Leaked this week

There has been a flood of leaked documents relating to breaches of copyright by governments and the judiciary.

WA Inc

The first is a photocopied letter, believed to have come from best-selling author Jeffrey Archer, in which he threatens to take the Royal Commission into WA Inc to the International Court of Justice.

The letter alleges that the commission's six-volume report is a summary of the plot and characters of a political trilogy, in six parts, that he is currently writing.

The letter says that the only substantial differences between the published report and the author's manuscript is that the former's prose does not flow as well and its main characters are not as believable.

Chinese government reforms

A US publishing house is suing the Chinese Communist Party's Central Committee for its recent market reforms statements.

The company alleges that the reform statements possess uncanny similarities to an essay penned by US economist Milton Friedman at the age of 15, to which the company holds copyright. The company says that the fact that the essay received a failing academic mark does not lessen the seriousness of the copyright infringement.

Opposition's policy

A carbon copy of a typewritten note, addressed to the Liberal Party of Australia, alleges that the opposition's new industrial relations policy was lifted from a 13th century document on the place of serfs in the feudal system.

The note, sourced from an outback university library, alleges that the opposition's policy is a word-for-word copy of the original.

However, the writer does acknowledge the possibility of coincidence, saying, "If an infinite number of monkeys at typewriters could eventually produce a copy of Hamlet, it is not inconceivable that by the same process this policy document could have been written".

From GLW issue 77