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Originally Posted by Harmon
If your plays are protected by copyright, you get royalties for performances by other companies. Performances of what? Of scripts you sell them. So you are much more likely to prepare a formal script to actually sell. The number of copies is not reduced - it is increased. Further, since your work is protected by law, you aren't as concerned about other companies stealing it if you allow copies of the script to circulate.
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Copyright would have given the author the right to sell his play to one company, which he did anyway. What you quoted has to do with what the company did next. They didn't keep the script, and that is why it didn't survive intact in time. They tried to keep the script from being copied, just like the publishers are using DRM today, and that is why few copies exist. They didn't want the script to circulate. If there would have been copyright laws then we wouldn't have had the copies we have today.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Harmon
What I am doing is pointing out that Helprin (and other authors) maintain that copyright protection makes it much more possible to create and promulgate an authoritative version of what the author creates. The kind of variences you are talking about have nothing to do with that point.
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The kind of variances I am talking about were brought up by you.
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Originally Posted by Harmon
And I will guarentee you that Shakespeare would have loved copyright, and mocked you in the famous play he never wrote, The Internet Pirates, or Love's Labour Paid For.
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You base this on what?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Harmon
Of course, had there been copyright, Shakespeare would have had to pay royalties himself...
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Or he would have been a pirate, or he wouldn't have had the money to pay the royalties and his works would have never been created.