In a message dated 05/11/2004 4:49:04 AM Eastern Standard Time, fides at kludgeco.com writes: Philip Hart wrote: >1) Can anyone expect copyright on broad plot ideas expressed in a public >forum? > > IANAL - it depends how specific it is and it is up to the court to decide which is something you don't want. You cannot copyright a stereotype for example - 'the wisearse sidekick' or 'boy meets girl' but when stereotype meets specific you start getting fuzzy legal gray areas. Where an idea for a story is expressed doesn't matter otherwise no writing whould be covered since you don't get much more of a publc forum than publishing something ;-) >2) Wow, what a pain. > > The problem is that such things would have to go to court and could go either way even if you had the idea first which is quite hard to legally prove. And anything that has to go that far is loosing even if you win the case. >While the above is interesting, I really hope that we find out in the >fullness of time what the prescient list idea was. > > Ditto. :-) Fides Only an idiot would publish their idea to a public forum and then cry when someone else 'stole' it. I believe that anyone on this list who writes 'it would be way cool if.......' would be honored that Steve himself was thinking along those lines. I also highly doubt that Steve really needs to steal ideas from us humble peasants. As he said in the interview(a loose paraphrase, allow me some leeway here)- someone on the list came up with a story line that he had been considering and now he is not sure if he will use it. He mentioned nothing about reading the list and then thinking along the posted story line. Methinks that there may be some out there who suppose too much. John D. Barbato, OD