For crying out loud, how do you think books get optioned for films?
It's common for studios to pay people for coverage (reading scripts) and to write up books that might potentially be worth optioning. And no, they're not infringing; they license the book; the author is paid. And yes, that's one of the services agents perform for their authors.
I don't think you're paranoid regarding copyright, I think you're woefully ignorant and therefore posting without understanding the basics.
my response (And I hope I am not imposing on your time)
I fully realize that studios pay people to read books and plays to hunt for material that could be turned into a movie. And I fully realize that if a studio wants to use a book they will contact the author and buy the rights to make such a movie. I was suggesting someting entirely different:
I suggested that perhaps Hellman got ideas from reading books for MGM and that some of the material that Hellman liked, that was not used by MGM, appeared later in works written by Hellman.
(Incidentally, I loved Hellman, both her plays and her memoirs)
Also, since I mentioned that ideas cannot by copyrighted, this sort of thing is extremely easy to do.
For example, if one is a professsor and must contend with the publish or perish doctrine, one has a saving salvo up one's sleeve: One's students. One can use the ideas proffered by students in their terms papers and theses, and then one can write an article in which one poses as the originator of the ideas.
I hope this is not offending people. I get the sense that today many young people gravitate to the idea that we should not be hung up on ownership rights, that in an ideal society ideas and art should be given with abundance and without resrtiction and that I am an anally retentive cheapo who is hung up about money and property.
Well, I am a bit Marxian in that I do believe that matieral issues, i.e., money, makes the world go round. You cannot get groceries from the store by telling the proprietor that you have written lovely novels. You cannot get medical care by telling the doctor that you have written poingant, profound poetry. As I think have said before (And this may be apparent from my posts which betray an ignorance of many facets of publishing), I am on the outskirts of the literary community, having spent most of my professional life as an attorney. However, certain things about writers and writing become more and more abundant to me:
Writers are severely persecuted by society at large. They are hideously under-valued. I think certain phenomena are only making things worse:
Because of the internet and the concomittant ability to read more and more stuff for free, I think people are less apt to spend money on reading matter. Because of the superfluity of so much media, most of it utter noise, people are too busy surfing the 800 channels on their television or the millions of web sites on the internet, to read much of anything.
There is something utterly disgusting when the President of the United States is an illiterate bozo who thinks about missiles the way an 8 year old boy thinks about his phallus, and bright, creative people are starving.
because that was a bit brutal.
