Quote:
Originally Posted by speakingtohe
Perhaps I was perhaps being a bit of a snotrag. I should have said derivative work instead of remix. I stupidly thought remix was more of a cut and pasting thing.
And of course almost everything has been said and done before.
The point is was trying to make was that there are numerous authors who manage to produce material that does not violate copyright, and numerous others who use copyrighted characters such as Sherlock Holmes and pay the fee to the rights holders.
And to state what I put so poorly in another way, the people who I referred to as want to bes are the many who cannot create a work without borrowing so heavily from another work that they would be violating copyright.
Lots of people have paid to use the name Sherlock Holmes in some pretty good books that do not draw heavily on the original books. And lots of heavily derivative works are pretty good as well. I just do not see that society has benefitted greatly from these books good as they are, never mind from the almost direct copies and clones that would emerge if copyright was done away with or shortened significantly.
Too many Twilight clones already IMO but perhaps you think differently?
Helen
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There are some wonderful pieces of literature that would have never existed without the public domain. For example, Rozencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead is essentially a hidden set of acts in Hamlet, and it's a wonderful play that draws and builds on Shakespeare's words, characters and ideas. And there are dozens more movies, books and plays where those came from, from Hamlet alone! These works are great on their own, and in turn make Hamlet itself even greater. The free use of that play is fundamental in that creativity.
I doubt anyone would suggest that copyright should be abolished entirely, so Twilight clones would not be much of an issue. In a fair arrangement, the time would come long after the market was still heavily demanding Twilight or books like it. Does anyone really think that letting the 1930's and 1940's into the 2014 public domain suddenly allow a flood of fads from those periods to resurface?