Below I’m posting a ninth example of how John Walsh’s book The Third Man: The Official Story of the Film steals from my book In Search of The Third Man. But first it’s time briefly to take stock.
A good starting-point is a Samuel Johnson quotation which I’ve already quoted: “Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.”
By far the best chapter in The Third Man: The Official Story of the Film is called “The Shoot”, which tells the behind-the-scenes story of the shooting of the film on location in Vienna and at Shepperton Studios. Of its 25 pages, 8 pages are images with captions, but otherwise no text. Of the 17 pages with text, 9 steal extensively from 18 pages in my book.
Outside “The Shoot”, in the less good chapters of the book, I’ve found only one passage so far that has copied me. I hope it is the very last theft that I shall come across, but the scale of what has already been stolen amounts to a major case of copyright infringement.
I am still waiting for both the publisher, Titan Books, and Studiocanal, which owns the copyright for Walsh’s book, to acknowledge this fact, and to begin discussions about how to remedy the damage to my intellectual property.
I am hoping too that Studiocanal will soon disown a promotional trailer that promotes John Walsh’s book as though it has Studiocanal’s support:
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So to give the latest example of John Walsh’s copyright infringement, page 120 of The Third Man: The Official Story of the Film copies pp.84–5 of my book In Search of the Third Man.
First, Walsh’s copyright-infringing text on his page 120:
And next, the passage in my book In Search of the Third Man that he plagiarizes:
As in the many previous examples of his copyright infringement, Walsh closely paraphrases my text, mirroring its structure, and, when he repeats the long quote from Guy Hamilton, which is taken from my interview with Guy, he does not credit this source.
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