Quoting Wikipedia for legal matters is better than nothing, I suppose, but hardly decisive. In this case, Wikipedia is wrong, as I have noted: many courts have found copyright infringement without any proof at all being presented that anything was copied. With the facts given - two individuals creating by pure coincidence a story that is nearly identical - whoever published it first is going to win the court case, and the court will presume that the other party copied it, even if no one testifies that they saw the other party reading, editing, and copying from the first story.
If you by pure chance happen to have a music file on your hard drive that decodes to play "Thriller" by Michael Jackson, and you claim that you created it independently and have never heard of the song before, I assure you the court will rule against you and the music publisher will not be required to submit any proof that you copied it from, say, a CD of Jackson songs.
The "copy" in copyright is NOT copying the other person's work. It's producing the copy you made. So in the story example, the second person's published story is the infringing copy, "Copying" from the first story is not the copying that is covered by copyright; it's the creation of items that appear to be copies.
Wikipedia is simply wrong here and it's kind of sad that HN is so ignorant about copyright law.
If you by pure chance happen to have a music file on your hard drive that decodes to play "Thriller" by Michael Jackson, and you claim that you created it independently and have never heard of the song before, I assure you the court will rule against you and the music publisher will not be required to submit any proof that you copied it from, say, a CD of Jackson songs.
The "copy" in copyright is NOT copying the other person's work. It's producing the copy you made. So in the story example, the second person's published story is the infringing copy, "Copying" from the first story is not the copying that is covered by copyright; it's the creation of items that appear to be copies.
Wikipedia is simply wrong here and it's kind of sad that HN is so ignorant about copyright law.