Re: benefits of the public domain and limited copyright terms?

On Tue, 9 May 2000, Albert Henderson <noblestation[_at_]compuserve.com> wrote:
>
> On Sat, 6 May 2000, Lance Purple <lpurple[_at_]netcom.com> wrote:
> >
> > Because it would likely have stopped Shakespeare, Walt Disney,
> > Andrew Lloyd Weber, and countless other artists from creating
> > their most popular works:
>
> That is assuming they were too lazy to obtain the usual
> permissions where needed and to pay appropriate fees and
> royalties.

OK, fine. William Shakespeare, a struggling London playwright, cannot locate any heirs of Saxo Grammaticus (who died roughly 500 years earlier in Denmark) Bad Shakespeare! Lazy! No Hamlet! Seriously, should he still be allowed to write the play, or the public allowed to see it?

Or: Walt Disney, a wannabe animator working out of his garage at night, and working a day-job at a catalog company to pay the bills, requests permission from the Grimm estate to make an animated cartoon version of "Little Red Riding Hood". He is told that the license to any of Grimm's fairytales will cost the equivalent of a years' salary each, which he cannot pay (he'd hoped to produce six such films his first year). Should he be allowed to make the films anyway, or should he just stick to painting pictures of shoes and handbags?

Or: Jacob and Willhelm Grimm, who would like to publish a collection of well known fairy-tales, discover that most of these tales may now be protected under perpetual copyright, and they cannot find who originated the tale of Puss-In-Boots or Sleeping Beauty. Should they be allowed to publish their collection or not?

Or: Andrew Lloyd Webber requests permission from the Leroux estate to make a musical version of _Phantom of the Opera_ and is refused; the grandchildren feel the work is somehow offensive and don't want it reprinted or adapted. Should he be allowed to produce the play anyway?

I'm sure you'll answer "no" to all the above; hence my claim that perpetual copyright would've stopped the above works from ever being produced, to the great cultural loss of the world.

You might say "they should start out doing only original work", but if Disney, the Grimms, Shakespeare, and countless other great names could not do so, that's a bit unrealistic of you. Artists need to built upon the work of others, and this need is the most acute when they are peniless nobodies. If we take away the public domain, they will have nothing to build upon, and we won't get any more classics like the above; we'll only get more dime novels and formula films.

Lance Purple
<lpurple[_at_]netcom.com> Received on Wed May 10 2000 - 14:46:07 GMT