this post was submitted on 01 Nov 2025
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one of the things copyright law purports to do is prevent products in the same sector being called similar things, ostensibly reducing consumer confusion. i don't think pointing to a case where it failed to do that extrapolates into your proposal. we can look at fanfiction instead and i think that deluge is a better reflection of what people would do unless you want to try to extrapolate a culture that is generations removed from our IP laws.
There is no "instead": I absolutely think fanfiction is what people should look at to get an idea of what a world without copyright would be like. I'm not necessarily an avid reader of fanfiction but I don't exactly get the impression that fanfics are known for being named confusingly similarly to each other, nor for trying to pass themselves off as "canon" — again because there's no real reason to.
You should also look at piracy: "no copyright" means that anyone is completely free to distribute anything under any title, which means that there's also less risk for the consumer to begin with (prices massively decrease if they don't disappear entirely), and that things will presumably be called whatever name catches on for them, instead of being stuck with whatever trademark the rightsholder insists upon.
The final point is in any case that just like any other law "for the consumer", intellectual property exists ultimately only for the sake of profit for capitalists. Capitalists are generally incentivized not to have confusing names, but the moment a capitalist sees their chance, the whole "no confusion" thing goes out the window: rights for me but not for thee. So the "no confusion" line is, as we see, a farce.