From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Doug
Meerschaert
Sent: Monday, June 26, 2000 11:54 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: RE: [Open_Gaming] The Spirit and the Letter
<< > If I transplanted it to a very
> different setting... if I in some way made the story a commentary on
> Tolkien, or an alternate interpretation (maybe telling the story from the
> evil demigod's point of view)... or even if I changed the tone to
> tongue-in-cheek humor... I'd probably prevail. But the closer I
> stuck to the
> original, the more likely they would be to win a derivative claim.
I think the alternative interpretation wouldn't fall under fair use... which
is a Bad Thing, if you don't have permission from Tolkien's estate. >>
I could easily get away with the alternative interpretation IF I changed the
names, maps, races, etc. Even if it was still recognizably similar to
Tolkien, it would be for the clear purpose of exploring the same themes but
leading to different conclusions. If I wanted to make the reader consider a
new notion -- say, that Tolkien's heroes were simply Aryan racist archetypes
trying to oppress the "lesser" races that were simply trying to make their
own homes safe from Aryan colonization (NOT MY THEORY! ONLY AN EXAMPLE! Good
grief, I've read LotR TWELVE TIMES, and consider it one of my all-time
favorite stories. So DON'T MISTAKE THIS EXAMPLE FOR ANYTHING BUT AN
EXAMPLE!) -- then it would definitely be a different story, even though the
knowledgeable reader would recognize it as an indictment of Tolkien.
In the comic book world, for example, take a look at Alan Moore's "Supreme"
books. Supreme as originally written was a blatant excuse for the "original"
authors to tell Superman stories for a different publisher. Had DC/Time
Warner felt there was a threat to their sales, they might have had a case.
After all, they have a precedent: they sued Fawcett to stop publishing
Captain Marvel fifty years earlier, and won the suit (though that may have
been on trademark grounds rather than copyright -- not sure); and Captain
Marvel was far more original than Supreme. But when Alan Moore took over the
Supreme character, he took the (un)original concept and turned it into a
nice mix of nostalgia and sly commentary on the conventions of superhero
comic books themselves. How could you make a comic book commentary on
superhero comic books WITHOUT exploring the original comic book superhero?
Could DC still have won a suit? I don't know. But it seems to this reader
that the books as done by Moore were clearly not derivative, but commentary.
I can't think of better examples right now; but I know there are authors who
decide that a given book was completely wrong-headed, and decide to rewrite
it the way it should have been done. Others will decide that a familiar
story can be reworked to convey their messages. Often, this is in the form
of differing political perspectives. For a good example of this, look for a
book called (I think) "Being Wicked". It's the story of the "Wizard of Oz"
told from the perspective of the Wicked Witch. (This one is NOT changed to a
different setting; so I have to assume the original has gone public domain.)
In this version, the Wizard is an evil conservative who enslaves all the
animals in Oz, and the Witch is an environmentally friendly person (she is
green, after all) who is just trying to protect animal rights.
Martin L. Shoemaker
Emerald Software, Inc. -- Custom Software and UML Training
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
www.EmeraldSoftwareInc.com
www.UMLBootCamp.com
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