Deadagent said:
Why? I'm not against limited time really I get that if someone makes a cheaper copy of your product you cant compete wich is why copyright and patents existed to begin with. To give authors and invertor a limited window to make money from their work and it was limited time only because having something to work with promotes creativity.
Well, there are two answers. The first is the "creative integrity" answer. If I write Lord of the Rings, I (or those I've passed my rights in the books to) get to decide which creative works should exist. Which works are within the spirit, and of enough quality, to be made. And I get to decide whether I want a Lord of the Rings video game, chess game, or sex toy.
The second answer is money. Especially in an era where merchandizing and other "derivative works" (like movies, video games, etc.) are often more profitable than the original work, all of that profit should flow to me.
But what kind of time period are you envisioning? Final Fantasy VII came out less than twenty years ago, even if you took copyright law back to what it was at the beginning of America it wouldn't be legal to make an unauthorized sequel. The reality is that most of what people want to infringe on isn't old stuff, it's stuff made in the last twenty years. Especially in movies and video games. One of the reasons I don't find the "sampling" argument to be compelling.
Also, you dismiss the idea of a right in derivative works through your focus exclusively on competing copies of the original work. That's not how copyright is (or should be) set up.
Music sampling is a great example of doing something new out of something old, but because time of exclusivity has been extended to ridiculous proportions, whole genres of music require stupid amounts paperwork for one track to be even made.
Well, first, sampling is different from the idea of "everything is a remix." The idea of everything is a remix is (a la Joseph Campbell) that there are a limited number of story archetypes, and most would argue a limited number of musical forms which are appealing, etc. Hell, the entire idea of TVtropes is this. But there's a difference between "Harry Potter is similar to The Once And Future King, which is itself a retelling of Arthur's story, which itself is similar to many preexisting stories of warrior kings not the least of which would be The Song of Roland" and "I'm taking the music from Mackelmore's latest track and putting some wub wub in it."
Taking the fact that there's nothing new under the sun to justify a stunning lack of original creation is not reasonable.
Well, there are (again) two reasons. The American reason mostly has to do with financial incentives. The entire idea of copyright law is to encourage creation of new art, new ideas, new music, new books. It's not meant to encourage the reuse of existing art for someone else's profit. And you can argue that fan works distributed for free shouldn't be prohibited, but there's no good way to exclude non-commercial works that wouldn't cut into the rights of the original creator. What if Square-Enix
wants to make a sequel? Now the unofficial FFVII sequel is competing with the official one.
The European reason has a lot more to do with the moral rights of creators. As a creator, I get to decide what is an acceptable addition to the work. I get to decide if there should be a follow-up to the Harry Potter series, or a movie version, you don't get to decide for me and go out and make the movie.
As far as I understand the character names were only changed, so the way to qualify in this magical copyright game is to just change the names. Ok so if it's something that simple, why would it even matter if they had the same names?
Having never read the book, or the original material, I don't know how much had to be changed. But, in the context of a video game, if you're using all-new art assets, none of the same dialogue, and a completely new story not referencing anything from the original games, the only thing you'd need to do to make it copyright-compliant would be to change the names and call it something else.
With a book, if you're using all new material, using none of the plot elements or names of the original series, the only thing you'd need to do is change the names and not claim it as part of the series.
If the story can stand alone like that, why do you need to use the existing characters or world?
You asked why not let them use the names, and the short answer is that while copyright law does not protect the ideas embodied in a work, it
does protect the expression of those ideas. J.K Rowling doesn't get to stop you from writing about an orphan boy with magical powers, but she
can stop you from using her specific expressions to make your work more popular.
It's kind of the same reason we don't let me market "Michael Jordan shoes" with a big ol' picture of Michael Jordan.
I claim that originality is a concept made up by the copyright lobby. Everything ever made, is based on something.
Considering that copyright law existed long before America was even a county (and originality as the standard long before any lobbyists for intellectual property existed), your claim is crap.
But, as above, there is a difference between "using similar concepts or idea from older works in new and interesting ways" and "using someone else's specific expression of those ideas for my own." I can write a swords-and-horses fantasy story, I just can't call my main character Aragorn and have him fight against Sauron.
Except that you're using remix in a way different from what the original creator of that video meant. You're using it as a defense for taking someone else's creation, slapping a new coat of paint on it, and calling it your own. He was talking about TVtropes, and Campbell, and mythemes. You're talking about taking a game younger than most people alive today and using its art, its characters, its story, and writing something else.
The only reason those aren't considered copyright infringement is because nobody claimed it as such.
Not so much, no. Analysis of copyright infringement first and foremost looks to whether what is being copied is an
idea or the
expression of an idea. Similar story themes and tropes are ideas, not expression. It's the difference between me writing a modern fantasy book with magic and wizards and various monsters, and me writing The Dresden Files.
Every note ever has already been played, should the offspring of the people who played each not be tracked down and be given compensation everytime a certain note is played? No.
Nor are they. And specific concepts and ideas are not subject to copyright law. But when you take those ideas and write them into a book (or take those notes and make a song), someone else doesn't get to use the specific way you expressed those ideas or notes and do something else with it. Once you've written the song, that song is yours.
How about if 2 seconds of a song sound exactly the same as some other song, should they be sued?
No, but it has happended.
You'll need to find a case where two seconds of a song (and only two seconds, not two seconds repeated throughout both songs) sounding exactly like another song led to a suit.
Making up fictitious examples of "bad" copyright enforcement doesn't demonstrate anything other than your ability to fabricate stories of "bad" copyright enforcement.
