Avatar has grossed more than a billion dollars.
Out of plagiarism.
Zhou Shaomou is entitled to reparations from James Cameron for copyright infringement.
Posted on 03/04/2010 4:29:39 PM PST by myknowledge
An unknown Chinese author is planning a $162 million lawsuit after claiming James Cameron plagiarised his story for the blockbuster Avatar.
Beijing man Zhou Shaomou claims he wrote a science-fiction novel called Tale Of The Blue Crows in 1997 which bears striking similarities to the plot of Cameron's film, Sky News reports.
The book centres around a group of explorers who travel to a distant planet inhabited by blue-skinned beings, he said.
"I wrote in my novel that their space journey took them six years but in Cameron’s movie the journey takes them five years nine months and 22 days," he said.
"I was shocked when I first saw that — it is too close."
Zhou said he never thought he would get a publishing deal for the book so he released it online, where he claims it has been read by more than 10 million people.
He now plans to sue Cameron for $162 million in copyright infringement.
Zhou has reportedly tried twice to get his case heard in China but was denied both times.
Beijing-based lawyer Yang Huipeng told Sky News that Zhou would be better off taking his case to a US court, where any legal judgement would have greater effect.
Avatar has grossed more than a billion dollars.
Out of plagiarism.
Zhou Shaomou is entitled to reparations from James Cameron for copyright infringement.
He says it was released online. What’s the link?
it figures that the bad guys would be American military types.....being a chicom wrote this.
it would be wonderful if anti American Cameron loses big money on this one....
Copyrights don’t work like patents. To prove patent infringement you only have to prove that someone s using your idea. To prove copyright infringement however, you have to prove actual copying. If Cameron claims he never read the plaintiff’s work then the plaintiff has to prove he did.
Well, good luck to him with that.
Guilty. Pass the Popcorn please.
An amateur Beijing writer alleges Avatar director James Cameron plagiarized his work and said he plans to file a lawsuit, seeking 1 billion yuan in compensation.
The obvious similarities definitely cannot be coincidence, said Zhou Shaomou, general manager of a Beijing-based hi-tech business, who also writes fiction in his spare time.
Mr. ZHOU Shaomou is defined by Chinadaily and IPR China an "amateur" writer who back in the time found no support from Chinese publishers who claimed "there [wasn't] any room for fantasy books in the country at that time. Now that there is more than room and sighs for an imminent Avatar 2 so big that the central Government tried to dial down its impact by unscreening the 2D version (pointless strategy and somewhat upsetting in the foreign press), Mr. Zhou's novel must be read to verify his statements. Whoever owns one of Zhou's e-copies of The Tale Of The Blue Crow is more than welcome to debrief us on that. And once we are done with that, it would be great to see if someone of you speaks cirillic because apparently a Russian is also suing the Director of Avatar for the same movie.
Cameron, was also accused of plagiarism for his movie Terminator and settled the dispute out of court with Harlan Ellison with an N amount of Dollars
Maybe he released it as a PDF document and hosted it on some unknown server.
Yes, it would be payback for his hideous Titanic! Maybe we could refer to it as his personal “Titanic”.
Could be the same exact story, but if there wasn’t copying, there is no case.
Also, it’s not like “Dances with Smurfs” was exactly groundbreaking. Any leftist hack could come up with the same stupid story.
Finally, so they both could do the basic math for “distance to X world divided by close to speed of light travel.” Yup, that’s proof.
All that aside, I hope he wins - and then goes for criminal charges for copyright infringement for commercial gain...
Get in line, buddy. If your story looks like Avatar, you stole it from FernGully.
Or maybe Avatar was a modern day reincarnation of Pocahontas, this time on an interplanetary setting.
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