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Comment by imgabe | Hacker News Reader

Remakes and adaptations are a timeless part of storytelling though. Having a template for a popular story with the freedom to adapt it to a new time period and audience is how we transmit our culture. For example:

    Pygmalion (Greek myth) -> Pygmalion (Shaw play) -> My Fair Lady -> She's All That  
    Hamlet -> The Lion King
    The Odyssey -> O Brother Where Art Thou (and countless others)
    Emma (Jane Austen) -> Clueless

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But wouldn't these adaptations still be allowed even if the original was copyrighted? Hamlet -> The Lion King has similarities but there's enough differences that even if Hamlet were copyrighted it'd still be allowed as a separate work of art.

They might be. NAL, but if a work is sufficiently transformative I think you can argue that copyright doesn’t apply. You might have to go through an expensive lawsuit to get to that point though.

Copyright has a chilling effect too. My wife is an art historian and publishes academic papers and books on contemporary art. Many times the artists are still alive and she’ll need their permission to reproduce an image of their artwork.

Technically, reproducing something for commentary or criticism, especially in an academic or educational context, would fall under fair use. But no publisher is going to risk having to defend that in court, certainly not for an academic work that isn’t going to make any money, so in practice you have to obtain (often expensive) reproduction rights from the rights holders.

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