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luchitaKatie J.M. Baker
9/30/13 5:53pm
I really want to be sympathetic, but the examples seem more like Dave Eggers fictionalizing things that happened in real life, which Losse wrote about first. I'm sure that if you read any number of accounts of employees working at Facebook or other tech startups there would mentions of getting passwords, Friday meetings, community, and sodas. I don't know how you could write a fictionalized account of the early days at Facebook without it sounding like real peoples' real life experiences of the early days of Facebook. That's not plagiarism, that's research.
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  Pepperluchita
  9/30/13 7:00pm
  Um, no - he still has to license it, even if he fictionalized something >based on a real person.< I say, sue the dickwad.
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  Jenna Sauersluchita
  9/30/13 7:08pm
  I tend to agree with this view. A few years ago, William Gibson published a novel called Zero History in which a (very minor) character is a model who leaves the industry and finds work in another field. Apparently, when Gibson was researching the book, he found an essay I wrote years ago here at Jezebel, because he incorporated some elements of my story and some details I shared about the modeling industry into the novel.
  
  It's true that the character in the book shares some important qualities with me, her perspective strongly resembles my own, and her story is a kind of fictionalized version of my, well, life (or at least a part of my life). But Gibson's act in no way diminished my story or my essay. Nothing was "stolen" from me. In fact, I was very flattered. It was honestly really cool to read this fictional person thinking things that I had thought, to see my own experience filtered and fed back out into the world in this new way. And Gibson very graciously thanked me in the book's acknowledgements.
  
  I think any writer has the right to take an interesting story or situation and "use" it in a transformative way. Otherwise, how could anyone ever make art? But if Eggers was (as certainly seems to be the case) inspired by Losse's memoir, he should have been open about the source of that inspiration, and given Losse the appropriate level of credit and thanks.
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nongebroktsKatie J.M. Baker
9/30/13 6:01pm
Hmmm...I am not sure I am getting the outrage.

I don't see the name similarity. I don't see how those paragraphs are all that similar.

Fictionalizing a true story is not really something that is generally seen as unethical or objectionable.
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  captain_spleennongebrokts
  9/30/13 9:28pm
  Yeah, the problem with writing about your experiences is that you have then contributed to the body of facts from which authors can draw.
  
  I'm guessing 90% of the novel differs from the memoir. The meat. If Facebook-related details are similar, that's probably because they're both sourced to Facebook.
  
  If you get right down to it, Facebook created the password policy, and the Friday events, not Losse. Did Losse compensate Facebook for her use of them? Probably not, nor should she have.
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  wasabi75captain_spleen
  9/30/13 9:44pm
  Yes down below someone pointed out that these "coincidences" came from just the first chapter alone. My suspicion is that is exactly where we would see most of the similarities because it's where the setting and characters are introduced. Now if the novel tells the exact story her memoir did well then we might be on to something. But if it's just that the describe similar place and have similar people working there well yes because they're describing the same place and the same people.
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Sparkle_MotionKatie J.M. Baker
9/30/13 5:50pm
What a farce!

How dare Kate Losse steal an idea from Dave Eggers! How dare she break into his fecund brain, take an idea he didn't even know he yet had, and then write a book about it! The nerve!

Incidentally, I'm about to start sending my own manuscript out for review. It's about a boy named Larry Clotter. He's the world's most powerful wizard but . . . wait for it! . . . he lives with non-wizards! (I call them "Bluggles.") And the kicker? He's got a strange, thunderbolt-shaped mark on one of his ears. Mystery abounds!
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  SyDySparkle_Motion
  9/30/13 6:24pm
  Kate Loss is a time traveler and an Inceptor... I'm impressed!
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  Sparkle_MotionSyDy
  9/30/13 6:30pm
  She did work at Facebook, you know.
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Archibald_CunninghamKatie J.M. Baker
9/30/13 5:49pm
Good for her, especially for calling it out. This is why I put my name on EVERYTHING at work. And when some dude tried to take credit during a staff meeting, I immediately jumped in with, "Oh, dudebro, sounds like you're referring to my idea."

Repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat.
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  Rooo sez BISH PLZArchibald_Cunningham
  9/30/13 5:53pm
  You have to do that. You have to. Every single freaking time it happens (and if you're an idea-contributor, it will happen often).
  
  It's a right pain in the butt, and an exhausting one, but every time we just let it go by we really are putting our own ability to work at stake by devaluing what we contribute.
  
  Keep taking those vitamins.
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  Just SayingRooo sez BISH PLZ
  9/30/13 9:48pm
  Yes! And also, "Oh, I am sorry, did you not hear that I was speaking?" after someone interrupts you. Or, "I guess you did not hear me when you interrupted. I was saying" of course the boss does it ALL THE FUCKING TIME. And then he moves the meeting forward so I cannot. He is SUCH A DOUCHE.
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PDXCardinal90Katie J.M. Baker
9/30/13 6:12pm
Umm - no.

Assuming that Eggers had read The Boy Kings, what, exactly is she saying is wrong about this? She wrote a book and published it to the world recounting some things that had happened to her. Eggers drew, in part, on the facts she recounted in the book to add some realism to a fictional story about fictional people and a fictional company. You don't get a copyright on facts.

Also, a couple of the things she says are such enormous reaches that I can't really credit any of it. The phonetic structure of the names? Really? Some relatively generic descriptions of events that are common to just about any silicon valley start up experience. Finally, I am not persuaded by Losse's conclusion that "the media made the sexist assumption that this book was not important, because how could a woman writing about technology be important". Maybe the book just wasn't that good or insightful? Maybe Eggers' book is getting more attention because he is one of the most famous novelists in the world and nobody knows who the hell Losse is?
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  captain_spleenPDXCardinal90
  9/30/13 9:37pm
  Maybe the media was Facebook'ed out after The Social Network. She was probably just late to market.
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  Ten Earth ImpsPDXCardinal90
  9/30/13 11:21pm
  But to not acknowledge she was an influence? That's pretty uncool, since he did at least acknowledge the other subjects from whom he borrowed life details. Why not her?
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OvdanyakadKatie J.M. Baker
9/30/13 5:43pm
She's an incredible sport it sounds like. I could only hope to have enough grace to release a statement that isn't just simply "FUCK THAT GUY"
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  Rooo sez BISH PLZOvdanyakad
  9/30/13 5:51pm
  Copyright theory won't work, I don't think — but if it were me I've have harassed my attorney till s/he found some viable intellectual property theory that did and then hammered that entitled bastard for treble damages.
  
  (In a way, I'm kind of mad ... she's devaluing all women's work by just sitting there with the vapors. We XXs have to earn a living too, you know?)
  
  #yeahNO
  
  GIF
  
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Seize: it's about ethics in gossip journalismKatie J.M. Baker
9/30/13 8:12pm
Wait we let Eggers sell a book without having a private investigator check it out first? Whose plan was that?
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MouthyFishwifeKatie J.M. Baker
9/30/13 8:14pm
Off topic. but kind of not; how much can a work of literature have in common with another and not have it violate some sort of copyright? Does it have to be flat out plagiarized, or is there a limit to how many ideas are robbed? My friends and I had a conversation about Twilight and 50 Shades the other night, and while the latter is obviously fanfic of the former, when does it get too close to being the same story to still be legal?
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  captain_spleenMouthyFishwife
  9/30/13 9:43pm
  When one is non-fiction, it gets messy.
  
  As I noted in another comment, the authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail sued Dan Brown over the DaVinci Code, for infringement on their book.
  
  The problem is, Holy Blood, Holy Grail is sold as non-fiction. So it isn't really an infringement for Dan Brown to write a novel that builds off of those "facts", any more than it would be an infringement to write a novel based on a news story about ebola.
  
  So Dan Brown won in court.
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  escolescaptain_spleen
  10/01/13 10:43pm
  yeah, IIRC the author of HB, HG wanted to claim in court that it was fiction; the case hinged on his earlier claim to non-fiction status.
  
  Brown almost certainly knew it was fiction — everyone who seriously researched the topic did — but the book was still sold as nonfiction right up to the court case.
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RaggiKatie J.M. Baker
9/30/13 5:59pm
His artwork of animals juxtaposed with phrases from 2010 also closely resembles the work of a lesser-known Philly artist, Ketch Wehr. Is this a trend by now?

http://savethekales.wordpress.com/2010/10/06/hea…
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captain_spleenKatie J.M. Baker
9/30/13 9:21pm
It reminds me of when Dan Brown, the DaVinci Code author, was sued by the authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail.

The plaintiffs lost. They published their book as factual, so Dan Brown didn't infringe anything by writing a novel based on their "facts".
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  realcaptainparsnipscaptain_spleen
  10/01/13 3:54am
  I remember that case, and although Brown was immensely disingenuous on the stand, I did agree with the verdict. If novelists could be sued for being inspired by factual events, the major news channels would have a field day suing everyone who's written a novel about 9/11.
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