4 ms·

If I take the Lord of the Rings book, type it all again by hand but change a few sentences here and there, would you consider that ok?

• autoexec 4y ago
  The difference is between crafting something transformative and a reproduction. If you simply typed up the same story (even with minor changes) you haven't created anything. Turning a typed work into a typed work isn't really meaningful. A better analogy might be if you retold the story yourself aloud, from memory, making changes by adding characters and omitting scenes that you didn't think were as exciting and adding new ones. That's how stories were shared before copyright. Someone would tell a story, and someone else would hear it and later share it with others and each time it was told by someone new changes would be made. Each storyteller would tell their own version, including the best parts from other versions and trying new changes on each audience and gradually the story would evolve as the most popular changes would be included more often and propagate farther.