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comment by Benjy Forstadt (benjy-forstadt-1) · 2020-12-11T22:50:56.017Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Borges is a very famous writer, so the fact that people keep mentioning him is not much evidence of coordination

Replies from: gwern
comment by gwern · 2020-12-12T00:33:28.174Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I think OP might be engaged in a sarcastic Borgesian exercise of their own playing with plagiarism and repetition and is not actually saying there is a global conspiracy between OpenAI and a dozen publishers to steal their draft and commission famous authors to rewrite it; unfortunately, it winds up falling flat for me because it leans too heavily in to the green ink, as it were, and itself repeats too much. Needs editing down and a clearer observation.

comment by ChristianKl · 2020-12-12T19:30:25.863Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

the copied products tend to be worse in quality than the original

To the extend that this is true, the copied book won't reduce the sales of the the original. 

Sometimes derivative work however provide additional value. That happens a lot in fanfiction. 

50 Shades of Gray seemed to have been highly valued by readers even through it's author based it orginally on Twilight. 

comment by Richard_Kennaway · 2020-12-12T21:31:31.251Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Green ink is the stereotypical medium that cranks and crackpots write in.

comment by ChristianKl · 2020-12-12T19:16:47.566Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Your books don't seem to have reviews. Why would an algorithm trained on Goodreads and Amazon Reviews rate them highly?

comment by Dagon · 2020-12-11T22:45:32.342Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I'm fairly conversant with software IP law (not that I like it, but I understand the criteria for and protections against copyright and patent claims).  I can't tell if you're saying fiction copyright enforcement should be more like software, or that it IS ALREADY fairly similar to software.  Some case citations would help to disambiguate this.

Either way, the on-the-ground reality for software is that nobody cares about the little guy - only big corporations and the lawyers who prey on them actually matter.  This sucks (sometimes; it's a boon to consumers who get more/cheaper stuff), but it's a bigger problem than implied by the article.

It would be interesting to compare plagiarism and copyright enforcement in the written fiction world against the music world.  Having standardized commercial licensing mechanisms for remixes (sampling, covers, mashups, etc.) would seem to go a long way BOTH toward reimbursing the authors of unique and re-usable things, AND toward more variety for readers.

comment by Dagon · 2020-12-11T18:54:20.030Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Could use a summary, but an interesting read, and topic.  

I'd love to pointers to what I hope are fairly rigorous definitions of similarity and "plot point overlap" - for instance, how many plot points are there in each book, and what percentage of overlap is required, as opposed to just picking 10-50 in a way that may or may not be important.  Also, why doesn't sequence matter?

I'd be curious how much international variation there is as well.

I'm not a general fan of ownership of ideas, but I'm fascinated by the specific measures we use for the compromises that have become embedded in our law and creative economy.