If you paint a picture of Sonic the Hedgehog in your living room, you are technically creating an unauthorized derivative work—but in practice, no one cares. Private, noncommercial creation has always lived in a space where copyright law exists on paper but is rarely enforced. Gift it to a friend? Still functionally tolerated—a technical act of distribution that copyright law mostly ignores at human scale. Take a photo and post it on Instagram? Now you’ve crossed into public distribution of a de...