[Xirdus]

> Strange Brew and The Lion King are not derivative works of Hamlet simply because they include literary themes and plot points that originated in Hamlet.

But try to write your own story of a lion cub chased away by his uncle and living in a jungle until his childhood friend finds him and convinces him to reclaim his kingdom, and you'll quickly hear from Disney's lawyers how non-derivative it really is.

OSS devs aren't worried about Hamlet reinterpretations. They're worried about legally-distinct-but-functionally-identical software clones. Unlike Disney, they don't have millions in their pockets to fight the legal battle. You know who does have millions? The people they'd be fighting against, who are going to use every single of your arguments to claim their AI-generated reimplementation of Kefir is not bound by GPL (or even by BSD 3-clause in case of runtime). No share-alike, no attribution, no nothing. If they are right, then the OSS social contract is dead. Even if they're not right, but behave as if they're right because they have lawyers and OSS devs don't - the social contract is just as dead.

[Gormo]

> But try to write your own story of a lion cub chased away by his uncle and living in a jungle until his childhood friend finds him and convinces him to reclaim his kingdom, and you'll quickly hear from Disney's lawyers how non-derivative it really is.

I'd expect them to say "we don't like this, but since it's not actually a derivative work, we can't do anything about it". As long as you're not directly copying things like characters, dialogue, etc., it's not a derivative work.

That's why Armageddon is not a derivative work of Deep Impact, the Shark Attack series is not a derivative work of Jaws, the more famous Titanic is not a derivative work of 1979's S.O.S. Titanic, and the Harry Potter series is not a derivative work of Teen Witch.

Using the same story themes, plot points, and setting as another work does not implicate that other work's copyright. Only substantial copying of specifics does.

[Xirdus]

> As long as you're not directly copying things like characters, dialogue, etc., it's not a derivative work.

Define a character. Is another lion prince named Simba the same character? Is a lion prince named something else the same character? Is a human prince named Simba the same character? I'm no copyright expert, but from what I know about fanfics and fanart, the US courts ruled all of these violate copyright (you can win a book plagiarism lawsuit even if the other book has all names changed and every sentence went through thesaurus). The few cases where the obvious stand-in was ruled non-infringing were on the grounds of parody exception, not on the grounds of being non-derivative.

The many Titanic movies are not each other's derivatives because none of them are based on each other. They're all based on the historical events directly. Now, if the original Titanic was fictional like the famous Nautilus, then yes, the 1997 movie would be derivative, but not of the 1979 series.

Which part of Harry Potter is directly rips off Teen Witch the way Lion King directly rips off Hamlet? I'm not familiar with that movie.