In the UK case the court considered a medium's claim to rights in the 'Chronicles' of Cleophas, 'automatic writing' supposedly - via a spirit known as The Messenger - from author Cleophas, who had been a contemporary of Christ and was able to offer 'insider' accounts of events depicted in the Bible. Ms Geraldine Cummins (1890-1969), the medium, sought to stop unauthorised publication of that text, which was subsequently promoted with the words
In this chronicle, the Christian will find confirmation of his most cherished beliefs, while the claim of psychic science to the possibility of obtaining exact knowledge by supernormal means is vindicated to the full.The non-believer, on the other hand, might simply have fallen asleep after encountering page after page of prose such as -
Now the inn was set in a barren place, no great journey from Jerusalem. Truly the face of that region seemed as the countenance of some old bald head which is scored and wrinkled, scourged by the furies of life and time. Only in spring did any green things show themselves, and that but sparsely. Soon the grasses drooped and died. With summer these rocky valleys and clifted hills were stripped of plant and flower, and the eyes of men were greeted only with the bare and pitiless stones that burned the feet with the coming of the noonday sun.The Chancery judge - Eve J - unsurprisingly found that he lacked jurisdiction in "the sphere in which the spirit moves" and was not prepared to hold that "authorship and copyright rest with some one already domiciled on the other side of the inevitable river. That is a matter I must leave for solution by others more competent to decide than me". Bad news if you are a spirit seeking copyright protection!
Mary might well have pined and drooped when compelled to five in the midst of such harshness; and at times her spirit yearned for the vine clad slopes of Galilee, for the rich blossom of that land, for the peace of the deep blue waters of the lake. Yet she was content because her dream grew and increased in loveliness.
In the season of harvest the innkeeper made great preparation and caused his housewife and handmaid to scour the house; for he deemed that many pilgrims would soon pass by that way, journeying to Jerusalem for the Feast of the Tabernacles.
It was a year when the hearts and minds of many Jews were turned towards the Holy City of Zion. So the belief of the innkeeper was fulfilled. Travelers passed by that way in great numbers; and Mary and the housewife served them, labouring early and late. Among them were certain Jews who had come from a far land that lay beyond the Euphrates.
They smiled upon Mary and desired that she should serve them. They were not as other pilgrims, but wore costly robes. So their host sought to do the strangers honour, and the maid bore meat and wine in haste, setting them before each grey beard.
And as they ate their fill they spoke with one another, saying: "Peradventure, we shall see Herod, the king, at Jerusalem, and he may lighten the darkness of our ignorance."
Whereupon the innkeeper inquired of them as to their purpose in this pilgrimage, and as to the knowledge they sought to acquire from a ruler who was not held in any great esteem by the faithful.
One white bearded sage said: "We have learned that the hour of the birth of the Messiah is at hand. We have seen the star that heraldeth His coming and we would find Him out and pay Him homage."
"And where shall he be found?" asked the innkeeper.
"The prophet hath declared that Bethlehem is chosen as His birthplace. 'Thou, Bethlehem, art not the least among the cities of Judaea.' So it hath been written. 'Wherefore, we would seek Him there."
"Nay, not in Bethlehem," spoke another bearded stranger. "Masters, ye are wise men. Wherefore should the King of Israel thus be born in a small city, without the knowledge of the people?"
His judgment stated
The issue in this action is reduced to the simple question who, if any one, is the owner of the copyright in this work. Prima facie it is the author, and so far as this world is concerned there can be no doubt who is the author here, for it has been abundantly proved that the plaintiff is the writer of every word to be found in this bundle of original script. But the plaintiff and her witness and the defendant are all of opinion — and I do not doubt that the opinion is an honest one — that the true originator of all that is to be found in these documents is some being no longer inhabiting this world, and who has been out of it for a length of time sufficient to justify the hope that he has no reasons for wishing to return to it.
According to the case put forward by those entertaining the opinion I have referred to the individual in question is particularly desirous of assisting in further discoveries relating to the ancient Abbey of Glastonbury, and he chooses the Brompton Road as the locality in which, and the plaintiff as the medium through whom, his views as to further works to be undertaken on the site of the Abbey shall be communicated to the persons engaged in the work of excavation. He is sufficiently considerate not to do so in language so antiquated as not to be understood by the excavators and others engaged in the interesting operations, but in order not to appear of too modern an epoch he selects a medium capable of translating his messages into language appropriate to a period some sixteen or seventeen centuries after his death. I am not impugning the honesty of persons who believe, and of the parties to this action who say that they believe, that this long departed being is the true source from which the contents of these documents emanate; but I think I have stated enough with regard to the antiquity of the source and the language in which the communications are written to indicate that they could not have reached us in this form without the active co-operation of some agent competent to translate them from the language in which they were communicated to her into something more intelligible to persons of the present day. The plaintiff claims to be this agent and to possess, and the defendant admits that she does possess, some qualification enabling her, when in a more or less unconscious condition, to reproduce in language understandable by those who have the time and inclination to read it, information supplied to her from the source referred to in language with which the plaintiff has no acquaintance when fully awake. From this it would almost seem as though the individual who has been dead and buried for some 1900 odd years and the plaintiff ought to be regarded as the joint authors and owners of the copyright, but inasmuch as I do not feel myself competent to make any declaration in his favour, and recognizing as I do that I have no jurisdiction extending to the sphere in which he moves, I think I ought to confine myself when inquiring who is the author to individuals who were alive when the work first came into existence and to conditions which the legislature in 1911 may reasonably be presumed to have contemplated. So doing it would seem to be clear that the authorship rests with this lady, to whose gift of extremely rapid writing coupled with a peculiar ability to reproduce in archaic English matter communicated to her in some unknown tongue we owe the production of these documents. But the defendant disputes the plaintiff's right to be considered the sole author, alleging that he was an element and a necessary element in the production, and claiming, if the authorship is to be confined to persons resident in this world, that he is entitled to the rights incident to authorship jointly with the plaintiff.
In the course of the trial, after reading the correspondence, and hearing the evidence of Miss Gibbes, I expressed an unfavourable opinion of the defendant's conduct in certain respects. For one thing he had at a very early stage of his acquaintance with that lady commenced to borrow money from her, and when at a later date he was called upon to repay the sums so borrowed he set up a wholly insupportable story that the moneys had been paid to him as a gift; and for another, when he was submitting a complicated agreement for the approval of the two ladies and inducing them to believe that he desired them to take legal advice thereon, he was at the same time urging a mutual friend to obtain their approval and execution of the same without taking any such advice. Since I expressed that unfavourable opinion I have seen and heard the defendant in the box, and although his conduct in the matters I have referred to cannot but be regarded as involving grave errors of judgment, I do not think he was actuated by the sordid motives which his conduct was certainly calculated to suggest. He is an individual upon whose memory little reliance can be placed — he is of an imaginative temperament and regards the alleged supernatural incidents connected with this work with a reverence that is almost fanatical, and he has, I think, in more than one incident shown that he is occasionally subject to hallucinations. His claim to be considered a joint author is suggestive of an hallucination, for it is based upon the assertion that by his presence at the seances where the writing took place he in some way transmitted from his brain to the unconscious brain of the medium the classical and historical references which are to be found in these documents. He frankly admits that he does not appreciate how it was done, or to what extent he did it; but he has evidently brought himself to believe that he did contribute materially to the composition of the work and that his contribution was made by means of some silent transfer from his brain to that of the unconscious medium of phrases and allusions with which he was familiar but of which she knew nothing. But inasmuch as the medium is credited with a power to translate language of which she knew nothing into archaic English, of which she was almost equally ignorant, and at a phenomenal pace, it does not appear necessary to fall back on the defendant's presence in order to explain the classical and historical references which he maintains must have emanated from his brain. They may well have originated in the brain of the medium herself. In these circumstances I am quite unable to hold that the defendant has made out any case entitling him to be treated as a joint author. I think he is labouring under a complete delusion in thinking that he in any way contributed to the production of these documents.
Alternatively failing to establish any claim on his own behalf he submits that there is no copyright in the work at all, that it has come from a far off locality which I cannot specify, and that the plaintiff is the mere conduit pipe by which it has been conveyed to this world. I do not think that is a fair appreciation of the plaintiff's activities, they obviously involved a great deal more than mere repetition; but, apart altogether from these considerations, the conclusion which the defendant invites me to come to in this submission involves the expression of an opinion I am not prepared to make, that the authorship and copyright rest with some one already domiciled on the other side of the inevitable river. That is a matter I must leave for solution by others more competent to decide it than I am. I can only look upon the matter as a terrestrial one, of the earth earthy, and I propose to deal with it on that footing. In my opinion the plaintiff has made out her case, and the copyright rests with her.
Sweet J in the 'Miracles' judgment comments that -
The centerpiece of this litigation is a lengthy written work entitled "A Course in Miracles" (the "Course"). The Course, currently published by Penguin in a single volume over a thousand pages in length, is divided into three sections: the text ("Text"), a workbook for students ("Workbook"), and a manual for teachers ("Manual"). The Course can loosely be categorized as belonging to that genre of "New Age" spiritual texts which seem to pop out of the post-industrial cultures of the northern hemisphere like the quarks which particle physicists tell us materialize spontaneously in the fabric of space-time. Nevertheless, despite its New Age trappings, the Course is explicitly grounded in Christian theology.The Course originated in 1965 with Dr Helen Schucman, an associate professor of medical psychology at Columbia University's College of Physicians & Surgeons, who after experiencing "some tension at work", started taking dictation from The Voice (subsequently identified as that of Jesus Christ). The Voice had told her: "This is a course in miracles. Please take notes." She obliged, and eventually over 2 million copies of the book were sold.
Its somewhat bewildered, bewildering, yet not terribly novel message appears to be that the world humans perceive with their senses is merely an illusion projected by our minds outside of ourselves, and that the true world is "God," who is love, which is "all there is." This is an admittedly subjective summation, but perhaps more informative than the cryptic summation provided in the Course itself: "Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the peace of God."
The judgment continues -
At some point during the summer of 1975, after it became apparent that an interest for the Course was developing, Schucman heard from the Voice that copyright registration should be sought for the Course, ostensibly in order to preserve the form of the Course against the possibility of incomplete or corrupted editions. Schucman asked that the registration be in the name of the nonprofit organization, the Foundation for Para-Sensory Investigation.A submission to the court included the statement that -
When A Course in Miracles was originally published in June of 1976, we made a firm commitment to seek out and listen to the Voice of the Holy Spirit before making any decisions related to the Course. None of us was prepared, however, for one particular instruction from Jesus to Helen Schucman, scribe of the Course. He wanted A Course in Miracles copyrighted and, she stated emphatically, he was quite adamant about this. ... the idea of a copyright struck all of us as somewhat out of character when applied to a spiritual teaching such as A Course in Miracles. Nevertheless, even though we could not envision a need for the Course to be copyrighted, we of course listened to Jesus and proceeded to contact the [U.S.] Copyright Office. ...From there it was down hill all the way, with disputes about unauthorised copying the dictation from on high.
We were informed that a copyright could not be granted to a non-physical author such as Jesus, nor to "Anonymous." On the other hand, Helen's name could not appear on the Course's copyright page because Jesus had cautioned her against publicly associating her name with it, lest people confuse her role with his and the Holy Spirit's. Therefore, our guidance was that the copyright registration should be filed with the author listed as "Anonymous," followed by Helen's name in parentheses, while the copyright itself was officially assigned by Helen to the Foundation for Inner Peace.
The Court indicated that -
even if Schucman had not made herself available to receive this revelation, and even if the original material did not reflect her personal tastes, it is undisputed that the dictated material was subsequently edited: personal references were removed, punctuation was added, chapter and section headings were created, and other work was done to shape the material into the final form it took in the published Course. Even if all of these editorial changes and additions were "approved of" by Jesus, it is undisputed that many of them were initiated by Schucman [and associates] i.e., many changes were not simply dictated, but were initially the impulse of Schucman and those others, with Schucman then "checking" to see if the changes would pass muster with Jesus, a process quite similar to that used by the Contact Commission. Significantly, the initial creative spark for these changes came from Schucman and the others, not from Jesus, and, as in Urantia, materially contributed to the structure of the Course. These editorial changes thus satisfy the "minimal degree of creativity," Feist, 499 U.S. at 346, required by copyright law.The case is discussed in 'Gutenberg's Legacy: Copyright, Censorship, and Religious Pluralism' by Thomas Cotter in (2003) 91(2) California Law Review.
Defendants, in their memoranda of law, play down the editorial contributions of Schucman, stating that she was only a scribe taking dictation. This is not borne out by the evidence, however, even when viewed in the light most favorable to Defendants. Schucman's interaction with the Voice was similar to the Contact Commission's interaction with the divine beings in Urantia: although in each instance the non-human author had the final say, the humans had at least some input into, and effect on, the form and content.