http://blogcritics.org/ A sinister cabal of superior bloggers on music, books, film, popular culture, politics, and technology - updated continuously. en Copyright 2005 by the authors Wed, 23 Jul 2003 17:50:56 EDT http://backend.userland.com/rss Blogcritics.org custom software http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/07/22/081519.php#comment-13597 This is a pretty specious argument on which to hang an anti-copyright screed, methinks. The real reason that the book <I>League</I> is heads and shoulders above the movie <I>League</I> is more basic: Alan Moore can write rings around 90% of his peers. Let's take a counter example from the early days of movies &ndash; from a novel that proved a source for one of <I>League</I>'s characters: Bram Stoker's <I>Dracula</I>. When German director F.W. Murnau was refused permission to utilize the Dracula name in his silent vampire flick, he simply changed the name and kept most of the other details intact. The result, <I>Nosferatu</I>, is today considered a landmark in horror cinema that inspired its own sound remake <I>and</I> a recent meta-movie, <I>Shadow of the Vampire</I>, set during a reimagined filming of Murnau's classic. Murnau and co. did an end run around the then-current versions of copyright and still managed to come up with a creative work. There are plenty of good arguments to be made in the ongoing discussion of copyright vs. public domain, but this one misses the mark. 13597@blogcritics.org Wed, 23 Jul 2003 17:50:56 EDT