Questions about plagiarism and copyright

Discussion in 'General Writing' started by blubttrfl, Jul 2, 2007.

  1. Catrin Lewis

    Catrin Lewis Contributor Contributor Contest Winner 2023 Community Volunteer

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    It wasn't in your local library? Wow.
     
  2. Nick Schoenbrodt

    Nick Schoenbrodt New Member

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    Let me start off by saying that this is my first post on this site, so if this is in the wrong sub just let me know.

    I have an idea for a book floating around in my head and a title keeps sticking out to me: The City of Glass

    Now, a little research has shown me that this is the title of a book in the Mortal Instruments series.

    From what I could find, using titles already used is normally okay, but this book seems to be decently popular and it is my understanding that reusing certain titles can have some repurcussions.

    Another title I considered was The City of Mirrors, as it would still make sense in the story, but this came up with an even more recent novel when searched.

    My question is as follows:
    Would I be legally permitted to use one (or either) of these titles for my novel?
     
  3. izzybot

    izzybot (unspecified) Contributor

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    I believe you can legally, but I'd question if it's really wise to. You want something people can google and not be directed to someone else's work, ideally.
     
  4. Iain Aschendale

    Iain Aschendale Lying, dog-faced pony Marine Supporter Contributor

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  5. deadrats

    deadrats Contributor Contributor

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    I agree with the others. I think the best thing to do is just keep brainstorming new titles. Ask someone who has read your book what they would call it. Honestly, neither of those titles really grab me. They're not bad, but they kind of sound like things we've heard before.
     
  6. Spencer1990

    Spencer1990 Contributor Contributor

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    There's The City of Glass (Mortal Instruments.)

    And, there's also City of Glass, New York Trilogy by Paul Auster.

    So, whether or not you're legally okay wouldn't really be my concern. It would be the aforementioned invisibility of my work with two novels of similar names.

    When I finally get my novel out there, the last thing I want is to be competing with already published work. This is hard enough. Why make it harder?
     
  7. Mumble Bee

    Mumble Bee Keep writing. Contributor

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    Glass Town
    Glass City (I think this one has a nice ring to it.)
    GlassOpolis
    A City in the Mirror
     
  8. Nick Schoenbrodt

    Nick Schoenbrodt New Member

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    Thanks for all the responses everyone! I'll definitely keep brainstorming titles to make a more noticable.

    I especially like Mumble Bee's suggestion A City in the Mirror as it fits the story well.
     
  9. Dnaiel

    Dnaiel Senior Member

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    Correct me if I'm wrong here, but I thought the publisher is the one who gets the final say on the title.
     
  10. Laurin Kelly

    Laurin Kelly Contributor Contributor

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    A friend and fellow author of mine was encouraged to change the title of her debut novel because there were several other books with the same title out there, and many of those were in the same genre (romantic suspense). I don't know that a publisher could force an author to change a book title, and would think it would be noted in the publishing contract if so. However, I think if a publisher really feels that a book would sell better with a different title, as long as they have a good track record and solid reputation I'd take their advice.

    My first book shares a title with some other books, but they all appear to be either crime novels or biographies, so I doubt readers would be confused about which book they're getting. For my second accepted-but-not-published-yet book, I have actually asked my publisher to help me come up with a better title because the working title is pretty lame IMO.
     
  11. big soft moose

    big soft moose An Admoostrator Admin Staff Supporter Contributor Community Volunteer

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    One of the things i'm working on is called Dark Fire , and i'm aware that CJ Sansum already wrote a book of that title, but since i'm in a radically different genre i'm not convinced it will be an issue (Googling also shows a book of the same name by Chris D'lacy but again not convinced it will be an issue)
     
  12. Dnaiel

    Dnaiel Senior Member

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    Well, I did a quick google and came up with these:

    MacGregor Literary Agency
    Sure, the publisher probably has the final say on your title — in fact, if you read your contract carefully, you’ll probably find a note about that very fact in the section marked “editing.”

    That said, the proposed title coming from the author is always given weight by a publishing or titling committee. They want to use a title the author likes. In fact, the publisher will sometimes bend over backwards to be polite to an author offering up a lousy title.

    http://www.macgregorliterary.com/blog/does-the-publisher-have-the-last-word-on-my-book-title/

    Jody Hudlund, Inspirational Author
    After contract, I quickly learned the publishing house would have the final title decision.
    http://jodyhedlund.blogspot.com/2009/11/how-publishers-choose-book-title.html
     
  13. ExpiredAspiration

    ExpiredAspiration Member

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    When an entire novel or even a sentence is heavily inspired by another pre-existing piece of literature and still considered original it's usually because the scene borrows thematic elements rather than circumstantial ones.

    In fact, if we were to boil down the majority of fictional narratives we'd end up with only 7 distinct categories. These categories being;
    • Overcoming the monster.
    • Rags to Riches.
    • The Quest.
    • Voyage and Return.
    • Comedy.
    • Tragedy.
    • Rebirth.
    The reason so many original pieces of literature can be found in each category is because of circumstantial variation. Circumstantial variation is why No Longer Human and Macbeth differ so much, both are tragedies which detail the protagonist's downward spiral and yet both are so drastically different. The same variation can be found in individual genres and right down to parodies of other works.

    There may be finite amount of stories but there's an infinite amount of applicable spices.
     
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  14. Mr.LemonDrops

    Mr.LemonDrops New Member

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    I was fixing on mentioning Daffy Duck in my project when I realized I just might not be allowed to do that. Is it like copyright infringement or whatever if I just mention his name?
     
  15. big soft moose

    big soft moose An Admoostrator Admin Staff Supporter Contributor Community Volunteer

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    you can't copyright a name .. hence there's a character called (indeed named after) Daffy Duck in Alex Garland's "the beach"

    However you would get into a shit load of trouble if you wrote a cartoon character called daffy duck and tried to pass it off as your idea... thats a matter of trademark rather than copyright
     
  16. Jacob MIles

    Jacob MIles New Member

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    I'm writing a book and it (some intentional, some unintentional) has a lot of similarities with Harry Potter in the ideas. For example, my book is about a chosen one who is destined to destroy to the Demonking who has broken out of The Darkest Corner (the most dangerous and prison like part of Hell) so he goes to a school where he learns how to fight and do magic. There are multiple similarities.
    1. A boy going to a school to learn magic
    2. The boy is the chosen one
    3. He must fight an evil which people thought was gone for goof

    There are a lot of things that set this book apart from Harry Potter, but I cant help but feel like my main plot is just too similar to HP. Can anyone offer me some reassurance and/or advice?
     
  17. Homer Potvin

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

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    You're fine from a legal copyright standard, but whether anyone will take your idea as anything other than derivation is another matter. Ideas, cliches, plot arcs, and characters can't be copyrighted... only the written words can.
     
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  18. thirdwind

    thirdwind Member Contest Administrator Reviewer Contributor

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    Yes, you have no need to worry. For more information, see copyright.gov.
     
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  19. Jacob MIles

    Jacob MIles New Member

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    Alright, thank you
     
  20. Genghis McCann

    Genghis McCann Active Member

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    "Plagiarism" is copying from one source.
    "Research" is copying from two.
     
  21. JPClyde

    JPClyde Senior Member

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    I am trying to look into the history of earlier copyright laws. It seems so weird to me that we live in a day and age where you cannot make an homage or extend a pen to a universe that everyone loves. I mean you can in fan fiction, but I am not necessarily talking about fan fiction.

    This discussion or really thought in my head came up because of the Star Wars Expanded Universe, countless of novels written by different authors and getting publications and this and that. Turns out there is a lot of litigations and laws you have to go to to even think of writing for the Expanded Universe and even then it turns out that Lucas Films no longer except novelizations from random writers.

    So it got me thinking about the countless renditions of Shakespeare's Plays and Sherlock Holmes and adaptations. And these aren't adaptations that simply exist in our era, but go back years and years. It makes me wonder if Shakespeare or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle tried desperately to protect their work or simply allowed others to share what they loved about their plays or inspired them.

    While plagiarism is terrible. I have always thought Art [and yes movies are art] is a shared experience of inspiration, imagination, and ideas. People are inspired in different ways by stories already told.

    Is this a new battle one created by the modern world and money monopolies? Or has it been a battle fought for years and decades?

    And why so?

    For example; if I had decided to write in the world of Star Wars it be about my own characters only set in the universe or the world, using some of the technology, but my own conflict and plot.

    So then, what harm does it do to the original creator? Shouldn't they feel admired that people are that inspired by his world to create something new from it?

    While I as a writer would be upset if someone took my words, word for word and used all my characters. I write enough science fiction and fantasy and build so much of a world, to me it seems like a waste of world building and establishing if no one else can create inside of it. Because I like to write shared worlds, that people can add to. Because as said Art is a shared experience. If you are inspired by a world I create, then all I ask is for some brief contact, ask me some questions and I'd like to see what people could or would do in those worlds.

    Maybe that's the DnD player hidden inside of my writing personality. I also play DnD, and that's a shared world, created by someone else, that others through homebrew and character creation create their own stories and ideas already established into the world.

    Thoughts?
     
  22. Homer Potvin

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

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    They are both in the public domain, and in the case of Shakespeare, I doubt he was ever copyrighted. Copyright expires either 70, 95, 0r 120 years after the owner's death with a bunch of legal exceptions/extensions:

    https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ15a.pdf

    I have no idea how this would work for a movie franchise like Star Wars given all its iterations in various mediums. Interesting to note, however, that Disney was the force behind lobbying Congress to increase copyright to 120 years to keep it's older movie out of the public domain. Suffice it to say, you ain't doing shit with Star Wars without paying Disney.
     
  23. JPClyde

    JPClyde Senior Member

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    I know it was just interesting to me.
     
  24. ChickenFreak

    ChickenFreak Contributor Contributor

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    Just to depress you more, it's not legal in fan fiction. It's just that copyright is often not all that stringently enforced when the subject is fanfiction.

    Those copyrights have expired. Which leads us to:

    Copyrights no longer expire in the United States. Oh, that's not official--it's not as if the law says, "Nothing copyrighted will ever expire again." But whenever there's a risk of it happening, copyright is extended. So that's the part that is new.

    I would say, no, arguably it reduces the potential profit to the original creator. There's a limit to the appetite for Star Wars themed works. If there's a lot of competition, then the original owners will get less of that market share. So I'd say that that restriction is reasonably in line with the goals of copyright.

    The issue is the fact that that restriction will NEVER go away. If I were king, copyright would expire within a normal person's lifetime--I'm inclined to say fifty years, which would mean that people could freely expand on the original Star Wars concepts starting in 2027. But I'm not king.

    (Edited to add: Once crowned, I'd add some nuances to that fifty years--I'd probably have a publication versus creation difference, so that someone who spent forty years writing the book wouldn't have only ten years to profit, but on the other hand so that the last unpublished works of a well-loved writer wouldn't be trapped in copyright jail forever after their death. Nuances. But nobody's putting me in charge anytime soon.)
     
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  25. Laurin Kelly

    Laurin Kelly Contributor Contributor

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    Some authors are very protective of their characters and other elements of their universes, and most vehemently feel that as the creator they should have total control over who gets to dabble in that universe. Anne Rice, Diana Gabaldon and George R. R. Martin are some high profile writers who have flat out said that they do not want fanfiction written based on their books. So no, some authors are not flattered at all, and I don't think they "should" feel any way about their work being interpreted by others. Some people are fine with other people playing in their backyard (J.K. Rowling is famously cool with fanfic, though she's understandably not in favor of her underage characters being written about erotically), and others aren't. I think they get to feel however they like about it.
     
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