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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 8199333" data-attributes="member: 18">No, not really. If one thinks that one probably doesn't know much about intellectual property. Copyright is a very precise and limited thing. Plagiarism that isn't actual plagiarism is nearly impossible to prove. Saying you were influenced by a story isn't going to "let someone sue you" or something. If you mess around with threatening/suing people in mainstream fantasy/SF, your publisher will drop you instantly, because the reputational risk of your behaviour is incalculable. And you'll basically be blackballed, because all major publishers publish fantasy/SF that could be subjected to unreasonable-but-annoying claims of plagiarism, so anyone who is doing that is impossible to work with and likely to harm long-term profits if encouraged in any way.The only area this isn't true in, that I'm aware of, is one corner of the fanfiction-derived kink-heavy erotic novel arena. There is an extremely litigious and extremely stupid individual there who has repeatedly lost or settled entirely specious plagiarism lawsuits and sent false DMCA takedown notices, and things which have gone so badly at least one of her lawyers have ended up being disbarred. This has only been possible because things are so small-potatoes that she found a tiny publisher willing to (for a time) go a long with this, because she was their main source of income. If you want to hear about this horror, and I advise you don't, Lindsay Ellis (who normally does discussion of Disney films and the like) got roped into this when the idiot tried to sue her for discussing it (... on the grounds she quoted some bits, apparently the author didn't understand the concept of "fair use" and her lawyer was a buddy and apparently not afraid of potentially being disbarred) and has done some funny YouTube videos about it. Even then whilst other people in this arena have threatened lawsuits, this idiot is the only one who has done it.So if you're writing really kinky erotic fiction for a really small niche market, maybe there's a risk, but for like, anything normal? No.(As an aside, despite being in the UK my wife and I once managed to get an opposing US lawyer disbarred, or I guess he got himself disbarred through extreme incompetence, but that's a whole other story!)</blockquote>

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