1. Zadocfish

    Zadocfish Member

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    Ripoff or inspiration? Or, is it okay to rip something off so long as it's really old?

    Discussion in 'Science Fiction' started by Zadocfish, Feb 10, 2017.

    So here's where I'm at. I'm tired of not writing, and figuring out setting details and plot points and stuff is keeping me from just jumping in and writing something.

    So, to get me writing, I've decided to jump right into a semi-nonsensical sci-fi/fantasy adventure story and just see where it goes. And I have the perfect idea for adventure-connectivity material; that is, a story-telling device that I believe to be easy to use, effective for delivering character to adventure, and providing lots of opportunity for quirkiness and general fun.

    The problem is, the easy-but-effective story telling device I want to use is lifted STRAIGHT from an old sci-fi anime/manga called Galaxy Express 999. It's a story about a boy and his guardian riding a spaceship shaped like a train and having various horrifying and sad adventures.

    Now, my story's main character couldn't be more different, and the tone will be less melancholy, I think. But yeah, the format and space-train is a 100% direct ripoff. I suppose if I'm just writing it to write, it shouldn't matter... but if it turns out well, I might want to have it read by other people. How close can you come to an old, tried-and-true concept without being distractingly rip-off-y?
     
  2. S A Lee

    S A Lee Contributor Contributor

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    The thing that strikes me is that a literal space train would sound like it's lifted. It's one thing to use such things when it's in the public domain, the creator is still alive, and we're talking about a central plot device.

    Is there no reason that it can't be a spacecraft that works like a coach or a cruise in the sense that it goes from place to place?
     
  3. BayView

    BayView Huh. Interesting. Contributor

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    I agree, it's the train aspect that seems obvious, to me... the rest of it seems like a pretty standard space adventure.

    Is there a reason you need to include the train part?
     
  4. terobi

    terobi Senior Member

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    I mean, strictly speaking you can't copyright an idea, so, legally you're fine.

    In terms of "will your audience accept it"... again, sure, why not? As long as the rest of the elements are your own and you're not just writing fanfic, I don't see why it should be much of a problem. How much you want to acknowledge the influence is up to you, really. Plenty of authors will straight up tell you that they got the idea for something by watching/reading someone else's work and asking "what if...?"
     
  5. SadStories

    SadStories Active Member

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    How many people actually know about this anime? Whether your story will be good or not will ride on completely other things than your primary concept anyway. And if things get hot you have both the Suzanne Collins excuse ("Well, that sure is a funny coincidence!") and the Quentin Tarantino excuse ("Homage!") available.

    Personally a lot of my writing is based on taking books I liked, such as Fingersmith, or even didn't like, such as Twilight, and doing my own thing with it. A lot of the creative people I admire most, like Quentin Tarantino and Jonathan Franzen (whose two first books are based on some movies), proudly admit to similar things.

     
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  6. Dnaiel

    Dnaiel Senior Member

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    Well, first it's not just an idea; it's in a tangible form, a published novel.
    Secondly, without seeing both side by side, no one can simply dismiss it as anything that doesn't infringe a copyright.
     
  7. terobi

    terobi Senior Member

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    As I understand it, the words are copyrightable, the idea is not.

    J K Rowling was hardly the first person to write a book about a boarding school for wizards, and I shudder to think of how many fantasy novels must involve magic rings at this point.

    The only legal trouble would be from passing off; the claim that a work is deliberately intended to ape an existing product in order to fool customers into thinking they are related.
     
    Last edited: Feb 11, 2017
  8. Cave Troll

    Cave Troll It's Coffee O'clock everywhere. Contributor

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    You can get really close (falling just short of being word for word). There are plenty of
    too on the nose stories that would be the exact same if you simply changed the names
    of the characters and the place.

    The chosen one (aka Jesus story), has been done so many times and yet people love it
    and all it's unrealisticness.

    So you could basically change a few things from a better story and there you go.
    But that is just lazy.
     
  9. Homer Potvin

    Homer Potvin A tombstone hand and a graveyard mind Staff Supporter Contributor

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    I suppose that depends on your concerns. Are you worried about being called out or do you feel bad for not coming up with your own shit?
     
  10. Dnaiel

    Dnaiel Senior Member

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    That's basically what I'm talking about. Ideas are worthless. Once someone makes them tangible, as in published, it's copyrighted. So it depends on how close in similarity it is, which is what I explained in my second sentence.
    Well, an infringement can be intentional or innocent, as unfair as it may seem.

    One of the most commonly misunderstood aspects of copyright law is the significance of intent. The elements of direct copyright infringement are (1) the plaintiff’s ownership of a valid copyright in a work and (2) the defendant’s copying of protectable expression from that work. The defendant’s intent is not part of this analysis. One hears the term “innocent infringer” thrown around, but this moniker is of far less value than is often imagined.

    http://www.trademarkandcopyrightlawblog.com/2013/12/innocent-infringement-intent-and-copyright-law/
     
  11. Mckk

    Mckk Member Supporter Contributor

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    What's wrong with a space train? Most people wouldn't know about Galaxy Express 999, and if they do - so what? How many orphan wizard boys stories are out there? How many wizarding schools? You don't hear anyone complain about Harry Potter. Elves? You don't see everyone crying "LOTR rip-off!" over every last new story about elves. People complained that Hunger Games ripped off of Battle Royale and - what? - look at how big Hunger Games is and you see you have no problem whatsoever.

    I've seen the space train thing in one other place, and that's actually in Doraemon. Nobita took the train ticket from Doraemon without asking, since Doraemon was gonna bin it, and Nobita invited all his friends. They go on this grand tour of space while the train warden said stuff like, "Ah no one rides trains anymore these days, ever since that thing was invented." At the end they reach their stop, and Nobita's like, "When does the next train leave so we can go home?" And the warden says, "Next train? That was the last train. We've gone bankrupt ever since the invention of that other thing." The kids cry for a while thinking they're stranded, until Doraemon bursts through the "Anywhere door" and says, "This is why no one rides space trains anymore!"

    Anyway, use the space train idea. How you use it is what will make it unique. If you're not gonna write something just 'cause it's been used once somewhere else, you might as well not write at all. Now imagine if the world never had Harry Potter because wizarding schools and evil dark lords have obviously been written about before :ohno:

    And this is just to get your writing momentum back. Don't shoot yourself in the foot before you've even begun by now saying, "Fuck me it has to be an original idea!" Just write. Enjoy it. Make it yours, make it the best you can. And if it's any good, publish it. Sure, some people will see similarities between your story and Galaxy Express, but so what? As long as you're not plagiarizing, I don't see the problem.

    The key problem, really, is whether you can stand it that you know where you lifted your idea from. :bigwink:
     
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  12. S A Lee

    S A Lee Contributor Contributor

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    Theoretically (how good this would be is a different argument) Hogwarts doesn't need to be a boarding school for Harry's adventures. Jewellery has been part of magic beliefs for as long as man could craft it, and rings are one of the most discreet things. It is also worth noting that Rowling was barred by someone from reading works by fans (I can't remember who by, either her agent or Bloomsbury) while she was still writing to prevent someone accusing her of plagiarism down the line. The OP doesn't have this barrier because he knows about Galactic Express. Not only can an accusation of plagiarism cause trouble, but it'll spread wider than ever thanks to the Internet.

    Comparing this to Harry Potter is very apples and oranges if you ask me, because when you break down the elements of Harry Potter they stem from a mixture of the real world (boarding schools) and folklore (magic, good vs evil, and pretty much all the creatures in it), the latter of which has existed for centuries and has been in stories longer than stories have been in written form, with the exception of the Dementors, which are an original creation inspired by a personal nightmare.

    Not everyone is as lucky as Monkey Punch in that he was inspired a work that was not at the time in the public domain and was permitted to continue as long as he didn't leave his home country with it.
     
  13. terobi

    terobi Senior Member

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    True, but that goes for things far more specific than simply the idea of a train in space. Hell, Doctor Who did exactly that a couple of years back, and if there was a lawsuit, I've not heard about it.

    There has to be a LOT more similarities than just one or two ideas in common in order to claim copyright violation, even if one of them was directly inspired by the other.
    Quite so, and this is exactly why TV shows immediately return unsolicited script submissions unopened, rather than reading and giving encouragement in the way they did a few decades back. As soon as they've opened and read it, any coincidental similarity becomes "they stole my idea!".

    But whether she was reading them at the time or not, it's hardly a stretch to claim that Rowling was aware of other works that involved wizard schools. Hell, she probably read The Worst Witch as a kid, which had already had several popular TV movies and was being produced for television by the time she was writing Potter.

    The point is, it doesn't matter if she literally wrote Harry Potter with an open copy of The Worst Witch in front of her. The fact that she took a similar idea and made it into a unique beast is important.
     
  14. BayView

    BayView Huh. Interesting. Contributor

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    I think there are different issues being discussed in this thread - full-on copyright violation vs. readers finding a story derivative vs. the author not being satisfied b/c the story is derivative.

    I agree that using a space train is highly unlikely to be a copyright violation. But that doesn't mean the idea isn't derivative, and might not be a problem for either audiences or for the author.
     
  15. Iain Aschendale

    Iain Aschendale Lying, dog-faced pony Marine Supporter Contributor

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    Every living soul in Japan, and probably a good chunk of the gaijin otaku community too.

    Just for reference.
     
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  16. terobi

    terobi Senior Member

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    I agree.

    But how much the story feels derivative for sharing a single common element is up for debate.

    I mean, Battlestar Galactica was famously created when a studio exec saw Star Wars and told his staff to make him one of those. But BSG has enough stylistic and narrative differences that you would hardly look at it and say "this is just a Star Wars ripoff".

    As long as you develop a world in which a space train makes sense and feels natural, then it doesn't matter.

    After all, it's not like two entirely different properties have time travelling phone boxes.
     
  17. Dnaiel

    Dnaiel Senior Member

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    I don't think it's an issue. I did consider Zadocfish's "But yeah, the format and space-train is a 100% direct ripoff." I'm sure that doesn't mean copying the dialogs and what else. But when I see "100%" I can't just say one way or the other. Just what is in that 100%? You say "idea". I see a possible more than that. The only contrast we're handed by Zadocfish is a different character and less melancholy. That's all Zadocfish gives us and that's not enough for me to conclude one way or the other.
     
  18. S A Lee

    S A Lee Contributor Contributor

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    Banking on your readership not knowing of the existence of a derivative work is guaranteed to shoot you in the foot, especially in the Internet age...
     
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  19. SadStories

    SadStories Active Member

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    I'm just kind of amazed that people think twice about this. The Matrix literally lifted both the concept of a simulated word and its name from cyberpunk novels, not to mention the entire aesthetic. The action scenes are also taken straight from John Woo-style movies where characters empty endless clips at each other in slow motion. John Woo, meanwhile, just tried to do Wuxia -- the kind of martial arts movies where the characters fly around when they fight -- with guns. Meanwhile the tone of the cyberpunk novels that inspired The Matrix is lifted directly from hard-boiled crime novels like the ones of Dashiell Hammett, down to the point where Neuromancer's narration almost sounds like a parody. And all the books/movies I've mentioned so far are considered particularly original.

    It's a bit different with literary fiction, but I would actually argue that having watched a ton of pop-culture and having the ability to shamelessly steal and synthesize is a basic skill of genre writing. Just imagine if a really cool trailer for a space train movie came out. Almost no one would say, "Oh, but this is like Galaxy Express 999! Yuck." They'd be like, "Cool! Reminds me of Galaxy Express 999." The vast majority of consumers would not even go there though, just like the vast majority of consumers did not care or know about the Hunger Games/Battle Royale similarity. If anything it brought both franchises a lot of new fans.
     
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  20. Zadocfish

    Zadocfish Member

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    Great discussion, here! The rip-off problem up being a smaller matter than I thought it would be, in my case. I figured out my own spin to put on it. I'm having the train be a sentient space monster whose insides have been converted into a public transit system. The conductor and attendants are all symbiotic organisms living off of the monster, as well. Also I've figured out a way for that to make sense in the setting.

    So, that's my problem resolved, but the discussion of copyright vs reader interest is still relevant and great.
     
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  21. Wolf Daemon

    Wolf Daemon Active Member

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    For creating my universe I took tons and tons of inspiration from tons of different science fiction/fantasy series'. That being said I try to put a different unique spin on everything I add or mash two things from different sci fi universes. While getting inspiration is great for writing straight ripping off, to me, is definitely a no no and should be avoided at all cost. Try to put your own spin on what you are taking from the other sci fi universe.
     
  22. Aaron DC

    Aaron DC Contributor Contributor

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    Call it fan fiction?
     
  23. Aaron DC

    Aaron DC Contributor Contributor

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    I watched Johnny Mnemonic for the first time after all 4 Matrix movies. The similarities were nuts, down to the leading actor.
     

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