I occasionally will use the first name of a celebrity for a character in one of my characters since so many celebrities have very common ordinary names.
If the person in question has an extremely recognizable name (this is likely a bad example, but 'Sarah Rose Hitler', even if she's a ballerina, will likely conjure a face as soon as you read it). Of course, Hitler wasn't really the ballerina type, but just with his very recognizable name (Adolf might have scored the same effect, but not with the same magnitude) you've drawn an association between Sara Rose Hitler and Adolf Hitler. Of course, as has been said before, there are two important points to remember: first of all, we are not a team of legal experts (well, I'm not, at least) and our advice/thoughts should not be taken as rock-solid truth. Secondly, you might proclaim it satire, but before the eyes of the law, it might not fit the definition of satire - and that opens you up to a hefty legal battle.
It's not even just a case of being found wrong under the law. Even if you're found to be right, and your use is protected, if the case goes all the way through trial in order to reach that determination you're looking at six figures in legal fees.
So, according to this, "short phrases" can't be copyrighted. Does that include short phrases in a work protected by copyright? Like, say, a line from a poem in The Lord of the Rings? Thanks!
no. it doesn't... 'short phrases' only refers to bits of writing that exist on their own, not excerpts from complete works that are protected by copyright... so, if i write: it can't be covered by copyright, since it's not part of a complete story/article/poem/whatever...
Yep - what [MENTION=373]mammamaia[/MENTION] said. A line from a poem in Lord of the Rings might be usable in some situations under Fair Use, but there is no bright-line rule for fair use. Instead, courts review a number of factors on a case-by-case basis to determine whether fair use applies. So you have to be cautious going down that path.
Does anyone know how this writing technique gets away with copyright issues? Or doesnt? I've tried looking for some article that addresses it but I can't find anything.
Could be subject to copyright. How large a portion are you keeping intact from any given work? Are there any ornamental features or graphic elements from the cut-up document that could be subject to copyright. Those are two things to think about. Easy enough to do this with public domain materials if you're worried about copyright. There are potential fair use arguments that could provide some protection as well.
Well, that's the thing I mean if you could cut words from an article phrases that sound so generic whose to know where you got them from. Four words could be clipped - Chaos in the Banana ( omiting republic ) and you could add it to a poem. But it would be harder to say take four words from Shakespeare - darling buds of May and not have everyone know where you got it from. I'm wondering if the idea would be that if the words cannot be concretely connected to a work they're up for grabs.
If you're cutting them into pieces that small, or otherwise rearranging segments that small, and rearranging them into entirely different sentences, you're distancing yourself quite a bit from the original work and the Fair Use factors start to swing more strongly in your favor. You'd have to look at it on a case by case basis. Shakespeare is in the public domain, of course, so there's no copyright issue there. The safest thing to do would be to use only public domain works. I've seen some articles talking about preserving larger portions of the cut-up work. Like maybe a series of sentences from one work rearranged with a series of sentences from another. In general, when you're dealing with a fair use argument, the less you use of the original work the better off you are.
Defintely - I've just looked at the How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, got wild and got a life and the author seemed to use whole passages - in order! only rearranging a few things. It's like instead of being inspired by the book and ideas she just cut whole passages like a Mad Libs template and inserted a few different words. I definitely don't want to fall into that category but I'd like to do a kindof word collage without stepping on any toes.
If your writing is lifted from someone else, it is a copyright violation regardless of how you rearrange or disguise it. Whether it can be enforced in a practical sense is another matter. This site does not condone attempts to "get away with" theft of intellectual property. A thief who isn't caught is still a thief. Don't do it.
It all depends on what sized segments of the original work are preserved, in my view. If you cut a book up into individual words and wrote your own story by pasting those words as a collage, it's pretty clear to me that's not infringement. Same probably holds true for two-word portions. On the other hand, if you're leaving entire pages intact and somehow arranging them to produce an intelligible end product, you probably are infringing absent some kind of Fair Use defense. Who knows where a court would draw the line. Three word segments? Ten?
I asked this question because I'm reading Woman's World by Graham Rawle. So far it's an great book and an amazing piece of art.
Cory Doctorow's Pirate Cinema is more or less about this issue. It's a young adult book, but I found it very informative. Doctorow himself writes a lot about copyright and fair use. In short it seems that you run a risk by creating cut-up works, but (with literature at least) the risk is relatively small, and you're unlikely to be challenged. It seems logical that the more cut up a cut-up is, the safer you are with it.
If you are interested in that sort of thing, you might also search YouTube for Doctorow's speeches on the subject. He does a nice job.
Hi everyone! First time posting a thread here! I was wondering; if you write a fanfiction (and publish it on a fanfiction site) but change the names (and features) to your own characters when you want to publish the fanfiction as an original story, is it still considered plagiarism? I ask because I can't understand the whole thing surrounding the '50 Shades of Grey' trilogy! What I can understand is that the author wrote a twilight-fanfiction, but just changing the names to her own wasn't enough? It was still considered plagiarism? Or was it? Where does the line go between fanfiction, plagiarism and original fiction? If I wrote a fanfiction and put it up on the web, would I still be able to take quotes from the fanfiction and use as original quotes in my original story? Feel free to direct me to another thread if this already has been answered somewhere
There's no fixed line in law as to when something is in violation of copyright and when it's not. That gets decided on a case-by-case basis in a court of law. In the case you've outlined, from the sounds of it you'd have the same world, the same setting, and the same characters even if they did have different names. I find it hard to believe the original publishing house would just let that fly if you did get your story published. I've not read 50 Shades or Twilight so I don't want to comment too much on that one, but from what I gather while E L James kept the character relationships, the characters themselves and the setting were all different.
Fanfiction can be 'scrubbed' to make it a publishable work - but the scrubbing has to be pretty thorough. Just changing the character names and looks aren't anywhere near enough.
I'm writing story that takes place in hell. The idea is that hell is a place where Sinners are trapped and bound in chains and tormented for all eternity. I worry it's too much like the 4th movie bleach movie where these beings called sinners humans that are also bound in chains and forced to suffer all eternity suffer. It's similar but there are severe differences like what hell looks like and the creatures that reside in hell tormenting the characters are also different. The plot is also completely different as well. Aside from some key similarities where the rules of hell are concerned it's very different story wise. The characters in the story aren't even like the ones in Bleach. Should I be worried?
I can't be sure without reading both works, but it sounds as if both of you are using the classic definition of Hell, so it seems to me that you're drawing on common culture rather than plagiarizing.
I agree with ChickenFreak. You're simply using the classical use of Hell, and that on its own is perfectly fine. And if your plot and story is different as well, it's nowhere near plagiarism.
