WHAT DOES THE COPYRIGHT LICENSING AGENCY MEAN?

"There is no need in the UK to register copyright. When an idea is committed to paper or another fixed form, it can be protected by copyright. It is the expression of the idea that is protected and not the idea itself. People cannot be stopped from borrowing an idea or producing something similar but can be stopped from copying." (From The Licensing Agency's webpage)

Doug Cheadle has threatened not to publish any more of my comments on his blog and so I must defend myself here - yet again.

And again Doug Cheadle tries to undermine what has been said. This time in response to my quotation from the Copyright Licensing Agency (see above). Now he says that the key is in that phrase 'expression', the expression of the idea is protected. Cheadle argues that this does not mean the precise words, but the treatment the idea is given by a writer. But the quotation actually says a writer can borrow another's ideas, can even produce something similar, but simply must not copy. Surely what is clear here is that a writer cannot use another's actual words but can do something the same. I accept that copying another's words is plagiarism.

Doug Cheadle quotes a lot of specialist cases on his blog to arrive at a definition of what plagiarism is. Unfortunately, most of these sites he links to refer to academic writing, where the idea in an academic paper is the whole thing. The taking of that is likely to be called plagiarism, but this has little bearing on creative works. Creative ideas in literature, or the arts more generally, are not protected so strongly precisely because it is not in the interest of art and literature to do so and precisely because it would be difficult or impossible to do so. Ideas of this kind run through every thought we have and everything we write owes something to some ideas that are not our own.

My story is different from Tania Hershman's. I have blogged about this already and so forgive me if I repeat myself here:

The list of characters differs.

The list of settings differs (aside from the opening hospital setting).

Our central characters are different, couldn't be more different (hers is a young and tentative man; mine is a middle aged married man who is not in the least tentative).

The key concepts of the two stories are different: Tania's is to do with holes in the brain/memory and young tentative love that is frustrated; mine has to do with Synaesthesia and perception and a failed marriage and an infidelity.

Key precoccupations of the two stories also differ: Tania's is almost solely concerned with memory loss and its impact; mine is to do with what's real, and perception and sensory short circuits (the stuff about the water being hot and cold depending on the warmth of the hand put into the water, and the fact that we do not have an awareness of the planet's swift movement through space, but we can be aware of the slightest movement of a car at the traffic lights.)

Our styles are completely different. Even Vanessa admitted to that.

But I concede that there are similarities: the reverse chronology leading to the lightning strike; the opening in a hospital; the name of the central character: Tania's is Henry and mine is Harry.

Reverse chronology is not of itself new or original. There was even an episode of the TV programme ER that employed this, rewinding back to a catastrophic event; it also opened in a hospital!

But there are big differences too between what Tania has written and what I have written: aside from the skeleton of the lightning and the reverse chronology, we tell very different stories.

Tania's character fails to get the girl he was plucking up the courage to talk to when the lightning struck. My character has a latent memory of the infidelity in his synaesthetic experience of Mondays smelling of burnt toast. He is, at the end of the story, stuck with a wife he had resolved to leave when the lightning struck him. My story is not a cursory rewrite, but a borrowing of an idea or two from Tania and the writing of my own story with my own characters and my own settings and my own preoccupations.

Look at what has been taken and what has been added by my own creativity, and you will see that I have done nothing that steps over the line of what is allowed. On the other hand, Tania's champion, Doug Cheadle, actually does step over the mark by taking my complete stories and doing what he likes with them, the actual words and everything!

Cheadle says that he/she believes I didn't know I was doing wrong in what I did and that I didn't understand about plagiarism, the fine details of what it could be. Maybe Cheadle did not know and still doesn't. You may not like that I borrowed from a fellow writer in this way, but there is nothing criminal here, and I would argue that this is a natural consequence of working closely with other writers: ideas will be shared and will enter each other's work.

But, and this is major now, what Jane Smith and Tania's champion have done on their respective blogs is... well, nasty. They have vented their spite against me in order to discredit me and to hurt me. They tell me that I should be more contrite and that I should apologise and admit to having done wrong. And because I haven't this is why they have continued with their 'persecution' of me.

I AM INNOCENT HERE. They have done wrong. And I should apologise? This doesn't make sense. I have actually apologised to Tania, for the hurt that my story caused to her. I did this before Jane Smith's Anti Plagiarism day last July. I will not apologise to Jane Smith or to Doug Cheadle - because it is them who owe me apology.