# "The Wind Done Gone": Copyrights vs the 1st Amendment **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 11, 2001, 3:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-wind-done-gone-copyrights-vs-the-1st-amendment/65058 "2001-05-11T03:54:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2001, 2:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-wind-done-gone-copyrights-vs-the-1st-amendment/65058/21 "2001-05-13T02:33:59Z")
If anything, people might rush out and read GWTW even more. I mean, yes, it’s outdated, and yes, a bit biased. That said, it’s a fantastic novel in my opinion. ---
**Author:** ![JonScribe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/3be4f8/32.png) [@JonScribe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JonScribe)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2001, 7:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-wind-done-gone-copyrights-vs-the-1st-amendment/65058/22 "2001-05-15T07:26:33Z")
Yeah, especially if you enjoy reading an apology of slavery. ---
**Author:** ![december](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/838e76/32.png) [@december](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/december)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2001, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-wind-done-gone-copyrights-vs-the-1st-amendment/65058/23 "2001-05-15T22:05:48Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by even sven \* > \*\*I want to use this oppertunity to complain about copyright extensions. \*\* William Safire agreed with you in his latest NY Times op-ed column. He pointed out that copyrights now go 70 years after death of the author, and says that’s much too long. ---
**Author:** ![Kamandi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5daacb/32.png) [@Kamandi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kamandi)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2001, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-wind-done-gone-copyrights-vs-the-1st-amendment/65058/24 "2001-05-16T00:13:47Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by ITR champion \* > \*\*I fail to see how this book would hurt sales of _Gone With the Wind_ and the sequels that are still being written. By generating more interest in the series they might even help sales. Overall, the novel will probably have more respect if there’s a high-profile novel written about the same events from a different perspective. So if the satire isn’t doing financial damage to the original, why should it be banned? \*\* > [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Guinastasia \* > \*\*If anything, people might rush out and read GWTW even more. \*\* If TWDG turns out to be a dud, it may **hurt** sales of the original franchise. The purpose of copyright is to protect the owner’s right to control and profit from her intellectual property. It’s nice to think that a great work should be free for all to enjoy, blah, blah, blah, but the fact is, the writer worked very hard to create it, and **it belongs to her**. It shouldn’t be given away just because she’s dead now and we all love the story.\* Satire notwithstanding, other writers’ works should not infringe on the copyright owner’s right to control her property. \*Admittedly, I’m a little unsure about time limits on copyrights. They seem illogical to me vis a vis my above argument, but if there was no limit, we’d probably have millions of people suing for the copyright to the Bible. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2001, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-wind-done-gone-copyrights-vs-the-1st-amendment/65058/25 "2001-05-16T00:21:56Z")
I wouldn’t call it an appology for slavery, so much as a book showing the MENTALITY of that time period. Yeah, I guess I’m a racist then. _sigh_ ☹ ---
**Author:** ![MandaJo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac91a4/32.png) [@MandaJo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MandaJo)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2001, 1:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-wind-done-gone-copyrights-vs-the-1st-amendment/65058/26 "2001-05-16T01:06:05Z")
I am gonna argue with you a bit, Ike. IN practice I agree that “telling the other side of the story” can be a cheap ploy for attention, in the same way as historians that go out of thier way to “destroy cherished icons”–it is bad scholorship and cheap sensationalism. But I am not going to throw out hte genre completly–I wouldn’t want to call up John Garnder and tell him that _Grendel_ was a cheap publicity ploy. Like any other genre, it can be done poorly–no doubt about it. From the _Salon_ article linked above, it sounds like in this case it was done very poorly, with more attention to a trashing what is, let’s face it, an easy target, than to good writing, to believable charecters, to compelling drama. But the concept of taking what has gone before and reshaping it–hell, that is what all art is when you get down to it. ---
**Author:** ![Ukulele\_Ike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/df788c/32.png) [@Ukulele\_Ike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ukulele_Ike)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2001, 1:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-wind-done-gone-copyrights-vs-the-1st-amendment/65058/27 "2001-05-16T13:50:12Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Manda JO \* > \*\*the concept of taking what has gone before and reshaping it–hell, that is what all art is when you get down to it. \*\* Oh, damn. I KNEW someone was going to come in eventually with the “What about Shakespeare?” argument. Okay, it’s wrong to say “all stuff stolen by artists from other stuff is bad.” And I can even admit “Shakespeare ripped off an old Irish or Italian folk tale in order to make a buck/meet a deadline, not to create timeless art.” And Meyers’ SEVEN PER-CENT SOLUTION was pretty entertaining, after all. It’s subjective. If a work smells to me of opportunism and seems to lack redeeming artistic features, like the subject of this thread or the SCARLETT sequel, I reserve my right to sneer. If it makes me giggle, like Carol Burnett walking onto the set in a dress made of curtains complete with rods, I’ll applaud. ---
**Author:** ![Maeglin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8baadc/32.png) [@Maeglin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maeglin)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2001, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-wind-done-gone-copyrights-vs-the-1st-amendment/65058/28 "2001-05-16T14:32:01Z")
> [@](#): > > It’s subjective. If a work smells to me of opportunism and seems to lack redeeming artistic features, like the subject of this thread or the SCARLETT sequel, I reserve my right to sneer. If it makes me giggle, like Carol Burnett walking onto the set in a dress made of curtains complete with rods, I’ll applaud. Sure. But does quality parodic, inventive literature have a more vigorous moral right to exist than hackneyed trash? I certainly don’t think so. You probably don’t think so either, but statements like: > [@](#): > > But by using those characters she loses, in my eyes, the “I just wanted to set the record straight” argument and leans towards “I just wanted to make a bunch of money.” Tough to take the moral high ground that way. …make me unsure of your actual position. As long as the author is not directly plagiarising Mitchell (which she very well might have done), she can take the moral high ground whether her motives were purely opportunist or not. Protected speech is protected speech. MR ---
**Author:** ![MandaJo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac91a4/32.png) [@MandaJo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MandaJo)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2001, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-wind-done-gone-copyrights-vs-the-1st-amendment/65058/29 "2001-05-16T15:14:45Z")
> [@](#): > > It’s subjective. If a work smells to me of opportunism and seems to lack redeeming artistic features, like the subject of this thread or the SCARLETT sequel, I reserve my right to sneer. Oh, me, too, though as an editor your sneer may carry more weight than mone. I will even go one further and say that from what I have read (of course, we can’t read the actual book) the court made the right decision-it dosen’t sound like _The Wind Done Gone_ is far enough away from the original to count as anything but an unauthorized sequal. But the genre of “Switched POV” is one of the few facets of post-modern writing with the potential to actually be entertaining. It may have a higher trash/gem ratio than other genres just because people are so enamoured of the idea trashing cultural icons that they don’t pay attention to the writing, but hte trash/gem ration is pretty high for other genres as well. > [@](#): > > she can take the moral high ground whether her motives were purely opportunist or not. Protected speech is protected speech. Sure she can, but she looks silly up there, claiming it is protected when it may well not be: we can’t read the original so we really can’t say, unfortunantly. As I said above, I suspect that it is too close to GWTW to be protected, and I don’t think that not being alowed to right a heavy handed sequal to GWTW is cramping her artistic voice: If she had been a better writer who took the time to write a better book, she could have constructed it in such a way that it was far enough from the original to count as parody or as merely derivative. Or she could have worked from a novel that was no longer copyrighted. The idea behind copyrights is that stuff will slide into the public domain after it has been around a generation or two and become part of our collective culture. I think that the problem is that in our nostalgia-infested culture the turnover from “novelty” to “Cultural icon” is down to about 18 months (remember the good ole days when we were worried about the Y2K bug and we thought 450mhz processors were fast? ho-ho-ho!), much shorter than the copyright. Hell if I know what the solution to this is. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-wind-done-gone-copyrights-vs-the-1st-amendment/65058.md?page=1)