copyright concept?

[mrn]

do you want to work on a movie with me

[Aegis Prime]

for example take the film "being john malkovich". If you wrote a film where characters are inside someones head, would that be infringing the copyright of the film. how close does it have to be before copyright issues kick in?

Well, that depends on how close to the source material it is - for instance - if in your story, someone took over somebody elses mind using telepathy or some spiffy sci-fi gadget then whilst one of the core concepts in Being John Malkovich may be similar, the execution (and presumably, plot) would be very different. On the other hand, if your character gets his mind taken over by someone who crawls through a tunnel behind a filing cabinet then you could be in trouble :)

[jeremybirn]

Copyrights apply to "a unique expression of an idea," not to an idea in general. So if one person makes a movie where robots become intelligent and decide to kill or enslave the human race, that doesn't stop other people from using that basic plot in other films.

-jeremy

[pgill]

ok cool


thanks for the advice...my idea is inspired by an old comic story which I loved as a kid but for my short, it is just the basic concept I am using, the plot, characters, environments are far from the original comic episodes.

Cheers for the thoughts.

Paul

PS Jeremy...great book!

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