Creatively uncommon

Animation is built on plagiarism!8230; You take away our right to steal ideas,where are they going to come from? asks an irate producer in a highly meta courtroom wrangle in The Simpsons,over the ownership of the cartoon characters Itchy and Scratchy. Now,Vidhu Vinod Chopra,producer of last years runaway success 3 Idiots,has sent a legal notice to director Biswaroop Roy Chowdhury,for daring to attempt 4th Idiot,an animated film supposedly sparked off by his own. Chowdhury shrugged off the charges,saying,everything is inspired by something,and that creative works are not produced out of a vacuum.

Chopra and Chowdhury will perhaps battle it out. But away from their spat,it is worth remembering that artistry is inspired by art,a fact restrictive copyright regimes often refuse to accept. This is not to condone outright forgery,but to accept that making fiction is crucially a matter of borrowing and recombining influences. Did Shakespeare plagiarise Boccaccio? Were T.S. Eliots allusive poetic fragments simply filching? In fact,the biggest copyright aggressor of our times,Walt Disney,is also the biggest plunderer of myth and fairytale. Also,imitation actually can magnify the aura of the original. Even J.K. Rowling and her publishers,after the initial recoil,came around to the recognition that Harry Potter-inspired fan fiction was flattering. However,how much of this inspiration is fair use? Rowling has also famously sued other derivative works.

While acknowledging the dues of authorship,as copyright is meant to,we need to remind ourselves that it should not end up constricting cultural exchange and expression.