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I like the scenario: Imagine I've hired an assistant with an eidetic memory who has read loads of books. I pay them to help me write a book and they reproduce a

I like the scenario: Imagine I've hired an assistant with an eidetic memory who has read loads of books. I pay them to help me write a book and they reproduce a few paragraphs from a different book into my book. Am I violating copyright? Yes Imagine they change the character names in those paragraphs. Am I still violating copyright? Yes At some point you can change enough of the text to not violate copyright. The grey area involves the courts. It feels very simple to me so I might be missing something.

q-big 4y ago
> At some point you can change enough of the text to not violate copyright. The grey area involves the courts. > It feels very simple to me so I might be missing something. In my opinion, you are missing something subtle: In continental Europe, there is a different law tradition - civil law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_law_(legal_system) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_law_(legal_system) ) - that is different from the Anglo-American common law tradition. To quote from the wikipedia article: "The civil law system is often contrasted with the common law system, which originated in medieval England, whose intellectual framework historically came from uncodified judge-made case law, and gives precedential authority to prior court decisions. [...] Conceptually, civil law proceeds from abstractions, formulates general principles, and distinguishes substantive rules from procedural rules. It holds case law secondary and subordinate to statutory law." So if you are attached to the civil law system, you seriously want to avoid this grey area involving the courts (which is much more accepted in common law) and instead want to codify into laws what you mean by this grey area.