Are scenarios copyrighted?

[Scud]

Copyright law is pretty complex. I know it where it pertains to songwriting. First you have to prove the person who "stole" the copyright had access to the song. Thus the reason most publishers won't take unsolicited songs. Then, the song has to be almost exact. Can't be just a few bars or a few lines of a lyric, that's done all the time. If you think you have a case, then lawyers and courts get involved and most of the time the person filing the complaint loses. Most famous and fairly recent exception was George Harrison's "My Sweet Lord" which was almost an exact note for note copy of "He's so Fine". George lost.

I'm fairly certain that most creative works can by copyrighted. In the case of scenarios, merely by posting somewhere in the scenario: copyright [year] [your name], i.e. Copyright 2010 David Bracken. In songwriting that's called a common law copyright. Since the actual filing of a copyright costs money, it's what most writers do when distributing their demos professionally.

Here's the thing, though. Let's say I decided to take one of Huib's scenarios exactly as is and rename it adding my common law copyright in the scenario description. Huib finds out and takes me to court. He could lose, since I copyrighted it and he didn't, or he could win. If he wins, now what? Next step would be figuring out damages. I doubt, in other words, he'd get much, if anything. So, why copyright?

If you use a current scenario as a jumping off point and change it pretty significantly, I personally don't see anything wrong. Wouldn't hurt to ask permission though, just for courtesy's sake, and offer to give credit. It would be a whole lot different, though, if each scenario sold for a buck each and millions of people were signing on to Iscenarios.com to download them.

Dave