This story was interesting.  ABC has a new reality show called “Glass House”.  It’s a clone of “Big Brother”.  ABC hired some former “Big Brother” employees to work on the show.

CBS sued ABC for copyright infringement.  Fortunately, a judge ruled in ABC’s favor and the show was allowed to air.

This is an example of overly aggressive copyright enforcement.  Corporations try to copyright everything.  “People live together, have competitions, and people get eliminated.” should not be covered by copyright.

It’s also a moot point.  “Glass House” sucked.  I only watched the first episode due to the copyright lawsuit.  “It must be a good show.  Otherwise, CBS would not be suing ABC.”

Outside the USA, in “Big Brother”, the viewers vote on the winner.  They tried that in season 1 of the USA version, and that didn’t fly with US audiences.  In season 2, they changed it to a more traditional “reality” show, where the guests compete and viewers don’t vote on the winner.

“Glass House” goes back to “The viewers totally determine the winner.”  That concept makes for a lousy show, because there’s no sincere competition.  If the viewers pick the winner, there’s no real incentive for the players to compete and backstab each other.

“Glass House” had an amusing moment of racism.  The viewers voted on “two people most likely to be enemies”, and they picked the Jewish woman and the black girl.  That was embarrassing.  Making the viewers vote on every single detail of the show gets silly and goes overboard.

They had the old guy say “I’m 48 years old!  I’m going to die in a few years!”  That was offensive and wrong.

Also, “Glass House” didn’t do a good job picking contestants.  They went with the usual reality show stereotypes (token mother, token homosexual, token old guy), and didn’t pick interesting people.

Why does every “reality” show have a token homosexual?  Homosexuals aren’t 10% of the population, but they’re more than 10% of reality show contestants.  There’s an agenda to promote homosexuality.

This is a common fallacy.  “Copy and idea and hire a couple of people form our competitor” is not an automatic recipe for success.  You don’t just need an idea.  You also need the ability to successfully implement that idea.  The producers of “Glass House” failed to execute and made a lousy show.

Given that “Glass House” sucked, CBS’ lawsuit seems stupid.  I am offended that CBS filed a frivolous lawsuit.  The “justice” system encourages and allows overaggressive enforcement on “intellectual property”.  The correct answer is “intellectual property” is not property.