionally keeping up with the plot - mostly because I've been curious as to whether or not they'd keep this scene, and wondering how fans would react if they did. Waiting for this scene to come up has felt kind of like waiting for GoT's red wedding (though I'm annoyed that they decided to make it a cliffhanger, as if the emotional impact of the damn thing wasn't intense enough ... had that GoT episode left with us wondering who had stabbed whom with what I would have been flipping tables).
posted by DingoMutt at 10:45 AM on August 16, 2016 [6 favorites]


Naming either guitars or baseball bats after girls is pretty cornball stuff, really.

Well, I named my cornballer Lucille, so we have the trifecta of Walking Dead, Arrested Development, and BB King.
posted by maxsparber at 10:47 AM on August 16, 2016 [9 favorites]


Every damn time!
posted by DingoMutt at 10:48 AM on August 16, 2016 [7 favorites]


Or maybe it's like The Simpsons and it's Maggie again.
posted by FJT at 10:49 AM on August 16, 2016 [2 favorites]


At this point we're all just hate watching it anyway, so really it doesn't matter who dies.
posted by bondcliff at 10:57 AM on August 16, 2016 [9 favorites]


> Whatever interesting character development and interaction the series had

Funnily enough, the comic - imo - started declining with increasing rapidity shortly after the Lucille bash, but the last few issues were surprisingly (surprisingly!) good on the character development front.
posted by porpoise at 10:57 AM on August 16, 2016


There really needs to be a big, toothy law against making trivially invalid legal threats. Anyone who has ever heard of copyright law knows this is absurd, yet the threat still has teeth because it's expensive to defend against. There needs to be a third party agency (probably government) who steps in and squashes this kind of thing. Personally, I think it should lead to both large fines to the client involved and ethical violations for the lawyers involved, potentially leading to disbarment.
posted by Mitrovarr at 11:25 AM on August 16, 2016 [7 favorites]


AMC doesn't want you to know

SPOILER! You just violated the copyright of AMC and the AV Club, by revealing this critical plot information from their cease-and-desist letter and article.
posted by sfenders at 11:26 AM on August 16, 2016 [4 favorites]


A prediction is not, by any stretch, a spoiler.

"if we post our Lucille Victim prediction and we’re right, AMC says they will sue us"

So the threat is even more ridiculous than the hypothetical situation of a website posting details from a script leak, or what have you. I can't even begin to understand what AMC's legal team is getting at regarding this issue. We're not allowed to discuss our ideas of where a show might go in the future on-line, according to them?
posted by Wetterschneider at 11:30 AM on August 16, 2016 [1 favorite]


nobody told them that Kirkman spoiled it a few years back in issue 100?

The show has played loose with the original timeline and has substituted various characters in different roles so there is good reason to suggest that the TV writers could go a different direction. Most of the people that I know are very aware who is on the receiving end in the original story.
posted by dances with hamsters at 12:02 PM on August 16, 2016 [2 favorites]


Maybe we should start posting names of possible victims Russian Roulette Style? Winner is the last name before the Cease and Desist Letter.
posted by Badgermann at 12:09 PM on August 16, 2016 [1 favorite]


Or maybe it's like The Simpsons and it's Maggie again.

"Well, I couldn't possibly solve this mystery... can you?"
posted by tobascodagama at 12:14 PM on August 16, 2016 [3 favorites]


The show has played loose with the original timeline and has substituted various characters in different roles so there is good reason to suggest that the TV writers could go a different direction. Most of the people that I know are very aware who is on the receiving end in the original story.

OTOH, knowledge of this fact made the cheap mid-season fakeout even cheaper and fakier.
posted by tobascodagama at 12:16 PM on August 16, 2016 [3 favorites]


The show has played loose with the original timeline and has substituted various characters in different roles so there is good reason to suggest that the TV writers could go a different direction.

Scott Gimple (showrunner) has specifically said that he uses the comic only as a source of ideas and doesn't consider it remotely canonical for the TV show. Robert Kirkman (comic writer) has said that he's cool with that.
posted by Etrigan at 12:18 PM on August 16, 2016 [1 favorite]


As if AMC hasn't sunk to the bottom in my eyes, this pretty much cements the hole I've buried them in. Christ, this makes Disney's legal team seem fair-minded and restrained.

Also, is this where I can write about the various gruesome fates I would like to see visited on Gimple and Kirkman for wasting so much of my time? I did eventually give up on this series, despite the protests of my wife who has stuck by it.
posted by Ber at 12:29 PM on August 16, 2016 [3 favorites]


this is indeed a disturbing universe
posted by beerperson at 12:30 PM on August 16, 2016 [3 favorites]


nobody told them that Kirkman spoiled it a few years back in issue 100?

If the showrunners know what's good for them they'll change it.
posted by Anonymous at 12:44 PM on August 16, 2016


If the showrunners know what's good for them they'll change it.

so it's definitely not being changed, then
posted by entropicamericana at 12:50 PM on August 16, 2016 [5 favorites]


You don't need a spoiler, you don't need to read the comic. You just have to understand that the makers of the Walking Dead have no original bone left in their body, and so the character that gets killed is the same as it always is -

the cop nearing his last day on the force
the soldier about to rotate out of hell and back to the world
the person who got 5 minutes to say they are at peace with the world

In this case, the person that got some extra attention and character development in the last episode or three, and the one that seemed to be marching forward with a new life...

I'll be shocked if I didn't spot the dead person a mile away just from the trope.
posted by Muddler at 1:02 PM on August 16, 2016 [11 favorites]


In this case, the person that got some extra attention and character development in the last episode or three, and the one that seemed to be marching forward with a new life...


This is also who I think it will be
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 6:33 PM on August 16, 2016


Also I hate this show and wish I could stop watching
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 6:33 PM on August 16, 2016 [2 favorites]


It's possible! I stopped. In my Walking Dead cannon, you-know-who is still stuck under a dumpster, neither dead nor alive like Schroedinger's Cat, because I never watched the next episode.
posted by mmoncur at 7:57 PM on August 16, 2016 [4 favorites]


the person who got 5 minutes to say they are at peace with the world

If they do this, then all of the ridiculous 'this death will gut the viewers! no one will ever be the same!' (not real quotes, but basically) nonsense that Gimple et al. have been pushing will be even more laughable.

so weird to hate on WD on the blue instead of the purple
posted by gatorae at 8:21 PM on August 16, 2016 [1 favorite]


Spoiler: No.
Betteridge already spoiled it for me.
posted by Obscure Reference at 7:37 AM on August 17, 2016


Here's my prediction, since I still can't buy JDM as the big bad. (He will forever be a hybrid of Denny Duquette and the dad from Weeds in my mind.)

When everyone looks good and terrified, he'll burst into a huge chuckle, all "ooh, you should have seen the looks on your faces!" Then he'll tell some ridiculous dad jokes, and the party will begin as everyone shows off their fancy walker-killing weapons. There will be an actual spiked baseball bat, like in Z-Nation, and who knows what other quiet magical tools, i.e. not guns.
posted by ktkt at 11:12 PM on August 17, 2016


« Older " vision of a world full of code, a cyborg world"   |   Stand your ground laws don't include domestic... Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments