: Re: On copyright laws and plots I was pondering a lot on the issue with copyrights on plots. Is having an identical plot infringing someone else's copyrighted work? I am fully aware that the character

Copyright law doesn't protect ideas, it protect specific arrangements of words. (Or pictures or musical notes or any other tangible expression, but that's not the point here.)

Easy case: If you copied a Harry Potter novel word for word, changed the author name to your own, and tried to print and sell it, you would be guilty of pretty clear and blatant copyright violation.

Opposite easy case: C. S. Lewis's Narnia books were about English school children who discover a world of magic. So are J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter books. But no one supposes for a moment that this is copyright violation, because there is very little similarity beyond "both involve English school children and magic".

Also pretty obviously, you can't just change one or two words in a 200-page book and say that this makes it different. The courts wouldn't take 30 seconds to rule against you there.

If you took a Harry Potter novel and changed all the names to things that don't sound at all like the original names, made it Peter Bronstein and he goes to Lancaster Academy and so on, and then you rewrote every paragraph in your own words so that there were no three words in a row that matched the original book, I don't think you could be prosecuted for copyright violation. You might well be criticized for being unoriginal. You would likely be guilty of plagiarism. But plagiarism is not a crime: it is an academic violation. Copyright violation means copying someone else's WORDS, not his ideas.

Isn't this how most Hollywood scripts are written? Take some other movie that was popular, change the names of the characters, shuffle a few details around, and boom, you have a new movie. Word processing software that lets you do mass search-and-replaces on text must have been a boon to Hollywood writers.

Load Full (0)

: List of wars someone could be a part of, if they were born a certain date I am trying to do research on a "military" character for a novel I am writing. I want him to have a great deal

@Annie587

Load Full 0 Comments

: In English we normally relate stories entirely in the past tense. "She had green eyes." If she's still alive presumably she still has green eyes, but that isn't the point. You're talking about

@Annie587

Load Full 0 Comments

: Compiling Articles in an ebook format I write a regular column (of about 800 words) for an industry publication that specialises in management matters. The columns deal with workplace matters

@Annie587

Load Full 2 Comments

: I've had quarrels with some of my friends where they say that some book or movie is bad because it depicts people doing evil things. And I say, But look HOW it depicts them! It clearly

: Re: On copyright laws and plots I was pondering a lot on the issue with copyrights on plots. Is having an identical plot infringing someone else's copyrighted work? I am fully aware that the character

More posts by @Annie587

: List of wars someone could be a part of, if they were born a certain date I am trying to do research on a "military" character for a novel I am writing. I want him to have a great deal

: In English we normally relate stories entirely in the past tense. "She had green eyes." If she's still alive presumably she still has green eyes, but that isn't the point. You're talking about

: Compiling Articles in an ebook format I write a regular column (of about 800 words) for an industry publication that specialises in management matters. The columns deal with workplace matters

: I've had quarrels with some of my friends where they say that some book or movie is bad because it depicts people doing evil things. And I say, But look HOW it depicts them! It clearly

Login to post a comment!

0 Comments

Back to top