The authors of 1980s-vintage Merovingian-bloodline conspiracy-theory-of-history classic Holy Blood, Holy Grail are suing Dan Brown for plagiarism, claiming that he plagiarised their "research" into the Priory of Sion, the Knights Templar and the suppressed bloodline of Jesus Christ, in his best-selling novel The Da Vinci Code. Though, by doing so, aren't they effectively acknowledging that their research is a work of fiction? After all, one can't claim ownership of actual historical facts, can one?

Posted by: toby | http:// | Tue Dec 21 03:46:15 2004

You're probably right, although interpretation and analysis of facts is likely to be a different matter.

Posted by: peter | http:// | Tue Dec 21 09:20:37 2004

Not necessarily. If you write a completely factual essay and don't acknowledge your sources then you are guilty of plagiarism. I imagine it is the same for a novel with truthful bits in...

Posted by: Paulo | http:// | Wed Dec 22 21:24:23 2004

The guy's dead anyway ... ;)

Posted by: mitch | http:// | Sat Dec 25 01:30:51 2004

Rumor has it that there will be an out-of-court settlement involving the eyes of the Oracle.

Posted by: Ben | http:// | Thu Dec 30 04:19:23 2004

I think they're suing him for making fun of them and their now dead co-author as fictional characters. It's a fairly sketchy case to my mind, but the publicity will be fantastic. I finished re-reading Foucault's Pendulum the other day, and it is as brilliant as ever.

Posted by: acb | http://dev.null.org | Thu Dec 30 13:06:30 2004

I wonder if they'll rerelease those Robert Anton Wilson books with the Priory of Sion and the Merovingian bloodline of Jesus. Did he ever get around to writing the third or fourth one?

Posted by: Ben Leviathan | http:// | Sun Jan 2 00:01:29 2005

The Third one got published I think (the one set in America), but as was discussed on Psychoceramics some time back all the publishers kept mysteriously going bust.... Happy New Year BTW.

Posted by: acb | http://dev.null.org/ | Sun Jan 2 00:20:48 2005

You'd think that now someone would rush out a new edition, with obligatory Dan Brown comparisons on the cover.

Posted by: Goody | http://peacebang.blogspot.com | Sun Jan 2 23:41:48 2005

Given that "The DaVinci Code" is a bunch of fictitious crap trying to pass itself off as history, I would say that the orginal authors have a legitimate beef.

Posted by: mark | http://donotuselifts.net/ | Mon Jan 3 16:08:24 2005

I was under the impression that /The DaVinci Code/ is a bunch of fictitious crap trying to pass itself off as... fiction?

Posted by: Sponge | http:// | Tue Jan 4 15:37:12 2005

>>I was under the impression that /The DaVinci Code/ is a bunch of fictitious crap trying to pass itself off as... fiction?

Well yes, you know that, I know that, but there are millions of lamers who think it's the truth...... Unfortunately some of my in-laws fall into that category, which surprises me not one bit ;)

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