How do I run for the shadow government?
So the authors of Holy Bloody, Holy Grail are suing Dan Brown for lifting the skeleton of their classic work of conspira-history and making, well, roughly a bajillion dollars from it. Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh claim that Brown's infringement was to use the results of their conjecture without going through the stepping stones.
Putting the dumbness of Dan Brown aside, and the fact that it's clear to anybody who knows much about the Knights Templar and related conspiratoria that of course he just tacked a dumb plot onto the skeleton of one of the oldest stories in the world, this seems an odd case. What right do Baigent and Leigh have to sue? I saw the terrifically idiotic film National Treasure the other day, and it seemed to be working with something not so very different (that part of the story that suggests the Templars founded the U.S.). Is conspiracy in the public domain? Would Robert Anton Wilson sue you for making a film about the Illuminati? (or could he even get you to court before you mysteriously disappear?)
Going the other way, perhaps the writers of V ought to sue David Icke... And besides, everybody knows Dan Brown's talking rubbish and Indiana Jones found the Holy Grail. Let's just be thankful that while he's in court, Brown is not writing. For that much, we can be thankful.
From your remarks anyone might believe IP cases were usually based on a framework of moral justification, as opposed to a double digit percentage chance of scoring a fat wad of cash, a.k.a. roughly a bajillion dollars.
What can I say, Tom? It's my hazy idealism. I'll keep it until I have the chance to score my own fat wad of cash. I've got this story about a carpenter's son...
Haha, yes, and I have an patent application in progress on the moving average.
What actually strikes me as odd is on one hand suggesting Baigent and Leigh don't deserve compensation, and on the other defending Brown's right to the $BIGNUM he's made from such a marginal piece of work. Not that you actually did the latter, but the implication is there, perhaps.
I certainly never intended to imply that Dan Brown has a right to any money of any sort, whatsoever. Except perhaps wages for working in a mail room.
But, much as it pains me, I think if I'm (badly) saying that conspiracy is in the public domain, I guess it's true -- they don't deserve compensation, and he's allowed his money. As were they when they sold half a bajillion copies of HBHG in the '80s.
Not really a fully thought through position, but there you go.
Fair enough to say that neither Brown, nor Baigent and Leigh "own" the source material.
I would say, from a position hardly diametrically opposed to your own, that if you debate the justice of an IP claim you soon expose the fact that IP law is a comedy that doesn't play out along those lines.
My objection to your original comments was that you spoke as if you held a more favourable expectation - but that'd just be the hazy idealism you mentioned :-)