Re: droit de suite

On 03/04/2000, Pat Sloane <patsloane[_at_]aol.com> wrote:
>
> On 04/03/2000, Jeroen Hellingman <jehe[_at_]kabelfoon.nl> wrote:
> >
> > On Thu, 30 Mar 2000, Pat Sloane <patsloane[_at_]aol.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > There's plenty of precedent for bequething intangible rights, as
> > > in leaving one's heirs a large block of General Motors stock.
> >
> > They are quite different from copyrights, as they represent a share
> > in real hardware, not in an abstract, non-physical entity. I do not
> > want to equate those two things, as they are quite different in
> > nature.
>
> They may not be as different as you assume.
>
> 1) What's copyrighted is a manuscript, which is neither abstract
> nor non-physical. No manuscript, no copyright. That's why one
> can't copyright an idea for a book that one never writes. The
> reason there are postal charges for sending books and manuscripts
> through the mails is that they aren't as "abstract, non-physical"
> as you're assuming.
>
> 2) When a stockholder is said to "own" a fractional part of General
> Motors, the usage is only nominal. It bestows no right to directly
> control the company. The only control a stockholder has over a
> company is indirect, exerted by voting the stock. All the stockholder
> really owns, in the sense of being able to directly control it, is the
> stock... either a paper certificate or an entry in somebody's ledger.
>
> Holding stock is very similar to holding citizenship. One might
> say a nation nominally "belongs" to its citizens. But that doesn't
> automatically bestow on each individual citizen the right to directly
> control a pro rata share of the nation's land, wealth, natural
> resources, or whatever. All the citizen has a right to do is vote,
> an indirect means of controlling "his" or "her" nation.
>
> When people create wealth, it's not a bad idea to allow them to
> bequeath that wealth to their heirs... whether the wealth consists
> of a company that was established, paintings bequethed to heirs by
> an artist, or royalty producing properties of any kind. Why is it
> OK to bequeath an oil-well (which produces royalties) but not the
> rights to a book manuscript (which produces royalties)?
>
> Actually, the price of books is rather low, and nobody is seriously
> arguing that we need to eliminate copyright to spare the public any
> harm done or hardships suffered by the price of books being "too high."
> Royalties paid to a writer are rarely more than 5% or 10% of the cost
> of a book, a mere piffle no more burdensome to the book-buyer than
> sales taxes. Also, nobody seriously argues that there's any public
> benefit to be gained by eliminating copyright -- that, say, if we
> could get the price of books down by 10%, then people might do more
> reading.
>
> So what drives the raging against copyright, if it isn't any kind
> of desire for the public good? Seems to me it's the larcenous lust.
> Eliminate copyright and you deprive the writer of the opportunity to
> profit from his work. But you've correspondingly opened the door for
> anyone other than the writer to profit from the writer's work. The
> T. S. Eliot estate makes a million dollars a year from the literary
> properties he left. Knock out copyright, and that million dollars
> is up for grabs. Anyone, even you, could print and sell his books
> without paying royalties and get a piece of the action. What I'm not
> understanding is why you regard it as obnoxious if the money goes to
> the writer or his heirs, and preferable that it go to anyone other
> than the writer or his heirs.

I agree the writer or his heirs should get some compensation under copyright. However, in most cases, it seems that the publishers benefit, not the writers. This is a bone of contention amongst many writers today. Copyright seems to protect the publishing industry, not the creators or authors.

Denise Nicholson
Nicholson.D[_at_]library.wits.ac.za Received on Tue Apr 04 2000 - 11:15:13 GMT