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Comment by grizzles | Hacker News Reader

The Constitution guarantees the right to free expression. CBS's strategy is based on threats, not law. A common misconception: Stage 9 looks the same as the USS Enterprise and that matters; nope. Legally, if Stage 9 is an original work, there isn't much CBS can do to stop it other than to try to look scary w/endless litigation. With the ACLU's help Stage 9 should easily prevail.

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From the video linked in the article, it looks like they are using the music, and characters from the show. The content of the screens also appear to be copies from the show. I am not a lawyer, but those do look like infringing elements.

Still, maybe with these elements removed they could have a case.

You are utterly and completely wrong.

Edit - As an example: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130304/18411522197/insan...

Your opinion is based on convention between a bunch of studios that have a self interest in preserving an asset portfolio. There is no case law that supports your opinion that I'm aware of. If I'm wrong, please do go ahead and cite it.

The Constitution also guarantees property rights.

You have the right to free expression, but that doesn't mean you can exercise that right on my wall.

So if I draw a perfect Mickey Mouse, can I hang it on my wall at home? Can I post it on my website? When exactly does my right to free expression become no longer exerciz-able? You can see what a slippery slope that would be.

From what I remember (not a lawyer), the border between “that’s grand” and “right, you’re taking the mickey” is different between countries, and in particular the USA allows arbitrary reproduction for personal use while the UK forbids reproduction even for personal use.

The edge cases are more complex than I have stated, in both countries, but courts have definitely had to answer the question “is it copyright infringement to load a computer program from (tape|drive|etc) into RAM”, so it’s not like they don’t know the simple definition is problematic.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glider_(bot)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAI_Systems_Corp._v._Peak_Co....

You can't just say that without citing Dara Ó Briain.

> When exactly does my right to free expression become no longer exerciz-able? You can see what a slippery slope that would be.

I'm not a lawyer so I wouldn't try to give you advice. I believe though you are asking about fair use and a lot has been written about that.

Do you have something you can cite regarding this? If I write my own novel that happens to look exactly like Stephen King's "It", I can't just start publishing it.

You can write a novel about a fear-based evil clown monster named "Centsmarty" that pulls kids into the sewers and does horrible things to them, and sell it all you want. Plot is not copyrightable.

It just can't contain any uniquely identifiable sentence fragments from any other novel. And you know people will be checking it particularly closely against the sentences in "It".

And you'd better be sure not to say "Pennywise" anywhere, as that would be a trademark character. The bridge of the Enterprise-D is a trademark set design.

If yours was an original work, how would you know it's the same? It's absurdly unlikely that you could write "It" but I'm sure people co-invent blocks of text every day.

I wonder what the longest block of text is on the internet that two people independently wrote.

The law doesn't operate on such a binary scale; "if we can't formulate an extremely precise distinction then no distinction can exist at all".

If someone claimed to write an original work that was exactly the same as It, a 1200-page novel, nobody would accept that it was independently written, even if we can't exactly pin down the word count at which we draw that line.

> I wonder what the longest block of text is on the internet that two people independently wrote.

Not more than a couple of dozen words I would think. The number of possible combinations is astonishingly high.

You might find this interesting: http://rstudio-pubs-static.s3.amazonaws.com/187848_0ec906d62...

My point is that if someone recreates an exact replica of the NCC-1701-D bridge, or another creative work that someone else made, it's ludicrous to suggest that the first amendment somehow magically protects you from doing whatever you want with it.

What exactly do you consider an exact replica? A screenshot from the TV series? It's a fictional object. It's not like it's the bloody Concorde and they photocopied the plans from BAC/Aérospatiale and posted them on the internet.

That's a fair point; other commenters pointed out that parts of the ship as depicted are identical to the parts seen on TV (e.g., the screens with the LCARS systems on them.) That's pretty damning.

More elegantly stated: Copyright covers expressions of ideas, not ideas.

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