Hollywood Doesn't Seem To Have A Problem With Stolen Ideas
from the only-so-many-to-go-around dept
Considering just how loud the MPAA is screaming about how much "piracy" impacts their business, it's fascinating to read this article in USA Today (found at TechLawAdvisor) about how so many movies these days take ideas from older movies - to the point that you could consider some to be an unofficial remake of another movie. Yet, despite all of this copying, there are almost no lawsuits - even while the MPAA screams about how important "intellectual property" is, they don't seem to do much to protect it. Of course, it's pretty standard for Hollywood pitches to simply use other combinations of old movies as shorthand for new movies: "It's Out of Africa meets Pretty Woman." In that context, it's not so weird. But compared to the overall industry denying any plausibility for "derivative works" while thriving off of such works themselves is quite a contrast.
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define derivative works
Not that Hollywood doesn't have a disturbing habit of eating their own dead in a creative sense, mind you -- that's a lack of creativity and fear of real creative risks. But it's hardly derivative work in the legal definition.
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Interesting
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