[Retric]

> I'm still not seeing how this actually affects you.

I stopped writing a book that happened to be overly close to another book someone else published. I had not read it when I started, but reading the second book I could no longer really separate the ideas. Now, sure plenty of people keep going in that situation but technically it does not take much to cross into derivative works. It's also why may (but far from all) writers stop reading others works.