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An interesting argument for limiting the copyright of books, one that plays on authorial vanity.
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In the recent past the duration of copyright after an author’s death was extended from 50 to 70 years. We sense at once that a decision like this is arbitrary and could easily change again.
Was it really necessary that James Joyce’s grandson could charge more or less what he liked for quotations of the author’s work, even in academic books up to sixty-nine years after his death? Does it make sense that to quote three or four lines from The Four Quartets in a book about meditation I have to pay T.S. Eliot’s estate £200? One feels the authors themselves might have rebelled, which gives us an insight into the real reason why works are allowed to go out of copyright protection. Because the author would have wished it thus. Once the immediate family has been protected, availability and celebrity is more important to an author than a revenue stream for descendents he has never met. The lapse of copyright is a concession to the author’s dreams of immortality at the expense of the family.
-- Tim Parks
_ _ _
In the recent past the duration of copyright after an author’s death was extended from 50 to 70 years. We sense at once that a decision like this is arbitrary and could easily change again.
Was it really necessary that James Joyce’s grandson could charge more or less what he liked for quotations of the author’s work, even in academic books up to sixty-nine years after his death? Does it make sense that to quote three or four lines from The Four Quartets in a book about meditation I have to pay T.S. Eliot’s estate £200? One feels the authors themselves might have rebelled, which gives us an insight into the real reason why works are allowed to go out of copyright protection. Because the author would have wished it thus. Once the immediate family has been protected, availability and celebrity is more important to an author than a revenue stream for descendents he has never met. The lapse of copyright is a concession to the author’s dreams of immortality at the expense of the family.
-- Tim Parks
