When I am inspired by code on Stack Overflow, and make workable code on basis of that code, is that also pastiche?
<p>So I've been reading through the new copyright directive proposal and saw the pastiche exemption.</p>

<p>So take this hypothetical:</p>

<p>I forgot how anime.js worked to animate something.<br>
I find a piece of example code on Stack Overflow that shows how it works to initalize it and to animate something to the left and then fade away<br>
I write my own implementation without copying the original code in my codebase, that does a different animation, move to the bottom and fade in, inspired by the code example on Stack Overflow.</p>

<p>Would that be a pastiche? Or would that still fill under CC-BY-SA 3.0 because I took a work for inspiration, <strong>not copied it though</strong>, but created my own example inspired by that code, and am required to follow all requirements of the CC-BY-SA license?</p>

<p>The only references to pastiche I've been able to find have dealt with an artist reusing work for comedic or entertainment purposes from Britisch guidelines.</p>

<p>Miriam webster defines it as: <strong>a literary</strong>, artistic, musical, or architectural work that imitates the style of previous work.</p>

<p>Code is a literary work in my opinion. You write words in a document in a grammatically defined language, so theoretically with my interpretation, basing code upon someone elses code  could interpret that as a pastiche.</p>

<p>I'm mostly curious because of this part from the final text of the former article 13 text:</p>

<p><a href="http://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/A-8-2018-0245-AM-271-271_EN.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/A-8-2018-0245-AM-271-271_EN.pdf</a></p>

<blockquote>
  <p>The cooperation between online content-sharing service providers and
  rightholders shall not result in the prevention of the availability of
  works or other subject matter uploaded by users, which do not infringe
  copyright and related rights, including where such works or other
  subject matter are covered by an exception or limitation.<br>
  Member States shall ensure that users in each Member State are able to rely
  on any of the following existing exceptions or limitations when
  uploading and making available content generated by users on online
  content-sharing services:<br>
  (a) quotation, criticism, review<br>
  (b) use for the purpose of caricature, parody or <strong>pastiche</strong></p>
</blockquote>

<p>Answers relevant to the European Union please, and i'm mostly interested if there are actual precedents for these "outlier" cases?</p>

<p>"Pastiche" is a literary, not a legal term, and as a professional coder, I would not use it to describe code that to some extent imitated other code.</p>

<p>The legal question here is: is your code a <em>derivative work</em> of the code it is based on, and if it is, did you have permission to make that work. Copyright, in an Berne Convention country, which includes the EU, does not protect ideas and concepts, it protects expression. It protects the choices of words and symbols, and other forms of expression. </p>

<p>If all you did was study example code, presented for educational purposes, and then write code that performs a similar function, using the same general techniques, then I don't think you have infringed copyright.  That, after all, is why people post code to Stack Overflow and similar sites, to allow them to learn how to use specific coding techniques, including in commercial projects. I have used techniques posted to SO to do coding as part of my paid job. </p>

<p>The usual test for copying under US law is "substantial similarity". This takes into account cases where there is essentially only one way to say or code something. I don't know the exact tests under the various laws of various EU countries, and they will not all be the same. But I suspect that on this point they are, well, substantially similar :).  </p>

<p>I can't advise on your specific situation. But if it is as described, I don't think you have a problem.</p>

<p>There's no legal definition of pastiche, but the general idea is that the work is set up in such a way, that it deliberately imitates the style of a work.  For example, the TV Show "The Orville" could be said to be a pastiche of Star Trek franchises, as the show has often used it's setting to stage morality tales and character dramas that explore hot button issues through politics.  Wikipedia draws the difference between Parody and Pastiche as the former mocks the targeted original source material while the later is a celebration of the source material.  Pastiche may be seen as a TV episode that imitates another series, or a film, that is done in the style of a straight genre film...  Such as "Who Framed Rodger Rabbit" being a straight Film Noir set in a world where Cartoons are actors who work for Cartoon Studios.   There isn't anything to differentiate Eddie Valiant from any Film Noir lead... a washed up PI who takes a seemingly standard case and discovers that it leads to a major conspiracy... he just lives in a universe where L.A. has an ethnic neighborhood called "Toon Town".  A pastiche can be parody, like the two examples, or done straight, like Star Wars and Indiana Jones, which were both done with loving respect to serial scifi films like Flash Gordon and Japanese Jidaigeki (period piece) films in the former, and Pulp serials in the case of the later.  While there is humor in the situation, it's not at the expense of the genre, but the specific situation of the story.</p>

<p>Since you're discussing how to initialize an animation code in Java, this is less of a parody and more of using an example from a text book using an example problem to solve your own similar problem.</p>

<p>Patische is probably best thought of as an original story that revels in genre tropes and conventions as a main part of the story.</p>

copyright european-union