To summarize, it would feel like talking around the elephant in the room if I had a pompous speech that was given by a techbro oligarch invoking something like class solidarity (among oligarchs) to rally them behind his leadership during a crisis that DIDN’T reference-drop that “who is John Galt?” quote, or for that matter a few other steaming drippings from the Ayn Rand canon.
I’ve read about libel laws and copyright, but considering that much of what I read said “you’re probably fine if you’re neutral to positive about the fiction being portrayed (I’m not) and if you’re uncertain just ask the estate of the author for permission (no).”
I could make it plausibly deniable, of course, but I wonder if my self-published book trilogy runs the risk of putting itself in legal jeopardy if it directly insults a dead terrible person that was a primary ideological contributor to the hellworld we now live in.
Is John Galt a character in your work or does a character simply reference him as the character in Atlas Shrugged?
It would be difficult to get in real trouble for a character alluding to a famous work in passing.
It’s sort of both.
John Galt is a referenced fiction character that is such a hot commodity to buy legal rights for as the “real” John Galt of the colony that the original winning bidder of the NFT-like “rights” to be called the one and only John Galt has a sticky end and several dubiously-sourced competing claimants to start popping up.
Yeah it doesn’t matter what the law actually says. If a big company that owns a bunch of intellectual properly doesn’t like you, they can bury you in lawsuits that you cannot possibly afford to defend yourself against, even (or perhaps especially) if they are on the wrong side of the law. Better make it “Who is Jack Goth?” so at least it’s not exactly the same.
