On Sun, 18 May 2003 14:12:23 -0400, RDX wrote:

> As you are no doubt aware, the current IRTC topic is "A scene from your
> favorite mystery story, or anything else recognizably mysterious or
> enigmatic."  Lets say your favourite mystery story is still protected
> under copyright laws, ie, anything written in the last few decades at
> least. Would reproducing a scene from such a work be a violation of it's
> copyright? How about the instance of taking a character from an existing
> work and putting them in a mysterious context, eg "Detective Chewbacca"?
>  Is fan art a violation of copyright?
> 
> Sorry to bring up copyright issues, but the last thing I would want to
> do is violate the copyright on someone elses work.

	A copyright deals only with the rendering in fixed form. Only if you
duplicated nearly exactly an illustration in the book could the question
even arise. Creating an image from a printed description is not infringing
a copyright as your form is an image and in the novel it is written.

	Using the name Chewbacca as the name of a character which looks like the
SW character is a violation just as it would be if the character were
Mickey Mouse. It has become a tradition in Hollywood to ignore fan
representation when not for profit but tradition is not law.

	But all is not lost. There was no lawsuit from Jim Hensen over
Chewbacca's uncanny resemblence to the Cookie Monster. It was not the
change of C to W but that the characters were otherwise unrelated.

	Certainly there would be no problem with a Wookie detective for the same
reason but to be save consider another letter like N but as that might
push the PG rating, an R is obvious.

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