http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11589138/
Seems like the author of A Million Little Pieces isn't the only one who's got problems in the literary world.
Dan Brown, author of the incredibly popular book The Da Vinci Code has been sued by the authors of the book Holy Blood, Holy Grail for ripping off material from their text.
The strange thing about this suit to me, is the fact that they don't accuse Brown of taking plot, or characters from their book, but instead claim that Da Vinci Code uses theories that they created. I find this claim both interesting and disturbing. Literary, and philosophical theories seem to me to be part of public domain, especially if its a non-fiction theory. Not only that but I believe (unfortunately I don't have a copy of Brown's book, but perhaps someone could check this for me) that Brown at his endnotes credits the Holy Blood for developing the idea that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and gave birth to His child, the key point of his book. Brown seemed to encourage further research into this subject and used his book to ignite the controversy, something that I would think would benefit Holy Blood's authors. Likewise, should this suit be successful, would novels developed from other theories have to pay money to the people who propounded these ideas? Would the Stan Lee and Jack Kirby have to pay money to Charles Darwin for X-men? It seems rather silly to me, but this suit, should it be successful, would definitely change fiction writing forever and close an unfortunate option for writers who use existing contemporary ideas for inspiration. We'll be following this one closely.
3 comments:
Also, I can't help but recall that the DaVinci Code has owned the bestseller list for like the last three and a half years or something. It's not like this story was new or anything.
Of course, what is new, is there's about to a movie coming out that will likely be the #1 hit of the summer and make everyone with a stake in the book crazy rich.
Call me cynical, but I can't help but suspect a connection.
Then call me cynical as well. It's sorta sad that this is the kinda greed that can possibly allow bad precedent. You'd think that they would make enough money through cross promotion with The Da Vinci Code, but for some people enough is never enough...
I should join in that lawsuit. I once told a friend that i thought there was a conspiracy after reading about Mary Magdalene and Jesus. Yeah, that'll work.
I could use the extra cash.
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