kawaiidaigakusei wrote:
Here is the link to the mirror of this thread that TheDeeMan has posted on digitalwebbing.

http://www.digitalwebbing.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1844348

As you can see, the other forum members have contributed interesting points and he has already been warned by an Admin that his thread may be locked.

__

Above all else, please watch your language in this thread. Drunk Duck strives to keep the forums PG-13 since we have young users on this site. Thanks.

Actually the admin didn't threaten to close the thread because of me. But whatever. And the “interesting points” are more or less the same ones as were brought up here: Which came first? The comic series the tv show is titled after that it has no resemblance to or the book series who's plot it “mirrors” to the letter. But again…Whatever.

Dee

Gunwallace wrote:
They were honest questions meant as part of the discussion. If I offended you in any way I'm sorry.


You didn't offend me David. I agree with you and Oceanozone. Other folks shouldn't be doing the heavy lifting trying to get folks not to support iZombie and being outraged Diana Rowland herself should be screaming this from the roof tops. I would. And the fact that she doesn't makes people wonder. And I'm just tired of taking peoples crap over trying to raise their awareness over this like that douche on Digitalwebbing who came at me with “I'll watch whatever I want to” as if I told him otherwise. I do believe both threads start with the word “please” and me trying to lay out a case for why we as creative people should support another creative person potentially getting ripped off by iZombie by deciding not to support the show by not watching it.

Maybe I should have added the word “please” to the thread title as well.

Dee

Gunwallace wrote:
For what it's worth, i found this topic enthralling and just want to know more. I'm just frustrated by the lack of anything first hand. Also, I have shelved my watching of the show, but I fear my constant googling of iZombie as a term probably counts as “supporting it” as it's bound to add to some trend counter.


What surprised me most David is the complete and total sense of “don't give a damn” from the comic community. I mean, yeah “White trash zombie” is a book and not a comic, but this could more then easily be one of us right now and no body give s a damn. Proving that the comics “community” is a community in name only. Oh, that is until it's them presumeably getting screwed–Then it's too late. If they'd given a damn when it was the other guy then maybe this crazy iZombie/White trash Zombie situation wouldn't happen to them, or me, or any of you in the future.

This situation is my nightmare. And it should be all of yours too IMHO. I LOVE David's comic “Madison Todd - Agent of God”. It makes me laugh out loud every time I read it. I'd hate to see some douchey tv show “Michael Todd - Agent of God”(It's Jerry Maguire meets Jesus!)because some douchey producer thought he/she could get away with it because we as creators didn't support eachother enough when it counted to stop this practice with our outrage. But again…Whatever.

Dee

Well for what it's worth, I'd never seen an episode of iZombie. This thread perked my interest but I have also refused to watch it due to this thread… But I still don't care all that much! It's just hard to care when the actual creator doesn't seem all that concerned…
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I used to be heavily involved in the company White Wolf's RPG line (games like Vampire: the Masquerade), and when those Underworld movies came out, I was thinking, ‘Man it sure seems like they stole some of their ideas from White Wolf…’ but I just shrugged and didn't give it much more thought…
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But then, White Wolf sued Sony (the company behind the Underworld movies) for infringement. I was suddenly very interested! I followed the case hard, got on message boards in support of White Wolf, and really felt I was a part of a small groundswell of support fighting for White Wolf's rights. White Wolf losts (or maybe it was settled), but that's beside the point - the point is, they themselves fought!
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If somebody stole my ideas from here, I wouldn't expect any of you guys to fight for me unless I was leading the charge. Anyway… I get where you're coming from Dee, and it is a more than scary how easily ideas can still be stolen!

Like you guys it does bug me a bit that she's letting her fans do the heavy lifting on this. But she does seem like a bit of a hippy chick so I'm guessing if she's got her lawyers involved as she stated maybe she's just leaving it up to them. Whatever her reasoning she needs to speak out if she's been wronged.

And the great thing about DD is that it is high profile and movie producers do come by and check out our stuff. It happened to me back when “GAAK” was running here. Monique/Coydog and I had not one but two production studios approach us after reading “GAAK” here. Nothing ever came of it ultimately, but the experience was exciting. saying that to say this, you never know who's trolling around looking for an interesting new idea. If it turns out to be yours, or mine, etc, etc, how would we know, what would our recourse be, and how could we prove that the “new idea” was ours to begin with? It's a little scary. At least to me. I work hard on these comics so, unlike Diana Rowland and “whie trash zombie”, I'd sceam long, deep, and loud.

Dee

Yeah, while I would be flattered if some producer thought my story the Godstrain was worthy of a movie plot - I'd be pissed to high heaven if I ran across something that seemed like a clone… It's a real fear to have if your story is any good! (not saying mine is… but I think it is haha)
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Once I started my story, I've ran accross titles like ‘Christ-Virus’ and worried for a second, only to discover they're very different and/or were written earlier… But ya know, that's still a potential bummer… What if you infringe on somebody totally by accident, they call you on it, and they win?!!
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There a set of novels by a Christian writer named Ted Dekker called the ‘Circle Trilogy’ - the novels are called ‘Red’, ‘Black’, and ‘White’. Anyway in them there's this guy who dreams other worlds and then in the ‘real’ world he suddenly can do a amazing things, and the story also has some people using a manufactured virus to hold the world hostage…
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I don't think my story has near enough resemblances to be anything to worry about, but… what if it did? And it was all just happenstance…? I've heard that's the case with the similarities between the Hunger Games novels and a manga called Battle Royale…! VERY similar premise (kids killing each for entertainment) but it was all just an amazing coincidense (so says the Hungers Games author anyway, and it seems the law believes her)
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The Circle Trilogy is actually a pretty good series, but the way - It's not too heavy handed (at least no moreso than C.S. Lewis' Narnia books). I couldn't've read it if it was…

Finally found a link that suggests there is some legal stuff underway
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=782910265112455

Oh my god, if someone ripped off “Madison” I personally would be PISSED! Love that comic top to bottom. I coud even imagine it as a Youtube series (since it is done in a series of vignettes) with like a sharp female comic with an edge like Chelsea Handler as Madison.

But the saving grace for something like “Madison” is the style in which it's done. You couldn't do it in any other way then the “see one side of the conversation” style that the comic is done in, and then what would the similarity excuse be? None. “Madison” is safe. And cool. :)

Now the problem with “iZombie” is that it's not an original idea that Rob Thomas thought up, the source material exists and is RADICALLY DIFFERENT then the tv show. Rob Thomas scrubbed that comic clean of the actual comic for the tv show and did make Veronica Mars as a Zombie which is the premise of “White trash Zombie”. Like you said, in no way a slamdunk on any level, for either side I might add, but I think a jury having the original source material of the two to peruse will recognize the “White trash zombie” in “iZombie”.

EDIT. Yeah, that Dead Rising thing is troubling on all levels. What else could humans battling zombies in a shopping mall during a zombie outbreak be other then Dawn of the Dead.

Dee

TheDeeMan wrote:
but I think a jury having the original source material of the two to peruse will recognize the “White trash zombie” in “iZombie”.

Okay, but to play devil's advocate …
But is there really that much similarity? The iZombie lead is not white trash, she is middle-class and well-adjusted. The tone of the stories is not similar. The supporting cast is completely different. If you are saying no-one else in the world can do a story where a zombie works in a morgue and solves crimes because a book did that already then that places extreme limits on creativity (putting aside the issue of whether or not the creators of the iZombie TV series had ever read WTZ or not).
Can I do a series set in a war zone hospital with doctors who are bored, frightened, horny, drunk and complain about the war? That would be MASH, right? But it's also China Beach. The tone and characters differ greatly. They are the same general idea, but done very differently. You can't help think of MASH when you see China Beach, but they are not the same idea. China Beach did not ‘rip-off’ MASH.
There is a comic where a zombie eats brains and gets memories from them. Chew. Does this mean no one else can ever use that idea?
There's already a movie with a sentient zombie, Warm Bodies. Does that mean no one else can use that?
There are so many short stories out there. Do you have to check each one to see if the basic concept of a story has been used before? Could anyone even do that?
There's a big difference between taking content from a property and having similarities to it.
I have read that you can't copyright general concepts. That was the takeaway point of the Dead Rising decision. The setting was basically the same, zombies in a mall, but the story, tone, characters, etc. were different and original. If concepts were copryright then there would be very few settings, characters and stories that could be told anymore.

It's possible that Diana Rowland is refraining from talking about it too much because she's planning legal action…probably increases her chances of a settlement if she doesn't make a big fuss about it in public, idk.

HippieVan wrote:
It's possible that Diana Rowland is refraining from talking about it too much because she's planning legal action…probably increases her chances of a settlement if she doesn't make a big fuss about it in public, idk.

Yes. As I've mentioned and Gunwallace has found the reference to Diana Rowland IS planning legal action. But still.

Gunwallace? The Zombie in “white trash zombie” is really only “white trash” in the first book. She started gettig her “life” together after she became a zombie to try to be a better “person”. Fans of the book series (it's up to four in the series now I think with a new one on the way) have pointed this out. But no that's not what I'm saying. The fact that iZombie isn't white trash s meaningless. What was done was essentially this. This guy bought the Batman comc, took out the parts where he's a rich crime fighter who's parents where killed when he was a kid, made him a blind lawyer who fights crime, and now claims it's not Daredevil.

Dee

But there are plenty of Batman clones, and none of them can be taken to court …
http://io9.com/9-batman-knock-offs-that-utterly-miss-the-point-of-batm-1693526750
As long as they dont call the hero Batman, use any of the Bat logos, or use the dialogue or characters from Batman they can be Batman by a different name.
There are also plenty of Daredevil clones.

EVERYTHING is derivitave in some way. If half the things that influenced others did legal action the courts would never be empty.

Haven't you ever heard that good artists copy and great artists steal?

Steal it make it your own and run with it. Batman was a rip off from a movie called The Bat about a mysterious criminal. In fact there were any number of bat themed heroes and villians around the time Bob Kane designed Batman and he acknowledged that he borrowed and stole. Shakespeare borrowed and stole and how many films are his stories with a different setting? Throw in “Inspried by…” or “based on” throw them some cash and leave it at that.

Manga and anime is the land of rip-off and dervivitive. I mean just how many stupid red head main characters can there be? Hmmm Excel Saga and Ikkitousen both started within months of each other and their main characters are nearly identical.

Gunwallace wrote:
But there are plenty of Batman clones, and none of them can be taken to court …
http://io9.com/9-batman-knock-offs-that-utterly-miss-the-point-of-batm-1693526750
As long as they dont call the hero Batman, use any of the Bat logos, or use the dialogue or characters from Batman they can be Batman by a different name.
There are also plenty of Daredevil clones.

Yeah, but DC did sue the shit out of the comic company that created Captain Marvel(Shazam) in the 50's because they thought he was too much like Superman. They didn't win. The comic compnay decided it wasn't worth it to fight it out and stopped making Captain Marvel comics. You never know who will decide “no, this is a bit too much like this or that”. Disney tried to sue Tom&Jerry becuase they used the name “mouseketeer” in two of their Oscar nominated animated shorts EVEN THOUGH the Tom&Jerry stuff came out two years before the Mouseketeers tv show. First thing I heard when I started “Chevalier: The Queen's Mouseketeer” is “Disney will sue”. Disney doesn't own the copyright to the word “mouseketeer”. There have been parodies of the the 3 Mouseketeers using mice called “The 3 Mouseketeers” in some way shape or form so I had/have no worries.

Dee

Detective Comics versus Fawcett over Captain Marvel was pure jealousy. Captain Marvel was huge and outselling Superman. Republic pictures had turned down Superman perferring to do Captian Marvel so in a business decision DC sued. They forced Fawcett out of the super hero comic book business but considering how sales had plummetted after WWII it really was a busniness decision. Though much sooner than the final decision in the 1950's (the suit started in 1941!) it got DC a deal with Republic pictures for serials of Superman and Batman.

As for Disney he was EXTREMELY litigious as he had a few intellectual properties stolen before he founded Disney and he had a big chip on his shoulder. Some theft of intellectual property suits are results of personality and busniess decisions. Sue the big guy so he wastes resources fighting you until you can regain market share.

I have no illusions about this stuff. It's purely business. Creating an intellectual property is often about gaining inspiration from the same muse as someone else. Often a creation is a stew made of bits and pieces gleaned from whatever one has looked at even in brief.

Or the infamous ,UGH I can do that SO much better! Let's do the minimum changes and I will Do it better!

Everything I have done is highly derivitive. But I like to think I do a good enough job hiding where I stole, um borrowed from or I readily admit the influence by putting in references acknowledging the original. You don't realize how hard it was to make the Robofemoid thing as original as I could and bucking all traditions I could think of.

I still remember that Disney stole the Lion King from Kimba. So lame.

ozoneocean wrote:
I still remember that Disney stole the Lion King from Kimba. So lame.

Oddly enough, Osamu Tezuka and Walt Disney meet and liked each others work. Tezuka was given permission to do a Bambi adaptation in Japan. Walt said he wanted to do an US Astro Boy. Japanese animators from his studio were trained in the use of colour by Disney. They seemed to want to use each others ideas in a time when the world was ‘bigger’ and the two markets were seperate. That, of course, was when both were alive.
But yeah, Simba was a rip-off of Kimba.

TheDeeMan wrote:
First thing I heard when I started “Chevalier: The Queen's Mouseketeer” is “Disney will sue”.

The problem is when you summarize a story about 20 words a lot of them start to sound the same.

The main plot follows the adventures of a mouse named Despereaux Tilling, as he sets out on his quest to rescue a beautiful human princess.
The young Princess Faere has been mysteriously kidnapped …
Chevalier the mouse goes off on a hero's quest to save the missing Princess.

Now, I'm in no way saying that Chevalier and Despereaux are the same story. I'm just saying that using selective quotes from CoyDog and Wikipedia I can make them sound the same. The tone, style, story, plot, characters and execution of the tales are completely different. They are not in any way the same thing, except when you reduce them down to a catchy little description. Anyone reading both, as my family has, sees them as seperate, wonderful tales. There is room in the world for many tales with a mouse rescuing a princess, and no one can stop anyone doing that. The mouse rescues the princess is a wholly unprotect-able concept.
Disney, and may others get all legal minded over words a lot of the time. Words can be trademarked, in often stupid ways. Droid is trademarked to Lucas, so every Driod ad and phone has to make that clear. McDonalds closes down restaurants with McTitles, even family owned restaurants by people named McWhatever.
The other big enforcement is art and logos. Schools with murals of Disney characters get told to paint over them. Anyone trying to use the Batman logo gets sued, etc.
I don't see any such infringement here with White Trash Zombie.
Now, there may be other issues at play. Perhaps Diana Rowland had been approached by CW for the rights to her books and turned them down? Then she'd have a case, as there's clear indication they knew of her intellectual property and wanted to use it. Who knows? I just don't think there's a case when you reduce both stories to a catchy twenty word summary and they look similar.

Gunwallace wrote:
ozoneocean wrote:
I still remember that Disney stole the Lion King from Kimba. So lame.
Oddly enough, Osamu Tezuka and Walt Disney meet and liked each others work. Tezuka was given permission to do a Bambi adaptation in Japan. Walt said he wanted to do an US Astro Boy. Japanese animators from his studio were trained in the use of colour by Disney. They seemed to want to use each others ideas in a time when the world was ‘bigger’ and the two markets were seperate. That, of course, was when both were alive.
But yeah, Simba was a rip-off of Kimba.

Oh yeah Absolutely Lion King was a rip-off of Kimba the White Lion - look at this early promotional pic (with Simba being white)

You would have to seriously dumb down the plot of Despereaux to make it only about him trying to rescue a princess. But trying to rescue a princess from whatever threat (humans, dragons, etc) is the essence of most fairy tales.

Dee

You'd be dumbing down the plot of Chevalier if you described it that way to.

Gunwallace wrote:
You'd be dumbing down the plot of Chevalier if you described it that way to.

Nope. Pretty much just about saving a princess. LOL! ;)

Dee

TheDeeMan wrote:
Gunwallace wrote:
You'd be dumbing down the plot of Chevalier if you described it that way to.


Nope. Pretty much just about saving a princess. LOL! ;)

Dee

Okay then. That's kind of the point I'm trying to make. As a general concept that has been done. That doesn't mean Chevalier isn't an original story. The characters, subplots, art, poetic style, all make the story unique.
If you put aside “zombie working in a morgue solving crime” how similar is iZombie the TV show to the White Trash Zombie books?

Again I take you back to what should be the
point and that's that by doing “zombie working at a morgue solving
crime” you're not actually doing “iZombie”. Mind you that
nothing-nothing-nothing from “iZombie” survived in the translation not
even her name. So how confident in the acquired property could Rob
Thomas be if he scrubbed it clean of what it was to turn it into what it
is? And I'll guarantee you that Thomas met with a butt load of lawyers
about this before he did it because what he did seems pretty blatant, at
least to me. What I wonder is if he tried to acquire “white trash
zombie” first and got shot down and just decided to do his thing with a
comic with a trendier title (“iZombie”) but a less tv friendly plot (“iZombie”) and
“adapt” it from a more tv friendly plot (“White trash zombie”). I'd LOVE to know the timeline on how “iZombie” made it's way
to tv.

Dee

Sure, but all of these are unknowns. There's a big assuption being waved around on the web that the writer of iZombie the TV series ripped off someone else's work.
Also, it is very common for an adaptation of a book or story to differ wildly from the source material. For example, just to take one of my childhood faves, I, Robot . The I, Robot movie was as different from the stories as I am from Will Smith. The title was what they wanted. I is a cool title. I'm guessing that's what they wanted here as well.
And just because …
I, Robot
iRobot
iZombie
I, Zombie?

Gunwallace wrote:
Sure, but all of these are unknowns. There's a big assuption being waved around on the web that the writer of iZombie the TV series ripped off someone else's work.
Also, it is very common for an adaptation of a book or story to differ wildly from the source material. For example, just to take one of my childhood faves, I, Robot . The I, Robot movie was as different from the stories as I am from Will Smith. The title was what they wanted. I is a cool title. I'm guessing that's what they wanted here as well.
And just because …
I, Robot
iRobot
iZombie
I, Zombie?

The movie is different from the story I, Robot, but the theme of can a robot be alive is the same. There's a difference between taking the theme of a short story and broadening and expanding on that theme to make it into a movie and scrubbing a story clean of all of it's esssential elements except for it's title and doing whatever the hell you want with it and still calling it by it's name. The people who should be most pissed off by the whole iZombie/White trash Zombie thing are the creators of the original iZombie. I'd be like WTF?! Was my comic not good enough for you? But then again they're the ones who got paid and that's reason enough to say nothing and support whatever is done with their comic. Money is great tonic for what ails your conscience. Especially since Allred does artwork for his “uncomic” tv show.
Dee

The problem with the case here is that the concepts are very generic as has been stated repeatedly so I see nothing to get worked up about. If I was the author and i felt I had been ripped off I would take action, but i would also be very uncertain of my chances of success. I guess that is where lawyers come in.

There were at two differnt stories/tales withthe title I, Robot. Everyone knows Isaac Asimov but before him there was Earl and Otto Binder which was made into a Outer Limits episode. But Asimov has acknowledged the influence and actually was against his publisher naming the series I, Robot. But no copyright was infringed because the author acknowedged the influence.

But all the series/stories are very different. The recent movie in my opinion had more to do with Eando Binder's story than Isaac Asimov.

You know it's not hard to just buy the rights of something with a similar title or acknowledge the inlfuence. Inglorious Bastards and Inglourious Basterds, Django and Django: Unchained are two examples.

bravo1102 wrote:
There were at two differnt stories/tales withthe title I, Robot. Everyone knows Isaac Asimov but before him there was Earl and Otto Binder which was made into a Outer Limits episode. But Asimov has acknowledged the influence and actually was against his publisher naming the series I, Robot. But no copyright was infringed because the author acknowedged the influence.


But all the series/stories are very different. The recent movie in my opinion had more to do with Eando Binder's story than Isaac Asimov.

You know it's not hard to just buy the rights of something with a similar title or acknowledge the inlfuence. Inglorious Bastards and Inglourious Basterds, Django and Django: Unchained are two examples.

Yeah, but Django/Inglorious Bastards have nothing to do with the similarly titled Tarantino movies except that they are similarly titled. Oh yeah, and Tarantino's habit of winking and nodding to movies he liked when he was working in the video store back in the days to show how cool he is. We get it Quintin, you're cool. If this was a case of iZombie vs I, Zombie I don't think this would even be an issue. Unless, of course, the Diana Rowland book was titled “iZombie” and the comic the tv show is based on was titled “I, Zombie” then I think folks would start chattering about that.

Rob Thomas should have just used the “iZombie” plotline. In the wake of Buffy/Angel on the CW, and with all the witches, vampires, zombies, and werewolves there no, “iZombies” original plot (which sounds fun) would fit right in. But he didn't even give it a chance.

Dee

I have an original pulp with an IRobot Adam Link story by Eando Binder :D