Thinking...thinking...
Feb. 24th, 2006 06:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ksmithI read this, and I ponder. Especially this statement by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tnh in ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-syndicated.gif)
makinglight:
It is right that what's new and unique in a writer's work be recognized as peculiarly their own. That's fine. But copyright is not a statement of inalienable natural right. It's a social convention, intended to reward (and thus encourage) writers and publishers to produce more books. To pervert it into a claim of perpetual ownership, especially when that claim is being forwarded by large entertainment conglomerates, is the moral equivalent of driving a fence around the commons.
I will admit that I do not currently make a bulk of my income from my copyrights. I would be interested in hearing how someone who does feels about some of these discussions.
Do I, or my heirs/assignees, have the right to own the rights in perpetuity of a work of entertainment that I have written? If we were talking about a company, a family fortune, or other property, the answer would be, with some limits, yes. I/they would own these rights/things/companies until we ran them into the ground/spent it all/outlived our commercial usefulness/whatever. It seems to me that the willingness on the part of some to restrict these rights is in inverse proportion to the income they derive from these or similar rights. I could be missing something here, of course. But I get edgy when I see the copyright as social convention argument, as though only good manners is standing between Jani Kilian and public domain.
I will admit that my kneejerk reaction to the issue is "It's my fuckin' book. My fuckin' characters. I wrote it as no one else would. It is a work of entertainment, an option, like the chocolate cookie or the tiramisu. No one needs it to live. No one's freedoms will be infringed if it is not available to be read. It is not a new method of sorting information, or a vaccine. It is a luxury of life, not a necessity. Not a right.
tnh in makinglight:It is right that what's new and unique in a writer's work be recognized as peculiarly their own. That's fine. But copyright is not a statement of inalienable natural right. It's a social convention, intended to reward (and thus encourage) writers and publishers to produce more books. To pervert it into a claim of perpetual ownership, especially when that claim is being forwarded by large entertainment conglomerates, is the moral equivalent of driving a fence around the commons.
I will admit that I do not currently make a bulk of my income from my copyrights. I would be interested in hearing how someone who does feels about some of these discussions.
Do I, or my heirs/assignees, have the right to own the rights in perpetuity of a work of entertainment that I have written? If we were talking about a company, a family fortune, or other property, the answer would be, with some limits, yes. I/they would own these rights/things/companies until we ran them into the ground/spent it all/outlived our commercial usefulness/whatever. It seems to me that the willingness on the part of some to restrict these rights is in inverse proportion to the income they derive from these or similar rights. I could be missing something here, of course. But I get edgy when I see the copyright as social convention argument, as though only good manners is standing between Jani Kilian and public domain.
I will admit that my kneejerk reaction to the issue is "It's my fuckin' book. My fuckin' characters. I wrote it as no one else would. It is a work of entertainment, an option, like the chocolate cookie or the tiramisu. No one needs it to live. No one's freedoms will be infringed if it is not available to be read. It is not a new method of sorting information, or a vaccine. It is a luxury of life, not a necessity. Not a right.
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no subject
Date: 2006-03-02 07:33 pm (UTC)The author has the right to designate heirs, and I've got the right to spend my money as I wish. That means if your stuff was out in hardcover, I'd buy the hardcover in preference to the paperback, but Miss Austen is in an electronic edition. If I can't choose a public domain edition and the author is dead, then it's likely the book will languish behind the books of authors who are alive and will get some good from my money. I can get *more* from them see :).
(don't take this as any kind of moral stance please, this is how I prioritize things with my book buying money. I can't afford every book in the world that I might want, so I pick and choose)