UnaMhendo, let me be crystal clear: I don’t give a rat’s ass about current copyright law in this situation. The author (MT) created his work under an existing copyright framework with which he disagreed. Subsequent copyright legislation is ex post facto, and IMHO, not relevant.
I am not arguing from a position of what the friggin’ law is; I was merely conveying what the author/speaker/comedian/satirist was driving at. Twain’s concern was the financial stability of his descendants so that he could feel like a good “papa.”
The copyright’s legitimacy will probably be challenged in court. So be it, and we’ll leave it to the knuckleheads we call judges to decide - no IT geek, history professor, or SDAB person is going to affect it.
Damn, the three of us should take “Get in the Ring” off of our playlists.
So what was your purpose in entering this conversation in the first place? Was it simply to demonstrate what an awesome Mark Twain scholar you are? Because otherwise i’m not sure exactly what your point is.
You enter a debate about the issue of copyright status, and tell us that Mark Twain disagreed with the law. Then you tell us that you don’t care about what the law is, and that your only real interest in the meaning that we might derive from Mark Twain’s testimony. Of course, you’re the only one who can really know what that is, since you’re the expert, and the fact that he explicitly states that he’s happy with the proposed change to the law is largely irrelevant.
It’s also not really clear about what you think is the connection between the law, on the one hand, and Mark Twain’s opinion of the law, on the other. Are you arguing that, because Twain disagreed with copyright expiration, we should respect this belief and allow his work to remain under copyright even though the law might say differently? If so, do you apply this principle more generally, to the extent that you exempt anyone from the consequences of laws with which they do not agree?
No-one has denied that Twain had a beef with some issues of copyright law (although i’m not convinced that your interpretation is the only valid one). But this thread started with a factual question about the copyright status of Mark Twain’s autobiography, and if that issue doesn’t interest you (as you’ve explicitly said), why don’t you head of to Cafe Society and start an “Ask the guy who knows a lot of shit about Mark Twain” thread?
My joining the conversation was intended to share some biographical info about MT. I didn’t start the bitterness… I responded (and regret it, because I feel like I’m arguing with a petulant child). The thread is called “A Question About Mark Twain & Copyright” – I thought it would be useful to the OP to share info on what MT had to say about the subject. For that, I got bombarded with “no shit, Sherlock,” “cut it out,” etc.
I also made it explicit that I’m not an “expert” - I said I’m “an expert novice or novice expert” - that’s a disclaimer with a touch of self-effacing cheesy humor. Twain ain’t a text book.
So anyway, you’re right. You win, if that makes you feel better. You’re good enough, smart enough, and gosh darnit, people like you.
I’m not arguing legalities - I’m talking about the intentions and desires of the author. Put an “f” in front of law and see what the product is. Never perfect, but always aspiring.
Keep your ignorance. I don’t care if you used citations from Roughing It, you clearly don’t understand how discourse works - it’s not didactic. I pity your students, if you have any.
Yeah, the olive branch. “I don’t give a rat’s ass…” That certainly sounds like an attempt at conciliation.
I understand quite well how discourse works. You can pretend all you like that you’re some sort of victim in this exchange, but the fact that i disagree with you (whether it’s about Twain or about copyright law) doesn’t make me ignorant.
I’m really not sure why you’re so offended by my disagreement. If you offer an opinion on a topic, whether a legal or a literary one, you can’t expect to have people simply nod and smile when they disagree with you. I disagreed with some of your interpretation of Twain’s comments, and with some of the comments themselves. Big deal.
Also, you say that you were arguing only about the “intentions and desires of the author.” If that were true, why did you cite the copyright page of the autobiography? Surely the content of that page is irrelevant to an examination of Twain’s testimony? Your contribution there went directly to the main legal question posed by the OP.
Go ahead and act all injured and offended if you like, but if you join a conversation like this, there are times when people will disagree with you. I wasn’t trying to bait you or needle you for my own amusement; i seriously disagreed with what you wrote, and wanted to argue about it. It was not personal, and as far as i’m concerned our disagreement is confined to this thread. Your own feelings on the matter are, of course, up to you.
And your comments were appreciated on that point, really. Where you went wrong was when you then left the domain of biographical info and instead started talking about legalities:
Here you made a statement of fact about copyright. It was wrong. And this is what people are disputing with you. So when you said:
Is it wine or whine in your case? You’ve been pitted before for similar reasons.
I quoted the title page to demonstrate that there is a legitimate copyright claim (if the claim is not legitimate, as stated previously, is up to the courts). Again, I was only trying to inject MT’s thoughts. I could throw a few hundred pages of citations out, but I’m lazy and I don’t think anyone wants this to become a shouting match between two obstinate idiots.
And “I don’t give a rat’s ass” was supposed to be a semi-comical reference to my username, as well as indicating that copyright law wasn’t the focus of what I was sharing. Again - excellent job reading context clues; perhaps the SAT will give you a 600.
I’m not offended by your disagreement - I haven’t expressed an opinion other than the fact that I like Twain and think he is/was a brilliant thinker/writer/etc.
In regard to the intentions of the author piece (in which I cited the copyright page), that was not meant to demonstrate the author’s intentions, per se, but to illustrate that he had arranged a mechanism (he did, after all, contrive that organization) to protect his copyright privileges for his descendants.
At any rate, I’ll go back to “acting all injured.”
BTW - mhendo, I’m willing to have a personal conversation on this topic (and stop irritating everyone else). I suspect that neither of us are as obnoxious as we appear to be on the basis of this thread. We could probably have an entertaining and illustrative discussion.
I’m sure you’re right. And, as i said, i didn’t engage in this debate in order to make the whole thing personal. I don’t recall having any run-ins with you before, and i didn’t contradict you as part of some personal crusade.
I’m aware that i can be somewhat abrasive at times, and maybe i shouldn’t have been so confrontational, but it wouldn’t change my actual opinions on the substantive issues. For me, the copyright issue is one of those where i tend to get a bee in my bonnet precisely because the whole issue is the subject of so much rampant misinformation on the internet, from all sides of the question: those who argue that they can take whatever they want because it’s online, and those who claim copyright on works with absolutely no foundation.
I’m not a lawyer, and i don’t claim to know everything about copyright by any means, but i have read quite a few books on the issue of copyright in the internet age, i spend quite a bit of time on websites like the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Stanford Copyright and Fair Use Center, and i read court decisions relevant to the issue. I think we are all better served if we understand this important issue.
With regard to Twain’s autobiography, i think it’s actually an interesting and rather complicated case, precisely because the nature of the work itself is so unusual, incorporating both previously-published and new material, all of which was written over 100 years ago.
It’s still not clear to me, for example, how much of the arrangement of the recently-published work was done by the editors, and how much was dictated by Twain himself. It could be that the editors could make some claim to copyright based on their own efforts in compiling Twain’s work; collection and arrangement of material has been recognized as creative work in many circumstances. For that reason, i cannot assert copyright over a 200-year-old image, but i might be able to assert copyright over a particular collection and arrangement of 200-year-old images, if i could establish that the process involved some original creative work on my part and was not just a random throwing-together of images.
This whole issue will probably never come before a court, because it probably won’t need to. The Mark Twain Project has made the whole thing available for people to read online, meaning that no-one needs to make and distribute copies (authorized or otherwise) in order for people to read it for free. But there are still, i think, important issues involved here. I’m going to refer to a couple of them in response to your own posts, not to antagonize you, but because there are distinctions here that i believe need to be made in any discussion of copyright.
For example:
Don’t you see the contradiction here? You argue that the copyright claim is legitimate, and then note that a determination of its legitimacy would be up to the courts.
You are absolutely correct that the Mark Twain Foundation has made a claim of copyright over the autobiography. But, as Una and i have both noted, plenty of people and organizations make copyright claims in cases where a reading of Title 17 suggests very strongly that such a claim could not be upheld. I posted an example from Harper’s Weekly earlier in this thread. If you want to see an incredibly long-winded and egregious example, check out the Legal page of the Central Pacific Railroad Photographic History Museum’s website.
A claim of copyright and a legitimate claim of copyright are not always the same thing. You are correct that this can only really be tested in a court of law, but if someone believes, based on a good-faith reading of the statutes, that copyright doesn’t apply, they can take their chances and copy the material. The entity claiming copyright must then decide whether a court would uphold its copyright claim, and decide whether or not to pursue the issue. Simply adding some text about copyright to a work doesn’t really do anything.
The thing is, though, that i never disagreed with you about his arranging that mechanism. It seems reasonably clear that Twain did, in fact, orchestrate a particular arrangement for the publication of his autobiography. Part of the reason seems to have been related to etiquette and decorum (not wishing to speak ill of people while they might be be around to be offended), and part of the reason was no doubt, as you say, to protect his copyright privileges for his descendants.
But, even if this is the case, the fact that he did this is a separate issue from whether his strategy was, in fact, successful. That is, while we might agree that Twain’s idea was to effectively extend copyright for his autobiography, this is unrelated to the question of whether or not the recently-published autobiography is actually covered by copyright. And, among other things, one reason that Twain’s actions and the current status of the book are separate issues is that copyright law has changed since Twain’s death. I agree that this might not tell us very much about Twain himself, or about his testimony regarding copyright law, but i believe that it’s an important issue, especially in a thread whose main purpose was, in fact, to investigate the question of whether the autobiography is covered by copyright.
Anyway, that’s my take on the subject. None of this changes my very high opinion of Mark Twain, and nor was it intended to become some sort of personal grudge match. I hope we can agree to disagree on some aspects, and acknowledge that we were, in some cases, probably talking past one another.
Oh my God, I forgot about those lunatics. It’s either a parody or a sign of serious, deep insanity at work. And I’ve seen shorter legal contracts on $50M Engineering projects.
MODERATOR NOTE: mhendo and Giant Rat: both of you, cool it. NOW.
You’ve both been around long enough to know that personal insults are not permitted in this forum. And the level of pissiness (by both of you) has crossed the line a couple of times. So, friendly advice: tone it down. WAY down.
Wow, Dex, talk about a day late and a dollar short! Cavalry to the rescue once the truce flags have been raised!
Also, please point me in the direction of the personal insults. I’ll cop to the fact that we got a bit pissy and heated, but i don’t recall any personal insults.
I’m sorry for being late; if I had been here on time, I might have issued warnings. However, I don’t want a thread to sit around a have others think that insults are OK. You want examples?
Those are comments about the other person, not about what the other person is saying, and thus represent one toe across the line.
Well, if that’s your definition of personal insults, i’m going to have to disagree completely. As i said, i agree that the general tone was getting a little antagonistic, but those examples simply don’t pass even the most basic smell test as personal insults.
I suppose my take on it is that the fundamental challenge here regards the evolution of copyright law and, as you’ve noted, this is an interesting and unusual case. My take is that (whether or not this is always the case), copyright enforceability should be determined by the applicable legal framework in place at the time of publication in order to protect the originator of the copyright claim from being “thrown under the bus” by later court actions based on dissimilar circumstances.
Absolutely. And I may be as guilty of misinterpretations, as well. Copyright law is often contradictory as a function of the evolution of communications and expressive trends and technologies. There are a lot of what-ifs out there these days. Absent those uncertainties, we’d all have a common understanding of the regs, and copyright court would largely be needed only in cases of blatant plagiarism and disputes regarding original creation of copyrighted material.
At any rate, copyright law not being my area of specialty, I’d just add that my sole purpose in posting in the first place was to point out MT’s original intent and philosophical musings on the state of copyright protection for authors and such. Having been bankrupt several times, he bears a clear sensitivity to the possibility of government (basically a bunch of elected lawyers) depriving creative personalities of their deserved royalties.
DIscussion of what constitutes personal insult should be taken to ATMB; this ain’t the place. Please note that I did NOT issue warnings, I just issued a friendly “cool down” reminder.