Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Where you get your ideas . . .
Apropos of Dean’s discussion here, I thought this was interesting:
Harlan Ellison isn’t my favorite person, but he did have cause to be pissed, IMHO. I remember both Outer Limits episodes well, and the Bob Culp story (Demon With A Glass Hand) had more than a passing resemblance to the Terminator storyline. Plus they have a witnessed record of Cameron’s admission of plagiarism. Cameron got off easy and Ellison deserved a lot more than $65 – 70,000.
D.
We have only Ellison’s word that he would have gotten more than 70k in court. Maybe he would have – but I suspect not. The only legal cause of action would have been for copyright infringement, and copyright infringement has clear guidelines, which Terminator certainly didn’t violate.
You can’t copyright an idea. You can only copyright a specific execution of an idea. And plagiarism, while cheating, is not a crime, nor is it cause for civil action.
I suspect that Cameron settled because he was going to have to spend multiple times 70k on lawyers to get it thrown out of court.
And for Cameron, 70K is chump change.