When Does Imitation Become the Sincerest Form of Rip-Off?

I'm in the process of reviewing Tarleton Gillespie's Wired Shut: Copyright and the Shape of Digital Culture, which (so far) is a very smart look at an issue that's of great personal and professional interest to me. So rather than just scribble in the margins, I thought I'd drop random questions, observations and interesting factoids here as I work my way through the book.

I would say this is the first of many posts in a series, but hopefully there won't be too many -- the review itself is due soon...

In any case, an early chapter talks a bit about the often-cited fact that "you can't copyright an idea." In other words, grabbing the text of Marc Andreessen's recent post on what he's learned by blogging and posting it as my own would be illegal (and dumb, since Marc can no doubt afford to hire lawyers). Yet if I want to appropriate his underlying arguments -- because I think he's onto something, or even if I'm just intellectually lazy -- that's fair game. Paraphrasing my own "ElevenTwelve lessons learned about blogging, so far" would be poor form, but it's not copyright infringement.

In the real world, of course, it's not quite so simple -- people get sued all the time for not-quite-verbatim "borrowing," especially in the worlds of music and code. For plain-text prose, though, the boundaries seem fairly clear.

That said, just how far could one go? Say, for example, I went out and bought Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns,* then sat down and paraphrased the entire story, cover to cover. Change every name, never re-use a sentence, but literally re-tell Hosseini's tale with different words -- and then start selling "my" novel.

It would be reprehensible, obviously. I'd rightly be savaged as a plagiarist of the highest order. (Though I'd also probably get appearances on Oprah and The Colbert Report.) And hopefully, no publisher would be dense or craven enough to publish it in the first place.

But would it be illegal? Should it be, on copyright grounds? Why?

In Wired Shut, Gillespie clearly explains why "only an author's particular expression" is protected, but where's the line? And if the example above crosses it, would it make a difference if I instead paraphrased a novel by Scooter Libby or Sen. Jim Webb, and the replacement names were those of carefully chosen political figures? (My guess on that point is yes, and I know I'd make the Colbert Report then...)

Ultimately, though, I'm just not sure what the answers would -- or should -- be on this. But who knows? Maybe Gillespie does, and shares that info in the back half of his book.

Clearly, I need to get back to reading. In the interim, though, if anyone knows of interesting court cases or other examples, please let me know.

* I was tempted to use J. K. Rowling's latest, just for search-traffic purposes. But while I'm sure it's wonderful, I have zero desire to closely read a Harry Potter book, even hypothetically. And besides, Rowling has even more money to spend on lawsuits than Andreessen does.