[HN Gopher] John Steinbeck's estate urged to let the world read ...
___________________________________________________________________
John Steinbeck's estate urged to let the world read his shunned
werewolf novel
Author : benbreen
Score : 116 points
Date : 2021-05-25 14:17 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| grouphugs wrote:
| no
| tclancy wrote:
| "Where ever there's a fight so hungry people can eat, I'll be
| there. And will eat."
| pmoriarty wrote:
| All work by an author should just pass in to the public domain
| upon their death.
| bidirectional wrote:
| I can see how this could be argued for published work, why
| should it apply to something unpublished? Should all of their
| personal correspondence be released too?
| greyface- wrote:
| Whether it is released or not is orthogonal to whether it is
| still protected by copyright.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| _" Should all of their personal correspondence be released
| too?"_
|
| I think it should, since after they're dead it's no longer
| their correspondence, since they no longer exist.
|
| Dead people have neither property rights, nor privacy rights
| nor any other kinds of interests that should be protected by
| law.
| hermannj314 wrote:
| People most capable of exploiting public domain works for
| profit also have tremendous power to end lives prematurely.
|
| I think this could end poorly.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| There's a huge profit motive for, say, pharmaceutical
| companies to manufacture unsafe or deadly medicines, for food
| companies to manufacture unsafe food, etc.
|
| But laws, regulations, and agencies like the FDA keep them
| mostly in check. Yes, there have been some abuses and
| regulatory capture, but compare the state of US food and
| medicine before the creation of the FDA and after.
|
| The chances of corporations starting to murder authors to
| profit off public domain assets is unlikely, especially as
| everyone will be able to use those assets when they become
| public domain.
|
| It's exclusivity and artificial scarcity that earns these
| companies the most money (or corporations like Disney
| wouldn't have fought tooth and nail to extend copyright
| protections).
| Justin_K wrote:
| Should everything you've written follow the same suit?
| bombcar wrote:
| I think the author's life + 70 years is a good default for
| anything not explicitly handled elsewhere, as by that point I
| and everyone involved will be dead (I suppose my grandkids
| will still be around at that point, but if 70 years of
| preparation for the publication of my list of Minecraft mods
| isn't enough, that's their problem).
|
| We're not talking personal or private matters here, we're
| talking something that would have been published if a
| publisher had said yes at the time. There's obviously a
| remuneration aspect and the wishes of the author and heirs
| should be taken into account, but as some point those
| diminish.
| skybrian wrote:
| It's excessive for long-lived authors. As a society we
| don't need to do _that_ much for heirs.
|
| Birth + 70 years or 10 years after death, whichever is
| later, would be more reasonable.
| bombcar wrote:
| What I'd like to see is some way to handle abandoned
| works - something like "if this book/game/movie is no
| longer in print you can obtain some form of archival copy
| for a fee, paid to the library of congress and
| transferred to the author/assigns/heirs if possible".
|
| Books can wait around for 70 years to be
| handled/digitized, but lots of other works are being lost
| (or are being preserved "illegally").
| pmoriarty wrote:
| Yes.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| Wow.
|
| Is everyone here aware that this would apply to any source
| code we write too? If an author writes a private book for
| his/her SO, that would pass into public domain because the
| copyright s/he gave to the SO would go away at time of
| death. I'm assuming that would mean we could not assign
| rights to source code to our family while we are alive. (Or
| anyone else come to think of it?) Since those rights go
| away when we die. This would change a lot. It would change
| almost everything.
| kevinh wrote:
| If they wrote a private book for their spouse, presumably
| the spouse would have the only copy and would not be
| required to provide access to it. Copyright wouldn't
| change that case one way or the other.
| [deleted]
| nokcha wrote:
| That rule would greatly discourage publishers from accepting
| works from authors who are near death. And it would also be
| impossible to enforce for anonymous or pseudonymous authors. I
| think a fixed term term of copyright, like 20 or 30 years,
| would be better.
| dageshi wrote:
| Your spouse works so you can write your book. You publish your
| book and it's a success, you die the next year. Work is
| immediately public domain and your spouse gets nothing?
|
| I don't think so.
| myWindoonn wrote:
| Will paying your spouse your royalties cause your dead corpse
| to rise from the grave and write another book? Copyright in
| the USA can only be used to benefit the artist who produced
| the art, so that they will make more art.
|
| Separately, society ought to not force artists to starve or
| sacrifice or be spouse-supported simply to be artists.
| watwut wrote:
| That is not how copyright in USA works and it did not
| worked that way for decades and probably never.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| Creative people need to stop relying on the broken system of
| copyright to earn money.
|
| They need to find alternate business models, like getting
| paid in advance by fans through something like patreon or
| kickstarter.
|
| However, while the copyright system still exists its damage
| to the culture should be minimized by letting cultural works
| go in to the public domain upon the author's death. The
| public good far outweighs the earning potential of people who
| didn't even create the work to begin with.
| dageshi wrote:
| There's never been more content available for cheaper than
| right now. What mythical "damage to the culture" is taking
| place?
| handrous wrote:
| All the wonderful unauthorized sequels, medium-
| conversions, re-makes, re-mixes, et c., that would have
| come to be seen as on par with or better than the
| originals, and possibly even more commercially
| successful, that aren't being made. Inherently multi-
| media works (film, games, that kind of thing) not being
| able to choose freely from non-super-old popular media to
| include, without having to both beg permission and pay
| someone else (as with soundtrack music, for example).
|
| Disney shouldn't own Star Wars now, to pick one example.
| Everyone should own it. Any person or company who wants
| to try to make a go at financing and selling a new entry,
| or a re-make, should be free to. Film-makers who grew up
| on it and want to put their spin on it without having to
| get permission first, should be able to try.
|
| Companies still making sequels to or remakes of 80s games
| should have to face competition from others trying to
| make _better_ sequels or remakes of those games.
|
| The best recorded version of the Beatles' oeuvre might
| well be one that won't ever exist now, because the person
| who'd have made it couldn't have made made any money at
| it, and died or will die of old age before the copyright
| expires, even though they weren't born when _Let it Be_
| was released.
|
| I hesitate to name a number (14 seems fine, though, and
| 28 not catastrophic if you want a longer duration that
| covers a large portion of a normal person's working adult
| life) but what we've got now is _way_ too long.
| breakfastduck wrote:
| I get what you're going for but it would be an
| unmitigated disaster essentially reducing the value of
| all creative output to 0.
|
| So no thanks.
| handrous wrote:
| Why would only being able to exclusively make money off a
| published work for 1/3 of a lifetime reduce the value of
| creative output to 0?
| pmoriarty wrote:
| Since, as you acknowledge, there's an enormous amount of
| content available, then we don't need to give it any
| special protection using copyright, do we?
| dageshi wrote:
| Well from my pov just because there's lots of it doesn't
| mean it's interchangeable? I think legal protections on
| what you create gives you an avenue towards making a full
| time career out of what you do. And I don't think the
| patreons or kickstarters of the world replace that
| because it firstly makes you a slave to your audience and
| secondly forces you to become a marketer which probably
| great disadvantages anyone who isn't either good at that
| or who isn't already comfortably well off enough to
| afford the time to get good at it.
|
| Finally I think it would greatly decrease the quantity
| and quality because frankly your time would be better
| spent elsewhere on things that can support you
| financially.
|
| Thankfully, it's never going to happen so it's a bit of a
| hypothetical conversation.
| bena wrote:
| Are you going to back a patreon or kickstarter from someone
| you've never heard of?
|
| It's a messy business and there is no single way it should
| be done. New authors need to prove themselves somehow. And
| they should be compensated for their works.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| _" Are you going to back a patreon or kickstarter from
| someone you've never heard of?"_
|
| They'll need to make a pitch and show me some of their
| work, then if I like it and I can afford it, then yes, I
| would.
|
| Getting one's work out there has never been easier.
| bena wrote:
| So once you hear of someone, you'll do it.
|
| Which brings us back to the question of whether you'll
| back someone you have no knowledge of.
|
| Because you're basically asking them to do some work for
| you for free to start with. And if they can't afford to
| do free work, etc, etc.
|
| It's just a cycle.
|
| And while there is a lot of material being produced, not
| all of it is good. Publishers and the like used to act as
| curators to a degree. Now I have to do my own curation
| from not just what's passed the previous barriers, but
| from _everything_.
|
| Sorry, no one has time for that.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| _" while there is a lot of material being produced, not
| all of it is good. Publishers and the like used to act as
| curators to a degree. Now I have to do my own curation
| from not just what's passed the previous barriers, but
| from everything. Sorry, no one has time for that."_
|
| You don't need to be your own curator. There are plenty
| of curators out there that aren't publishers, but just
| people who choose to promote or feature art based on
| their own personal taste -- which is pretty much what
| traditional curators like publishers did, but now that
| power is no longer concentrated in just a few hands, but
| anyone can do it, and many do.
|
| So you just have to find those curators whose taste is
| compatible with your own.. those could be friends whose
| taste you trust, or even people you don't know who like
| the sorts of things you do.
|
| We no longer have to bow down to the whims of those who
| live in an ivory tower. Curation has been distributed.
|
| Of course, you might still have to curate the curators,
| but there are curators of curators too.. like articles on
| the "best blogs" or various awards to content
| aggregators, or, again, friends who can recommend you
| stuff.
|
| The core problem is information overload, and no one has
| an ultimate solution to it yet, but I'd much rather have
| today's world of an incredible amount of information,
| cultural production, and content, than yesterday's world
| of relatively little content trickling through a few
| gatekeeper priests.
|
| _" you're basically asking them to do some work for you
| for free to start with. And if they can't afford to do
| free work, etc, etc."_
|
| I'm not asking them for anything. Many artists naturally
| make art, writers write, etc.. and it's just a fact that
| a huge amount of them publish their creations for free.
|
| Artists now realize that because of the information and
| content glut their problem is mostly one of getting
| noticed, so they'll release plenty of work for free.
|
| I'm not asking them for it, but many are almost trying to
| force it on me (and everyone else).. trying to get more
| eyeballs on it, because they realize that once they've
| got an established fanbase they can monetize it and
| become more famous and successful... and once they are
| then the patreon/kickstarter model becomes viable.
|
| Not everyone can do it, but, too bad. If they can't then
| they can remain a hobbyist or just keep their art to
| themselves (as I have throughout most of my life).
|
| I'd love to have a utopia where every artist gets paid to
| create and do nothing else, but copyright has absolutely
| failed to bring us there, and it's becoming less viable
| as a means of helping the vast majority of creators every
| day. It's mostly the lucky few and the middlemen that get
| to successfully play that game. Instead of propping up
| this broken system we should be working to find new
| alternatives which don't rely on artificial scarcity or
| putting sharers in jail.
| josephorjoe wrote:
| so now artists have to not only be talented artists but
| also talented self promoters. i shudder for the future of
| art...
| pmoriarty wrote:
| Art is in no danger. There's an absolute glut of art,
| since making all sorts of art has never been easier. It's
| also never been easier to learn how to make art.
|
| It used to be that in order to be a photographer you had
| to buy an expensive camera and have access to a darkroom,
| or at least spend money to get your photos developed. Now
| you can take high quality photos with your phone, that
| everyone has, and no development is needed. So more
| people than ever are taking photos, many of them
| artistic. There's no shortage of photography and unless
| civilization collapses, never will be. If anything,
| there'll be more and more photography every year, and
| sharing it has gotten easier than ever.
|
| The same is even more true of video, which used to be
| even more expensive to create than photos, but now is
| just as easy and virtually free.
|
| Same with desktop publishing ever since cheap personal
| printers became available. It used to be that you had to
| either own a printing press or pay to have someone print
| your work for you. Now you can print it yourself on your
| personal printer, or just put it up online, skipping the
| printing step.
|
| Digital art creation programs have made creating visual
| art way more affordable, as now you don't have to pay for
| expensive physical art supplies.
|
| Same with digital music creation tools, etc...
|
| The many digital distribution platform, from Facebook, to
| Instagram, to Etsy, to Amazon have made publishing one's
| art super easy too. There's less need than ever for
| agents, publishers, or other middle men.
|
| All together, this has led to an enormous amount of
| creativity and art creation, with probably hundreds of
| millions of people becoming creators compared to what
| existed just 40 years ago, before the personal computer
| revolution or the internet boom.
|
| So I'm not worried in the least about art. There'll
| always be more than enough of it to go around.
|
| I'd love it if creators got paid for their work, but it's
| not at all essential for art to live or thrive. More than
| enough artists will continue to make art regardless.
| dageshi wrote:
| Then what's the issue with copyright?
|
| There's more art than ever, but yet the ability to have a
| legal protection in order to make money on your art is
| somehow a problem? How?
| pmoriarty wrote:
| Because people should not be going to jail for copying
| and sharing artwork (or bits, really). Throwing people in
| jail and ruining their lives is a tangible harm, and it's
| harmful to society to disallow the public to view, share,
| or remix art and literature unless they can afford to pay
| for it. Society and culture advance with the sharing of
| knowledge, while copyright runs directly counter to this.
|
| Meanwhile, there's no right to make money. It's an
| artificial scarcity model that mostly benefits
| corporations and middlemen along with a small minority of
| extremely popular artists, and once the artists die it
| doesn't even benefit them either but does continue to
| benefit corporations and middlemen.
|
| If creators want to keep control of their work they
| shouldn't publish it at all, but once they do there
| should be no artificial legal framework to imprison
| people that copy or share it.
|
| However, artists can still get paid by asking to be paid
| in advance through sites like patreon and kickstarter.
|
| For the rest, they can remain hobbyists.. and I see
| absolutely nothing wrong with that. As I said before,
| there's no shortage of art.
|
| In the system I'm advocating for, no one gets sent to
| jail and no one's lives are getting ruined for copying or
| sharing bit, art continues to be made, and artists
| continue to get paid (though now in advance rather than a
| legally mandated system of artificial scarcity).
| vidarh wrote:
| They already do. The average income from writing for
| novelists is low enough that the vast majority of
| published writers can not live off their writing alone.
|
| Outside a very tiny proportion of best sellers you need
| to expend significant efforts on promotion if the income
| matters to you.
|
| This is not new, or unique to literature, and never has
| been.
| watwut wrote:
| That is literally how art always worked.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| I will go even further and say the lifespan of the author
| should not be a factor at all. Death is random, and one
| author's work shouldn't get more protection just because they
| happened to have better genes.
|
| (This is not an argument in favor of extending the lifetime
| of copyright, which IMO is way too long. But the duration
| should be constant from the time of publication.)
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| An artist doesn't owe the world anything. If he didn't want to be
| associated with it, then leave it alone. Have some respect for
| the way a person chooses to present themselves to the world.
|
| The greediness of the contemporary public is really off-putting.
| It reminds me of how we dig up mummies and place them in museums;
| completely disregarding the actual human beings that lived and
| their cultural-religious beliefs, all so that we can stare at
| them in a museum for 30 seconds.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| As a huge Steinbeck fan, I do not want to read this book. I
| don't want to think of him as someone who wrote a warewolf
| novel - and he probably didn't want to think of himself that
| way either. At the time he would have written it he was very
| desperate for money so he would have written it in the hope
| that he might make a bit of money to keep going.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| Why is writing a werewolf novel such a stain on his
| reputation?
| sjansen wrote:
| I'm not opposed to sharing an author's unpublished works
| after death because their is value in allowing certain
| readers access.
|
| But after reading Douglas Adam's, I'm personally hesitant to
| read unpublished item from any other authors. After finishing
| The Salmon of Doubt I felt vaguely embarrassed, like I'd
| barged into his house and found him relaxing on the couch in
| his boxers. I'm a fan, not a scholar, and there were reasons
| he wasn't ready to share the material yet.
| vidarh wrote:
| I liked A Salmon of Doubt.
|
| If he'd published it himself in that state, I'd have found
| it embarrassing.
|
| But as a posthumous memorial that I knew from the outset
| would be unpolished, it was fine and a bit sad knowing it's
| never be finished.
|
| I think comes down to how well you're able to keep focus on
| that what you're reading is unfinished, and enjoying the
| glimpse of something raw.
| ghaff wrote:
| Are there any truly great posthumous novels other than
| maybe ones that were in essentially a final polish edit
| state? Hemingway's True at First Light wasn't bad but by
| Hemingway standards pretty so so.
| handrous wrote:
| Austen's _Persuasion_ is easily my favorite of her
| novels, and I believe it 's understood to have been not
| just a polish-edit away from ready for publication, but
| one or two content and punch-up passes, too (which
| reveals to me that I probably don't really _like_ the
| stuff she added to her other books in that stage).
| dfxm12 wrote:
| Whether you read the book or not, whether the public gets the
| chance to read the book or not, he is someone who wrote a
| werewolf novel. You can choose to ignore that fact if you
| want, but it makes no difference; it doesn't make him any
| worse of a writer. It doesn't make Cannery Row any less of a
| novel.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| People do things when they're desperate for money that
| they're not proud of. They certainly don't want to be
| remembered for those things. The fact that he wrote it
| under a pseudonym indicates that he didn't want to be
| associated with it.
| shard wrote:
| Writing under a pseudonym can be seen as brand
| management, so that the brand of one name does not leak
| to the brand of another. For example, Nora Roberts, the
| romance novelist, uses the pseudonym J.D. Robb when
| writing futuristic suspense novels. It may be as you said
| that he doesn't want to be associated with it, or it may
| be that he wants to keep the brands separate.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Women also used to write under male pseudonyms in order
| to get published.
|
| https://theculturetrip.com/north-
| america/usa/articles/12-fem...
| Beldin wrote:
| Out of curiosity, why do you use the word "novel"?
|
| I'll happily concede he wrote a werewolf story, but since
| it was never available as a book, I would not call it a
| novel.
| ssully wrote:
| Whether it is released or not, he is still someone who wrote
| a werewolf novel and if it is released it's not something
| that would detract from his other works or legacy.
| preordained wrote:
| > if it is released it's not something that would detract
| from his other works or legacy
|
| We don't know that. It could be a viral laughingstock that
| becomes the new primary association the public holds for
| the author (I doubt it, but never say never). If he didn't
| want it released, I'd say honor his wishes.
| ssully wrote:
| I don't know, there are plenty of prolific and well
| regarded authors (Stephen King comes to mind) that have
| plenty of stinkers in their catalogue.
| booleandilemma wrote:
| Why does it matter?
|
| Anyway, wait until you find out what he used to do in the
| bathroom.
| echlebek wrote:
| John Steinbeck is dead, and the world doesn't owe him anything
| either. No need to scold people who are interested in history.
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| If you don't have any respect for the past, don't expect the
| future to have any respect for you.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| Correct. I would understand if archaeologists two thousand
| years from dug me up and used me in a display about burial
| rituals. I don't think there's any expectation of privacy
| from that kind of thing.
| titzer wrote:
| Just declare bankruptcy and realize the future is full of
| psychos. This is why you should want to be cremated and
| have all semblance of your existence erased, because you
| have no idea what insanity they'll come up with for their
| own amusement. Also, don't upload your brain.
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| That's mostly because you live in a society which doesn't
| value burials or the afterlife and which worships
| information, which must be acquired at any cost.
|
| No ancient Egyptian Pharaoh would be happy with being dug
| up and placed in a glass box in a museum. They didn't
| build the pyramids because they were bored or wanted
| people to visit them as tourist attractions. To the very
| real human beings of ancient Egypt, becoming an
| anthropological exhibit would be deeply troubling, a
| massively negative outcome.
| havelhovel wrote:
| Surely you can't simultaneously support cultural
| relativism (misplaced as it may be for an American author
| being discussed by mostly Americans) and also speak for
| an entire group of people who existed thousands of years
| ago. The only thing we have empirical proof of is that
| the deceased don't complain about the treatment of their
| remains or estates.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| But I also wouldn't mind if future archaeologists
| entombed me in a pyramid, used my body as a comedic prop,
| burnt me for fuel, etc.
|
| At some point after death we should acknowledge we no
| longer have moral claims on the world.
| grenoire wrote:
| You're reinforcing OP's point: You don't care about
| afterlife. Don't have to, but recognise that many do, and
| have been for a _very_ long time.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| The Pharoh might be incensed we let his slaves go free,
| educated women, didn't worship Ra, etc. We don't respect
| any of ancient Egypt's beliefs except we should respect
| their reverence for the dead? Doesn't make sense to me.
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| Is it really that difficult to just leave the Pharaohs in
| the pyramids and not in a glass box at the museum?
| Doesn't really seem too much to me. They built the
| pyramids, after all.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| Yeah, it is that difficult. Huge numbers of people want
| to see the mummies and will pay for the privilege. The
| people with legal claims to the mummies make significant
| money.
|
| Denying the owners profits and the curious the chance to
| indulge their curiosity for the benefit of people a
| thousand years dead is a derangement of moral priorities.
| We should care more about the living than the long dead.
| We can learn from and about them.
| klyrs wrote:
| Point of fact, they did not build the pyramids. Their
| slaves did the work. Maybe let's split the difference --
| what proportion of the slaves would want to see the
| pharaoh's corpses defiled?
| WalterBright wrote:
| > slaves
|
| That's the Hollywood narrative. Archaeology points to
| them being free men. Though nobody knows for sure.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| I don't, and I don't. Why do I need respect if I'm dead?
|
| I mean, people are going to go through my stuff. They'll
| find sex toys, for example. Maybe my family will be able to
| be comfortable if they are able to profit from my stuff, or
| someone in the future find my stuff and get some
| satisfaction.
|
| Again, though, I'll be dead.
| m00x wrote:
| The only people for whom it really matters is their
| descendants or people who cared about them.
|
| The dead is gone, there is no difference for them if their
| image, or their bodies are disrespected.
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| Well, luckily the people who died fighting in World War 2
| cared about their society's descendants, otherwise why
| bother fighting and dying? If your future society doesn't
| care about you, why risk anything for them?
| WalterBright wrote:
| Fighting for the future is very different than fighting
| for the past.
|
| We've evolved to care about our descendants, not our
| ancestors.
| NineStarPoint wrote:
| To care for the state of future generations is
| worthwhile, because it is to give hope and happiness to
| them while they are living. I want all of humanity to
| live in as ideal a world as possible, and it's worth
| fighting in the present so that future humanity has a
| better world. And society should care for those who have
| sacrificed for it, while they are alive.
|
| Once I am dead though, there is no me here to respect any
| more. Death is complete separation from this world. The
| vast majority of people who have ever died are completely
| lost to memory, whether they wanted that fate or not. And
| for those we do still remember, they're long past having
| the ability to care at all what happens to what they left
| behind. Whether through nothingness or an afterlife, they
| are no longer here.
| watwut wrote:
| A lot of them were nazi. Many nazi fought that war. They
| have seen themselves as fighting for future.
|
| Majority of people dying were civilians.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| All the norms around burial culture are contrivances made up by
| humans and have little basis in the natural world. That the
| dead even deserve respect is similarly made-up.
|
| One's involuntary submission to the whims of the living is part
| of the process of death. If one does anything even remotely
| notable you can be assured that society will want something to
| do with it. There's no point in chastising the entire world
| because of it.
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| If that's your line of thought, then why stop at burials? All
| human culture has little basis in the natural world.
|
| Unless you're a Nihilist and Darwinist, I assume you think
| _some_ values are more important than others?
| tomc1985 wrote:
| There are some such values, but I recognize their fragility
| in the face of actual human behavior.
|
| And indeed, I think a lot of aspects of culture are dumb
| and that society would be better off without. It would be
| better if the world returned to the basics instead of
| endlessly wrapping itself around an axle of contrivances.
| Andrex wrote:
| > All the norms around burial culture are contrivances made
| up by humans and have little basis in the natural world. That
| the dead even deserve respect is similarly made-up.
|
| Not sure elephants, among other species, would agree.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| Culture rears its ugly head once again.
|
| The elephants might not agree but I'm certain that the
| cheetahs, tigers, hyenas, and all the other predators of
| the world would
| josephorjoe wrote:
| > The greediness of the contemporary public is really off-
| putting.
|
| Well put.
|
| This feels like some bizarre end game of "information wants to
| be free" where instead of railing against content owners
| expecting to be paid for content people are railing against the
| idea that content creators can have any control over their
| creations whatsoever.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| But they can't. Once the work is out there, any control that
| the author is given is an affordance. Trying to fight it is
| why we live in a world of draconian DRM and licensing-not-
| ownership
|
| To be clear: an artist's control of a work ends once it is in
| the hands of their audience.
| sincerely wrote:
| Well, the work in question is not "out there".
| duxup wrote:
| I suppose everyone wants to control how they're remembered /
| their public image.
|
| I'm not sure that is a right that anyone has.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| > all so that we can stare at them in a museum for 30 seconds
|
| So that we can study them, learn from them, and let them tell
| us their stories, so that they truly live on after death.
| ResearchCode wrote:
| Societies with high human capital respect the dead and won't
| seize upon the first opportunity to rob their graves
| (rationalizing as "learning" or whatever doesn't cut it).
| There's plenty of other material that was willfully published
| to learn from.
| bredren wrote:
| They respect _their_ dead. There is relatively minuscule
| respect paid to dead native people that lived in their land
| before they arrived.
| riversflow wrote:
| I disagree. I have extremely high respect for human
| capital, and genuinely feel disgusted that especially
| western society isn't working hard to improve the human
| condition at it's most basic level, i.e. Automation first.
|
| To me the long dead are meaningless, and the recently dead
| are mostly so. I have the utmost respect for the living,
| and those who are recently dead have people who care about
| their legacy. But the farther you go back you go, the less
| direct connection the dead have with the present, and the
| simple fact is that the dead are gone.
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| Pretty much the entirety of the modern world is built on
| the accumulation of ideas and knowledge acquired over
| thousands of years. Unless you are a hunter gatherer, you
| have a direct relationship to the long dead.
| riversflow wrote:
| Oh I agree 100%, I'm fully of the belief that we stand on
| the shoulders of giants, and that Social contract theory
| has merit; we owe society for the world we are born into.
| But owing society isn't the same as owing respect to
| individuals. We can't be burdened by the wishes of those
| long dead, they no longer exist and as a society we have
| to move on.
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| From their perspective, none of that would be relevant. They
| had certain beliefs and rather than respect them, we treat
| them like objects to gawk at.
| anbende wrote:
| Except that the mummy in the museum isn't a person. It's a
| collection of inanimate organic matter. There are no
| beliefs there to respect. They ended with the person's life
| thousands of years ago.
|
| I could see an argument made for modern remains as there
| are living people/descendants who have a strong connection
| with the burial beliefs and practices. But make no mistake,
| even in that case it is about the living and not the dead.
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| Sorry, but this is a modern anachronistic statement. To
| the people that lived, their remains were extremely
| important. They even built dozens of pyramids to house
| them, which again, have been reduced to a tourist
| attraction.
|
| The modern world has no respect for anything.
| anbende wrote:
| Those people are also gone and no longer have any beliefs
| or ideas that can be violated.
|
| Nothing we do today affects those people or their beliefs
| in any way. Those people no longer exist and cannot be
| harmed or protected. Ideas about respect and proper
| behavior around their landmarks only affects people who
| are alive. It is only important to the extent that it is
| important to us. It is clearly important to you but not
| others. So why should it matter to others if it doesn't?
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| Because it's a simple matter of recognizing other human
| beings and respecting their cultural achievements and
| desires. Just because they don't exist anymore doesn't
| mean they weren't humans worthy of our empathy.
|
| I hate to use this example, but your argument would also
| basically say a genocided people is completely
| unimportant and unworthy of respect, as they no longer
| exist either.
| anbende wrote:
| Thanks for your response. I'm trying to understand your
| position here, and I'm really not getting it.
|
| Aside from the obvious problem of their being living
| people who experienced the holocaust (so they still
| exist), this example seems to imply that I'm saying that
| there's no need for empathy and respect for the people
| who came before us. I don't think that anything I've said
| implies that. Instead what I'm saying is that the dead
| need no protection and can receive no pain or insult.
| Anything we do for "them" is really for "us", because
| they do not exist.
|
| >Because it's a simple matter of recognizing other human
| beings and respecting their cultural achievements and
| desires. Just because they don't exist anymore doesn't
| mean they weren't humans worthy of our empathy.
|
| You seem to be implying that not honoring the wishes of
| the dead is an empathic failure. How so? I can empathize
| with someone's wishes, understand where they are coming
| from, and even respect who they were. None of that
| implies that I owe their desires a place in the world
| now. And in fact as modern people we MUST make choices
| about what pieces of the past to revere, revise, or pave
| over. Otherwise the world becomes a mausoleum to the
| past.
| [deleted]
| exikyut wrote:
| What does "them" refer to here though?
|
| Our preferred projection of _them_ in our own image?
|
| Or a meeting-in-the-middle between you and an individual's
| preferred presentation of themselves?
|
| One of the reasons the Git version control system caught on
| is that it lets you rewrite history...
| curtis3389 wrote:
| What about Kafka?
| tiahura wrote:
| and Marcus Aurelius?
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| Difficult case but I still think the rights of the creator
| are more important to respect.
|
| There's also something kafkesque about the way his stories
| weren't destroyed, which makes me think that the story isn't
| as simple as it seems.
| justicezyx wrote:
| I don't know how Mr. Steinbeck still enjoyed his fame and legacy
| while being found as a major benefitciar of intellectual
| misconduct, and obviously belittle women.
|
| When he was writing the grapes of wraith, he was reading Sanora
| Babb's manuscript from his publisher friends. He was already an
| established writer, and managed to publish his own work heavily
| borrowed the structure and major plot from Sanora's work.
|
| And obviously, no publishers are willing to publish Snora's work,
| because Mr. Steinbeck is telling them he is writing one that is
| very similar (which is obvious, because he is essentially copy
| the book's story line). Ms. Babb's work is only published in
| 2004, 70 years later after its original completion in 1930s.
|
| I think Mr. Steinbeck probably deserve being stripped of his
| Nobel prize for this blatant misconduct.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whose_Names_Are_Unknown
| echelon wrote:
| I have _never even once_ heard this accusation. I skimmed his
| Wikipedia article and didn 't see a reference to any of this.
|
| Is there clear plagiarism? The Great Depression wasn't exactly
| an obscure topic and was still fresh in the minds of many
| people at the time.
|
| What is going on? Is this posthumous cancel culture?
|
| Wasn't it prudent to look for similar media and clear the wake?
| Publishing was a smaller, more difficult world back then and
| publishers wouldn't back two of the same thing.
|
| Wouldn't you drum up support for the novel you worked on?
| Especially after having struggled for _years_ as a manual
| laborer trying to make it? Would you willingly table your book
| that you worked on so that someone else could take your place?
|
| Is that malice?
|
| Unless there's clear evidence, it's like saying Marvel
| plagiarizes DC. And that Disney should be cancelled for
| scheduling their movie premieres around the best moviegoing
| dates. (Is that highly competitive? Sure. Evil? no...?)
| kingnight wrote:
| Answers to your questions might be in the Smithsonian mag
| article here:
|
| https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/forgotten-
| dust-b...
| bombcar wrote:
| This is why famously many artists will REFUSE to look at any
| unpublished works and why places like Disney will return
| scripts unread, etc.
| alligatorman wrote:
| It is mentioned on The Grapes of Wrath wiki page
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grapes_of_Wrath#Similariti.
| ..
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| > I have never even once heard this accusation.
|
| There's some information in the William Souder Biography of
| Steinbeck that came out last year. Though it wasn't presented
| as a clear-cut case of plagiarism there were definitely
| questions. He'd apparently had access to her manuscript for
| "Whose Names are Unknown" and he and Babb were traveling the
| migrant worker camps in Central California working on stories
| for various publications. They did appear to cross paths.
| I've yet to read "Whose Names are Unknown" to see how similar
| it might or might not be to "Grapes of Wrath".
| elliekelly wrote:
| The reason you've never heard of this accusation is because
| it was Babb who was wrongly "cancelled" soon after she wrote
| her novel. She was the subject of intense FBI scrutiny for
| her "leftist" writing and blacklisted by the "House Un-
| American Committee" so she fled to Mexico. She also dared to
| marry an Asian man as a white woman which was not just
| frowned upon at the time but illegal.
|
| Regardless, I think it's odd you find something utterly
| unbelievable simply because you haven't heard it until today.
| Surely the entire internet is full of true things that you,
| and I, and most people have never heard of? Not having heard
| a piece of information before doesn't make it any less
| credible.
| justicezyx wrote:
| Also her leftist tie was derived from her marriage to a
| Chinese man:
|
| """ Howe met his wife, a white woman named Sanora Babb,
| before World War II. They traveled to Paris in 1937 to
| marry, but their marriage was not recognized by the state
| of California until 1948, after the law banning interracial
| marriage was abolished.[5][13] Due to the ban, the "morals
| clause" in Howe's studio contracts prohibited him from
| publicly acknowledging his marriage to Babb. They would not
| cohabit due to his traditional Chinese views, so they had
| separate apartments in the same building.[14]
|
| During the early years of the House Un-American Activities
| Committee hearings, Babb was blacklisted due to supposedly
| having Communist ties from her marriage to Howe; she moved
| to Mexico City to protect the "graylisted" Howe from racial
| harassment.[5][15]
|
| Howe raised his godson, producer and director Martin Fong
| after Fong arrived in the United States. """
|
| From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Wong_Howe
| echelon wrote:
| That's so awful. It hurts to think about the pain she and
| her husband, let alone families like hers had to endure.
|
| I'm sorry for my tone. I had no idea.
| justicezyx wrote:
| Don't be, we all are learning. Nothing was set in stone.
| Even words carved on stone can erode and change.
| echelon wrote:
| Good points.
|
| > She was the subject of intense FBI scrutiny for her
| "leftist" writing and blacklisted by the "House Un-American
| Committee" so she fled to Mexico. She also dared to marry
| an Asian man as a white woman which was not just frowned
| upon at the time but illegal.
|
| That's awful. :(
| lucretian wrote:
| the original comment is itself perhaps over-confident in
| its accusation. as far as i can tell, the known facts
| about what materials steinbeck received of babb's are
| hazy. certainly seems suspicious though.
| bnralt wrote:
| The Wikipedia page you linked to doesn't make the claims that
| you are. It says that Babb volunteered for the FSA to help
| migrants, and that her supervisor Collins asked her to keep
| notes on her work there. Collins seems to have later shared the
| field work notes from her, as well as others, with Steinbeck
| when he was doing research. There's no claim that he read (or
| was even aware of) her manuscript, or that he dissuaded her
| work from being published (it says her publisher decided not to
| publish it after The Grapes of Wrath was successful).
|
| People can read the summaries of both if they like; there
| doesn't seem to be a lot of overlap other than they're both
| about downtrodden Okies trying to make it out West.
|
| Edit: Also worth noting that Steinbeck's nonfiction account of
| migrant workers in California, The Harvest Gypsies, was
| published two years before Babb began her volunteer work with
| the migrant farmers.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| _"As Steinbeck wrote Murder at Full Moon under a pseudonym and
| did not choose to publish the work during his lifetime, we uphold
| what Steinbeck had wanted," [the estate 's agents] said._
|
| This isn't true as the article states earlier that _Murder at
| Full Moon - has survived unseen in an archive ever since being
| rejected for publication in 1930._
|
| As this was never published, how does copyright law affect it?
| Will the estate have no say in the matter when the novel becomes
| 96 years old in a few years?
| devindotcom wrote:
| I have to imagine copyright has nothing to do with it, since it
| was never copyrighted. They can hold onto it for another
| century if they want.
| fastball wrote:
| That's not how copyright works, no? Copyright exists when you
| write something, regardless of where you put it.
| ghaff wrote:
| Now. Wasn't true then. But others who are probably more
| knowledgable than I are saying that older non-copyrighted
| work inherited the modern Berne regime automatically.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| One hasn't had to file for copyright for a very long time.
| It's automatic now.
| scratcheee wrote:
| copyright is automatic and implied, if someone somehow got a
| legal opportunity to see it, and managed to copy the work (or
| indeed if the publisher who originally refused it decided to
| publish it from their records), they would be breaking
| copyright from the original work regardless.
|
| But once the copyright runs out then the publisher can
| publish it regardless, and a viewer could quietly copy it and
| publish it, unless someone in the estate made altered copies
| for anyone viewing it, then the altered copies would have
| fresh copyright, confusing the whole issue.
| u9rptDjqLl0Pdcz wrote:
| I thought this was a change ca. 1980 or so?
| not2b wrote:
| 1989, when the US finally ratified the Berne Convention.
| But I think it was retroactive.
| jandrese wrote:
| It will fall into the public domain, but if the estate holds
| the only surviving copy it's kind of a moot point.
| bombcar wrote:
| I don't believe this is true if it were never released, since
| the copyright term starts upon publication.
|
| I am incorrect: https://copyright.cornell.edu/publicdomain
|
| It is lifetime of the author + 70 years.
| klyrs wrote:
| This is a really interesting question. If I send a
| manuscript to a publisher, the publisher declines, but a
| clerk of that publisher attempts to republish the work
| under their own name, is that not a copyright violation?
| The wording in [1, and link to "fixed"] suggests to me that
| the work is covered by copyright because the author
| conveyed it to a publisher with intent to publish.
|
| [1]
| https://www.lib.purdue.edu/uco/CopyrightBasics/basics.html
| toast0 wrote:
| Fixed in a tangible medium means recorded in some
| fashion. In a computer's non volatile storage, on paper,
| on a tape or record or CD or wax cylinder, etc. But, not
| simply performed for an audience (or oneself).
|
| Under modern copyright law, if it's a qualified work, and
| it's recorded, copyright begins then. No intent to
| publish or special marking or registration or other such
| ceremony is required. Marking and registration do have
| benefits in lawsuits about infringement, however.
|
| For works created before the modern automatic copyright,
| other rules probably apply.
| zerocrates wrote:
| Something created but not published before 1978 gets
| basically the "modern" copyright duration: life of the
| author plus 70 years, with a caveat that none of these
| would fall into the public domain until 2003. To
| encourage publication, if you _did_ publish a previously-
| unpublished pre-78 work before 2003, you got a bonus
| extension of that term until 2048.
|
| This was written before 1978, was not published before
| then, and not published before 2003 either, so it is
| protected by copyright for 70 years after Steinbeck's
| death: he died in 1968, so through 2038.
|
| As to the hypothetical unpublished work that the
| publisher takes and publishes as their own: with newly-
| created work nowadays its easy: the work was copyrighted
| at "fixation," no need to publish or intend to publish.
| Before 1978, the author had state-level common-law
| copyright in unpublished works that would have applied.
| bombcar wrote:
| Yes - everything you produce is instantly copyrighted
| nowadays - the question is when such would fall out.
| Likely if the clerk kept the copy until after you died,
| he'd get away with it.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| _if the estate holds the only surviving copy it 's kind of a
| moot point._
|
| They don't. It's currently in the Harry Ransom Center
| archives at UT. https://lithub.com/john-steinbeck-wrote-a-
| werewolf-murder-my...
| devindotcom wrote:
| This sort of thing is always tough. Sometimes estates truly do
| the opposite of an author's intent, such as with Tolkien's
| Beowulf. I believe it's on record that he never wanted it
| published.
|
| It's not so clear cut here; Steinbeck submitted it for
| publishing, got rejected, then seemingly spent years improving
| his art and produced his major works.
|
| I certainly don't blame him for not wanting to throw a werewolf
| murder mystery out there after being recognized for what he must
| consider his "real" work. But it was commonplace to destroy
| unwanted manuscripts or simply to say, don't publish it, or
| destroy it when I die, etc, and he didn't. To me it seems like
| license to print, as long as the context is explained in a good
| introduction. Scholars of the American novel will go nuts for it.
| jfengel wrote:
| It's not so much that Tolkien explicitly didn't want his
| Beowulf published, as that it's one of the many, many works
| that he started and was never satisfied with.
|
| Note that that category includes the _Silmarillion_ , which was
| cobbled together by his son Christopher. And Christopher rarely
| chose his father's latest efforts, preferring instead versions
| more compatible with the published _Lord of the Rings_.
|
| Christopher was chosen by his father for the job of literary
| executor. It's arguable whether JRR Tolkien really wanted him
| to publish every scrap the way he did, but they do form an
| extraordinary documentation of the extraordinary process of
| Tolkien's imagination.
|
| His Beowulf could be tinkered with forever because it's not
| really a translation. It's a hook on which to hang a lengthy
| series of scholarly footnotes, discussing almost every single
| word of the original.
|
| If you want to read Beowulf in translation, pick any other
| version. (I adore Maria Dahvana Headley's hilarious, insightful
| new version.) If you want to read Beowulf in the original, and
| want an exhaustive discussion of how it works, pick Tolkien's
| book -- which also includes a helpful prose gloss.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > on record that he never wanted it published
|
| One can control one's estate while alive. Once dead, the estate
| belongs to others, one's intent no longer incurs any obligation
| for others to adhere to.
|
| If someone never wants their manuscripts published, they should
| destroy them while they are alive.
| nickff wrote:
| Then why are wills permitted and enforced?
| nineplay wrote:
| It may be worth noting that William Faulkner wrote a murder
| mystery and threw a fit when he didn't win the Ellery Queen
| Mystery Magazine short story award. Steinbeck might not have
| felt that he was above genre fiction, but perhaps he thought
| the addition of a werewolf was a bridge too far.
|
| > What a commentary. In France I am the father of a literary
| movement. In Europe I am considered the best modern American,
| and among the first of all writers. In America, I eke out a
| hack's motion picture wages by winning second prize in a
| manufactured mystery story contest
|
| http://thepassingtramp.blogspot.com/2012/05/faulkner-vs-well...
|
| I read Faulkner's story and honestly the ending wasn't as
| satisfying as he might have thought. Wellman's story was
| probably better as a "murder mystery" even if the writing
| perhaps lacked some of Faulkner's polish. I thought some of
| Faulkner's other mysteries were better
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knight%27s_Gambit
| notsureaboutpg wrote:
| Can you recommend some Faulkner mysteries? I loved his style
| and the world he built and could always go for more.
| NoGravitas wrote:
| Wellman was one of the greats of pulp fiction (especially the
| Weird subgenre, on which he was a lasting influence), so it's
| not terribly surprising that he could wrangle a mystery story
| more effectively than a literary writer.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| > Steinbeck might not have felt that he was above genre
| fiction
|
| At the time he would have written it, he was quite hungry.
| Living off of income from manual labor with some extra
| contributions from his father. Perhaps he thought a warewolf
| mystery could sell a few books at the time, but as you
| suggest, later on that would've been embarrassing.
| bombcar wrote:
| The idea behind copyright itself is a give-and-take for
| society's benefit (it is good to give authors rights to their
| works to encourage publication, it is good to give the rights
| to the people at some point in exchange).
|
| Tolkien's is an interesting case, for with the Silmarillion he
| obviously wanted to publish it (he considered it a much better
| work than the Hobbit or the Lord of the Rings) but he also
| could never get it completed. His son took over and did his
| best to compile it. I suspect his Beowulf was similar - he did
| not feel it was up to his standards.
|
| At some point after death, and with due consideration to the
| heirs and others, I think the historical value of these things
| outweighs the personal.
| vlunkr wrote:
| It certainly is a more complex issue than some commenters are
| making it out to be. I think these things need to be analyzed
| on a case-by-case basis. I think both the intent of the
| author and the manner of presentation are important. With the
| Silmarillion and other Tolkien works they usually make it
| abundantly clear that it's not a finished work.
|
| As a counterexample, there was the Xscape album from Michael
| Jackson where they took decades-old demos, had producers make
| them sound like modern songs, and put his face and name on
| the cover like it was just a new album. (also the songs
| mostly suck) That seems like it benefits no one besides Sony.
| moomin wrote:
| Honestly that and "Michael" would have been better off as
| the original demos. I found "Behind the Mask" particularly
| interesting since that's the original version of the song
| as most people know it. (Also it's a cracking song and
| Jackson's contributions enhance it.)
| jandrese wrote:
| It may just not be all that good. The idea that it wasn't
| published because it was too lurid for the delicate sensibilities
| of the day sounds like wishful thinking to me.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| As a lover of turn of the century genre fiction, I imagine it's
| an attempt to save face more than any question of delicate
| sensibilities.
| klyrs wrote:
| When I read Neil Stephenson, I decided to go chronologically.
| The Big U is quite a bad book, but I enjoyed reading it, and
| appreciate the perspective I gained by seeing Stephenson grow
| as an author. Steinbeck fans will probably eat it up, even if
| it's objectively awful
| skykooler wrote:
| Much the same thing for reading Jim Butcher's Dresden Files
| series, since the first book is basically the first thing he
| wrote - you can really see the writing style grow over the
| course of the series.
| bredren wrote:
| Stephen King has a recent book, "Finders Keepers," that
| dramatizes the lost and found works of a fictional western
| literature author.
|
| Good page turner if you like that sort of thing. The characters
| are part of a minor connected set of stories, largely orbiting
| around a character Holly Gibney, which are also easy entertaining
| reading.
|
| https://stephenking.com/works/novel/finders-keepers.html
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