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Interesting copyright question.
Dec. 21st, 2005 04:19 amBouncing off an idea in ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
eryn_'s LJ about fanfiction, here's my interesting idea.
Software companies sue each other over look and feel of each other's products. (Only MIT, by the way, would have a hexadecimal protest chant.)
Do authors have "look and feel" to their works?
Imagine the following 3 scenarios.
1. Inspired by the popular movies, you write a book starring Harry, Hermione, and Ron, three young wizards battling an evil wizard named Voldemort. You publish it yourself on your mimeograph and hawk it outside on your front lawn for $5 a copy, touting it as "The rousing conclusion, book 7 in the series!"
2. Inspired by the popular movies, you knit, crochet, and sew some outfits from your own patterns that seem redolent to you of "wizardry." You then pose some friends wearing the outfits outside, holding wood-stained dowel rod "magic wands" in dramatic poses. By sheer coincidence, your friends happen to be a brunet boy, a redheaded boy, and a brunette girl with very curly hair. You sell prints of the pictures for $5 each. People who see the pictures almost always compare them to the main characters in the Harry Potter books.
3. Inspired by the popular movies, you create a beautiful dance sequence which you envision as "the story of a young man's triumph over evil." You sell tickets to watch you perform your dance, and people in the audience will frequently compare the storyline of the dance to the storyline of the Harry Potter books.
Which of these is "infringing" on the works of Rowling?
Rowling created a series of books, and as the creator of those books was allowed to sell the rights to them. In order to protect those rights, and her right to create further works in the series, anyone else who writes a story with a character named "Harry Potter" who is a wizard and other obvious similarities for profit will get their pants sued off.
The question now becomes-- what exactly isn't infringement? Rowling can't own the word "wizard" or even the idea of a skinny teenaged wizard with messy dark hair (Duane got there first with Kit Callahan of the Young Wizards series).
We've had plenty of examples of different amounts of leeway for stories written based on an author's work; when are we going to see what's allowably "derivative" in other media?
eryn_'s LJ about fanfiction, here's my interesting idea.Software companies sue each other over look and feel of each other's products. (Only MIT, by the way, would have a hexadecimal protest chant.)
Do authors have "look and feel" to their works?
Imagine the following 3 scenarios.
1. Inspired by the popular movies, you write a book starring Harry, Hermione, and Ron, three young wizards battling an evil wizard named Voldemort. You publish it yourself on your mimeograph and hawk it outside on your front lawn for $5 a copy, touting it as "The rousing conclusion, book 7 in the series!"
2. Inspired by the popular movies, you knit, crochet, and sew some outfits from your own patterns that seem redolent to you of "wizardry." You then pose some friends wearing the outfits outside, holding wood-stained dowel rod "magic wands" in dramatic poses. By sheer coincidence, your friends happen to be a brunet boy, a redheaded boy, and a brunette girl with very curly hair. You sell prints of the pictures for $5 each. People who see the pictures almost always compare them to the main characters in the Harry Potter books.
3. Inspired by the popular movies, you create a beautiful dance sequence which you envision as "the story of a young man's triumph over evil." You sell tickets to watch you perform your dance, and people in the audience will frequently compare the storyline of the dance to the storyline of the Harry Potter books.
Which of these is "infringing" on the works of Rowling?
Rowling created a series of books, and as the creator of those books was allowed to sell the rights to them. In order to protect those rights, and her right to create further works in the series, anyone else who writes a story with a character named "Harry Potter" who is a wizard and other obvious similarities for profit will get their pants sued off.
The question now becomes-- what exactly isn't infringement? Rowling can't own the word "wizard" or even the idea of a skinny teenaged wizard with messy dark hair (Duane got there first with Kit Callahan of the Young Wizards series).
We've had plenty of examples of different amounts of leeway for stories written based on an author's work; when are we going to see what's allowably "derivative" in other media?
