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> Expanding copyright even more so that text / art that looks stylistically similar to another work is counted as infringing will, in the long run, give Disney'
by visarga 11mo ago
> Expanding copyright even more so that text / art that looks stylistically similar to another work is counted as infringing will, in the long run, give Disney's lawyers the power to punish folks for making content that even looks anything like Disney's many, many, many IP assets.
Legal doctrines like the "Abstraction-Filtration-Comparison test", "total concept and feel," "comprehensive non-literal similarity," and "sequence, structure and organization" have systematically ascended the abstraction ladder. Copyright no longer protects expression but abstractions and styles.
The ugly part is the asymmetry at play - a copyright holder can pick and choose the level of abstraction on which to claim infringement, while a new author cannot possibly avoid all similarities on all levels of abstraction for all past works. The accuser can pick and choose how to frame infringement, the accused has to defend from all possible directions.
- cowpig 11mo agoThe idea that copyright holders are at the better end of a legal asymmetry here is kind of a baffling one. I guess if the copyright holder's name is Disney that might be true. But the vast, vast majority of the time it is way too expensive to enforce any kind of copyright claim to be worth even bothering.