Scott, there is a dissociation between what your words have been and what you seem to think they are. You say you “just want to reanimate the world of a long-dead author, a world in which I once lived with some pleasure, a world now in darkness.” Your remedy is to severely cut the rights of the current copyright holder so that, against their clearly and specifically expressed objections, you can meddle in this world. And then you wonder why we think your suggestion benefits you and you alone?
Your other assertions are equally suspect. “I think it’s wrong, and harmful both to individuals, and to our society.” Can you explain exactly how it is harmful either to individuals or to society for you - or anyone else in a similar position - to be denied the privilege of benefiting from someone else’s creativity and imagination? Remember that you are in no way prohibited from writing these stories to your heart’s content. Or showing them to your spouse, friends, parents, or fellow workers. It’s just that you cannot disseminate them widely. How is this harmful to anyone or anything other than your ego?
But the writing of fan-fiction can be harmful to the copyright holders in that it can thwart future plans and possible future monetary value of their creations. You evidently did not read the Marion Zimmer Bradley link I provided. For all you know there may be a Hollywood producer who has paid a huge option for the rights to develop a picture around this character that your writing could jeopardize. It has happened. It is a danger for the creators.
The rest of your posts don’t raise very many items that I can comment on. Your suggestions for work-for-hire protections mostly baffle me. As far as I can tell, your three points in your 5/2 post protect only writers of fan-fiction. You say you “propose giving the originators even greater control, in that I limit the rights of employers over works-for-hire, while giving the actual creator(s) near-absolute authority for the rest of their lives.” How do you do this? For that matter, where do you do this? Not in any post in this thread.
And it really doesn’t matter, because the rights normally enforced are trademark rather than copyright. The Sonny Bono Copyright Act that is the basis for much of this brouhaha does extend the copyright for corporate works. If it hadn’t passed, you would have been allowed to show Steamboat Willie, the first Mickey Mouse cartoon, without paying royalties to Disney. And that’s it. You absolutely would not be able to make any new Mickey Mouse cartoons, comics, or stories because the Mouse is a trademarked character. Changing copyright law would have no effect whatsoever.
Again, trademark owners must vigorously and indiscriminately challenge non-compliance. Copyright is absolute. Writers can allow or disallow derivative works of their choosing.
In truth, few writers oppose the current work-for-hire situation. Some legal gains have been made; e.g. creators of comic book characters can regain ownership rights even if they have been legally signed away. Most writers of derivative works would like better royalty provisions in their contracts, but they are usually well compensated for short bursts of work. And it is all done with the understanding going in that somebody else controls the world and the characters.
There are issues that copyright law can affect that are work-for-hire issues, but none are mentioned here. There is a Freelancers Protection Act that many writers groups are supporting that is being considered (and revised now) by Congress. But the main thrust of this bill would be to exempt writers groups from antitrust so that they could collectively bargain for their members against onerous wire-for-hire all rights provisions being built into contracts so that employers can’t demand all rights including electronic rights for freelance work. While this is an extremely important bill, it is arcane and mostly affects non-fiction writers.
And moral rights is the express legal phrase used in contracts granted to writers almost everywhere else in the world outside the U.S. One major issue you don’t acknowledge is the desirability of U.S. copyright law conforming with that of other nations, an increasingly important point given the worldwide distribution of books, both print and electronic. The justification for the Sonny Bono Copyright Act was specifically that the copyright length should be increased to that of the European Union. In other words, there is not much point in shortening the U.S. length of copyright if it remains the same elsewhere – especially on the Internet. Personally, I had no problem with the old 28 years plus an optional 28 year renewal. But the rest of the world sees it differently – and who am I to argue?
In short, I’m not hearing or reading anything about actual copyright law. I’ve seen no backup for your many, many allegations that individuals are being unduly harmed under current copyright law or that society would benefit from shorter copyrights.
Copyright is a giant field with huge numbers of interests and a dearth of good case law. (I’d love to see some definition of what fair use is, which would help everyone here who posts material from outside sources.) Almost everybody has some aspect of the law they would like to see changed. Almost all of these changes contradict and interfere with one another.
Everything you say, however, comes down to an extension of peoples’ [to our eyes, your] ability to write fan-fiction, something they have absolutely no right to, except the right of “I wanna.”. That may be important to you, but in the larger world it’s a minute corner of a hideously complex situation.
Perhaps if you could articulate how your “I wanna” helps me as a member of society, a non-reader of fan-fiction, and a creator of worlds of my own that I hope one day will be a temptation to others as well as an annuity for any surviving members of my family, then I could examine what you want with a different eye.
