On Sun, 20 Mar 2005 19:03:06 +0100, Jean-Baptiste Soufron jbsoufron@free.fr wrote:
You can use your addition by itself if you want. It's not a derived work in itself, only the combination of the 2 texts is.
Unfortunately this isn't the case.... Check out the numerous cases of fan fiction that don't use a single word of the copyrighted work, but have still been ruled to be derived works.
Inspired works are now starting to fall under copyright protection. This trend started with the inclusions of translations under the definition of derivative works and has been expanding since then....
Enforcement has been previously limited to things like fan-fiction since it's so difficult to prove if original text was derived or not, but the history in wikipedia make it pretty easy to make a good argument where previously it would have been near impossible.
Copyright law in the US needs to be reformed, but the current trends are not heading in the right direction yet.