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Originally Posted by Glice
I think it's not a case of 'copywriting history' so much as a question of academic referencing; Brown presents the historical 'facts' (which are not facts but assertions and speculations; nonetheless, they function as putative facts) in tdvc as his own, or rather, does not credit their source. Because there is an adendum to tdvc to say which parts are Brown's own fiction and which are 'facts' (used in this putative sense) of his own discovery or investigation, it seems perfectly reasonable that if it can be shown that Brown sourced these 'facts' from the holy blood and the holy grail, he should be made culpable for copywrite infringment.
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Fair enough, but surely not culpaple of any seious wrondoing - if found guilty (which would be laughable) then at worst he has failed to give credit, and punishment should be to give mention in future issues. And place an errata slip in already-printed copies.
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Originally Posted by Glice
To explain: If I write a work of fiction based on Kant's Third Critique, which uses the same ideas without giving credit, then I am stealing from him. Of course, a lot of these ideas could be arrived at without my reading it; however, the case with historical documents is that they rely upon a large amount of specialised investigation in a specific field; that is, it is unlikely I would discover the same things as are common to tdvc and the holy blood and the holy grail on my own; and as one precedes the other, it seems incredibly unlikely that Brown sourced his assertions from anywhere other than the holy blood....
So I believe it's a question of academic referencing more than it is copyrighting history. Isn't it?
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I agree. But surely the whole thing about this is, is
The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail a work of fiction with plot, or, as the authors claim, a work of fact based on a decade of solid research? If it's the latter, that Brown is taking the facts and using them for a plot, then this trial
is about copyrighting history. To pick an example, one of Anthony Burgess' novels,
A Dead MAn in Deptford, is based on the spying career etc that the playwrite Christopher Marlowe seems to have has. But that historcal fact was not always known, it was researched and discovered, so should the relevant historian have been able to sue Burgess? If it turns out that there is documentary proof that the artist Sir Walter Richard Sickert was Jack the Ripper, as some assert, then should it only be the historian who discovers the documents that can freely dramatise history?
Also, I believe the trial will end in Random House/Brown's favour for another reason ie they went ahead with the book being already sure of their ground. Dan Brown acknowledges the importance of (amongst other very big clues) The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail in The Da Vinci Code, saying directly that it is the foremost work on the royal bloodline of Jesus. This is not how plagiarists generally work. This very direct mention, however, contained within millions of books sold worldwide, isn't sufficient publicity for the authors. I would also point out that all readers of TDVC will read that plug, whereas if it were removed and replaced with a bibliographical mention at the back, not many would pay attention.
If the authors of
The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail are claiming the theft of their ideas, then they are saying that their work is fiction, in my opinion. To saay that you have discovered historical fact, present it as fact, then attempt to make money out of a work that uses those facts to create a work of fiction, is not on.
Any referenced work should absolutely be credited, of course.
But once you leave 'facts' out in the open, they are not really your property anymore, so you should expect little more than the decency of a mention.
What I want to know is, what's going to happen to the guy who's writing the book of the
trial?