Copyright of stories

[Annie_Austria]

Hello Admins 

 

I want to post a story that I actually started as a writing improvement project for my English skills. It is/was based on another story in that forum and step by step I did a complete rewrite.

 

But due to the method of doing it chapter by chapter in some parts the plot is still so similar that there are doubts for me whether I have to ask for permission to post it 

 

I mean just the stats (the story (will) tripled in length (from ap. 18000 to 43000 (adding a 1000 per day))) tell me that is a new creation, but I don't want to risk being called out for a copyright violation.

 

The question is, if it is just the plot of the start that is the same and there are no copied sentences would this raise concerns from your side? Is there a copyright on plots?

 

Thanks Annie

[BabySofia]

I'm not an admin, but I am familiar with copyright laws. The idea of plagiarism is more what you could be accused of than a copyright violation in that case. Plot being similar though is not going to be in the direct copyright violation or plagiarism. If it's truly just someone only rewording the exact events of a work, that would be plagiarism. If it's just a similar plot structure then that is generally okay. How many modern works are essentially a rehash of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet? At this point movie plots often borrow a lot from each other. (James Cameron's Avatar was essentially Ferngully 2 according to many at the time it was released)

If it's exactly chapter by chapter, event by event, then I would say you're in more of the danger zone. The only thing that raises any flags about the situation you mention is the first thing about step-by-step doing a complete rewrite. 

You could always give a message to the author you think you're the most similar to and see what they have to say too, and potentially credit them with the idea. Takes the gray area out of things.

[PeculiarChangeling]

To be honest, I'd look at this less from a copyright angle and more from a personal respect angle.

 

It's extremely unlikely that you'd face copyright problems for posting a story, especially for free to this forum. However, if it's a rewrite - even with significant additions - I would strongly suggest you just reach out to the original author and ask them for permission to share your story, with a link back to theirs. If they're no longer active or can't be reached, just post in good faith, explain the context, link back to the original work, and clarify that if the original author gets in touch you'll respect their wishes!

[Diapered Dave]

8 hours ago, BabySofia said:

 Plot being similar though is not going to be in the direct copyright violation or plagiarism.

If it was, every movie on the Hallmark channel would be guilty of it...  😁😂🤣😆

[Annie_Austria]

Thanks to all I already reached out to the original Author to get his approval.  Hopefully there will be a response. 

Yes and I would have named the initial Storry anyways to give credit. 

When I can reach him it would be fine if not I will probably wait for a month to give him time and just name it as a reference as advised here. 

[spark]

I have a somewhat different situation with a story that I started but put on a long-term hiatus.  I still plan on coming back to the story, but I've got other things to write.

Here is the case: @MinnesotaWriter started a story called "The Girl Who Wanted Diapers".   It was abandoned, and I started a story called "The Boy Who Wanted Diapers".  There were very few similarities in the stories, but the titles were similar because it is a good title.  I abandoned it, and MW resurrected his title with a different story.  If I start to rebuild my story, I'm going to need a new title.  PS- I suck at titles.

[LittleFenny]

With the disclaimers, I Am Not A Lawyer & I Am Referring To United States Law, but having had reason to look into copyright law for a few different reasons on a few different occasions:

• Copyright protects specifics and creative work. So you can't copyright boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy and girl get back together. But you can copyright your latest take on the age old pattern. This is also part of why the courts and copyright & trademark office have said AI created works don't get copyright -- a machine did it, it didn't do so under the direct creative control of a person but the randomized application of an algorithm, therefore it's not creative work and doesn't get copyright protection.
• You can't copyright titles, although if a title is really popular and well recognized you might have issues under trademark law. (Thus why you will find dozens upon dozens of stories with generic and straightforward titles like: Home For The Holidays, or Summer Vacation, etc.)
• Trademark too has limitations: A romance author tried to stop other romance authors from making any use of the word cocky in their titles, subtitles, or series names arguing that because she'd trademarked a series name that included the word no one else was allowed to use it. She had a momentary victory with Amazon temporarily stopping sales of a few books she submitted complaints about, and then got roundly laughed at and lost in both the courts of law and public opinion.
• Copyright and trademark are generally shades of grey and not absolute black and white rules. There have been three lawsuits in which Apple Records (the label started by the Beatles) sued Apple the computer company. The first time around in the late 70s based purely on not wanting to share the name, again in the 80s when Apple the music company argued the sound capablities of the Apple IIgs were a violation of the out of court settlement for the earlier lawsuit where they agreed the one wouldn't get into computing and the other would stay out of music (leading one of the Mac OS programmers to name part of the sound software for the Mac sosumi which can easily be read as so-sue-me), and then again when Apple the computer company came out with iTunes. The first two cases were settled in private agreements and the third time around it went to trial and Apple Computer won.
• As people get this one confused all the time: There is no obligation to defend a copyright. You can ignore violations for years without losing your copyright and then change your mind ten or twenty years later and send out cease and desist letters. Trademark has to be maintained by both actively using it and by actively opposing misuse of it (this does not however have to be antagonistic opposition, when a certain famous cartoon company sent legal threats to day cares that had painted their trademarked characters onto the walls they could have instead sent letters granting a limited license to the use of the characters. There isn't a legal requirement to threaten only to take some form of action to make the situation no longer a violation). As an example, if someone at the Apple computer corporation got it into their heads that people know them mainly for Mac computers and iPhones they could stop using the word Apple in their name or product announcements and use the name Macintosh. Macintosh Macs on the desktop, Macintosh iPads and iPhones in pockets and bags, and if the didn't use the word Apple to refer to the company or products for enough years (ask an IP lawyer, again, I Am Not A Lawyer) the board of directors could one day discover that they no longer hold a  trademark on the word Apple in any field of commerce. Even if that unlikely day came to pass, you still couldn't pay me to start a company named Apple since both companies seem to have rabid legal offices.

In @Annie_Austria's case: wow, the grey zone is probably murkier than usual. Mostly (in my opinion, again not a lawyer) from openly having it start as a chapter by chapter rewrite of another story. If on the other hand you had made page or a few pages long outline of the plot of the story and then worked from that, probably much further into the, "no problems," side of the shades of grey. If you made an outline of the original story, tinkered with that outline merging and splitting side characters, adding events, or perhaps changing how major plot points go ("Hey, what if instead of the major midpoint event being the protagonist's family discovering what's been going on we move that to the last act and instead at the midpoint the protagonist is thrown for a loop by _____, oh and then this happens, and because of that this character will want to do that..."). Keep in mind there are actual published for profit by major publishers books that started as fanfic and even if the rights holders to the stories they started as fanfic of wanted to do something about that there is little they can do. (I can name at least two book series, I'm sure others here can name more)

[Annie_Austria]

Hello to all who took their time to comment on my question. 

Thanks for all your replies and analysis. On the weekend I was able to each out to the original author and got a short approval to post it. 

And I finished to type the last chapter that I added in the end. I will need to go over gramma and spelling once more before I may post it an some 2 or 3 weeks. As english is not my mother tongue I will take my time for that and its about 46000 Works and 100 pages (with a lot of new lines to make it readable).

A lot of thanks also from LittleFenny for this explanation about the law behind that. 

As the first capers are really pretty similar, because it was where I started and were not to confident to deviate to a grater parts of the original story, The only thing apart of rewriting in my own words  was that i added inner monologs to describe her feelings and padded out the plot where explanations and reasons where missing. So there, the degree of similarity is on a event to event basis and you can actually still compare each paragraph where something happens. 

In the later parts i just read the original and recreated another part that fit in the gap and it even has little to no connection to the original, with adding new events that happened, adding new days they where just skipped in the original, adding friendship. So it just the basic idea that is similar, and that is the reason I want to post it anyway. 

In the end i am glad that i got the approval from the original author. 

Again thanks a lot for all the comments that was a great help for me. 

Annie