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Comment by VanTheBrand | Hacker News Reader

Lots of posters here seem to fundamentally misunderstand the basics of copyright protection and derivative works. So many replies about the example here not being an “exact copy” and therefore “obviously” not deserving of protection. I wonder if maybe all the talk over the last 20 years about copyright infringement as it relates to digital piracy and “exact copies” has perhaps confused people into thinking that exactness is a necessary part of copyright infringement. It’s not. Some very common examples you see every day. When you make a book into a movie? You need copyright holder permission. When you take sheet music or lyrics and make a song recording? You need permission of the copyright holder. These aren’t exact copies they aren’t even the same mediums.

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And clearly the Luxembourg copyright system doesn't work that way? Maybe in Luxembourg, copyright only exists in much more limited situations?

Whether something should or should not be copyrightable in the moral sense is a very different conversation than in the legal sense and I don't really see why we should be restricted into believing that things that commonly require licenses should always be that way.

Why just guess though?

If the Law governing IP in Luxembourg only protected exact copies, the reasoning wouldn't have had to have been about the pose, it would have been that the painting wasn't and exactly copy of the photograph.

I think the ruling is probably much more complicated than the simple statement that it was on pose alone. Whether or not the similarities between the original and derivative work meet the criteria for the Luxembourg equivalent of Fair Use is probably a better discussion.

However either way, I see no reason to think about copyright in such a limited way. I don't think many people believe that copyright is only enforceable if two works are exactly the same. Rather I think they're simply discussing how inspiration and imitation is very common in art.

I'm not sure anyone is thinking of copyright 'in such a limited way' in this particular thread? the parent comment was regarding comments on this post implying or explicitly stating there isn't an issue because there isn't a material duplication.

> And clearly the Luxembourg copyright system doesn't work that way? Maybe in Luxembourg, copyright only exists in much more limited situations?

The problem is that Luxembourg's copyright regime should be a lot more stricter than, for example, US (this ruling is significantly different from other Luxembourgish rulings). I actually thought that this is a US ruling at first glance.

The comments I’m talking about are not speaking about Luxembourg they are speaking (incorrectly) about the US and copyright in general. Also the Luxembourg system does work this way. In the case discussed here, they simply said the underlying work was itself not deserving of protection. Were it ruled deserving of protection, the derivative works would have been infringing.

Knocking off a book by changing some character names is common. So in spirit, yes you can't make a movie based on a book without licensing. In practice we have stealth book adaptations without license. We even have movies licensing a book, and then ignoring everything EXCEPT the names of few characters.

With AI you need to prove that picture A.jpg was based on work B.jpg. How are you going to do that? "It looks similar" is not a proof I used your picture.

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