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From: Leban%hp-hulk.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Re: The Terminator vs. Harlan Ellison (i.e., Plagiarism) ...
Message-ID: <2265@topaz.ARPA>
Date: Wed, 12-Jun-85 03:56:31 EDT
Article-I.D.: topaz.2265
Posted: Wed Jun 12 03:56:31 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 13-Jun-85 01:54:53 EDT
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Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
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From: Bruce <Leban%hplabs.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa>

Subject: ... and "Melancholy Elephants" by Spider Robinson (*SPOILER*)

From: rayssd!m1b@topaz.arpa (M. Joseph Barone)

> Ellison stated that the idea of 'The Terminator' came from two episodes
> he wrote for 'Outer Limits'.  The episode names elude me but the plots
> were: 1) the soldier from the future, Quallo Kaprikni (sic?), and 2) Bob
> Culp as a robot from the future with a glass hand ('Demon with a Glass
> Hand'?).  He therefore sued for copyright infringement and won.

From: peora!joel@topaz.arpa (Joel Upchurch)

> This seems a little thin.  The producers would have had to copied a
> lot more than the IDEA from Ellison for him to win a copyright suit.
> Ideas are not copyrightable, only the particular expression of those
> ideas are.  If you could sue a writer for stealing an idea, they
> could sue every writer in existence.  When was the last time you saw
> a TV show or a movie with an original plot?  A writer has to be very
> good just to come up with an interesting variation of an old idea.
> 
> I enjoyed the Terminator, even though I couldn't find a single
> element in the plot that hadn't been used before.

From Spider Robinson's story "Melancholy Elephants" in the book of the same
name (TOR, 1985):

        "... Remember the /Roots/ plagiarism case?  And the dozens like it
    that followed?  Around the same time a writer named van Vogt sued the
    makers of a successful film called /Alien/, for plagiarism of a story
    forty years later.  Two other writers named Bova and Ellison sued a
    television studio for stealing a series idea.  All three collected.
        "That ended the the legal principle that one deos not copyright
    /ideas/ but /arrangements of words/.  The number of word-arrangements
    is finite, but the number of /ideas/ is /much/ smaller.  Certainly,
    they can be retold in endless ways [sic] --- /West Side Story/ is a
    brilliant reworking of /Romeo and Juliet/.  But it was only possible
    because /Romeo and Juliet/ was in the public domain.  Remember too that
    of the finite number of stories that can be told, a certain number will
    be /bad stories/."

This is an interesting perspective.  But before I'm willing to give up, I'd
like to at least know the order of magnitude of the number of ideas.

Incidentally, the last sentence quoted above is my response to "The
Problems of SF Today".  We need to have writers who write bad books so it
will enable other writers to write the good ones.  If everyone were writing
good books, we'd run out a lot sooner.  (:-)

Bruce Leban	...hplabs!leban
		leban@hplabs.csnet
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