Reply #117: In support

[Tansy_Gold]

As the owner of numerous copyrights, I'm here to support you, qwghlmian, and elaborate on your arguments.

Original art works can be and are copyrighted and may not be copied without risk.

Deriviative art works are also covered by the original copyright; a larger mirror-image version in a different color is "derivative" and therefore copyrighted under the original. The copier is liable for infringement.

In the absence of proof of permission, which Churchill has already claimed, the other defense is separate creation without possibility of knowledge of original. This is what happened when two novels were used as the source for the Irwin Allen flick "Towering Inferno." The two books had been independently written and did not infringe on each other's copyright.

Copyright law is fundamentally unchanged for the past 100 years or so; it is was not "payed" /sic/ for by the RIAA.

Fair use doctrine under copyright law allows for parody. Thus SNL can spoof just about anything with impunity.

There is a difference between copyright infringement and plagiarism; sometimes plagiarism is perfectly legal. A version of the Mona Lisa with the face of Lynne Cheney is quite all right, as da Vinci's work is not subject to copyright, so that even if the work were not considered "parody" under fair use, it is still not infringement of copyright. "West Side Story" is a modern reworking of Shakespeare's "Romeo & Juliet" and thus is legal plagiarism.

IDEAS and TITLES cannot be copyrighted.

If Churchill's reworking of Cohen's original essay on fishing rights contained verbatim sections of her original work, used her original sources, and included no new or additional material, he is very likely to be hit with charges of copyright infringement. Although it is perfectly legitimate for one academic to build upon the work of another -- with proper attribution -- the unattributed appropriation of another academic's work is, shall we say, bad form.

I was instrumental in bringing not one but two copyright infringers to justice. Armed with copies of their work and the copyrighted work they had copied, they offered some of the most bizarre and even laughable excuses you could ever imagine. They did these thieves no good: both were found guilty and were made to pay for their crimes, not monetarily but with the utter destruction of their artistic reputations.

Just because I may agree with someone on some political points does not mean I am prepared to overlook that person's lack of artistic and/or intellectual integrity. Being on the left does not make one an angel.


(c) Tansy Gold