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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.'"
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.
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?
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.
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
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.
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.
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?
100% of an idea may be used, it's the expression of the idea which bears copyright protection. Why is this such a diccifult concept to understand? Most of the arguments against copyright from the slashbots would go away if you simply understood this simple point (the rest would go away if they understood that copying is distribution and while it may or may nto deprive the author of anything, it this violation which is being contested, not whether they lost any money).
Also, portions of the book were plagarized from Leigh's and Baigent's work.
One slight problem - Plaguerism does not equal copyright infringement. It commits an academic offense. Not legal, ethical.
As a writer of fiction, Brown has no obligation to give two shakes of a rat's ass about plaguerism. Now, he might want the world to take his writing a bit more seriously than "mere" fiction, in which case he has only hurt himself (if you can include "written a best seller that spawned a sure-blockbuster" in the definition of "hurt"). But as for legal remedy? As much as I enjoyed HB:HG, I'd have to agree with another poster that Baigent and Leight most likely just want to cash in here.
I have no patience for this untalented loser.
I thought it a fairly cute book. Get over yourself, 'kay? You don't have to read it or like it, just as you don't have to read or like "The Cat In the Hat", either. But you'd look like an idiot criticising the grammar therein.
It's a good movie, and I recommend it to anyone who can look critically at their religion. //spoiler//
Actually, in the movie, he did act on the tempation: to end the suffering and live life as a normal man
(the x-tians love to focus on the idea of Jesus having sex as being so heretical - but that wasn't the actual "tempation")
He got the chance, at the end, however, to see that he had been fooled by Satan and got the chance to re-make the decision to stay on the cross and "die for our sins". The life he lived post-cross, though, may have just been a hallucination.
If you're a Christian and hate the movie for being heretical, I suggest you think about it again. Here, Christ is depicted as being human - and suffering from all the things we all suffer from - including tempation, and the desire to live a "normal life". The story even presents the idea that he had a choice - at the moment of truth. End the pain and live normally. When he finally chooses to return to the cross and live out his "mission", that shows a true sacrifice.
If Jesus is just a god-man, who can easily deny his humanity and desires, how is he like me at all? What kind of an example is that for me? I'm not like that at all. I suffer pain and live with tempations. If my "example" doesn't have these same frailties, then how is he really an example for me at all? So really, I think the movie could serve as quite an affirmation of faith.
Of course, I'm pretty much an athiest now. It takes more than a book and a movie to make me into a believer.
What it looks like is that Dan Brown has essentially written a story set in a world someone else invented. I pretty sure that's a no-no.
If Holy Blood, Holy Grail were a work of fiction, then yes, Dan Brown's book could be argued to be "set in a world someone else invented."
However, Holy Blood, Holy Grail (the US title; the UK title was The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail) purports to be a nonfiction work of history, documenting the real world. In which case, the setting of The Da Vinci Code is not something that the authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail invented, but merely the real world. If Jesus really had kids and the Catholic Church really is still actively covering that up, those facts are fair game for all authors to use.
Which is why I, personally, welcome the lawsuit. The only way the authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail can win it is by admitting under oath that their book was a work of fiction. And if they do that, that's one more nail in the coffin of this conspiracy theory.
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'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.
Many take the book's claims seriously, and as far as I understand the author takes "Holy blood, holy grail" as a credible source, believing that those parts of the story (about mary magdalene being the grail etc.) are based in fact. And whether he does or not, I know that many take the book's historical claims seriously, including book reviewers.
I know it may be hard for atheists to believe that there is serious research involved in theology, but if you look at the track record of Baigent and Leigh it should be apparent to anyone that they are immensely disreputable "scholars" trying to make a quick buck. For instance, they published a conspiracy theory called "The dead sea scrolls deception" some years ago, alleging that the slow release of the dead sea scrolls was a result of catholic researchers trying to suppress information that would lead to the collapse of the church. Today, all the scrolls are released, and it's plain to everyone that they don't have any implications for christians. (People reading them looking for scandal would probably be immensely bored).
The entire premise for their conspiracy theory was removed, but that doesn't prevent them from republishing it in order to profit from the brouhaha around the da vinci code.
As for that book, I see it as an anti-catholic conspiracy theory, and I don't get why it's so popular - I can find any number of those on crank.net.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
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....."