[HN Gopher] Photos in a Similar Style Aren't Copyright-Infringin...
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Photos in a Similar Style Aren't Copyright-Infringing-Woodland vs.
Lil Nas X
Author : hn_acker
Score : 23 points
Date : 2025-05-20 20:40 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.ericgoldman.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.ericgoldman.org)
| darth_avocado wrote:
| Bruh... the images aren't even close... maybe you can kinda see a
| resemblance in one or two, but not enough to be copyright
| infringement
| HenryBemis wrote:
| I can imagine in certain movies, where the 'scenario' is
| limited to 'physical activities' between a variety of men,
| women, and various combinations. I will say 'they tend to be
| recurring scenes in those' (no I haven't watched them all).
| Will they start suing each other because they (more or less)
| are doing the same deed, the very same deed found in various
| ancient books and amphora, for the past few thousand years?
| Animats wrote:
| Semi-naked Instagrammer probably falls under the scenes a faire
| copyright exemption. It's an expected cliche in the genre.
| jetrink wrote:
| It turns out that Woodland v. Hill is _not_ about landscape
| photography.
| chrismcb wrote:
| "similar style" is a bit of a stretch. More like photos with a
| similar concept. Even that is a bit of a stretch.
| modzu wrote:
| the court's argument is interesting here - you have to prove
| access to argue infringement? wouldn't infringement prove access?
| and what is with the wacko claims about probabilities for
| discovering content on the internet?
| jerf wrote:
| Copyright really does protect against _copying_. Proving that
| you came up with the same idea independently provides
| substantial protection in a lawsuit. This is why big-name
| authors will hire people to screen their mail and remove all
| suggestions, so they can say with a straight face in court that
| even though Fan #5,243 sent them the exact idea they ended up
| using in their seventh book in some series, they never saw it
| and therefore did not copy it.
|
| Obviously, if you create a page-for-page match for some
| 500-page novel this still won't save you, because no one's
| going to buy your claim to have stumbled on that independently.
| This isn't licence to do large-scale copying and then try to
| claim you had no idea that somebody else wrote the exact same
| book. But this is the exact sort of case where demonstrating
| that there was no way that the putative copies are actually
| _copies_ means the lawsuit will fail.
|
| Bear in mind I'm talking about the intended purpose of the law.
| There are borderline and questionable cases where you may feel,
| even with substantial justification, that the court ruled
| against this principle. But this is at least the clear
| intention of the system.
| kragen wrote:
| You have to prove copying to prove infringement. But because
| actual copying is often done in private, under US law, courts
| deem copying to have happened if you can prove both "access"
| and "substantial similarity". Substantial similarity on its own
| isn't enough.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substantial_similarity#Substan...
| says:
|
| > _it refers to that level of similarity sufficient to prove
| that copying has occurred, once access has been demonstrated._
| hiccuphippo wrote:
| Even if the guy saw the other's pictures, there's no actual
| copying happening. It's a new work in the same style. Styles are
| not copyrightable.
| SchemaLoad wrote:
| Copyright needs to be massively scaled down. What innovation is
| this kind of thing encouraging?
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(page generated 2025-05-20 23:01 UTC)