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Someone wants $20,000 for a story I published

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Comments

  • #32
    all_names_gone
    Registered Users Posts: 71 ✭✭all_names_gone


    LLewellen Farquarson wrote: »
    Or refer them to the case of Akkell v Pressdram

    http://www.lettersofnote.com/2013/08/arkell-v-pressdram.html?m=1

    Haha love it lol


  • #33
    Dial Hard
    Registered Users Posts: 13,367 ✭✭✭✭Dial Hard


    all_names_gone wrote:
    The biggest worry for me is not the actual $20,000, which is nonsensical but its the fact that they could possible have my Facebook page taken down, which I have put hundreds of hours of work into and gains about 100 new followers a week and the website which took months to put together and build up too. Thats my biggest concern, I have since spoken to the hosting company and they have assured me that unless it is illegal or I am causing trouble on their servers is only then they will act, but so far I have done neither of those things.

    On what grounds do you think they could possibly have your Facebook page taken down???

    You're giving this far too much headspace, dude. Laugh at their neck and move on, seriously.


  • #34
    all_names_gone
    Registered Users Posts: 71 ✭✭all_names_gone


    Dial Hard wrote: »
    On what grounds do you think they could possibly have your Facebook page taken down???

    You're giving this far too much headspace, dude. Laugh at their neck and move on, seriously.

    Yes I suppose youre right about getting carried away with it.

    I guess I am thinking of the obscure Facebook community guidelines that they seem to make up as they go along but again there probably is no basis for any of it and Im just getting paranoid.


  • #35
    Cryptopagan
    Closed Accounts Posts: 419 ✭✭Cryptopagan


    Peregrinus wrote: »
    Nitpick: non-fiction is protected, but it's only the author's creative work that gets protection, not any underlying facts. So if I lift chunks of the text of your thesis on, say, Michael Collins and incorporate them into my soon-to-be-released erotic thriller The Big Fella (and Do I Mean Big!), a sizzling tale of lust, violence and then some more lust in revolutionary Ireland, passing them off as my own work, that's a breach of your copyright. But if I simply repeat factual information which I learned from reading your thesis, nope. You may have discovered those facts by diligent research, but you didn't create them.


    What if the "researcher" had just made up the "facts", and passed it off as non-fiction? If, for example, in the 80s you concocted some febrile conspiracy theorist's tome about paintings and virgin births which never troubled the bestsellers lists, but which years later formed the basis for a hit novel. You might then decide you wanted the world to acknowledge that you did indeed just make all that stuff up.


  • #36
    coylemj
    Registered Users Posts: 25,313 ✭✭✭✭coylemj


    all_names_gone wrote: »
    I have an email drafted with the links to every story and book and front page newspaper of the day to send, I was waiting to get a bit more clarity before sending it, which now looks like it will be soon

    Go easy with the volume of detail. The longer your reply, the more they will figure that you are worried and taking their claim seriously. Which may be true but you don't want them to know that.

    Sometimes, less is more and I'd say this is one of those occasions. I would simply point out that all of the material you used is in the public domain and leave it at that.


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  • #37
    The Enbalmer
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 1,001 ✭✭✭The Enbalmer


    It's a simple blackmail/fraud attempt.
    Block communications with them via whatever media they contacted you. Do not engage further or try to reason with them.


  • #38
    Peregrinus
    Registered Users Posts: 26,021 ✭✭✭✭Peregrinus


    Cryptopagan wrote: »
    What if the "researcher" had just made up the "facts", and passed it off as non-fiction? If, for example, in the 80s you concocted some febrile conspiracy theorist's tome about paintings and virgin births which never troubled the bestsellers lists, but which years later formed the basis for a hit novel. You might then decide you wanted the world to acknowledge that you did indeed just make all that stuff up.
    If you have presented your work as factual, and other people take you at face value and treat your inventions as factual, you can't subsequently complain that they have copied your creative work. By your own behaviour, you encouraged them to believe that they were entitled to copy what they had no way of knowing was your creative work.


  • #39
    JimsAlterEgo
    Registered Users Posts: 1,917 ✭✭✭JimsAlterEgo


    The Enbalmer wrote: »
    It's a simple blackmail/fraud attempt.
    Block communications with them via whatever media they contacted you. Do not engage further or try to reason with them.

    or counter reply and say you have reported their communication as an attempt at blackmail


  • #40
    Bannasidhe
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 19,219 Mod ✭✭✭✭Bannasidhe


    Peregrinus wrote: »
    Nitpick: non-fiction is protected, but it's only the author's creative work that gets protection, not any underlying facts. So if I lift chunks of the text of your thesis on, say, Michael Collins and incorporate them into my soon-to-be-released erotic thriller The Big Fella (and Do I Mean Big!), a sizzling tale of lust, violence and then some more lust in revolutionary Ireland, passing them off as my own work, that's a breach of your copyright. But if I simply repeat factual information which I learned from reading your thesis, nope. You may have discovered those facts by diligent research, but you didn't create them.

    Agree, I was oversimplifying it - the issue from the historians side is that everything you write should be based completely on the sources with any 'creativity' avoided so It's pretty much fair game. No historian is going to go to court and say 'I was being creative in that passage m'lud' which is akin to saying 'I made that bit up.' This is not to say it doesn't happen - just that no academic would ever admit to it...


    This is the ruling I was referring to :
    Today's appeal upheld the high court verdict, which ruled that while both books explored similar ideas this did not constitute a breach of copyright.

    Copyright law protected Baigent and Leigh over the research and composition of their book, and the way the ideas in it were originally expressed, Lord Justice Mummery, one of three appeal judges, said.

    "It does not, however, extend to clothing information, facts, ideas, theories and themes with exclusive property rights, so as to enable the claimants to monopolise historical research or knowledge and prevent the legitimate use of historical and biographical material, theories propounded, general arguments deployed, or general hypotheses suggested (whether they are sound or not) or general themes written about," he ruled.
    https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2007/mar/28/danbrown.books

    So while a work of non-fiction may be protected in theory, it really isn't - and who has a few million to fight the case anyway?

    Having read both those books, my personal opinion is that Holy Blood and The Holy Grail was very 'creative' in it's use of the material (it's the kind of work I would use in a case study module to teach students how to rigorously take a source apart - books that you could drive a bus through the gaps in research are ideal for that) and when I read Da Vinci Code I thought hang on - I've read most of this before in Holy Blood/Holy Grail.

    TBH I think the warning shot across my bow was because when I looked at the documents I discovered large sections where the author did appear to get very creative in her book so if I had used any of those parts she might have had a case - all I did was reference them in footnotes and demonstrate how there was no evidence to support such flights of fancy.

    Funny you should mention tales of lust, lust and more lust - I have a collection of truly awful books where my theses subject appears in just such potboilers :D


  • #41
    Peregrinus
    Registered Users Posts: 26,021 ✭✭✭✭Peregrinus


    Yeah. I think the basic point is that the actual historical facts can't be copyrighted - even if you are the person who has uncovered a previously unknown historical fact, it's not your fact; it's just a fact. And the same goes for other disciplines - scientific facts, for example.

    What you have copyright in is your expression of the facts. So if people copy chunks of your text, you have a case against them. But you don't have a case if they make use of facts which they learned from reading your text - not even if your text was the only place anyone could have learned those facts.

    Non-fiction authors do occasionally succeed in copyright actions. For example, if you write a maths textbook obviously the mathematical rules, principles etc that it teaches are not copyright. But if somebody copies your questions, worked examples, illustrations, etc, you have them over a barrel. But outside of cases like that, not so much.


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  • #42
    BarryD2
    Closed Accounts Posts: 4,732 ✭✭✭BarryD2


    The unusual aspect of this query is the subject matter. If the OP were writing about growing roses or along those lines, they can just laugh it off.

    But there's the law and there's mob law. What I'd be concerned about, are not the strict legalities but whether these people are still in the game and have contacts here?


  • #43
    The Enbalmer
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 1,001 ✭✭✭The Enbalmer


    BarryD2 wrote: »
    But there's the law and there's mob law. What I'd be concerned about, are not the strict legalities but whether these people are still in the game and have contacts here?


    Gangsters don't make extortion attempts via email...i'd take my chances.


  • #44
    BarryD2
    Closed Accounts Posts: 4,732 ✭✭✭BarryD2


    Cryptopagan wrote: »
    What if the "researcher" had just made up the "facts", and passed it off as non-fiction? If, for example, in the 80s you concocted some febrile conspiracy theorist's tome about paintings and virgin births which never troubled the bestsellers lists, but which years later formed the basis for a hit novel. You might then decide you wanted the world to acknowledge that you did indeed just make all that stuff up.

    That's the tricky bit, isn't it. Lazy authors taking stuff that purports to be factual but not checking it out. Easy to be on the wrong side of that.


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