Writing a magazine/fanzine with stories. How can I protect them from someone making a movie or tv show based
Question by FAshionPassion: Writing a magazine/fanzine with stories. How can I protect them from someone making a movie or tv show based
I just read a court case in my class about how this movie (famous) pretty much STOLE the storyline of this book. Yeah the book wasn’t in print. i even tried to look for it on amazon and didn’t see it. I think the people pretty much took everything the plot, location, storyline, even a couple of names.
How can that happen and I’m writing my own stories for a small magazine. I know it’s a great couple of stories but how can i protect them from someone taking them? (I know i sound like i’m all that I know, but say this was J.K. Rowling and she wrote and self published a small print run of a magazine and Harry Potter was one of the stories. Just saying hypothetically. what should you do to protect yourself)
Best answer:
Answer by kahlessa
There’s not too much you can do other than copyright your story. It’s automatically copyrighted when you write it, but you can register it with the US Copyright Office. If someone steals your story, the burden will be on you to prove it. The stories and ideas can’t just be similar–they have to be incredibly alike. The burden of proof is yours. The problem is, many famous people are sued when there is no case–by people who are greedy, delusional, or just bitter at their own lack of success. You mentioned J.K. Rowling. She was sued by a woman who claimed Rowling stole the idea for Harry Potter from a book the woman had written, but not published. It turned out that the woman wrote the book after the first Harry Potter was published, and forged the evidence to make it seem like her book was written earlier. She not only lost the case, she was charged and convicted of fraud.
Stealing ideas doesn’t happen as much as you think. The trick is not having a good idea or two. The trick is turning that idea into a finished novel or film. And if you can do that well, people will want to hire you rather than steal your idea. I had a media law professor who said once that the one good writer who successfully turns an idea into a novel ends up being sued by the bad writers who couldn’t.
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