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Da Vinci Code Author Sued
riptalon writes "Dan Brown, the author of The Da Vinci Code, is being sued in the
UK for using ideas from a previous non fiction book The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail
in his novel. The Bangkok Post states that 'The question the court is facing is whether you can copyright an idea, a conjecture.'"
Can using a book as a research source be considered copyright infringement when you cite said work as a source?
authors, the events described in the book are factual. Since facts cannot be copywritten, (last time I checked), that should mean they are out of luck. Given the amount of historical fiction on the market, I seriously hope this gets shot down. Unless Dan Brown plagarized or something.
No! Well let me restatae that. The answer *should be* no if we are talking about conjecture. I could see merit in a suit if the original book was a work of fiction.. but the author (..hoax perpatrator?) claims that it is truth.
I just type my sig in the reply form...
Isn't that what happens when you walk sideways past a fence?
"The modern novel should be largely a work of reference." -- Flann O'Brien, At Swim-Two-Birds
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
What does an author getting sued for ripping off somebody have to do with my online rights?
I don't see the connection here.
Let's See:
And February 27th, 2006: Slashdot posts it!
Isn't the problem for the authors of "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail" that they claim their book is fact? If it were fiction, then they would probably have a viable copyright claim, but while they claim their book is fact, they have the problem that facts are not generally copyrightable. Ironic really!
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
I say it's a damn good thing most people don't TRY to, especially on ideas that are based in history and mythology...Where would the Fantasy genre be if Tolkien had copyrighted most of his "ideas" instead of only his books?
Fairly ironic because that very book is referenced in the Davinci Code. I bet that sales of it increased with the popularity of The Davinci Code.
Still, everyone is out to make a buck...
Sadly, The Davinci Code was not even that good, but the controversey certanly made it popular.
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
The premise of HBHG is too similar to the DVC to be happenstance. But if you ask me the real insult is that Dan Brown uses one of the last names of one of the authors of HBHG (Richard Leigh) as the first name of one of his characters (Sir Leigh Teabing). Makes it seem like an explicit nod to the original, or the middle finger, depending upon your point of view.
"IAEA head criticises Iran cooperation"
it's not art. Art is something the human mind fabricated. So the original author can decide whether he wants to drop the suit or admit that he fabricated the facts (i.e. lied).
If the latter, the author of the novel can claim bona fide and the suit gets rejected regardless.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
how can someone claim copyright on facts?...... give me a break
I read "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail" quite some time ago. Some of the theories are quite interesting. Others are "out there". This was not the first book written on the subject, just the first popular one. It caused quite a stir when it first came out. I read "The DaVinci Code" a couple of years ago. It wasn't a BAD book, but it certainly wasn't worth all the hype. Brown is, in my opinion, a highly mediocre writer. The only thing that made the book popular is the theory he used as the mystery of the book. For that, he owes much to "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail" and the authors. Using anagrams of "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail" authors' names as a character in the book was, I'm confident, his way of honoring those writers. Brown also used a number of other books to further the theories in his book. Does he owe them anything besides a thank you? I'd be hard pressed to think so. So long as you provide references for your theories, you should be safe. I'm a bit split on this since I'm not a lawyer, but I have to side with Brown, except for using the authors' names.
But why is the rum gone?
George Lucas; watch out; Dune is going to own you.
That is over-flowing with IP related litigous bastards.
This must be the international full employment act for lawyers. Lawyers, of course, are *always* the big winners in these senseless squables.
Maybe excessive litigation will send the UK right down the sh!ter, along with the USA. At least the USA won't have to go alone.
Rowling must be sprinting.
The question the court is facing is whether you can copyright an idea, a conjecture
The judge thought of an idea to solve his/her dilemma. Using that idea it was clear that ideas and conjectures can be copyrighted. Unfortunately, that idea had been copyrighted and the judge could not use it.
I think the concept copyright of an idea for a book is as ridiculous(if not more).
Both books plus the film all stand to win with this free publicity, a fresh surge of interest in both.
Oh, that was a nice, polite, loving response from someone who seems to hate what he has said. Do you want that post to be an example to all of us of how a good, loving Christian should respond to such things? Is that what Jesus would do?
If so, how do I avoid contaminating my mind with them?
So even if one does infringe the copyright of the other, what is all the fuss about ? Is the publisher suing himself, and if so will the court not tell him to go away and stop wasting the court's time ?
Yer, like that's a story that's not been done before. Everyone's got one!
... write about it? That's ridiculous. Suppose I wrote a book claiming to know who killed John F. Kennedy. I couldn't sue someone who made a movie based on my theory. That's ridiculous.
Of course, if my theory were fiction in the first place, I could see why I'd feel like my ideas were being ripped off -- but then, if it were fiction, I'd have published it as such, and thus enjoyed the copyright privileges thereunto appertaining. In this case, I could attempt to sue someone whose fiction too closely resembled mine -- but only if their work was fiction, too, right?
If I wrote fiction based on a theory, and you wrote a non-fiction book exploring the same theory, I can't sue -- the theory isn't the fiction, is it?
If I wrote a [allegedly] non-fiction book, I must accept that someone may base a novel or movie on my idea, right? That's how I understand copyright and fair use to work, in general, though it'll be [a bit] interesting to see what a court in the UK makes of the notion.
No it can not.
Also you can not (c) and idea AFAIK, nor should you be able to. We already have issues with Patents on Ideas.
With that, I'm off to patent copyrighting patentable ideas to sue the real patent holder with over infringement of something or other.
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
Cock-sucking fuckwad. I hope the bastard burns in hell. Let him spend his fucking money there.
Wow! Just a crazy guess, but somehow I get the feeling you're a person who considers themselves a good christian aren't you?
Scary and sad, but anymore when I see comments like this my first reaction is "he must be religious". I don't mean this as an insult and I know most (or at least many) believers are nothing like this, but with all the religious nuts out there these comments just seem normal coming from the "religious".
"reality has a well-known liberal bias" - Steven Colbert
'The question the court is facing is whether you can copyright an idea, a conjecture.' What's the huge question ? The answer is NO. Copyright is clearly only protects the specific EXPRESSION of ideas, thoughts, etc, not the idea itself. Besides, which, as the book documents supposed facts of history, those certainly cannot be copyrighted, period.
I think this is just a marketing scam!
Look,
"The legal action has seen The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail shoot up the Amazon.co.uk bestseller chart from number 173 at lunchtime, to 102 by 2.30pm and was at 53 late this afternoon."
These guys are doing it to make a buck or two--I'd never heard of the book until now.
ACK! The like the parent provided is PORN
DON'T CLICK THAT LINK!
Required reading for internet skeptics
It's about patents... remember Stallman told us about patenting book ideas? Actually I'm surprised, I thought it'd be 10 or 20 years before his predictions would come true...
Now, I haven't ready DVC, but it seems to deal with the same subject matter as Foucault's Pendulum -- that is, Knights of the Templar, conspiracies dating back to ancient times, etc.
If this lawsuit stands ... shouldn't Eco be allowed to sue too, since DVC treads the same topics and probably uses some of the same historical references? For that matter, shouldn't every Hollywood movie today be under lawsuit, considering they've all stolen their storylines from somewhere?
Having read both books, I can say with confidence: 1) Dan Brown used themes inspired by the research in HBHG 2) So have the "history" and "discovery" channels- for years and years and years This is the kinda lawsuit I like to read about: the kind that looks stupid, wastes money, and ultimatley proves nothing. Keep it up, morons. Lawsuits like this make the "anarchists" like me sound less crazy.
Math is math. Regular expression is regular expression. The tools are there. The future is now.
Heh Why not? It's right up there with software patents. I mean, let's go all the way with this crap and place all human activity under some IP law. Then we won't have to deal with such silly nonsense as "freedom of speech". A lot of Americans already think their first amendment goes too far. So, let's finish it off, once and for all. IP law is the perfect way to do it.
What?
There was a saying among students I went to college with : "Copying from a single source is called plagiarism, copying from multiple source is called research"
This is neither news for nerds nor is it stuff that matters!
so Jesus had kids. What's wrong with that? Why would Catholic church be upset by this? We could all be descendents of JC.
You can't possibly cite every book that might have a fact in it that some fictional character in a book might state. Give me a break. When was the last time you saw a list of citations in a work of fiction. Next we will have to put warnings on the books, "Possible instantaneous combustion when reading at ambient temperatures exceeding 451 degrees fahrenheit".
People are just trying to steal money from the author.
if you site your sources.
Brown mentions HBHG explicitly, and the character name Leigh Teabing is an anagram of Leigh and Baigent, the authors. He made no secret of using HBHG as source material.
Read it here.
This is a money grab attempt.
-V-
Who can decide a priori? Nobody.
-Sartre
The ideas in the Harry Potter books were basically stolen from Ursala LeGuin's "Wizard Of Earthsea" and Raymond E. Feists "Magician" .
-- Betting on the survival of the media industry is a serious risk. I advise investing elsewhere.
It's a vastly richer narrative.
Da Vinci Code: Doubleday ...both divisions of Random House.
HBHG: Bantam Dell
But then, the ultimate copyrights on the works (and liabilities for infringing on others) are held by the authors, not the publishers. See the inside covers of both. The (C) does not precede "Random House."
Lewis Perdue also claims his 1983 novel "The Da Vinci Legacy" was largely plagiarized by Brown. You can read 'Da Vinci Code' Plagiarism Lawsuits for more details. If i look back far enough, surely I _must_ have written something I can sue them both for ;-)
Is this sig nificant?
I was expecting a lawsuit from Opus Dei, or maybe the Catholic church itself. I even thought there was an outside chance of a Fatwa from some Islamic cleric, but the last thing I expected was a suit from anyone connected with Holy Blood, Holy Grail. The whole book is practically an advertisement: "Go and buy Holy Blood, Holy Grail, only really clever people who can see through the lies read it, it's really good and everything in it is true!". I reckon they just want too get both book's names back in the papers now that the publicity has died down at last.
There was once a person who said that 1 in a million odds happen 7 times a day in New York city. The same is true about this book. They use esoteric pattern searches with random perbutrations to prove that there are hidden phrases and words in historic documents. After billions of tries on computers, they are sure to find something - to where they can say "see theres a hidden message here". In truth, it is just another way of using statistics to lie.
That's only because the nuts are the really vocal ones ;-)
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
No.
Next question? I'll be here all night.
I don't know what kind of crack I was on, but I suspect it was decaf.
However, "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" is listed as fiction IIRC.
Doesn't this mean that he will have to admit that the content of his book is completely fictional in order to sue Dan Brown for violoating his copyright?
Can he be sued for writing a really, really shitty novel?
I predict that you can copyright a concecture.©
Paul Grosfield - the quicker picker upper.
Make up your mind, dude. If you don't want people to click the link, don't say that it's porn.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
This is just silly. No wonder they're litigating over in the U.K., as this "idea infringement" wouldn't make it over here in the US, even with our own nonsense copyright laws (DMCA anyone?). The copyright office clearly states you can't own copyright to an idea or method of doing something. That would be just a little too much -- even for people in the US.
l #idea
See:
http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-protect.htm
People need to stop wasting their time in the courts.
"I'll just chip in a bit for RedHat: I actually have that installed on my university machine." - Linus, '95
It's becoming a pretty common kind of lawsuit. JK Rawlings was sued by some obvious crooked bastard a few years ago. Hopefully the English court not only rejects this suit but makes the fucking prick who brought pay through the nose. The time really has come to start reigning in these bastards who sit around like carrion birds waiting for a juicy morsel. Perhaps by rewarding to the object of the suit all the damages the complainaint demanded.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Sometimes I like to read troll comments as they are sometimes not really trolls. So, I set my threshold to -1. However, repetetive copy-and-paste trolls like this are useless to all. Slashdot should introduce a mod level for repetitive trolls.
Dan Brown is not being sued.
RandomHouse, the publisher is being sued.
Actually, Dan Brown used two out of three of HBHG's authors names in the character "Leigh Teabing". Didn't you think Teabing was a weird name?
Richard Leigh
Michael Baigent
Leigh + Baigent = Leigh Teabing.
Poor Henry Lincoln must feel left out.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095497/
Written by Nikos Kazantzakis who died in 1957. So the concept of Jesus and Mary getting married has been around (and documented) for quite a while.
making profit from taking someone elses ideas since 1923
I bought it. I read it. It was a quick read and light on the mind.
So I bought "Angels and Demons" by him. He has the exact same style in that book. I instantly knew who the good guys were and who the "secret" bad guy was.
It's like a Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew mystery for adults.
The author of the Holy Blood Holy Grail was on a History channel show called Beyond the Davinci Code. Where he talked about his ideas and how they differed from what Dan Brown used. He didn't seem to be upset that it was stolen from his book then.
I have no sig, the eyebrows seal the deal. That's right. Eyebrows.
ACK! The like the parent provided is PORN
Being at home and practicing safe browsing, I gleefully clicked the link. YIKES! I doubt those girls are 18. Seriously, I cleared my history and cache for fear of legal reprecussions.
Mods, you may actually want to delete or edit the GP post.
DON'T CLICK THAT LINK!
Seriously! We mean it!
But you can patent it! (at least in the US)
God will get them for this!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
If I wrote a Sci-Fi story, the core idea of which was later adapted for a movie without my permission, I could justly sue the producers for ripping off my idea. On the other hand, if my scientific journal article was the source for a movie, I could not justly sue. So the answer hangs on the question Is Holy Blood Holy Grail fiction or non-fiction? I think that any sane person reading HBHG must conclude that it is a complete fabrication and the authors knew or should have known that. The authors' claims to scholarship are so preposterous that they can make a plausible case that Dan Brown stole their fictional work. Unfortunately, their case depends on them admitting that they made it all up.
The premise of HBHG is too similar to the DVC to be happenstance.
And the problem with that would be exactly what? Almost all great art--music, theater, literature, TV, SciFi, etc. has been created by copying and improving what has come before. Where do you think Shakespeare's plays come from? Bach's music? Mozart's operas? Babylon 5 and Star Trek plots? Even the most famous artists stand on the shoulders of generations of giants.
I guess your comment demonstrates what is wrong with IP law: not only have people like you gotten it into their heads that at the beginning of the 21st century, ideas should be owned, you are also so ignorant of history that you don't actually recognize how unprecedented that notion is.
by the Flying Spaghetti Monster, who created the universe and thus has copyright, or is it copyleft, well he has lots of invisible tentacles anyway - to the whole fake religious controversy idea in the first place.
...
I mean, heck, He/She/It's a cartoon drawing and He/She/It's a God, and didn't create us in His/Her/It's own image because we're imperfect, so it makes just as much sense as suing someone for such a thing
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
- AMW
Before Tolkien, elves were small fairy creatures. Now they are commonly human sized, or slightly large. The epitome of human beauty. So the Tolkien estate can sue Brooks and every other author that uses the new Elf image. This case is a load of BS, especially since the Da Vinci Code is such a horribly written book.
To steal a nonfictional idea?
I'm confused. Must be something like throwing an apple at someone violates Newtons intellectual property.
'Holy Blood, Holy Grail' is a hoax anyway.
This suit would be thrown out a US court immediately. By federal statute, ideas are not copyrightable:
17 USC 102 Subject Matter of Copyright: In General - (b) Copyright protection does not extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery.
Let's hope the UK courts do the same!
Copying from one book is called plagiarism.
Copying from five books is called research.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
so Jesus had kids. What's wrong with that? Why would Catholic church be upset by this? We could all be descendents of JC.
...
Actually, my question is, how did they rate on Hot or Not?
That might answer whether or not there were many descendents
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I'm really sick of hearing his name in the news.
Dan Brown fans vacillate on the edge of illiteracy.
Seriously, if you love Da Vinci Code, stop reading all together; culture obviously isn't for you.
"Hobbit" is something that Tolkien thought up. So that term can be protected with copyrights or trademarks.
"Elf" cannot be. Too much prior art. It's a generic now.
You'll see that "Ents" were changed also.
Their "non-fiction" book went from 173 to 53 on the Amazon.uk bestseller list in one day... Watch them drop the suit after they make their millions...
You can only copyright the actual words you write. If someone expresses the same idea in different words it's not got anything to do with copyright. Ideas is what patents are for. This is why source code can be copyrighted, and the mechanism it implements can be patented (in the U.S.A and which I deplore, but that's another issue). Ideas, theories, etc cannot be patented though so this is a non-starter.
Names of characters and perhaps organisations and fictional places probably could be protected. Nobody could write Sherlock Holmes stories, or even have him appear as an incidental character in a story untill the copyright expired for example. However for this to work thay'd have to have orriginated the characters, names, etc which they could only do if they are fictional. Thus to win this case they'd have to decalre that they made it all up. Even this would probably not work though, because they claim in the book that it's all true.
The closest case to this I can think of is the Scientologist's actions against people publishing their 'revelations' as a violation of their copyright. This was successful in most countries they tried it in, which is fair enough to an extent I suppose.
Interestingly in Germany this held no water. the german court held that since the Scientologists claimed their teachings were historical and spiritual fact that therefore they weren't copyrightable.
Simon Hibbs
This whole issue is predicated on the idea that Holy Blood Holy Grail was the first to come up with the idea. In fact, the Jesus/Magdalene marriage thing has been around for a long, long time. HBHG is not the first to come up with it; they just made it more popular. It's probably a moot point since the suit ought to be DOA anyway, but pretend it went forward for amoment: All Dan Brown has to do is cite the several dozen books prior to HBHG with the same idea.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
Ideas are not copyrightable, patentable or trademarkable.
Patents cover physical inventions (and apparently software?) that represent the incarnation of an idea.
Copyrights cover the written word "implementation" of an idea.
Plagiarism generally isn't covered by the courts. Of course the old joke is "when you copy from one its plagiarism, when you copy from many it's research".
This lawsuit shouldn't go anywhere - at least in an ideal (or even partially ideal) world.
Just like ideas that further science build upon previous work, ideas for new fiction don't usually come out of nowhere. People borrow and steal ideas then change them to suit their purposes and add their own thoughts along the way. This is how a lot of great work gets done in many fields.
The ideas have been around in one form or the other for hundreds of years. There's a competing theory that the two Marys are one in the same. This is a money grab pure and simple. Some religous sects actually have had the belief that Christ had a wife for many years. I've even heard references to him having children. The only thing earth shattering was putting it on paper.
A young science fiction author named Larry Niven (anyone ever heard of him?) read the article, wrote a fictional account of such an encounter called Neutron Star, and won awards and acclaim for it.
While Asimov commented afterwards that this Nebula Award would have been his if he'd only been thinking fiction instead of fact, and Larry Niven even admitted that Asimov's article was the spark for his story, Asimov didn't sue Niven.
HBHG is not DVC. Two completely different books. Neither author(s) could have written the other book. So fiction should wins out over proported fact again, but they have no case...
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I wish you fucking idiots would read the book(s) that we are discussing before coming here and spewing out such nonsense.
So much of similarity is not a coincidence.
I forgot where I heard it, but someone had a fantastic joke about it:
Christians are protesting the DaVinci Code and developing texts refuting it. Apparently they're having difficulty believing that a book can be fiction.
Boy did I mangle that one. Anyway. -1 Overrated for ME!
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
They're also known in the United States as "software patents."
[ducks]
- Just my $0.02, take with a grain of salt, your mileage may vary.
It seems you can here in the USA these days...
Oh wait. that patents.. nevermind.. nothing to see here, move along.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Since when is plagarism supposed to be protected? Why are we posting this on YRO? Every rational and reasonable person out there reallizes that Dan Brown's book is utter bunk, and those who disagree have some vested interest. First of all, the Priori of Sion was founded in France during the 1950s as a hoax. Also, portions of the book were plagarized from Leigh's and Baigent's work. What he did was take ownership of their work. This is a big no-no. On top of that, the book is biased against Christians, and extremely biased against Catholics in particular. Any book using simply "Da Vinci" without Leonardo is immediately a red flag in my book, especially when it claims to be a scholarly and rigorously researched work. On top of that, Brown uses every corny and stupid cliche ever invented. I've heard about this for a while; the suit has been going on for a while, it just hasn't been covered by the media. This brings my opinion of Brown even lower; he not only wrote a shitty book, but he couldn't even be original in his shitty book. It is bad to make up shit and pass it as fact. It is worse to copy other people's made-up shit and pass it as your own fact. Worse still is naming one of your characters after the original authors (Leigh Teibing). I have no patience for this untalented loser.
I pointed out that the concept has been around longer (and documented) than the HGHB book.
Remember when Tom Cruise had a new big movie coming out, and suddenly he was on the cover of every magazine in sight, and the movie made lots of money? Yeah.
Okay, so there's this movie coming out in a couple months, and the source material was a big hit on bestseller lists and lots of people got sucked in, but it's been a while, and they need some way to push it all back into the public's eye. it was about conspiracy and there was a lot of scandal in it... let's build up a frivolous lawsuit and start a bunch of buzz!
yeah, dan brown couldn't get me to give him money after reading Angels and Demons and the first 30 pages of this crappy book at the local b&n, and he won't get my $10 at the movie theater either.
After all, we can patent conjectures (such as vague software potentials), and we can even patent facts (such as the structures of DNA molecules, for example). So if we can patent conjectures and facts, why shouldn't we be able to copyright conjectures and facts as well?
Hell, we should trademark them too!
Welcome to the modern world, where everything in your brain is owned by someone else!
In other news radio is sueing TV because radio first had the idea to broadcast information to the masses. This is rediculous. Under this logic there would be no competition in any market (ya this is a book but I said logic) because the idea would have already been there and was copywritten.
If you want to read a really good grail conspiracy theory, read Foucalt's Pendulum
I think Name of the Rose is another, I didn't read it. Eco's a very thick writer, with plenty of big words. Great sense of humor as well, I really enjoyed Pendulum.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
There are tons of books about the exact same stuff TDC talks about. I have read so many, that TDC told my nothing I hadnt already read about 93 times before.
This is just marketing.
The theory that Jesus had progeny figures in Foucault's Pendulum by Eco, too. Not sure if it predates HBHG or not.
Those are the moronic, vocal Christians. The vocal ones don't actually know the history of the bible or any real philosophy behind Christianity.
If you want a good view on Christianity (specifically, Catholicism), look into the Jesuits.
salman rushdie sues a small danish newspaper for using his idea of insulting islam and the prophet muhammad for the purpose of creating an international incident
his ip lawyers are currently debating whether or not the idea of insulting any religion is ip theft, or whether insulting the catholic church and insulting islam are two separate spheres of ip law. in which case dan brown may be sued next
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Never heard of the 'facts' book before, and now it's all over mainstream media. Great promotional move!
They interviewed this guy on the History Channel ~2 years ago. On a show about "The Da Vinci Code." Precisely because he knew the story behind it much better than the author...cause he wrote it.
And the one thing they asked him not relative to the story was whether he was happy with the Da Vinci Code, to which he replied "No." He was fairly pissed that, even though it basically retold his idea, Dan Brown and the publicity had all made it seem like his own idea, and that he never, ever even mentioned him in anything.
I haven't RTFA, but I'm betting the guy basically told Brown to start being truthful about who came up with the idea, and Brown hasn't, so he's suing, just like we were taught in High School would happen if we copied out of Cliff's Notes or from a scientific paper...
No trespassing. Violators will be shot. Survivors will be shot again.
but with all the religious nuts out there these comments just seem normal coming from the "religious".
You know I can't really recall any significant religous figure that uses language like that. Never heard most of those words or that general idea from Jesus, Budda, the Pope, Mormon prophets, or even TV evangelists. Not even Mohammad was even close to that harsh. Maybe comments like this only come from people who are religious but not very good at it. You know kind of like listening to an MCSE explain security best practices or something. Maybe there should be a certification for inept religious people so we can separate them from people who actually have some clue about the proper methodologies of pleasing Diety.
No, IANAL, but a 20 second google search found this:
Interpretation is related to the independent creation rather than the idea behind the creation. For example, your idea for a book would not itself be protected, but the actual content of a book you write would be. In other words, someone else is still entitled to write their own book around the same idea, provided they do not directly copy or adapt yours to do so.
From here.
Really though, this is utterly, utterly basic stuff. Ideas are not copyrightable, only a particular expression of the idea. Thus, I can write all the books I want about kids going to a school for wizards and having adventures, but if I try to write about Harry Potter, *then* I'm up shit creek.
If it were otherwise, then the fiction book trade would die over night as people sued each other left and right. There really aren't very many different plots, once you strip them down to the essential details.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Stallman wrote an article about this last year. It's well worth the read.
A Swedish translation.
Who made me the genius I am today
:-)
The mathematician that others all quote
Who's the professor that made me that way
The greatest that ever got chalk on his coat
One man deserves the credit
One man deserves the blame
And Nicolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky is his name, hi!
Nicolai Ivanovich Lobache-
I am never forget the day I first meet the great Lobachevsky.
In one word he told me secret of success in mathematics. Plagiarize!
Plagiarize
Let no one else's work evade your eyes
Remember why the good Lord made your eyes
So don't shade your eyes
But plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize
Only be sure always to call it please "research"
(Tom Lehrer, _Lobachevsky_. Imagine someone dancing the Mamuska while playing a banal Russian folk tune on a piano.
"The human race's favorite method for being in control of the facts is to ignore them." -Celia Green
The idea of patenting a storyline has been mentioned before. If in the UK, they already have such law in place... how scary is that?
IP craziness needs to come to a head soon!
It's ironic, I have been using this argument against Software Patents, by likening patents on software to patents on general plotlines for books and TV shows... Seems that our collective legal insanity is racing right past me...
Only the expression of one.
What's funny is that the sales of Da Vinci Code caused a massive increase in the sales of Holy Blood, Holy Grail, or so I've read. So they're essentially saying they wish they had not made all that extra money.
Of course what they're really saying is that they should make even more money than they did, but let's say Dan Brown recognized that his book was copyright infringement and chose never to write it (prevention is the goal of any law, right?), well, then there would be no money to be arguing about.
Cheers.
n/t
Next you are going to tell me all those John Grisham and Tom Clancy books I read are bunk too!
Anyhow, I read it, was entertained by it, and am rapidly forgetting it. It is just another suspense novel, as far as I am concerned. The parent poster, on the other hand sounds like he is about ready to go on an anit-muhammed-cartoon style rampage!
lighten up!
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
the conjecture concerning the survival of Jesus' bloodline in France, the idea that disciple Miryam or "Mary Magdalen" was Jesus' wife/widow, etc. is not the invention, or even the reconstruction of Baigent, and therefore could not have been stolen by Brown.
those are very old legends, they were already part of folklore. there are place names in France that reflect the belief that Mary Magdalen landed here, lived there etc.
these stories have been enclosed in Masonic and other privately-given esoteric teaching for centuries long before the popularizers decided to take the wraps off everything and make money.
now they are all trying to establish proprietary versions of things that belong to Western civilization as a whole, but were once considered either too sacred or too controversial to put up for sale in this fashion.
"42"
The real lawsuit should be filed by anyone who has read the book against Dan Brown for stealing the ideas of a French conman who most of this modern "bloodline of Christ" crap in the 1960s with his faked list of "Priory grandmasters".
You want to know who isn't running Firefox 2.x? They spell it "definately" and "rediculous".
One point of interest is that the UK publisher of The Da Vinci Code is also the UK publisher of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail... so Baigent and Leigh are in the somewhat uncomfortable position of suing their own publisher ;)
That said, it doesn't suprise me in the least that they'd sue. I mean, they might conceivably win their case, and who wouldn't want more money?
This is unbelievable. If the plaintiff even comes close to succeeding, the public is so screwed.
It doesn't matter whether Brown lifted his ideas from an earlier book. Pope said, "True wit is nature to advantage dress'd/What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed."
It may be unfair to Baigent and Leigh that they did all the hard work--"invested a 'massive amount of their lives'researching the Holy Blood book between 1976 and 1981'"--and that Brown made all the money, by recasting their ideas into a more entertaining package. But writers have been doing that ever since Shakespeare cribbed Hakluyt.
Copyright protects the expression of ideas, not the idea themselves. And in the U.S., Feist v. Rural Service Telephone Co. established, in so many words, that in the U.S. copyright exists to reward "creative expression, not hard not hard work." I doubt that British law is all that different. I certainly hope not, because if stealing ideas is actionable, it will mean the end of literature as we know it. Nobody can write a novel without borrowing from the work of the past.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
I was thinking "He must be a troll."
Dan Brown mentions Holy Blood, Holy Grail within the book. He also mentions it in the bibliography connected to the book on his own website. Several documentaries and books have made the obvious connection about the two books. So I dunno what this is all about, cause it's most certainly not about credit.
So what? Does this mean, for instance, that if someone writes a historical account of Shakespeare's life including various theories about whether he wrote the plays or not, and then I turn around and write a fictional account of the Shakespeare scam where other writers in fact wrote the great plays, that I can be sued for ripping off the other author? YOu might as well kiss historical fiction goodbye, my friend.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Come to think of it, I already copyrighted your idea from your post.
So Baigent and Leigh wrote (what they would claim is) a history book and Brown is sued for using the information in it. Maybe I should get sued for mentioning that Hitler was the dictator of Germany during WWII. Unless Brown has literally copied text (which I doubt as the former book is a 'non-fiction' work and Brown's is fiction) there isn't any kind of case here.
"The White House is not an intelligence-gathering agency," -- Scott McClellan, Whitehouse spokesman.
If you want some really good (as in well-articulated and thoughtful) views on Christianity, I highly recommend C.S. Lewis -- something other than the Narnia Chronicles. e.g. The Space Trilogy, or The Great Divorce. Lewis, like Brown delivers his philsophy through fiction.
New Snot Eunichs.
wow, i didnt know all of a sudden a FICTION book author could get sued for its sources. its a friggin FICTION book for fucks sake! F-I-C-T-I-O-N as in NOT real!
Of course you can! For example, legally, a "book" is both (a) a set of markings on paper, and (b) a collection of ideas (known as "sentences"), which are in turn a collection of ideas, (known as "words"). "Words" are a collection of concepts used to describe the world around us, using a theoretical framework called "language". It's so basic that most people don't think of it, but language isn't something tangible; it's a collection of abstract ideas that allow us to communicate.
It's not the markings on the book that count for the purposes of copyright; it's the underlying ideas that are protected. It's illegal to reproduce those particular set of ideas, regardless of how it is done, be it through print, electronic media, or morse code.
What's more, imagery, storylines, and depictions or dress that "too closely" resembles the ideas found in a copyrighted work are themselves often illegal to depict. You can be sued for using an image related to an image protected by Disney, or a character "too similar" to Micky Mouse or Donald Duck. If you translate a story, the translation is subject to copyright, despite all the words being different, the underlying "meaning" is the same, and so it's subject to copyright law. (Since the translation is itself a creative work, it is covered by a separate copyright. However, it's only legal to translate a work if the copyright holder allows you to do so, or if you find a fair usage exception).
Obviously, this has implications for freedom of speech; unfortunately, each court interprets the law according to the judges own opinions; there's no way to know for sure in advance what's legal, and what's not, with the exception that an exact verbatim copy is always illegal unless permitted by the copyright holder.
Copyright law is ugly and complex. But copyright clearly applies to the protection of ideas; and has for centuries. Originally, it stemmed from the Queen's efforts to silence heresy; today, it's mostly used to fill the pocketbooks of IP lawyers.
--
AC
*, .. . . oO Xx_x__ /*\). ... * **XXx xx
(tumbleweed)
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
Really? The saying in my high school was "If you don't cite sources you fail". In my experience in college writing classes if a line looked too similar to a source it was consider plagiarism if you didn't explicitly connect it to the author of the source or the work it was derived from (of course any exact quote had to be put in quotes and cited MLA style).
Computers allow humans to make mistakes at the fastest speeds known, with the possible exception of tequila and handguns
Under Australian law, bringing such a claim to court could be considered a vexatious suit, in which case the respondent can seek relief under the law against the plaintiff. I truly hope that Dan Brown exercises all his rights under the law against these miscreants.
Regardless of what you think of The Da Vinci Code or whether you think that Dan Brown used ideas in Holy Blood, Holy Grail the fact remains that the former fails the substantive similarity test against the latter.
The whole concept of derivative works being copyrightable is already abhorrent. Imagine if that was extended to copyright of ideas. As a civilisation we would be paralyzed as we cannot build upon knowledge of our forebears. Copyright and the entire concept of IP needs to be completely reworked from scratch.
"People are just trying to steal money from the author."
Not quite sure what they are whining about. I imagine sales of "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail" sky-rocketed after "The DaVinci code" got big. It has brought a lot of free publicity to their book and theories. My mother bought me a copy after I raved about Dan's book (and I really did not like some of his earlier stuff).
Yeah, I can see their desire to be acknowledged as a key source for ego purposes, but both monetarily and publicity wise they have benefitted immensely from Dan Brown's success.
They should continue to milk it, and maybe send Dan a thank you note.
The only athletic sport I ever mastered was backgammon - Douglas William Jerrold
This was on BBC World Service almost 24 hours before it appeared here.
I think this would be protected if it was parody, but since it is not I don't think just labeling it was fiction gives a get out of jail free card. I used the same plot of another play but changed names and change lines of dialoges I think I could still be in trouble if enought of it was the same, and I think rightly so. Now if Dan Brown mention the other book as a resource or inspiration somewhere in the Forward or something then I think he should be fine, but otherwise I think he needs to give credit where credit is due.
Computers allow humans to make mistakes at the fastest speeds known, with the possible exception of tequila and handguns
"Every rational and reasonable person out there reallizes that Dan Brown's book is utter bunk, and those who disagree have some vested interest"
Dude... here's a question for you...
Q: What do the Catholic Church and Dan's Browns books have in common?
A: They're both fictional things set up to make money for somebody.
The key difference, of course, is that Dan Brown tells you it's fiction up front.
Oh yea, Muhammed was a homo, too. Now go burn down Eastern Europe you savages.
At least until they fix it.
Both books are published by the same publisher. I wonder what that will do to the sales of both books, hum ... i realy wonder.
I've been waiting for this from Umberto Eco.
Spoiler: Foucault's Pendulum is like The Da Vinci Code, except it's actually worth reading.
Don't be too hard on religious types - it's just 99% of them that give the rest a bad name.
Disclaimer: the above statements and ideas are my own, and any resemblance to any fiction or non-fiction books or previous posts is entirely coincidental and in no way grounds for a lawsuit.
"They've canceled the show but we're still here. What does that make us?" "Big Damn Junkies, Sir!" "Ain't we just"
"Possible instantaneous combustion when reading at ambient temperatures exceeding 451 degrees fahrenheit".
By failing to list Celsius, you have confirmed where your loyalties lie, Imperialist pig.
A more interesting question is the general copyright-ability of 'fictional' worlds. Can I write novels that take place in Asimov's, Niven's, Heinlein's, [etc] worlds?
Well, seeing as how that would make it a derivative work... no.
Copyright gives you the rights not only to control who publishes or distributes the work you wrote, but it gives you the rights to control who publishes works derived from that work. If you're using the Federation, or the Foundation, or Known Space, you have to either wait for the copyright to run out or ask permission from teh copyright holder.
You could, of course, write it as fan fiction, avoid selling it, and hope it stays under the radar -- or you could write something in a *similar* world. That sort of thing happens all the time. Not just Middle Earth vs. D&D, but people will pitch a Star Wars novel or Star Trek script, get turned down, and come up with their own characters and setting.
I always wondered - What the hell is up w/ The Moped Jesus?
Mistook your comment of being about the da Vinci code, as it's such a common criticism of the book. :-(
:-)
Note to self -- Don't post at 2 am.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
What is slashdot coming to that there is not one headlining post?
'The question the court is facing is whether you can copyright an idea, a conjecture.'
I doubt it... but I'm sure you can patent it.
Wow. Someone sure feels threatened by this book. Maybe there's a reason for this insecurity?
1. Sue world-famous author
2. Doesn't matter the outcome of the legal case as it's all good publicity
3. Profit !!!
FTFA:
The legal action has seen The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail shoot up the Amazon.co.uk bestseller chart from number 173 at lunchtime, to 102 by 2.30pm and was at 53 late this afternoon.
In college (20-25 years ago) - this was back when it was still a coin toss: go to work and make money immediately or get the paperwork and the delayed, but greater money. A lot of students thought it was okay to copy source, write it for $, or do a little diving in the trash can for the source people trashed because it worked but it wasn't what they wanted to turn in - usually cosmetic issues (e.g. column aligment).
Someone got stuck with ferreting these things out.
Later, they permittted students to get assistance, but they had to list whom they worked with and the type and length of assistance.
The other thing they tried was like the ACM programming competition. I think they provided four problems and people had to show reasonably complete work on at least two of them and as much as possible on the other two. This was around the time of Fast Times at Ridgemont High, so I don't know if I did it on my own or if Jeff Spicoli inspired me, but I did order a pizza the only time I had to undergo one of those tests. (Fortunately, I was exempt from my time spent teaching)
> Not even Mohammad was even close to that harsh
Try reading the Qur'an dude.
I don't know if Brown treated his earlier book the same, but in the Da Vinci Code, alot of the statements are pretended to be facts. Of course nothing could be furthur from the truth, the whole book fictitious, and don't get me started on the Apocrypha :)
It was pretty stupid of Dan Brown to use the "Sir Leigh Teabing" anagram for Leigh/Baigent. It's like acknowledging them without acknowledging them, and he really set the scene for this lawsuit (whether it has merit or not).
What's your GCNSEQNO?
And why does this link "copyright an idea" point to an article "IAEA head criticises Iran cooperation"?
Of course, Strange Brew did borrow heavily from Hamlet...
Program Intellivision!
If it's little more than a thinly veiled rip-off of my work, then yes, I would sue you.
It's a fine mix of history and fiction for sure, I'm staring at my dog eared paperback right now as a matter of fact. But I don't think it matters whether or not Holy Blood, Holy Grail is fact or fiction, if The Da Vinci Code stole the basic storyline then they should get sued.
If I were to write a yarn about a blue ogre who rescues a princess for a corrupt king and have a travelling cow sidekick, and called the story Johnny the Friendly Ogre instead of Shrek, I think I might have some lawyers on my tail, whether or not any of the events actually happened.
weasel publishers also like to insert clauses in contracts that cover this, usually to the detriment of the author... but since the book is about a conspiracy, i doubt the pertinent clauses will ever come to light (unless the author wishes to post said text)
The estate of J. R. R. Tolkien sues author of Harry Potter books for use of ideas, including, but not limited too:
1. Main Villian is called by at least one major population "Nameless one", "He who must not be named" , etc.
2. Use of a fantasy setting filled with majic and wonder.
3. Writing a fantasy book filled in general without a royalty plan.
They will follow by suing writer of Eragon, for theft of many lines, including "Fly, you fools" (Adapted, but simmilar enough to warrent theft accusations)
Steampunk/fantasy author Ian Irvine is to be sued for creation of a fantasy language, geography, and such.
It was a troll. I love trolls on Slashdot but on this one I went too far. I apologize.
I highly recommend C.S. Lewis -- something other than the Narnia Chronicles.
Even Narnia was pretty impressive although not really theology or anything.
I read the series as a kid and then as an adult I heard C.S. Lewis referred to as a Christian philosopher or somesuch and I was all WTF?!? that guy who wrote those great totally non-religious kids books? When did he get religion. That's when it hit me. Oh yeah....
I think it's a shame that many religious people are so violently opposed to the book. As a Christian, I am strongly opposed to the "ideas" in the book, but I read the book and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was an excellent work of fiction and Dan Brown is an engaging author.
I also happen to own, and am in the process of reading, the book that Dan Brown allegedly ripped off. I think the arguments in that book are weak thus far, but I think that if you start banning books or attempting to censor unpopular ideas, then I believe you prevent any sort of meaningful discourse. Afterall, why should you listen to my beliefs on religion if I refuse to even acknowledge your beliefs?
Unfortunately, ideas like mine are rarely published in the popular media. However, comments like the GP are regularly published. I know many more people in my circle of friends/peers that believe like I do versus those that are crude and make ignorant outbursts.
Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.
I don't think they ever claimed that it was fact or fiction. In an interview with one of the authors he claims that from their research they came to the conclusion that the story was possible. Whatever that means.
"sweet dreams are made of this..."
the name leigh Teabing(from da vinci code)'s first name is taken from the authors of Holy Blood. Teabing is an anagram for Baigent and Leigh happens to be the name of the other author. Jacques Saunière from Da Vinci Code is based on Bérenger Saunière, also from HBHG (from here.
Dan Brown did not just steal the ideas, he stole a lot more from the book. What is most amazing is that while deliberately taking the ideas and the names there was not one reference to Holy Blood, Holy Grail. While he had made references to movies/novels like The Last Temptation of Christ which shares the same idea.
Speaking of which, the idea of Jesus and Mary Magdalene being married was first potrayed in The Last Temptation of Christ. A book which first appeared in 1960
I love humanity, it is people I hate
I don't know baout the rest of you guys, but I for one think that the whole lawsuit thing is just a smear campaign from various religious groups. They don't want the movie doin any more damage than the book, because obviously (by their very nature) relgious people tend to believe just about anything, so long as it's a good story. The christians are just mad cuz "The Da Vinci Code" is more interesting then the bible.
It's poetry with a beat behind it! And guns! They're like beatniks with automatic weapons.
for such a CRAPPY book.
... I had the feeling that Brown's novel is a tacky rip off of the other one. Brown's contribution is a, more or less irrelevant, sequence of comedy special cheap tricks and poorly elaborated templates. The most "intense" passages that hold the story together are simple crash courses on the stuff from the other novel which really tangles itself in detailed chronicles.
Both of them are speculations, but one is the equivalent of a McDonald tray, while the other is a trip to an ethnic restaurant. One fills your belly and makes you a bit sick, the other requires a curious, "are these friend ants?!". attitude.
Brown should have at least shared some pocket money with them (instead of dissing the other novel from within its own)
e
Mi domando chi à il mandante di tutte le cazzate che faccio - Altan
I'm patenting the idea of going out to lunch. If you want to go out to lunch, you're gonna have to pay me. I'll lobby the legislators to impose a compulsory tax for each meal (or fraction thereof) served and deposit it straight into my bank.
Now THAT'S a good idea.
cat
When was the last time you saw a list of citations in a work of fiction.
You obviously don't read a whole lot of Michael Crichton
Why not fork?
Writer 1: Damn dude, look how much money the Da Vinci Code made!
...
...
...
... I got it! Sue the publisher!
Writer 2: Why didn't our book make that much?
Writer 1: There's gotta be a way to get a fat slice of that money cake...
Writer 2: I know! Sue Dan Brown!
Writer 1: But he mentioned our book in his book
Writer 2:
Writer 1:
Writer 2:
Writer 1:
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not entirely sure about the universe - Einstein
A lot of comments take the stance that Baigent et al are simply grubbing for money off Brown's successful novel with a shot in the dark. I will go out on a limb and empathize with Baigent's frustration: the authors spent several years researching French genealogies, medieval charters, property listings, and folk tales, then made several films about it and wrote the book. I'm aware that their academic peers were dissatisfied with the rigor of their research, but the authors put in a substantial amount of effort nonetheless.
... The plot has all the elements of an international thriller." When I read that, I felt immediately like Dan Brown had read it, too. Brown mentions Holy Blood, Holy Grail in The DaVinci Code. Many activities of the characters mirror events in HBHG as well. It's not a casual correlation.
The back cover of my edition has a quote from Newsweek that says, "Like Chariots of the Gods?
Yes, it is Baigent's loss for not couching the book in fiction and missing the right place and the right time for publishing. You can't own an idea, from what many of you are saying, and, indeed, other professors, quoted by Baigent, had speculated about Jesus's marital status. These professors didn't sue them for 'stealing their idea', either.
The broader question is perhaps better framed hypothetically: if someone researches and publishes an innovative theory, then someone else takes that theory and research and gives it some fictional characters, is it their new idea now? This may be immaterial anyway; copyright is based on expression, not ideas, and Baigent et al expressed their original idea as nonfiction, whereas Brown expressed a less-original? idea as fiction. Is that enough of a distinction, though? Brown added characters and a plot to someone else's foundation. He did create a new thing -- but does he owe the people who built his basement nothing? Is acknowledging them in the text enough? Is there any point, in a nonfiction to fiction situation, where you go from 'standing on the shoulders of giants' to a complete ripoff?
That Moses fellow is really gonna rake it in.
'But I don't want to go among mad people,' Alice remarked.
All I know is that this bulls**t wouldn't happen in the United States.
I think this would be protected if it was parody, but since it is not I don't think just labeling it was fiction gives a get out of jail free card. I used the same plot of another play but changed names and change lines of dialoges I think I could still be in trouble if enought of it was the same, and I think rightly so. Now if Dan Brown mention the other book as a resource or inspiration somewhere in the Forward or something then I think he should be fine, but otherwise I think he needs to give credit where credit is due.
There are far too many I think's in there. What you think makes absolutely no difference.
Just one example:
There are hundreds, perhaps thousands of detective novels which use the same plot, with different characters and different dialog.
Nobody gets sued.
...all romance novels ever published have been recalled.
The legal action has seen The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail shoot up the Amazon.co.uk bestseller chart from number 173 at lunchtime, to 102 by 2.30pm and was at 53 late this afternoon.
The Great Divorce was the best Lewis ever did, IMO (superb metaphorical imagery, philosophical illustration without being overt/pedantic, insightful and revealing). The Screwtape Letters are a close second. Whatever your tastes--including non-Christian--Lewis is a damn good thought-provoking read.
Ignorance is curable, stupid is forever.
HBHG is an abbreviation but not an acronym. Don't worry, most dictionaries forget to mention that acronyms are pronouncable as words, like: NATO, LASER, SNAFU etc.
I liked the parts in the Da Vinci Code about the artwork that was historically accurate. The rest, well, it's just a fun story to read.
Excellent observations, well presented, thoughtful. Insightful, indeed.
Ignorance is curable, stupid is forever.
It's only research if you cite your sources and give credit where it's due, or else it'd be a discovery!
HD Trailers
If Jesus ever did sin he couldn't be God, God is Holy and therefore sinless.
Yeah, I'm just a stupid athiest and stuff, but doesn't this make Jesus' sacrifice, well, worthless? I mean, if he were truly 'God,' as is claimed, then his sacrifice was really nothing. 'Sacrifice' means giving something up; what did Jesus give up, if all He did was go up to heaven to stand bside His Father, casting judgement and hell upon all who do not believe in Him?
That sounds like a selfish, egotistical God to me, not a kind and loving God. If Jesus sacrificed himself, He'd have to give up something pretty special to make up for our sins, now, wouldn't He?
I think that was the point of TLTOC. That Jesus had the chance to become more than God-- to become Human, to give up the brief, transient pain and truly be a Man. And that was the sacrifice. After all, He really couldn't give up His life, now, could he? He's God; He's immortal. There's no life to give up, just a brief amount of pain. After that-- 70 virgins!
I think. I might be getting my religious zealoutry mixed up a little.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
When a society decides that certain subjects are off-limits (think anti-Semitism in Germany), and everyone says, "We don't talk about that," it just drives the nut jobs out of the public view. Oh, the nut jobs are still there, lurking in the shadows, spouting nonsense to anyone who will listen. But that nonsense, since it's hidden from public view, goes unchallenged.
This is why I am all for the ACLU taking up the case of neo-Nazis wanting to demonstrate in Skokie, etc. Get those "big fish" out of their little ponds, and let them demonstrate to the world how stupid they are. That gives knowledgeable people the opportunity to educate the young (new to all kinds of ideas) and ignorant (long sheltered from all kinds of ideas).
For me, it's not a case of "I'll listen to you so that you'll listen to me," because I don't expect them to listen to me. It's "I know you're talking to people; I want you to do it in front of the world so that you may be properly refuted."
Web 2.0 == Giant Blogspam Circle Jerk
If I was on the jury "The Holy Blood" guys would win.
I read "The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail" years ago. Never read "The DaVinci Code". I didn't understand the "furor" over it, thinking "oh this has been done before". Hell I even thought it was the same authors who had just "updated" their material.
So if I was asked my opinion(e.g. a juror) I'd find for "The Holy Blood" guys in an instant.
The Da Vinci Code was a disgrace, every factual analysis done on the theories presented showed NO FACTUAL BASIS!!!. This includes the History Channel and one of the major networks (I believe CBS). The book is just AntiCathoilic rhetoric.
Well, you're not quite completely free. And in the case you describe, since Fargo is still under copyright, you'd be giving your lawyer an uphill battle.
Now, if you want to start from a work no longer under copyright, and use that to base your movie on, your lawyer will have to put in a lot fewer billable hours. What he invoices may be another story, but that's between him, the FBI, and Grisham's copyright lawyer.
Frankly, I think White Wolf's case over Underworld was roughly the same caliber as this one for the DaVinci code, and WW were not-quite laughed out of court by the judge.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
Agreed.
Unless they can show significant blocks of copied text, I think it should be thrown out of court.
Yes, the ideas behind the Di Vinci code are part of its appeal, but they are really just another conspiracy surrounding the Catholic church. I haven't read the book, so I don't know if Dan Brown's brilliance is in his writing, his storytelling or in his marketting, but obviously he did something that the other's didn't.
If he's stolen their "ideas". Tough. If he's plagarized material, then he should be stuffed like a thanksgiving turkey.
Norman Cook's Ode to Sl
Here's my guess: You are an angst filled middle to upper-middle class suburbanite teenager who thinks he is smart because he rejects religion, most specifically Christianity.
Learn to spot a troll when you see one.
This whole lawsuit makes no fucking sense. If HBHG is true, which it claims to be, it is not a plot, it does not have characters, it is facts. Anyone can recount them, or incorporate them in any fictional plot. (And they're old enough facts that you don't even need a disclaimer on them, because none of those people can sue.)
If it's a scholarly work, there might be obvious plagerism, but fictional books do not have to cite sources for things they present as facts, or any sources at all.
However, as others have pointed out, Holy Blood, Holy Grail is mentioned within The Da Vinci Code. So it is, indeed, 'cited'.
Incidently, Holy Blood, Holy Grail didn't discover most of these 'facts' either. They are old legends and stories and occult secrets. The writer just put them together and documented some evidence of them being true. So even if they are fiction, they are public domain fiction.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
I wonder if the person is a Christian or is someone just having fun at the expense of Christians. There is no reason to use Anonymous Coward name to protect one's identity in this case. Anonymous Coward designation always makes me wonder if what is said is for real. In this case since there is not reason to protect one's identity, I really wonder.
There hasn't been anything with "new ideas" written about in over 200 years (maybe longer)!
Unles you are a complete idiot, you will realize that there is no theft, just authorized and unauthorized copying, fraud, etc... anybody who was taching this bullshit that ideas can be owned is full of shit him/herself... the raw ideas are not protected by copyright law - which what is in question since we are talking about copyright, even further stretching out to say that we are talking about copyright infringement here not any theft - and the person(s) who perpetuated this loony concept fail to realize how dangerous "owning" raw ideas in certain (most, if not all) forms can be to advancement and progress, not to mention creativity since it has and continues to be raped by the mindless.
As current grand poobah of the illuminati (london branch) I for one also plan to sue dan brown forthwith.
Yea, you christians are sooooo compassionate...
I am assuming the person posting was a troll meant to potray himself as christian in order incite a huge flamewar.
But Ill answer that christian people don't like the Da Vinci code because people are taking it as fact. It's proping up a consperacy theory and people are eating it up. Its kinda like the JFK assasination which created distrust of the other party and christianity is that party that feels like they getting slack for something thats not trye.
That logic would say we could go sue Coleman for making camp stoves that use fire. I'm surprised nobody has tried to patent fire retro-actively.
.. ~ 2 or 3 emails a week from "internet law firms" who see my site and tell me how I should be patenting stuff or protecting my "ideas". Its almost like a new cottage industry. You had Ambulance chasers who drove around looking for car wrecks .. now you have them surfing around looking for intellectual property to cash in on and make rotten.
You can't produce research in an attempt to pronounce yourself as an authority on the subject then get pissed when other people take your research in other directions, which seems to be the case here. Once you contribute it, you contribute it. Especially if you show yourself as an authority on whatever it is you are writing about.
You know, I get
All this is going to do is stop smart people from sharing things. That doesn't benefit anyone.
Off my soapbox.
If I hadn't used all my mod points yesterday, I would definitely give you one right now. I have great respect for all fans of Tom Lehrer.
Remember, open source is free as in speech, not free as in bear.
.. I may also add, the only two places links to my site appear are slashdot and some strange IT directory in Egypt. Wonder where these patent hounds are getting my email .... just something to think about ;)
It was pretty stupid of Dan Brown to use the "Sir Leigh Teabing" anagram for Leigh/Baigent.
It might have actually been an homage. From what I gather in the article, he hadn't read the book when he started but eventually read it. The works of Leigh and Baigent may have been a good research source for something generally discussed among conspiracy theorists. He may not have actually learned about it from their book initially, but included the anagram as a way of acknowledging that they did good research on the topic.
For more interesting reading along those lines, check out "Genesis of the Grail Kings" and "Bloodline of the Holy Grail" by Lawrence Gardner. The books cover the Old and New Testaments, respectively.
With Ray Bradbury, of course.
Remember, open source is free as in speech, not free as in bear.
I've read the The Holy Blood And The Holy Grail (HBHG) 3 times. It's a book presented as fact or moreover, fact mixed with conjecture. The facts are readily available. Da Vinci's artwork, Rennes Le Chateau (sp?), documents from the French National archives, all of that. All that stuff is fact. What is conjecture is the idea that all of this ties together into a secret society that clandestinely is protecting a blood line with lineage that draws back to Jesus Christ. That is one hell of an idea that they came up with, and one that seemed to be theirs alone. Dan Brown in the Da Vinic code literally took all of their work, all of their ideas, and crafted a fictional story around it.
I personally never understood with the Da Vinci Code was making so much money, when the real meat of matter at hand was all directly from the Holy Blood And The Holy Grail. I get the Da Vinci Code may have add some plot twists and intrigue, but by reading it you were also hearing the information from a second hand source, Dan Brown. Like I said, if people were so interested in the subject matter, it was lost on me a long time why people weren't reading HBHG.
A book was written called The Coming Global Superstorm (by Art Bell & Whitley Strieber) that was later adapted into The Day After Tomorrow. If someone rehashed all the new ideas -DIRECTLY- from Art Bell's book, released it as their own book and sold their book as movie to some studio, wouldn't Art Bell be entitled to some of the proceeds from that studio? They are using his ideas, just with a pretty bow on it.
If you think of an idea as a patent... you can't just go stealing a patent, and a patent is an idea that you can develop to make money. If someone comes up with an idea that is originally there own, aren't they the ones entitled to make money off of it???
Dan Brown's book would literally be nothing if he hadn't stolen every juicy tidbit in it from the HBHG, and for that I think the writers of HBHG should be compensated.
then I just thought up the next big thing that Google is going to release!
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
Our Faggit Boys in the merry old UK did their "dirty"
... ...
there because in the merry young USA, "... ideas
cannot be copyrighted."
In the USA, some years ago, copyrights cost a pitense
about 20$
; on the other hand patents cost, some years ago, about 500$
USA at that time.
Copyrights are cheap!
Faggits are even cheaper!
Who gives a fly'n sh*t about the lives of a couple of faggits?
Not me for one!
Toodles!
And gardner is easily as engaging a writer as Brown, and the weaving of fantasy, archaelogical fact, and scripture together makes for a truly engrossing read. Its really a pleasure to test my critical reading and research skills to that level.
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
The Da Vinci Code
Dan Brown
The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail
Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, Henry Lincoln
Perhaps this seems like a good time to drum up some publicity in time for the movie release?
I hope the courts give them a good slap for wasting everyone's time.
Re: 'Sacrifice' means giving something up; what did Jesus give up...? The claim is that what he gave up was unity with his father. That is, the father and the son are one in spirit, but the Son suffers disunity with his father (that's the idea behind that whole "Why have you forsaken me?" (Psalm 22:1) (Matthew 27) quotation that Jesus recites while being crucified). Since the father is the source of all life (and good, and such), the son is made to suffer the pain of death in the form of disunity with the source of his life.
Re: "...if all He did was go up to heaven to stand bside His Father..." The idea behind this is that if his death had been just, then it would have been the final word on the matter, but since his death was by his own choice as an act of mercy (a death by proxy for people who had sinned), it wasn't un-just to overturn the sentence (as it would be for someone who justly deserved death). Note that that doesn't un-do the sentence, it just ends it -- as if you pardoned someone who was on death row that you found out wasn't guilty of the crime... they still served the time, they just didn't have to serve it "forever."
Re: "...casting judgement and hell upon all who do not believe in Him..." Hell isn't actually related to the judgement (I know that's an odd sounding claim, but the bit that describes the whole hell thing is pretty unambiguous (Rev. 20:12-15):
Notice that everyone is judged -- people who do believe in him and people who don't. Also notice (in 15) that the criterion for "the lake of fire" is whether one's name is written in "the book of life" which is a way of saying something like "Jesus's little black book." The one set of books is what you've done, the other book is whether you believed in him. So you can be a rat-bastardly Christian or a most excellent non-Christian and that's not relevant to the whole life/death bit. (Though the claim is you won't find a single person besides Jesus who hasn't ever given in to any temptation ... some people will ask about babies and retarded kids and such at this point. I don't know how that works, but I would generally respond that the picture that we tend to see (Old Testament and New Testament) is that God prefers mercy to just
For those who haven't read the book, Leigh Teabing is a major character in the Dan Brown novel.
The authors of the "copied" one?
Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh (2/3)
Leigh, from Richard
Teabing, rearranged from Baigent.
You decide.
And Name of the Rose is also excellent. The first 100 pages or so are a hard read, but well worth it. Sort of like doing wind sprints to get your brain in shape. Eco is brutally casual about using multiple languages so if you don't understand Latin, you'll be confused ... but that's ok because it puts you in the same frame of mind as the not-overly-bright sidekick protagonist.
Forget the movie; NotR is a great detective/conspiracy/historical/political novel, operating on many levels: murder investigation, petty abby politicals, religious politics, imperial polics, and ultimately a clash of worldviews (faith vs. reason.) The capper is (spoiler alert) is that the rationalist hero wins and loses at the same time, for he is ultimately correct but for the wrong reason.
Christ, I've got to go re-read it!
--- Attorneys Assisting Citizen-Soldiers & Families -
Their sales have gone through the roof SINCE they started the law Suit ... so if they stop the suit in the next two weeks (either drop their suit or come to some settlement), then they've made a packet.
I don't recall anyone mentioning an increase in their sales since Dan's book came out, (doesn't mean they didn't increase, and I can't be bothered googling for it), but their book has now hit 58 on Amazon (and climbing).
Sure enough, the cow costume was hanging up next to the superhero outfit and sailors uniform. (S,Spud)
They had to wait 3 years before realizing that Dan Brown stole from them? Where were they, in the middle ages?
Coming so close to the release of the movie I can only think that they were waiting for the stakes to be much higher before suing, so that the studio/publisher would be more amenable to a quick settlement.
> When was the last time you saw a list of citations in a work of fiction
5 24192-8012635?v=glance&n=283155
This work of fiction:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1401905013/103-7
Why do you (slashdot reader) attack article by Preston, who claims: "the author of Linux was not Linus Torvalds, but me." http://www.madpenguin.org/cms/?m=show&id=1800
And at the same time you make fun of us, when we disagree with opinions like those: "the Da Vinci Code is absorbing -- perfect for history buffs (New York Times Book Review Fall 2003)" and "readers have finally found a book that combines historic fact with a contemporary story line (New York Times Book Review Fall 2003)." Even Brown claims in the introduction to the novel that "all descriptions of documents and secret rituals are accurate (Brown, Dan The Da Vinci Code., Acknowledgements)."
You are so smart! Wow! And do you actualy believe in every shit someone write without any respect to facts? Have you ever read any of the articles criticizing the book? Such as:
'The Da Vinci Code': Exciting New Novel, Tired Old Conspiracy Theories.
Having worked for a major chain bookstore since Da Vinci came out and actually being one who read it as an advanced copy, I am amazed that this is happening now. Da Vinci Code is due to be released as a paperback, both trade and mass market, sometime like the 15th of March, sorry can't remember exactly. Anyway, when it first came out it put Holy Blood, Holy Grail on the paperback bestseller list, virtually making that book a household name as well. So, why is it now that the authors decide to sue their publishing company. Are they afraid that they won't make a few more barrels of money once the long awaited paperback of Da Vinci Code comes out and their book is back in the spotlight. I know the company I work for is planning on having a huge Da Vinci display and their book will be prominently displayed.
So I guess I ask, is it all for publicity or have they been hiding under a stone for three years?
... Gabriel Knight III: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned?
Same concepts, same underlying ideas. And that was back in 1999. Cool game too.
No he is not sued
Single persons cannot be sued for plagiarism in the UK
Random House, as publisher, is sued
According to prophecy
Of course it is a work of fiction. It is a little bit sad that you consider it "excellent", though.
May I suggest some damn good readings?
Try something by Umberto Eco, perhaps The Name of the Rose, or even Foucault's Pendulum.
Personally I find amusing all the fuss about such a crappy book. I really couldn't care less if the events narrated in the book are "true" or not.
Uh, other way around, eh?
Don't just stand there, get that other dog!
unfortunately there are some idiots who want to patent plotlines... and this will be grist to their mill whichever way the case goes...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Nobody could write Sherlock Holmes stories, or even have him appear as an incidental character in a story untill the copyright expired for example.
;-)
Well, unless they bought the rights, as one of my high school English teachers did.
He wrote a book called "Exit Sherlock Holmes" where he killed off Holmes. To hear him tell it, that's the main reason he even wrote the book
Phht! I read Holy Blood, Holy Grail when I was about 11 or 12 - required reading for school. I mean, who hasn't? I thought everyone got that reference when they read The Code...
People get worked up when there's lots of money in to had, hey. I can a write some obscure work that alludes to anything, and no one will really care. But once I write the next NYT top-selling Asimov novel, boy, the people who published things about Heisenberg and Einstein better keep their wits about them. All that money is mine (er, I mean my publisher's).
Who's your user, program?
The Da Vinci Code should be moderated down, Overrated! :P
If I write a great scientific article describing facts and manage to get it published on Nature, the publisher is going to copyright it. From that point on, whoever wants to use that work for commercial purposes will have to pay good money, or at least get permission.
I don't see how this can ever work. If you write a scientific article for Nature....let's say it's about dinosaurs being warm blooded and possibly moving in herds and birds being their descendants....then I go and write a fiction novel around those ideas, how can I be sued for that? Why would I need permission?
That's like saying the descendants of Galileo can sue the makers of 2001: A Space Odyssey because they wrote about the moons of Jupiter that Galileo discovered and wrote about. Ok, kind of lame example but it's the only one that I could come up with early in the morning.
My point is, fiction writers use scientific hypothesis all the time and never credit the source...because, well, it's fiction being written. They can even get the idea for a story second hand. Many screenplays and novels germinate from reading the newspaper that may have a story about an article in a scientific journal.
Now, if you wrote a scientific paper on something, then someone else comes along and writes another scientific paper basically saying the same things that you're saying, then I can see where these things can converge.
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
i thought the majority of /. was beyond post-menopausal mastubatory aides.
It's kiddie porn, not the regular kind.
Don't go there.
"The extension of the patent system to software constitutes the first major attack to copyright law, to which the legislator had, after deep thinking, incorporated software. This assimilation was altogether natural because software, just like books, consist in the production of a textual original work (the source code of the program), resulting from the combination of elementary ideas. For an adventure novel, these elementary ideas can be: "love scene on a balcony", "twins being mistaken one for another", etc. For software, it can be: "alphabetical sorting in a list", "displaying a progress bar telling the user to have patience", etc.
Unlike copyright, which protects final works, software patents, which protect against the imitation of features, allows the protection of these elementary ideas, and thus prevent whoever to realize a program implementing a protected idea. This would amount, in the case of books, to be allowed to claim elementary ideas such as the balcony love scene, although the same idea can lead to very different implementations, such as the balcony love scenes of Romeo and Juliet and of Cyrano de Bergerac, which are not plagiarisms one of the other."
http://www.abul.org/article191.html
Rich
And the worst and most bigoted religous are the atheists.
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
So, both books are published by the same publisher. Sounds like a great way to get lots of free press to up sales on the other book. Heck, it's almost got me interested. What's it called when they put the grass seed next to the freeway? Spray-grass or something like that....
Such fun.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Eco wasn't the only one to touch on HBHG in a story. Some 15 years before Dan Brown, Robert Anton Wilson (he of the Illuminatus! trilogy and numerous vaguely new-agey books) wrote a book titled The Widow's Son. It was set in the 18th century, and somewhat slower-paced than the Da Vinci Code, but the main twist of it was derived from Baigent and Leigh's Merovingian-bloodline conspiracy theory.
No, the loser pays the costs awarded by the Judge. Costs are not automatically awarded, and a Judge can even burden the winner with all costs if he sees fit, or award a percentage of costs (80%) to be paid by the loser, or not award costs at all.
2. The film of the DaVinci Code is coming out soon.
Doesn't this strike anyone as a publicity stunt for the film?
There's no brilliance, beyond pitching the book at the perfect level for an audience of illiterates. It not only celebrates a perfect ignorance of every subject it touches -- art history, church history, even aviation -- and is shot through with superstition (pace the Roma Catholic objectors, it actually swallows the Christian myth whole, merely adding a little sexual and dynastic speculation), but it is astonishingly badly written and constructed. The book's huge success is a rebuke to Western Civilsation. Holy Blood is no better. Personally, for once I hope the lawsuit goes on for ever and the lawyers get all the money.
Science fiction for grown-ups...
That book is not about the grail. It's a crime story in a medieval monastery where monks are killed over some mysterious book.
While I enjoyed the novel immensely it is not an easy read as Dan Brown. My copy (German translation of the Italian original) is full of Latin phrases and historic references which are only partially translated and explained. There are many digressions to philosophical and theological questions. It's a novel written by a scholar, and he lets you know that on almost any page. And it's quite a tome.
NotR--stripped down to its core story--was made into a terrific movie with Sean Connery and Christian Slater. If I understand it correctly that movie is not so well-known in the US.
I'm actually looking forward to patenting my new idea... "writing books after February 28th, 2006." No one has ever done it yet, and I plan to sue anyone who does (or at least charge a hefty fee)!
Where's that -2 when you need it.
I think there will come a day when complete copyright reform will be necessary. Why not today?
:))
As time goes on we collect more and more data, and store it permenantly. Due to that fact that, at some point in the future, we will have almost everything ever thought of recorded somewhere, a reform will become necessary. When that happens, many common phrases, or ideas on certain subjects will already be written down somewhere. If one happens across this "coincidence," then they are able, under current rules, to say "Hey! You copied it!" Even if you had never seen the document before.
Some group really needs to sit down and rewrite the copyright rules. It's going to cause a lot of headaches and possibly instate a lot of bad precedences along the way, if it is not reformed soon.
Gotta love the information age! Where everything ever written online is cataloged. (Thanks, by the way, go out to Google and websites like it.
Thanks. (At least nobody modded it "offtopic" or "flamebait"...)
"The human race's favorite method for being in control of the facts is to ignore them." -Celia Green
Uh, and in the "novel" (IIRC), that character scoffs at a work which bears striking similarities to Baigent and Leigh's.
:-)
Combined with the partial anagram, that was probably enough to annoy them...
Information wants to be beer.
Perhaps the judge will add personal damages, as he now has to read both books....
:-\
Information wants to be beer.
that I was finally free from hearing people talk about this book ten times a day, something like this has to happen.
i seriously don't see what the big deal over this book is, its interesting, but the prose is about as complex as a Nancy Drew mystery, seriously, as far as talent in writing goes, this guy doesn't have a bunch. it was an enjoyable book, an easy read certainly, but nothing special at all. to the point of TFA, the lawsuit is ridiculous.
nobody's perfect
Well, the major point is, that no suit would have been issued if Dan Brown had not made off so well. I read the book, and I really enjoyed it, and guess what, it made me want to do a little research, and I bought Holy Blood, Holy Grail, so both got my money because of Dan Brown, you think an increase in sales would make them happy... NOPE!!
Oh, great idea. Let's copyright it!
I read an interesting article once, claiming that there are 36 possible storylines.
Sounds strange, but after reading through them I could confirm them - not onle of my (very) many books would be in a different story.
And if you now copyright one, two, all of them - you won't be able to write another book.
Great idea. Surely, That's exactly what we need copyright for. Right?
Right?
Free PC version of ChipWits at http://www.breueronline.de/klaus/chipwits/
If Dan Brown was trying to plagarize Holy Blood, Holy Grail, he did a pretty lousy job of it. As a general rule plagarism involves the uncredited use of someone else's ideas, trying to pass them off as your own. But notice how at the beginning of Chapter 60, for those of you who have actually read the FB:
I'm pretty sure the rules for citation in works of fiction are somewhat looser than what we'd expect of academic non-fiction, so this looks pretty up front to me. My point is, Brown drew extensively on Holy Blood, Holy Grail, and openly acknowledged he was doing so. That was central to the success of his book, that it was supposed to be based on real research. The validity of the research is a separate issue, of course.
If the suit succeeds, then Michael Crichton had better get his wallet ready, cuz he's gonna have to pay all the scientists, reputable and otherwise, that he's been cribbing from for his novels.
The real issue of course, is that both books have the same publisher, so this really boils down to a rather crass publicity stunt.
yp.
I know that was kind of dickish. My Diner's Club got rejected this morning and while I have no trouble discerning fiction from reality, I have incredible amounts of trouble choosing proper targets for my anger.
Next on the list to attack is Pee Wee Herman.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
Wait. I've read "HBHG". Did they say nonfiction?
By the way, if you want to read a good book that has some things in common with The Da Vinci Code, read Umberto Eco's "Focault's Pendulum".
haha this is so retarded.. every author has a source of influence.. I'm sure the authors of those books had influences too.. its not like their predecessors are suing them.. plus the Da Vinci Code is fictional.. jesus christ.. Dan Brown is NOT claiming that HE discovered the theory about Mary Magdelene.. so why the hell are these people pissed?? they're good books.. all of them.. they all serve different purposes.. whether you need reference, or a novel.. if anything, these fuckers should be HAPPY that their theories have been promoted on such a high level.. that kind of product placement has already paid for the lawsuit..
*plays the Apogee theme song music*
If some of the dead sea scrolls could unfound the catholic church (they are doing a good job of that all by themselves...) do you think those scrolls would ever see the light of day?
High School English? Coincidentally that's the English level the book was written in.
Sorry, but "The DaVinci Code" is a rubbish book. It was not excellent, merely popular. It's stolid with the "plot" and characters regurgitated from the other novels he's produced. It's almost as if he has a template which he just fills in with which ever conspiracy theory is current.
Deleted
I remember first reading these stories in the new age literature in books published the 1960s. I presume they've been circulating for centuries.
Baigent, et. al., put the information together with a specific interpretation, but they're far from the first to do so. They simply did it in a popular form. It should not be possible to copyright an interpretation of history.
This is separate from Dan Brown possibly having a moral obligation to the HBHG authors. Though he does give them credit in the book itself (and no matter how silly HBHG might be, it's still a better book than the simplistic DVC), an argument might be made he could give them more tangible support. Not a legal argument, and not necessarily a good one.
If I were Baigent&Co, I would bask in my already-bestseller past and the increased publicity for a subject close to my heart. I bet HBHG sales went up significantly after DVC came out. And I would be embarrassed to ask Brown for part of his profits, coming from such a bastardization of the concept in the first place.
Mohammed, Confusius, Moses's brother have descendents. The first two have geneology lists, while the Aaron's has been verified by DNA testing.
As far as I can tell, most of these descendants are proud of their heritage. Many of the leaders in the mid-East brag about being a descendant of Mohammed.
From the world's leading authority on News:
ACLU defends Nazi's Rights
Sometimes comedy speaks more clearly than reason or religion.
Oh, and you get the Godwin's Law points for being the first to mention Nazis*.
*(I think the neo-Nazi's also count for Godwin's Law).
I think I'll copyright that idea.
Well, for starters:
As for "lifting the central theme" from a fictional work, the test for infringement in the US is generally derived from Reyher v. Children's Television Workshop, 533 F.2d 87, 91 (2d Cir. 1976) (the essence of infringement lies in taking not a general theme but its particular expression through similarities of treatment, details, scenes, events, and characterization).Copyright in historical research, however, has been a little more tricky. The 2nd and 7th Circuits have a minor split on the question of how much protection, if any, historical research should get. The tension lies between disallowing an author to 'take exclusive possession of history', yet encouraging historians to do research. See Hoehling v. Universal City Studios, 618 F.2d 972, 978 (2d Cir. 1980) (interpretations of historical events are not copyrightable, repudiating Toksvig, a 7th Circuit holding) and Nash v. CBS, 899 F.2d 1537, 1542 (7th Cir. 1990) ("it is a mistake to . . . grant[] the first author a right to forbid all similar treatments of history [or to] grant[] the second author a right to use anything he pleases of the first's work"). After discussing incentives and 'sweat of the brow', the 7th Circuit found that there was no infringement, the same outcome as in Hoehling. Both courts agree that to avoid a chilling effect on authors who contemplate tackling an historical issue or event, broad latitude must be granted to subsequent authors who make use of historical subject matter, including theories or plots. Nash, 899 F.2d at 1542 (citing Hoehling, 618 F.2d at 978).
My guess is that if this case were tried in the US, there wouldn't be any infringement.
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
I never claimed to enjoy DaVinci's Code. In fact, I think it was a suck book. Not because of the "inaccuracies" but because it simply wasn't that good. Transparent plot, basic whodunit.
The only thing about it that's entertaining is the Christian world's reaction to it.
wahhhhh it's like writing a denigrating book about your mom wahhhhhh
wahhhhh it says mean (fictitious!) things about the church wahhhhh
Just hilarious. Seriously, I don't think Brown even had an agenda when he wrote it, other than write a story that sells a lot of books.
The Christians get all pissy about a fiction book, when if we really want to boil down the meat of it, we can go to fact and paint a really fucking ugly picture of both the Protestants and the Catholics. No reason to make shit up. Just write about the Inquisition, or the witch hunts, or the Hundred Year War, or any ov the myriad injustices performed in Christ's name.
The bitch-fest about Brown seems to me to reek of supressed doubt lashing into anger at an easy target.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
Umberto Ecco wrote a bookt, Focault's Pendulum, and the Da Vinci Code is a direct rip off of Ecco's book. Where Ecco took liberally from Holy Blood, Holy Grail so I don't see what the fuss is all about. Maybe there should be footnotes in all works of fiction, would probably get in the way of the story, and the marketing. It's all a tempest in a teapot, the real story in the Sangreal line of merovigians. Knightof, KMGO
You still know I am right.
Robert J Sawyer used them in his last novel. He does quite a bit of research for his books, as do other sci fi authors.
"We shall party like the Greeks of old! You know the ones I mean." - HedonismBot
Most rich people get that way because their objective is not to make something perfect and pure, but to make something which will make them...rich. Complaining that you're a better writer, or programmer, than they, simply shows that you have different goals. (Except that the bitter envy redolent in such complaints hints otherwise, that perhaps you share the same goals but are simply far less effective at achieving them.)
Now, were you to say, "I didn't like his books," that would be quite all right. But plainly they don't "[objectively] suck," because they fulfill exactly what millions of readers wanted them to provide.
First of all, in the US an author still controls derivative works. A derivative work is a "work based upon one or more preexisting works such as a translation, musical arrangement, dramatization, fictionalization, [ . . . ], abridgment, condensation or any other form in which a work may be recast, transformed, or adapted". (Copyright Act, Section 101). Also, "[a] work consisting of editorial revisions, annotations, elaborations, or other modifications which, as a whole, represent an original work of authorship is a 'derivative work'." (Copyright Act, Section 101). Fan fiction is an obvious example of a derivative work in most cases.
Secondly, if this case were in the USA, it would turn on whether the court thinks Dan Brown used copyrightable elements of the other book. This is a tough argument to make, especially where the subject matter straddles the line between fiction and history. But consider for a moment a few examples. If Author B read Author A's book about UFOs invading Earth and then Author B wrote his own book on UFOs invading Earth, there probably wouldn't be a good infringement claim based on that alone. But if Author B's book included all the same characters as in Author A's, and the plotlines were essentially identical and the only differences were word choice and formatting, Author A would probably have a good claim, especially if Author A can show that Author B's book is robbing his sales.
I'm not sure what the merits are in this case (or what the standards for infringement are in the UK), but it's clear that the plaintiffs have an argument and should have their day in court.
Why were you looking at kiddie porn? Fucking pervert.
Dan Brown is smart. The movie based on the NYT continuing best-seller is due out soon. How can he make sure the movie does as well as the book?
Dan Brown: "Is Michael Baigent in please?
Michael Baigent: "Yes Mr. Brown?"
Dan Brown: "Could you perhaps see you way clear to sue me?"
Michael Baigent: "I don't see why; your book has done wonders for our book ("Holy Blood, Holy Grail"). We'd be crazy to sue you after you helped our sales so much!
Dan Brown: "That's why I wnat you to sue me! The movie is coming out soon, and I'm worried that it won't do as well as it could with a bit more publicity. What we need is another media blitz like happened after the book came out; all the attachs were the kind of publicity you can't buy at any price, and they made my book what it is."
Michael Baigent: "But what can we sue you over? Your book borrowed some ideas from the same sources we used; what can we sue you for?"
Dan Brown: "It doesn't matter! Sue me for plagairism, or whatever. If you win, my publisher will pay out millions but they can afford it, between insurance and the increased ticket sales for the movie. If you lose, your book will still benefit by being connected to the movie. Either way, you'll get a lot of money and I'll get a lot of money.
Michael Baigent: "OK, who do I call....."
The church attempting to suppress ideas? Why, whatever could you mean?
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
"Unfortunately, ideas like mine are rarely published in the popular media"
I find it interesting that this one sentence can sum up and expose the problems with sensationalism in media.
Christians are portrayed as fact-hating zombie zealots. Atheists are portrayed as God-hating radical nuts. Both portrayals are based on 10 seconds sound bytes by people who were probably taken out of context or represent an inscrutible minority of the overall population subset. Neither represent the truth about the subjects as a whole and undeniably betray the notion of individuality.
What is interesting to watch is how people will take a simple declaration "I am an atheist" or "I am a Christian" or "I am a Muslim" and immediately correlate all their media injected hyperbolic characterizations into their frame of reference for that individual.
New meme: Lies...damnable lies...statistics...advertising...media?
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
YOU CAN'T COPYRIGHT AN IDEA.
Ideas are everyplace, and everyone has them. An idea, even a really good one, cannot be copyrighted. You can copyright the implementation of the idea (ie. the words or image) but you cannot copyright the idea itself.
The guys who wrote HB,HG didn't really come up with the idea on their own. I've read the book, and I remember a pretty thick bibliography where they got their ideas. What hypocrites. This is all huff and puff, and Mr. Brown shouldn't be too worried.
Ceci n'est pas une pipe.
And the worst and most bigoted religous are the atheists.
I can guess which side of the 99% you fall on.
You still know I am right.
More like far to the right.
I don't understand what all the controversy, all Dan Brown did with The DaVinci Code is take a bunch of existing ideas and theories about the grail/christianity and write a reglious thriller novel. There's absolutely no new ideas what-so-ever in the book. And there have been other movies done which basically have the *exact* same plot line as the DaVinci Code (both book and movie) the one that I can think of off the top of my head is: Revelations. I saw it once a long time ago, and it was recently aired again on SciFi Channel.
//spoiler//
.02c
As for blasphemous books, I thought that Dan Browns "Angels and Demons" was much more controversial.
The plot is basically: A Illuminati consiracy has assassinated the Pope, and is executing the next four cardinals, that are favorites for being the next pope, and branding their bodies with Illuminati "symbols"
The kicker is that there is no Illuminati, but the person behind it is the carmenlego who thinks that this will somehow re-establish the worlds love for the church and christianity.
Just my
Hmmm...have any atheist politicians ever suggested that religious people should nor be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots, because this is (as provided for in its founding documents) a secular nation? Not to my knowledge.
Have any religious politicians ever suggested that atheists should nor be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots, because this (according to a mythology deliberately planted in the mid 20th century) is "one nation under god"? Yes.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Definitely, falls somewhere in the two groups. Still I'd say that most trolls aren't religious, and pro- or anti- religious trolls are almost cookiecutter-easy to do.
The OP is just a well-crafted troll, meant to incite some anti-Christian debate, I imagine. With /. the way it is, I'm not surprised that so many people have fed the thing.
You need to restart your computer. Hold down the Power button for several seconds or press the Restart button.
From what I gather in the article, he hadn't read the book when he started but eventually read it.
And, just in case somebody believes him, I happen to have this really nice bridge for sale...
Cheers,
Carlos Cesar
OK, so let's get this straight. The first book in non-fiction, the second is a fictional story. For the first book to be non-fiction, it is (presumably) based on some fact or at least real-life events/evidence/etc that should have happened.
So therefore, what is to say that the "Da Vinci Code" is based on the book in question, rather than the realistic events that were earmarked by the book in question?
Since the cornerstone of the Democratic party seems to be arrogance through slandering Christianity, the far right sounds somewhat appealing.
Don't worry about it though. You are smarter than all of us concervatives because you vote Democrat, can make killer Ruby on Rails applications (almost without any copying/pasting of boiler-plate code), and reject Christianity.
How's the bubble tea taste today?
Come to think of it, there's a book of essays by Eco, Serendipities, which contains an essay on "The force of falsity" which is informative about some of the material used in Foucault's Pendulum. I gather he was also involved in Will Eisner's graphic novel The plot: the secret story of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which also has a lot of common ground with Foucault.
I don't know if I did something wrong, or if /. glitched, but the post was not meant as a reply to you.
wierd.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
it's only temptation if you try to resist.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I have taken a couple of US copyright law courses in college.
The way to sum it up is this:
Ideas and facts are NOT copyrightable in the US.
Only the expression of ideas and facts can be copyrighted given there is a minimal degree of creativity. If the layout of the facts can be considered copyrightable as long as it has a minimal degree of creativity to it. For example, the phonebook listing of names isn't copyrightable because an alphabetical listing does not constitute enough creativity to be copyrightable.
Charachters can only be copyrighted if they are well enough deliniated.
I hope this clears some things up for everyone.
Libertas in infinitum
'The question the court is facing is whether you can copyright an idea, a conjecture.'
Wait, hundreds of years of UK case law and legislation and this question has never come up before?
I'm sorry, I thought the year was 2006. My mistake.
I just noticed that that's what's happening.
Problem is a lot of so-called or wanna-be techie-nerds think they know everything. The ignorance abounds in anything outside of technology. Grok Christian,or Muslim, or Jew. Read the f.a.q. then hopefully you will think before you label and generalize groups by their chosen religion.