>>89201
>There are hundreds of Sherlock Holmes works not made or endorsed by Doyle, but it is very easy to just read the ones by Doyle, and understand that they are a continuity to their own. Hell, even when there is control, it's not like it makes things less confusing. DC Comics has control over Batman and Superman. Try understanding their continuity and canon. I mean you can do it, but it's a hell of a lot more complicated than understanding Sherlock Holmes, despite the hundreds of unauthorized, but still legal, Sherlock Holmes stories.
That's because Sherlock Holmes was published in a completely different format than Batman and Superman. In the case of Holmes, Doyle is the sole creator and one can always refer to his works as the original and complete story. Meanwhile, with the latter two, they've been passed from writer to writer for the passed 80 years as one ongoing continuous story. The closest they get to have an "original" story is when Siegel and Shuster were writing Supes comics for the first decade, meanwhile Finger and Kane were writing Batham stories until '43. If you want an example of a single writer that needs a map to navigate his story, there's Toriyama with the original
Dragon Ball, which makes and breaks it's own rules at the drop of a hat, not to mention several prequels and sequels, and inbetween-quals, all of which he is involved with. However, its still easy enough to follow the story as everything is still centered around the original manga, and builds off of that. And, in the case of the DC/Marvel way of doing things, then you also have franchises like
Star Wars, which have nearly half a century of completely different writers telling stories across it's entire universe, but still centralized around six films (Half of which were solely written by it's original creator) that have a beginning, middle, and end.
I guess, when you boil it down. The biggest problem with DC and Marvel is that there is no actual "base" foundation one can refer to if you want to say that "
This is
Spider-Man" or "
This is
Aquaman".
At least, not without referring to the derivative works.
>This is why parody is legal. However, good luck winning a court case on this basis if it's not a very blatant parody. It can happen, but it almost never does.
Some creators, like Mel Brooks and Weird Al, have skirted this issue by going to the creator themselves and asking permission.
>Who said no one wants to read anything unless it's directly related to a previous identity?
That's sort-of what you're implying when you stated that you cannot create certain stories and works unless you're allowed access to another's property.
>But sometimes people also value adaptations and sequels and other forms of derivative works.
One of the things I'm increasingly seeing, that I outright hate, is people valuing adaptations
OVER the original, like they don't feel vilified that one can enjoy a work unless it's adapted to another medium. It's like all the idiots who feel guilty about enjoy vidya or animu unless it's finally adapted into a Pedowood production.
>If it wasn't for intellectual property laws, he would have been allowed to finish his magnum opus, and then his second attempt at his magnum opus since intellectual property laws stopped him from doing it the first time. Marvel and DC could have continued milking the characters just the same, but Kirby could have actually told the story he wanted to tell.
Doubt it as we can look at Japan and see works like
Bleach,
Death Note, and
Dragon Ball (All series published under Shounen Jump, but are owned by their respective creators) were all demanded to be changed or continue beyond the original story planned.
>The real thing that you should be arguing would be disincentivized isn't the creation, but the pubication, because it's the publishers who would be afraid of more competition against their own future derivative works. But of course it's not like they wouldn't still be able to make plenty of money off of the original works themselves, and their own derivatives are still allowed to compete. They just have to make good ones that can beat the competition.
Japan already does that, and, as you can see already in this thread, people are still complaining about the lacking variety in material.
>That they are devoid of value as their own works?
Yes, it actually does because we have nothing to compare it to. Keep in mind that I said, "
by all accounts". For all we know, Shakespeare could have even made better stories, and those claimants were just envious. However, because no one bothered to preserve nor archive the originals, we will never know. It will just be an eternal guessing game, with those stories having a big asterisk hanging over their title with the label "
This isn't an original work, but it's the best that what we got". It's a similar situation to
Citizen Kane, where the film is rather average itself, but introduced filming techniques and concepts that changed the entire media. Imagine if that was lost but we managed to save everything before and after it, even to the point that people directly reference it, but no surviving reel of
Citizen Kane was ever found. Yes, the films would still have some value, but would be devoid of much of it because we don't know if they improved from
Citizen Kane or if
Citizen Kane was a plateau of film-making.
>It only hurts the actual art, because The Shadow may well still be well known if people were allowed to continue making things with him while his rights holders didn't do it or didn't do it well. And it hurts the little guy, since DC could get away with ripping off The Shadow anyway, but a regular person couldn't do that.
Could they just have reprinted the original 325 stories in a series of collections every decade and remained relevant in that fashion? Sort of like why people still know about
The Hardy Boys series, or games like
Ecco the Dolphin, or why Disney has their "Disney vault" that they release classics from every now and then?
>Does anyone really think that every work based on pre-existing ideas or characters or concepts would have been better if they changed it to not include those characters or concepts?
Care to explain
Die Hard or
Bayonetta?
>Would anyone really say that all of those works would have been better if they changed Jesus to some legally distinct original character?
Is it wholly Christ, himself, that's important, or a specific aspect who Christ that's important? If it's the latter, you don't need Christ himself to exist in the story, you just need a "Christ-like" figure that fits the same bill. In fact, didn't several JRPG have to go that route during the NES and SNES era, where they had to convey the same idea while removing the direct religious symbolism due to NoA's restrictions?
Keep in mind, I'm not defend NoA, just using as an example.
Also, as an aside, could I point that part of the reason why I'm so against the concept of derivatives is that then you have people like Spielberg who come along, take something that people recognize, and then shove it into a product like
Ready Player One for no other reason than to just get people to go:
<OH, I remember that.
And, yes, he actually did say that was the purpose of why he even made the film.