Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

With editing in particular, one of the most important jobs is ensuring that a remixed work doesn’t cross certain boundaries. Does this add to the authors work? Have we done enough to give new meaning? Can we do without it? Most authors use others work in their own regardless of there awareness of it. With all the material that already exists out there, someone in 1772 wrote a text with the same premise as yours. As an editor, one must check if the differences are substantial enough to where an author could rightfully claim their work as original. Many works have been products of remediation with books that become movies that become video games that become board games. When franchises become so large that many others create remediations and profit from it, copyright law and fair use clauses question if the work was transformative enough that it merit’s its production. Since its release in the 1990s, JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series has come under fire for alleged plagiarism. For each time someone accuses her, several hundreds create a work within the “Potter-verse” which infringes upon copyright law. Fan made encyclopedias, rewritten plot lines, summarizations all use Rowling’s work over and over many times without a strong case that refutes copyright.

Editors will come across similar works all the time and it is up to them to come up with alternative ways for their author to convey meaning with original concepts. It would be unethical to allow for the publication of a work knowing that it is the work of someone else. We expand ideas and theories by adding to them and making them our own but their is a difference between remediation and plagiarism. Writes can avoid these legalities by questioning the benefit their reuse will have for their audience, if they’ve added enough analysis or spin so that the work becomes theirs, and if their remediation will in any way affect the profit of the original work.