Mia voĉo (My voice)

Fahrenheit 9/11 ― Plagiarism?

Oops. Legendary SF author Ray Bradbury of The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, Fahrenheit 451 and a host of other works (mostly eminently readable ― unsolicited advertisement), is upset with moviemaker Michael Moore and his recent very successful pseudo-documentary attacking George Bush and his administration. "'He stole my title and changed the numbers without ever asking me for permission,' the 83-year-old Bradbury reportedly said in the interview." The article containing this quote can be read here; I won't trouble you with hunting up the original interview with Bradbury, which appeared in Stockholm's Dagens Nyheter ("The Day's News"), since it is presumably in Swedish.

Did Moore steal Bradbury's title? Ipso facto, no. First, the title is not the same as Bradbury's; obviously Moore used Bradbury's well-known title as a template, but "Fahrenheit 9/11" is not the same as "Fahrenheit 451", any more than Chad Oliver's "The Winds of Time" title is the same as Robert Jordan's "The Crossroads of Twilight" (both being "The {something} of {something}").

But in the second place, you can't copyright a title. Even if the attack on the World Trade Center had (somehow) occurred on April 51 and Moore had called his film Fahrenheit 4/51, it would have been perfectly legal for him to do so. Back in the days when I was lapping up Mr. Bradbury's stuff, I read three different stories ― one of them a novel for young people, the other two short stories or novelettes (very forgettable) in SF magazines ― called Trouble on Titan. I don't remember any one of the authors attempting to sue either of the others, or even calling them naughty names like "screwed a------" (Bradbury's description of Moore) for "stealing" his title. Note: I don't think Mr. Bradbury was the author of any of those stories, and probably himself never wrote a story called "Trouble on Titan", though I can't be sure.

Bradbury is reported as failing to indicate that he would "take legal action." Wise of him. He'd lose.