Quote:
Originally Posted by eschwartz
Quote:
Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg
. . . Living leaders who also are authors, including Angela Merkel, GW Bush, and Barack Obama, don't do it. Should publishers, and self-published authors, who quote from their writings have to pay them off as well?
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If the copyright holder desires thusly, why on earth not? |
It gets to the fundamental value of a free press in providing a check on political leaders. And Random House is one of said free presses.
Given the decline of newspapers, book-length journalism is more important than ever, and shouldn't be subject to making payments to the public figures under examination.
Quote:
Originally Posted by eschwartz
Public posting to forums implicitly gives authorizes people to quote you completely, and let us not forget that the Reply feature encourages people to fully quote you.
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I'd then say that when a public figure like Joseph Goebbels, or unlike him, keeps unpublished (in his lifetime) diaries, the public figure reasonably expects future historians to quote from them without his heirs getting a pay off.
Now, if the quotes were from books prepared for commercial publication, I'd still be against Random House paying off politicians, democratic or otherwise, or their heirs, for the quotes in critical biographies. But in terms of there being no expectation of the writing ever getting financial compensation, posts here do have a family resemblance to diary entries.