How much "inspiration" is legal?

[Hory]

I am considering adapting a certain Outer Limits episode into a game, but I am not sure how much of their idea it is legal for me to use.
While many stories have often been adapted, reinterpreted or derived, I have no idea if and which required licensing or whatnot.
Even the Outer Limits episode is not based on an original idea. How much is generally legal to take from such an episode?

General events?
Character archetypes?
Character backgrounds and relationships?
Names?
Certain dialogue lines?

Note that the game would be free. Would non-commerciality make any difference?

Thanks.

 

[Greatatlantic]

What is this Outer Limits of which you speak? A TV show, a comic?

Beyond that, Copyright law is one confusing son of a gun, or at least in the US. Basically, the law has "fair use" exceptions to copyright. Quoting a book in a review, for example, is fair use. Parody is also generally considered fair use. However, this stuff is theoretically decided on a case by case basis, so you can still get sued even if fair use on the outside would seem to favor your case. Here's the wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use .

That being said, there is a difference between being suable, and actually being sued, or the copyright holder caring. If your project is low key enough, I doubt they'd care. Also, not using exact names and dialogue lines makes it MUCH harder to sue.

 

[Hory]

The Outer Limits is a TV anthology series, similiar to The Twilight Zone.

I found something interesting in the link you gave me:

To prevent the private ownership of work that rightfully belongs in the public domain, facts and ideas are separate from copyright—only their particular expression or fixation merits such protection.

But it is still unclear, for example, how much of a TV episode is fact and idea and how much is expression.

Do the character roles fit into the fact or the expression of it part? *Sigh*

 

[barzam]

The subject is really a confusing one, and most people seem to confuse copyright with ownership rights, while the real case is that immaterial rights are part of free speech, granting the copyright holder the sole permit to 'use' the copyrighted material in public.

You don't own the rights to intellectual property, you have been granted by law the only right to publish it for a limited time, thus infringing on the right of free speech of others.

[on topic]
Good points all over, Greatatlantic.

It would be easier to answer this specific question if you told us where you are from and where you will be publishing this game in question.

 

[obediah]

I am considering adapting a certain Outer Limits episode into a game, but I am not sure how much of their idea it is legal for me to use.
While many stories have often been adapted, reinterpreted or derived, I have no idea if and which required licensing or whatnot.
Even the Outer Limits episode is not based on an original idea. How much is generally legal to take from such an episode?

General events?
Character archetypes?
Character backgrounds and relationships?
Names?
Certain dialogue lines?

If you are in the U.S., and don't have a huge pile of cash, the law doesn't matter so much. If you get anywhere near the line and a company wants too, they will file suit and quickly run your legal costs past what you are comfortable with and you will have to settle.

Note that the game would be free. Would non-commerciality make any difference?

Thanks.

It would probably mean the difference between a takedown notice and a suit for money. There is no real harm in just not working on a project, especially one that is probably more about learning than anything else.

So go ahead and start on it, and be prepared to have to walk away right when the game is taking off. And yes, all of this is from my ass and countless hours wasted following interwebs news.

 

[Hory]

I'm in the EU. I'm not worried that I'll be sued, but I don't want to invest a lot of time in this game only to be shut down by whoever holds the rights to the Outer Limits. I also want to be able to display this game positively in my portfolio rather than as a black sheep, as copyright infringement or plagiarism.

Where will the game be published? That's also a strange issue, in this age of globalization. If I make it downloadable online, then I guess it will have been published in the US as well. Assuming the game somehow breaks copyright laws, would I have to ban IP addresses from US?

I guess I'm bothered by the whole moral uncertainty of it all. Can you copyright a story? And even worse, can you buy the story from it's creator and own it as if the fact that you didn't even write it is irrelevant to your right of having it? I'm talking about the Outer Limits copyright holders.

I want to make this game for the sake of interactivity, and for the sake of retelling a good story, not for the sake of creating an entirely new one. I think it's wrong to prevent retelling of stories, which is so much part of human nature. If I am not allowed to retell it in a different medium, wouldn't I also (for example) be disallowed from retelling it to a friend by word of mouth? How about traditional storytellers. How many of the stories they told did they also create?

 

[Helton]

Is it an old Outer Limits or one of the newer ones?

You could email whoever holds the rights and ask permission. Save the emails.

 

[crakkie]

I am considering adapting a certain Outer Limits episode into a game, but I am not sure how much of their idea it is legal for me to use.
While many stories have often been adapted, reinterpreted or derived, I have no idea if and which required licensing or whatnot.
Even the Outer Limits episode is not based on an original idea. How much is generally legal to take from such an episode?

General events?
Character archetypes?
Character backgrounds and relationships?
Names?
Certain dialogue lines?

Note that the game would be free. Would non-commerciality make any difference?

Thanks.

You can copyright stories, but not scenarios. You can copyright characters but not archetypes. Dialog lines? yes. Dialog topics and outcomes? no.
If you're parodying then you can push it all the way, really, but that's not what you are doing.

And there are international copyright laws, not just US laws, that you would be violating if you did follow it too closely. I'm sure there's several court cases dealing with just how far you can push it both in the US and the EU. Talk to a copyright lawyer (or some similar, cheaper resource) to find out how the boundaries are defined. Probably something like "obvious to even a casual observer to be a re-telling of the original work", but IANAL.

And I don't think non-commerciality (firefox is telling me that that's not a word, but dammit it should be) will put you in the clear. Asshole companies that don't want any infringing fan-made work have had projects shut down.

If you're really nervous, get those neurons firing and come up with enough original material to incorporate into your game to make it seem significantly different than the Outer Limits episode. I was worried that my game was veering much too close to Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrel, so I screwed with the timeline, characters, and setting until it was distinctly my own creation. Now it's more like Shadowrun-in-the-1920's, and my nightmares of Susanna Clarke kicking down my door, grabbing me by my throat and screaming at me in a cockney froth that she was going to "bash my eyes out" in what amounted to a single word are for the most part gone.

 

[Norfleet]

The important thing is to always maintain strict seperation between "meatspace" and "Internets". Never cross the streams. If they can't even find you, they can't even try to sue you. If you make it prohibitively expensive to even find you, they will abandon all but the most solidly grounded lawsuits on cost. If you are only a virtual presence, they can only attack your hosting, not you, and if their legal grounds are completely shaky, moving to an international jurisdiction will yank the rug out from under them. Even if you aren't doing anything shady at all, you can NEVER BE TOO CAREFUL. Never cross meatspace with the Internets.

 

[Jasede]

That's the dumbest advice ever given on these foruns to date, Norfleet.