6 ms·

I'm pretty sure that if you rewrote Harry Potter from scratch with new names and wording (redoing the implementation) and published that, you would still get in

by Hermel 9y ago

I'm pretty sure that if you rewrote Harry Potter from scratch with new names and wording (redoing the implementation) and published that, you would still get in trouble. So copyright is somewhat broader than you think.

indolering 9y ago
Nope, it's not a violation of copyright.
- thaumasiotes 9y ago
  Copyright law apparently makes an explicit exception for translations. (i.e. translations are subject to copyright despite usually sharing literally no wording with the original.) It isn't clear to me whether that only covers works in a foreign language that claim to be translations of some other work, or whether it would apply to any foreign-language work that duplicates the plot of an earlier copyrighted work.
  - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
    The thing to remember with copyright is it covers copying. If you read a book and rewrite it in another language you didn't copy it, you copied the ideas, perhaps, but copyright covers expression and not ideas.
    - shagie 9y ago
      Creating a translation of a work is a derivative work itself. This applies to porting software from C++ to Java as well as translating of Harry Potter to French.
      - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
        Re-writing a story and translation are different things entirely. If I describe at an abstracted level the working of a C++ program to you and you implement it in Java then you have not copied the work, nor even created a derivative, ergo clean-room implementation being a thing.
    - thaumasiotes 9y ago
      Like I said, the copyright law makes an explicit exception for "translations". Copyright also covers translations, despite the fact that they share none of the "expression" of the original.
- nobodyorother 9y ago
  Nope, it's too wishy-washy for you to judge the potential for violation in a forum post. The 4 criteria have to be interpreted with respect to the situation at hand, and hypotheticals are almost impossible to interpret rationally. Republishing single sentences has previously been found to be a copyright violation, and copyright has been granted on as few as three notes. On the other hand (to pick a recent example), 50 Shades of Grey, originally written as a Twilight fan-fiction (derivative by definition) was never pursued for copyright violation (AFAIK).
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
lightedman 9y ago
That didn't happen when Disney ripped off Kimba the White Lion and made The Lion King.
- thaumasiotes 9y ago
  It also didn't happen when Terry Brooks reskinned the lord of the rings as "The Sword of Shannara".
  - freehunter 9y ago
    Or when EL James rewrote Twilight without the vampires and called it 50 Shades of Grey.
    - robmiller 9y ago
      Or when Disney animated Doc Hollywood and called it Cars
      - saagarjha 9y ago
        Cars was a Pixar movie.
        beedogs 9y ago
        Pixar was already owned by Disney when Cars was released.
        saagarjha 9y ago
        Wikipedia[1] says otherwise: > [Cars was] Pixar's final independently-produced motion picture before its purchase by Disney in May 2006 [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cars_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cars_(film)
    - thaumasiotes 9y ago
      I was under the impression that the characters in Twilight never actually have sex, while the characters in 50 Shades of Grey have a lot?
linker3000 9y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanya_Grotter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanya_Grotter
MatthewWilkes 9y ago
Of course there are grey areas, and it's appropriate that they're decided by the courts. I'm sure nobody would argue that a lossy copy of a work protected by copyright can still infringe, even if the lossiness was deliberate and intended to differentiate it from the original to a minimal degree. Copyright of literary characters is one of the harder ones to define, and perhaps a system more like patents would be more appropriate for them, but that's neither here nor there. Let's stick to computer science for a while. Imagine I have come up with a sorting algorithm for integers with significantly better time complexity than existing options. I can describe that in any number of programming languages, in natural language, in pictographs, etc. It's a skill that people can learn, or a tool that could be embedded in silicon and used for financial gain. Doesn't that sound more like an invention than a creative work? Shouldn't patents be the best fit? Don't get me wrong, copyright and patent systems the world over hace significant class, but for us as software engineers to declare that patents shouldn't apply to our work because it is somehow fundamentally different to the other science and engineering disciplines is just arrogance.
- slaymaker1907 9y ago
  The problem is that algorithms and math are explicitly forbidden from being patented. This is why most software patents include some sort of clause specifying that the work is done using a computer. The patent office has simply done a lousy job when it comes to software patents.
  - lkbm 9y ago
    I hadn't heard it explained this way before, but it explains so much. So, for example, if I came up with a better sorting algorithm, I couldn't patent Luca Sort, but I could patent using a computer to run the Luca Sort algorithm? Or am I misunderstanding?
    - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
      That's not how it works in Europe; just saying "done on a computer" is explicitly not enough. There's a concept called "technical effect" that's been worked over in the courts and well developed in the last decade (I'll leave you to look it up, eg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_patents_under_the_European_Patent_Convention https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_patents_under_the_E...). I'm a bit out of the loop but whilst USA started letting pretty much anything in there seem to have tightened up over the years. There's a parallel with business methods too. In both cases there been a move towards a middleground - harmonisation. Personally I feel the USA position is far worse and this harmonisation is not good; liberalisation of soft-pat and business method patents on Europe would be a big loss IMO.
moomin 9y ago
Oh, I don't know. JK Rowling rewrote Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and added wizards and no-one's complained. :p
- lightlyused 9y ago
  You must be kidding, Harry Potter is nothing like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, unless you consider magical candy to be the most important part of the story. :)
  - moomin 9y ago
    Philosopher's Stone has quite a few direct correspondences. The letter/golden ticket, the factory/Hogwarts (I could go on, but it would require me to reread it, not that that would be a bad thing). The unjustly discriminated against kid is another Dahl trope (although not one in CF per se). And more generally, the style is very similar. Beyond the first book it diverges, however.
    - bluGill 9y ago
      Copyright considers things a unique work if less than something like 10% is copied. Harry Potter is in no danger. Even changing the golden ticket to a letter is enough to get around infringement there. Of course consult a lawyer if the 10% figure above it important to your copy - there are lots of details that I don't know.
      - moomin 9y ago
        I only felt the need to establish enough similarity to demonstrate that the joke was funny, not so much the Dahl estate could take Rowling's hard-earned money. :)
logfromblammo 9y ago
The literary characters and other proper nouns in a series may be covered by trademark. Copyright only covers the specific expression of the text. Patent, of course, does not apply to fiction plots. So if you scrupulously avoided character names and quotes from the original work, you can indeed rewrite the same plot and story arcs in your own words, and not be in conflict with the law. That will be of no solace when lawyers for the Harry Potter media empire pursue you anyway. Just as you did not break the law in a technical, letter-of-the-law sense, so is it also possible for an entity with great wealth to make someone with lesser wealth miserable, without breaking the law. It is far easier to rip off a nobody, or someone who is dead. For instance, rewrite Amber without Corwin or Merlin in it; make superficial modifications to all named characters and locations. Maybe you get some fans that never read the original; maybe you get some that did read it, and like your version better.

by Hermel 9y ago

indolering 9y ago

Nope, it's not a violation of copyright.

thaumasiotes 9y ago
Copyright law apparently makes an explicit exception for translations. (i.e. translations are subject to copyright despite usually sharing literally no wording with the original.) It isn't clear to me whether that only covers works in a foreign language that claim to be translations of some other work, or whether it would apply to any foreign-language work that duplicates the plot of an earlier copyrighted work.
- pbhjpbhj 9y ago
  The thing to remember with copyright is it covers copying. If you read a book and rewrite it in another language you didn't copy it, you copied the ideas, perhaps, but copyright covers expression and not ideas.
  - shagie 9y ago
    Creating a translation of a work is a derivative work itself. This applies to porting software from C++ to Java as well as translating of Harry Potter to French.
    - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
      Re-writing a story and translation are different things entirely. If I describe at an abstracted level the working of a C++ program to you and you implement it in Java then you have not copied the work, nor even created a derivative, ergo clean-room implementation being a thing.
  - thaumasiotes 9y ago
    Like I said, the copyright law makes an explicit exception for "translations". Copyright also covers translations, despite the fact that they share none of the "expression" of the original.
nobodyorother 9y ago
Nope, it's too wishy-washy for you to judge the potential for violation in a forum post. The 4 criteria have to be interpreted with respect to the situation at hand, and hypotheticals are almost impossible to interpret rationally. Republishing single sentences has previously been found to be a copyright violation, and copyright has been granted on as few as three notes. On the other hand (to pick a recent example), 50 Shades of Grey, originally written as a Twilight fan-fiction (derivative by definition) was never pursued for copyright violation (AFAIK).

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

lightedman 9y ago

That didn't happen when Disney ripped off Kimba the White Lion and made The Lion King.

thaumasiotes 9y ago
It also didn't happen when Terry Brooks reskinned the lord of the rings as "The Sword of Shannara".
- freehunter 9y ago
  Or when EL James rewrote Twilight without the vampires and called it 50 Shades of Grey.
  - robmiller 9y ago
    Or when Disney animated Doc Hollywood and called it Cars
    - saagarjha 9y ago
      Cars was a Pixar movie.
      - beedogs 9y ago
        Pixar was already owned by Disney when Cars was released.
        saagarjha 9y ago
        Wikipedia[1] says otherwise: > [Cars was] Pixar's final independently-produced motion picture before its purchase by Disney in May 2006 [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cars_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cars_(film)
  - thaumasiotes 9y ago
    I was under the impression that the characters in Twilight never actually have sex, while the characters in 50 Shades of Grey have a lot?

linker3000 9y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanya_Grotter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanya_Grotter

MatthewWilkes 9y ago

Of course there are grey areas, and it's appropriate that they're decided by the courts. I'm sure nobody would argue that a lossy copy of a work protected by copyright can still infringe, even if the lossiness was deliberate and intended to differentiate it from the original to a minimal degree. Copyright of literary characters is one of the harder ones to define, and perhaps a system more like patents would be more appropriate for them, but that's neither here nor there. Let's stick to computer science for a while. Imagine I have come up with a sorting algorithm for integers with significantly better time complexity than existing options. I can describe that in any number of programming languages, in natural language, in pictographs, etc. It's a skill that people can learn, or a tool that could be embedded in silicon and used for financial gain. Doesn't that sound more like an invention than a creative work? Shouldn't patents be the best fit? Don't get me wrong, copyright and patent systems the world over hace significant class, but for us as software engineers to declare that patents shouldn't apply to our work because it is somehow fundamentally different to the other science and engineering disciplines is just arrogance.

slaymaker1907 9y ago
The problem is that algorithms and math are explicitly forbidden from being patented. This is why most software patents include some sort of clause specifying that the work is done using a computer. The patent office has simply done a lousy job when it comes to software patents.
- lkbm 9y ago
  I hadn't heard it explained this way before, but it explains so much. So, for example, if I came up with a better sorting algorithm, I couldn't patent Luca Sort, but I could patent using a computer to run the Luca Sort algorithm? Or am I misunderstanding?
  - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
    That's not how it works in Europe; just saying "done on a computer" is explicitly not enough. There's a concept called "technical effect" that's been worked over in the courts and well developed in the last decade (I'll leave you to look it up, eg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_patents_under_the_European_Patent_Convention https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_patents_under_the_E...). I'm a bit out of the loop but whilst USA started letting pretty much anything in there seem to have tightened up over the years. There's a parallel with business methods too. In both cases there been a move towards a middleground - harmonisation. Personally I feel the USA position is far worse and this harmonisation is not good; liberalisation of soft-pat and business method patents on Europe would be a big loss IMO.

moomin 9y ago

Oh, I don't know. JK Rowling rewrote Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and added wizards and no-one's complained. :p

lightlyused 9y ago
You must be kidding, Harry Potter is nothing like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, unless you consider magical candy to be the most important part of the story. :)
- moomin 9y ago
  Philosopher's Stone has quite a few direct correspondences. The letter/golden ticket, the factory/Hogwarts (I could go on, but it would require me to reread it, not that that would be a bad thing). The unjustly discriminated against kid is another Dahl trope (although not one in CF per se). And more generally, the style is very similar. Beyond the first book it diverges, however.
  - bluGill 9y ago
    Copyright considers things a unique work if less than something like 10% is copied. Harry Potter is in no danger. Even changing the golden ticket to a letter is enough to get around infringement there. Of course consult a lawyer if the 10% figure above it important to your copy - there are lots of details that I don't know.
    - moomin 9y ago
      I only felt the need to establish enough similarity to demonstrate that the joke was funny, not so much the Dahl estate could take Rowling's hard-earned money. :)

logfromblammo 9y ago

The literary characters and other proper nouns in a series may be covered by trademark. Copyright only covers the specific expression of the text. Patent, of course, does not apply to fiction plots. So if you scrupulously avoided character names and quotes from the original work, you can indeed rewrite the same plot and story arcs in your own words, and not be in conflict with the law. That will be of no solace when lawyers for the Harry Potter media empire pursue you anyway. Just as you did not break the law in a technical, letter-of-the-law sense, so is it also possible for an entity with great wealth to make someone with lesser wealth miserable, without breaking the law. It is far easier to rip off a nobody, or someone who is dead. For instance, rewrite Amber without Corwin or Merlin in it; make superficial modifications to all named characters and locations. Maybe you get some fans that never read the original; maybe you get some that did read it, and like your version better.