Stealing From A Thief

This afternoon I saw a very interesting article about a lawsuit filed by CBS, aimed in the direction of ABC. In the suit, CBS attempts to block ABC from premiering its new show "The Glass House" later this summer. CBS claims the show, in which contestants would live in a house and have the entire experience caught on camera, is too similar to its summer series "Big Brother." As evidence they point to the fact that a large number of people who previously worked on "Big Brother" have been hired to work on "The Glass House." ABC has said that the show is totally different because America would be voting people off the show, making it more like "American Idol" than anything else. (No word on if Fox has called their lawyers.) ABC is asking the suit be dismissed because they claim to have spent $146 million promoting the show and delaying the premiere would lose them most of that money. (I say, since this is the first I have ever heard of the show and I usually pay attention to these kinds of things, they should fire their promotions department for wasting that much money. Honestly, this lawsuit could be the best thing which has ever happened to them.) Since I ignore reality TV I won't be watching either way, but I admit that I find this principle behind this case to be very interesting.

This lawsuit brings up the very interesting question of what kind of ownership people can have over an idea. Obviously, this situation is why we have copyright infringement laws on the books. However, Hollywood is a different animal. Everyone steals from each other out there. Which is why to start with you have to question where CBS gets the right to claim any kind of idea infringement considering they stole the idea of putting a bunch of strangers into a house and letting America watch what happened from "The Real World" and MTV. The only difference is that the people on "Big Brother" can't leave unless they get voted out and the last one standing gets a large check. It's different, but it ain't that different. It takes a lot of balls to copy something and then get mad when someone copies your copy. It would be like Vanilla Ice getting pissed because someone used the bass line from "Ice, Ice Baby." On top of that they are suing to protect I show where I don't know a single person who has ever watched it. At this point it just kind of feels greedy. CBS has enough hits to worry about, they shouldn't be in such a hurry to claim "Big Brother" anyway. If ABC announced plans to develop a new Army-based criminal drama entitled "ACIS" that is when CBS should call the lawyers.

On the surface it appears that once you put a show out there people are pretty much free to do what they want with it and that includes rip it off. As long as they change one or two things to make it slightly different most of the time people don't bother to complain. Hell, sometimes they don't even need to make those one or two changes. Just think about how many times a show been blatantly lifted from another country and the studio doesn't even bother to make big changes, simply hoping the majority of the people are unaware it is a rip-off. This kind of "borrowing" from successful shows is why my television guide is filled with 10 procedural cop dramas, 15 medical mystery series and 26 reality shows about housewives from various locations. It even happens with movies, as it often seems like we get two or three films on the same subject coming out within a few weeks of one another. (Never a good idea as they are always compared to one another and then even if they are both good movies one is downgraded. Think "Armageddon" and "Deep Impact" coming out the same summer. Both were ok, but "Armageddon" made more money so "Deep Impact" has become an after-thought, even though it came out first.) I think what CBS is really mad about isn't that ABC copied their show, it's that they violated some unwritten rule of Hollywood and copied too much of it.

Still, the main thing this lawsuit does is shine a glaring light on how few original ideas there are in Hollywood. If networks are fighting over this crap, then the prospects for something new and original coming along must be pretty bleak. Watching the NBA playoffs on TNT I was bombarded with promos for the network's re-launch of a new "Dallas", which is basically the same show right down to Patrick Duffy and Larry Hagman, only it takes place in the present day. On top of that came news that another network is currently working on a "re-imagining" of "The Munsters" which will treat the show as an hour-long drama instead of a half-hour comedy. (Which I "imagine" will suck.) Apparently, we haven't learned from the attempts to re-launch previous hit shows like "The Bionic Woman" and "Knight Rider" which were gone from the schedule after just a couple weeks. In the end I'm sure "The Glass House" will be allowed to air and, if it is anything like the "Deep Impact" phenomenon, it will be fine but largely ignored for being too like a show we already have. So, at the end of the day all these lawsuits will have been for nothing. Well, not totally nothing: I learned that it may be possible to start suing Hollywood for being out of good ideas and it that is the case I hope I can contribute some money to pay for the legal fees.