In article ,
Wes Stewart wrote:
On 16 Aug 2004 18:49:09 GMT, otforme (Charlie Self)
wrote:
|Wes Stewart writes:
|
|
|As a parting thought, consider that once a week on public television,
|Nahm, does exactly what you're thinking about. He makes a copy of
|someone else's work and "sells" it for money to our friends at
|Delta/Porter Cable, Minwax, etc.
|
|Uh, not exactly. I don't watch much TV, but the items Norm reproduces, that
|I've seen, would all be well out of copyright. And he, or someone with the
|show, usually has to develop his own plans from the old furniture.
Correct. "Exactly* was a poor choice of words. But the concept is
certainly similar.
So I wonder how New Yankee would feel about someone buying and
building from their "not quite an original idea" plans and selling the
results?
"If you steal from one source, it's plagiarism.
If you steal from two or more sources, it's research."
This =is= a close statement of the facts with regards to copyright.
If you can point to the 'same thing' (or 'very close' to the same)
from two _unrelated_ sources, then it is clear that you are _not_
infringing on the 'unique creative effort' of _either_ 'author',
because it *isn't* "unique".
If there is nothing 'unique' about the plan, other than the totality
of the plan drawings, then there are no copyrighted elements in that
which the 'derived work' is derived _from_. Therefore, the copyright
owner has no claim on the derived work.
Or if the construct is built 'not exactly according to the plans', so
as to leave out (or substitute for) any 'unique' creative elements from
the plans that 'would have been' embodied in the derivative work -- again,
the copyright owner has no legal claim.
As for New Yankee Workshop, the underlying object from which the plans
are derived is -not- protected by copyright. The plans themselves are
a 'derivative work' of the original object. The NYW copyright extends
only to the creative effort they _added_ in creating the plans themselves,
and does _not_ include any of the characteristics of the underlying
object. Building an object from those plans involves -only- those
elements which were part of the original object. Since NYW has no
copyright on those elements, they have no grounds for complaint.