On copyright laws and plots
I was pondering a lot on the issue with copyrights on plots. Is having an identical plot infringing someone else's copyrighted work?
I am fully aware that the character names are copyrighted and cannot be copied. I am also fully aware that the representation of the idea (the words themselves, in substantial amounts) are copyrighted.
But what I'm curious about is the play, the plot points, the storyline, in other words, the idea behind which the words convey.
Let's assume I hold the copyrights of the Harry Potter books.
If someone took all the pages of a Harry Potter book and rewrote each of them in his own words (when I say in his own words, I mean no simple task of rewriting. Paragraphs are removed, changed, added, dialogues changed, added, removed, even the chapters are different, the entire expression is different beyond recognition), plus he had renamed all the characters (e.g. Harry Potter to Gary Potter and so on). Although the entire expression of the idea is beyond different, the entire idea is identical. could I charge him for infringement by the copyright law? Could he publish his plagiarised work and claim copyrights for it?
I see that the Harry Potter movies do not use words copyrighted by the Harry Potter book (spoken words, or written words which are shown on screen). Does it mean that if the movie were to rename all its characters (while having exactly the same plot), it is fully original by the copyright law, and the publishers (or movie makers etc) do not have to pay a single cent to me (the copyright holder of the Harry Potter books)?
Now let's take another example, this time on the web.
If someone rewrote every single post in my blog in his own words and publish it, could I charge him for infringement by the copyright law? Could he publish his plagiarised work and claim copyrights for it?
If someone rewrote all the content of my website (keep in mind that I'm not talking about programming code/design of the webpage) in his own words and publish it, could I charge him for infringement by the copyright law? Could he publish his plagiarised work and claim copyrights for it?
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/3928. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
1 answer
CAVEAT: I am not a lawyer.
At the level you're describing, yes, this is copyright infringement.
Basically, if it's easy to demonstrate that your work is "substantially similar" to another piece, to which you had access, then infringement can be proved. Working with similar themes, plot elements, and tropes generally doesn't constitute such extreme similarity, but if you're talking about rewriting a piece at a paragraph-by-paragraph level, merely re-wording without changing content or theme, then that's an easy case against you.
Note that there are plenty of retellings which don't constitute infringement - but they need to add or change something substantial. West Side Story 'wouldn't infringe on Romeo and Juliet (even if that illustrious work weren't long out of copyright) because it's a retelling in an entirely different era and setting, and these elements change the story. Barry Trotter and the Shameless Parody doesn't infringe on Harry Potter because it's a parody. Wicked doesn't infringe on Wizard of Oz because it retells the story from a vastly different POV, and is a riff on the Oz mythos. Also, "substantial similarity" can be vague and tough to prove, so even fairly blatant rip-offs can avoid infringement.
But a simple line-by-line rewriting - the same elements, characters and events in the same configuration - would be shot down pretty easily.
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