Kate Losse, the author of last year’s Boy Kings, which outlined the early culture at Facebook from her experiences as employee #51, has accused Dave Eggers of stealing her book idea for his forthcoming novel The Circle. “Dave Eggers decided to rewrite my book as his own novel about a young woman working her way up through Facebook,” she writes on Medium today.
I find the suggestion that one can steal “the idea” behind a novel to be completely bizarre. It is even more ridiculous when the Big Idea in question is the hugely original “a person is excited to get a prestigious job at a huge company until she realizes that the way the company does business is suspect.” Wasn’t there a movie starring Tom Cruise based on the same Big Idea sometime back in the 80s?
The main philosophical issue both books claim to address is the eminently boring,
Would Facebook improve our social interactions?
I have almost died of boredom by the time I finished reading just this one sentence. The author of the earlier book seems convinced that she came up with something hugely original when she addressed this question in her writing but people have been bellyaching about the evils of Facebook for years.
Of course, the funniest part of the whole brouhaha is the following:
“From all appearances, it is the same book, and I wrote it first (and I imagine mine is more authentic and better written, because I actually lived in this world and am also a good writer),” she adds. Losse, in an email to The Atlantic Wire, admits she has not read his book.
Not reading a book is definitely an inventive way of engaging with its content. At least this Losse character is original in something.
Clarissa's Blog 
Legally you can’t steal an idea as outlined in part 102 of Title 17 USC.
“b) In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work.”
;however, there is an attempt to muddy the water by calling ideas intellectual property and by placing them in a tangible medium as a concrete manifestation.
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Another point. J. D. Salinger who wrote “The Catcher in the Rye” in 1951 stopped the publication of a novel, “The Sixties” by the Swedish author Fredrik Colting in which the main charactcter was an aging Holden Caulfield by a law suit in 2009. In Salinger v. Colting, the court ruled for the plaintive, Salinger, on the basis that the new work was not sufficiently transformative from the original publication to be acceptable under the “fair use” clause of copy write law. At what point an idea becomes an intellectual property is an evolving consideration in the Internet age and if the rumors about the Trans Pacific Partnership treaty are correct then blogging as we know it may become illegal.
Click to access J.D_._Salinger_v_._Fredrik_Colting,_et_al_._.pdf
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In early XVIIth century Cervantes was so annoyed by people publishing sequels to his Don Quijote that he wrote the brilliant second part of the novel. It was published in 1615. Cervantes killed Don Quijote in the end to ensure that there would be no more sequels.
Today he would have just sued and we’d never see the second part.
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Out of topic: What do you think about David Gilmour?
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This loser doesn’t deserve people thinking about him. What is sad is that UofT is losing its prestige every day because of their ridiculous hiring practices.
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For other readers… http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/the-hot-button/david-gilmour-responds-after-remarks-on-female-writers-sparks-controversy/article14535257/
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