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PaperclipPerfector  16hr ago (text post)   2158 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 6, 2026

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For those of you who play guitar, you have probably played a stratocaster at one point or another. Or maybe you haven't. The "stratocaster" shape (also called the S-body) is one of the most copied and cloned electric guitar designs in history. Back in 2009, Fender tried to trademark the body shape in the United states and failed. However, Fender recently went back on the offensive and filed a new suit in a German court.

The Düsseldorf court - regarded as one of the most influential intellectual property courts in Germany and Europe - confirmed that the Stratocaster® body design qualifies as a copyrighted work of applied art, reflecting original creative expression rather than purely functional design. The ruling aligns with a growing body of EU and German case law recognising that iconic product designs can benefit from full copyright protection, beyond traditional design rights. Crucially, it confirms that offering infringing products for sale into Germany or other countries of the EU is sufficient to establish liability, regardless of where a manufacturer or seller is based.

As a result of the ruling, Yiwu Philharmonic Musical Instruments Co. is prohibited from manufacturing, offering, or distributing guitars featuring the Stratocaster® body shape in Germany and the EU. Any future violations may result in fines of up to €250,000 per infringement, or up to six months’ imprisonment if fines cannot be enforced, subject to statutory limits.

The defendant did not show up, and it appears that Fender has won the German equivalent of a summary judgement.

Why is this in the culture war, you ask? Mostly because it represents another crack in the monolithic corporate-mass media culture that defined the United states from circa 1950 to 2010.

Leo Fender launched the Fender Electric Instrument Company in 1946, and created several iconic stringed instrument designs between 1950 and 1954, including the Telecaster guitar, Precision Bass, and Stratocaster guitar. The Stratocaster, in particular, set the musical world on fire due to its heavily contoured body, flexible pickup arrangement, and and tremolo bridge. Guitarists like Dick Dale, Jimi Hendrix, Eddie Van Halen, and Stevie Ray Vaughan took the instrument and created brand new, incredibly popular styles of music.

Things were going great for the strat, but the Fender Electric Instrument company wasn't having the best time. Leo Fender sold his interest in the company to the Columbia Records Distribution Corporation or CBS. Musicians derided instruments produced under the new ownership, and "pre-CBS" instruments developed a mystique that made them highly coveted prizes.

Eventually, CBS decided to unload the Fender brand, and a car dealership-turned private equity company called Servco Pacific Capital picked it up. This launched ushered in a cambrian explosion of product lines meant to ruthlessly segment the market into every possible price point. Around this time, Fender started running into a real problem. It turned out that other people could also make guitars. Japanese companies started undercutting Fender with clones of their most popular products. Some companies would attempt to double down on quality, but not Fender. Instead, they bought out the biggest clone company and rebranded them as their own "Squier" product line, turned to aggressive IP protection (securing a trademark on their headstock design in 1991), and engaged in a public marketing blitz to make sure that the musical community understood value of a Real Fender™ over an inferior clone. This worked pretty well for a while, but eventually Fender started seeing real competition from above and below. While they could buy out low-end competitors, all it did was incentivize more clone builders to spring up in countries across the world with cheap labor. Indonesia, Korea, Sri Lanka, and China all started cranking out Fender clones at a fraction of the prices Fender was charging. At the same time, "boutique" builders like Suhr started nibbling away at the high end. Fender started losing its mystique. When a $300 guitar with a $50 setup could rival a pre-CBS guitar for ergonomics and tone, enthusiastic amateurs stopped dreaming about the day that they could get a Real Fender™. Instead of shelling out for a Real Fender™, serious musicians (and rich guys) would go straight for the boutique builds instead.

The end result is that the Fender brand is a shadow of what it used to be, largely propped up by a shrinking-but-affluent market, while their leadership is either unwilling or unable to branch out.

The Stratocaster suit, in particular, offends me in a way that's somewhat hard to articulate. If you've ever built a slab-bodied instrument before, you start to realize that there are only so many ways to accomplish the task. If you want an instrument that's comfortable to play while sitting, you need to cut a contour that matches the curve of a person's thigh. If you want to play high notes, you need to cut material out below the neck. You need a projection above the neck to attach the strap at the instrument's balance point, but you don't want to add too much weight, which results in a "horn". You need room for electronics, and you probably want a contour at the top for comfort while playing as well. In the end, there are only a handful of designs that can flow from those requirements. Unless you're a psychopath like Ned Steinberger, whatever you build is probably going to end up looking similar to a strat.

Fender isn't the only company out there suffering from a similar malady. In fact, it's almost identical to the trajectory of the Harley Davidson corporation. Both became aspirational, iconic symbols of Americana. Both started banking on tradition and mystique, while trying and failing to hold back the tide by buying out competition (see: Buell). Both they eventually ended up trapped by their own early success.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately, as I drive back and forth to band practice. I see far fewer motorcycles on the road than I did a decade ago. Musicians still exist, but the community of "instrument players" around me is going increasingly gray. Young people generally don't create music, or they stick to various flavors of electronica that they can produce on their own.

At the same time, the entire concept of "brand" has been eroding. In my youth, a brand generally traded on its reputation and relied on customer goodwill for its continued existence. Broadly speaking, 80s and 90s America trusted "brands". We hung out at the Dairy Queen. When somebody got a new guitar, we'd be excited to hear how that slick new Stratocaster sounded. A guy with a Harley was the coolest guy we knew. Craftsman tools were the last set you'd ever have to buy. Corporate consumer culture was mercantile, but at least it felt like you were getting something out of it.

In 2026, the American consumer/vendor relationship seems broken. Everything is owned by an increasingly small number of conglomerates who wear different skin suits to con suckers into buying from them, and not from those other guys, who are also them. It's starting to feel like a home-grown version of Chaebols, or Zaibatsu, and people are checking out.

This has has some real downstream effects. In a secular, essentially constructed nation like the US, the necessity of commerce and the prosperity that flows from it is one of the few universal experiences that citizens of this nation have. It feels like we're losing our lingua franca, however thin and materialistic it might be. At the same time, I can't tell what is cause and what is effect. Are the "lifestyle" companies all converging into a sleezy car dealer modality because it's efficient, or because Americans have stopped engaging with the idea of "lifestyle"? If it's the latter, is it because of a broader rejection of materialism, or because we're all fuckin' broke?

I don't think I have any answer to this, but if there's a moral to this story, maybe don't buy a Fender.

Another Intellectual Property disaster:

For the unfortunate fellows and fellas who aren't following the Italian brainrot universe, Tung Tung Tung Sahur is having legal issues (Fall Guys video for those illiterate or with short attention spans). Not one, but two companies are claiming to own the titular character, suing everyone including each other.

What's surprising about this case (to people who still believe in IP's integrity), neither company owns Mr. Sahur: AI-generated works are public domain in most countries including Indonesia (a draft regulation to change this has been proposed but not yet accepted), as they should be, in part because they themselves are trained on others' copyrighted data.

Yet the court case is delayed until October. In the meantime, he has been removed from the Roblox game Steal a Brainrot, played by over 25 million children and pedophiles (won't somebody think of the pedophiles?) This is no small drama: the game is so popular apparently a movie is being made about it, and by the time this is resolved, it may be too late to include him in the cast.

I just don't know how anyone can look at this and not feel...utterly dejected by the state of society. Copyright is a scourge, abused by large corporations and not actually benefiting small creators, and should be severely curtailed if not fully eliminated.

AI-generated works are public domain in most countries

This sounds suspicious to me. I have no idea about Indonesia, but the usual criterion for copyright is creativity, not the tool. If you type a long prompt and then iterate and select after many generations, then it should be enough human creativity in there. And how the model creator got the training data should have no bearing on this. As long as it's not regurgitating a particular copyright protected character or image in that specific output, there should be no problem.

You didn't specify why any of these actors are claiming they own this character. That seems quite a big omission. If one of them is the original individual who used AI to make this character's image, then I'm actually on their side. It is a creative act to specify this nontrivial character form and presumably the prompt wasn't two or three words and they probably didn't pick the very first result.

AI-generated works are public domain in most countries

This sounds suspicious to me. I have no idea about Indonesia, but the usual criterion for copyright is creativity, not the tool.

In its complaint, Spyder Games quotes a 2023 statement of policy from the US Copyright Office.

If a work's traditional elements of authorship were produced by a machine, the work lacks human authorship and the Office will not register it. For example, when an AI technology receives solely a prompt from a human and produces complex written, visual, or musical works in response, the “traditional elements of authorship” are determined and executed by the technology—not the human user.… When an AI technology determines the expressive elements of its output, the generated material is not the product of human authorship. As a result, that material is not protected by copyright.

This statement remains in force, though the Copyright Office is continuing to investigate the topic.

You didn't specify why any of these actors are claiming they own this character.

Spyder Games alleges in its complaint that the characters are AI-generated, but Mementum Lab actually denies this allegation in its amended counterclaim.

[1] Defendant Mementum Lab describes itself as “the (Brainrot) Memes Agency”. [2] Even though the law provides that AI-generated content isn’t protectible by copyright, defendant claims that it owns or controls the copyrights to over a dozen brainrots in the Game that were generated by artificial intelligence tools (and more than 50% of the entire “brainrot universe”). [3] For example, defendant contends that it owns or controls the copyrights to the brainrots known as “Tung Tung Sahor” and “U Din Din Din Din Dun Ma Din Din Din Dun”.

Answering Paragraph 7: [1] Defendant admits the allegation in the first sentence of this paragraph. [2] While the allegation in the second sentence of this paragraph that the law provides that AI-generated content isn’t protectible by copyright calls for a legal conclusion, to the extent a response is required, Defendant denies this allegation on information and belief, admits the allegation in this sentence that it claims it holds copyrights relating to over a dozen brainrot characters in the Game, and otherwise denies the allegations in this sentence. [3] Defendant admits the allegation in the third sentence of this paragraph that it contends it holds the copyrights relating to the referenced brainrot characters.

On page 9 of the amended counterclaim begins a five-paragraph section with the title "Defendant’s Creators Use an Involved, Artistic Process to Create Some of the Most Iconic Brainrot Characters, including Tung Tung Sahur", in which AI is not mentioned at all.

Policy statements are not dispositive. Cite the statute.

The statement mostly cites court decisions in support.

In the Office's view, it is well-established that copyright can protect only material that is the product of human creativity. Most fundamentally, the term “author”, which is used in both the Constitution and the Copyright Act, excludes non-humans. The Office's registration policies and regulations reflect statutory and judicial guidance on this issue.

In its leading case on authorship, the Supreme Court used language excluding non-humans in interpreting Congress's constitutional power to provide “authors” the exclusive right to their “writings”. In Burrow-Giles Lithographic Co. v. Sarony, a defendant accused of making unauthorized copies of a photograph argued that the expansion of copyright protection to photographs by Congress was unconstitutional because “a photograph is not a writing nor the production of an author” but is instead created by a camera. The Court disagreed, holding that there was “no doubt” the Constitution's Copyright Clause permitted photographs to be subject to copyright, “so far as they are representatives of original intellectual conceptions of the author”. The Court defined an “author” as “he to whom anything owes its origin; originator; maker; one who completes a work of science or literature”. It repeatedly referred to such “authors” as human, describing authors as a class of “persons” and a copyright as “the exclusive right of a man to the production of his own genius or intellect”.

Federal appellate courts have reached a similar conclusion when interpreting the text of the Copyright Act, which provides copyright protection only for “works of authorship”. The Ninth Circuit has held that a book containing words “authored by non-human spiritual beings” can only qualify for copyright protection if there is “human selection and arrangement of the revelations”. In another case, it held that a monkey cannot register a copyright in photos it captures with a camera because the Copyright Act refers to an author's “children”, “widow”, “grandchildren”, and “widower”—terms that “all imply humanity and necessarily exclude animals”.

Modern AI systems are so far beyond anything we have seen before that I would treat these court opinions as advisory.

I want this to be the case that makes it to the Supreme Court. Meme magic is real.

This seems useful for the case of a particular image, but I believe copyright extends to the full fictional character, like I can't draw e.g. Lion King characters even in novel settings and poses and make a product out of it, and this is not just due to trademarks, as I understand.

Now in that case, we'd need to know the very first original brainrot images. If the person created one version without AI, then also prompted some AIs to make the character, that presumably doesn't reset the copyright. Like, if I describe Simba's appearance to AI and it draws me a Lion, it doesn't mean it's now public domain. Of course one would have to prove there was a non AI version.

But if the fictional characters can be copyrighted as such, not specific renditions of them, then does the specific execution of a particular depiction really matter? The creativity is in the invention of the character itself.

What are the traditional elements, when it comes to the design of a character in the abstract, as opposed to the creation of a particular image as artwork?

(It's also a question what is with 3D renderers like Blender, which use complex shaders to make the final image. Is that traditional? How about photoshop and generative content fill? Does it have to involve mouse movements that move on top of the image? Or does it have to be deterministically predictable what it will look like if I click a button labeled "Render" as opposed to "Generate"? What's up with procedurally generated textures and terrains?)

If one of them is the original individual who used AI to make this character's image, then I'm actually on their side.

Mementum is partnered with the individual who created him, but they’re a corporation based in France. Judging by that and their name, they buy others’ fads to make money, for example by suing others for using them without a license.

There’s a valid argument that Tung Tung Tung Sahur shouldn’t be in any game without permission, and maybe this is less popular, but I still disagree. Steal a Brainrot doesn’t just include Mr. Sahur or make him the focus, he’s one of many characters. I’d rather see more remixes and compilation games like Super Smash Bros without insane corporate backing and licenses. If Tung Tung Tung Sahur’s creator was broke I’d want him to get some revenue from somewhere, but I believe he’s making more than enough from the character’s likeness already, why does he need more?

Actually, I’ll accept if Steal a Brainrot can’t make money off Mr. Sahur’s likeness, by for example selling him specifically. But at least any free media should be allowed to include him without being DMCAd.

but I believe he’s making more than enough from the character’s likeness already, why does he need more?

I believe Roblox has made enough money already, why do they need more?

It’s not only Roblox but mainly Spyder Games. However I agree: I’ll accept if there’s a different way to fund them that digital games shouldn’t have copyright either, and I already believe Spyder Games shouldn’t be allowed to DMCA Steal a Brainrot copycats.

At least in the United States, the specific rule is :

If a work’s traditional elements of authorship were produced by a machine, the work lacks human authorship and the Office will not register it. For example, when an AI technology receives solely a prompt from a human and produces complex written, visual, or musical works in response, the “traditional elements of authorship” are determined and executed by the technology—not the human user.

I don't know how well that will stand up to legal challenge. It's very rare to just give a prompt and get back a complex output. There's a lot of design, iteration, and thought.

Right. Generally, as I understand, copyright is very generous (when no AI is involved), in the sense that as long as you exercise the slightest creativity, they don't question stuff like "but you just randomly threw a pile of trash on the floor, that's not a sculpture" or "you just put a red square on white background, that's just geometry, not an art piece" etc. because that would kill a lot of contemporary "what even is art anyway" type of art.

So it seems like if you use a ControlNet, or any similar guidance, you're good for sure. But

For example, if a user instructs a text-generating technology to “write a poem about copyright law in the style of William Shakespeare,” she can expect the system to generate text that is recognizable as a poem, mentions copyright, and resembles Shakespeare’s style. But the technology will decide the rhyming pattern, the words in each line, and the structure of the text. When an AI technology determines the expressive elements of its output, the generated material is not the product of human authorship. As a result, that material is not protected by copyright and must be disclaimed in a registration application.

Now if the user types "change the rhyme pattern to ... and make the lines shorter" and gets another poem fitting this requirement. Under the historical broad interpretation of "creativity" (which doesn't have to be impressive or painstakingly high effort), this would have to count as enough creative input I think.

Same with images. Today's AI chat apps can do iterative work on images that wasn't available in 2023 (when the doc was written), you could just re-generate with the same or a different prompt, but real editing wasn't possible. Today, you can tell ChatGPT what to change, and it will only change that part and keep the rest the same (as much as it can). So if you do 3 such iterations, each time specifically naming an aspect you want changed, that has to be enough... And what about selection? Is that exercise of creative judgment enough? Generate 10 Shakespeares and pick the one you like best? Based on the above text, I guess no. But what if you change your prompt inbetween?

I highly doubt the guy just sat down to the computer, typed out the perfect prompt for Tung Tung Sahur and got an image and he ran with that. He likely experimented with lots of weird and absurd character ideas and this one came out the funniest and he wrote and rewrote that prompt to make it maximally funny. It's absurd to deny him authorship for this.

That would be broadly my suspicion as well, with the caveat that the government and AI lobbyists may decide that the wind is blowing the wrong way and that some concessions on copyright may be needed to forestall serious rebellion/challenges to the training of AI as a whole.

Sorry I don't understand the polarity of which way you think it will go. You mean anti-AI people will get it their way and govt and pro-AI people will retreat, and refuse to grant "authorship" to AI-generated stuff, where AI-generated is broadly interpreted? Because that takes away the commercial value of AI art, hence AI art-making won't be profitable and hence not done, and hence human artists can keep making money?

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