Quote:
Originally Posted by hildea
As for the discussion about the right to not publish something, I have one real life example: One of my favourite authors used to write fan fiction. When she got her first deal for original fiction to be commercially published, she informed her fans that she would take down her fan fiction, made a PDF with all her fanworks available for a limited time, and then removed it all. It's very, very obvious that if I published any part of her fanworks anywhere, I'd be going against her wishes. The law should protect her wishes regarding her works.
|
I have no interest in fan fiction. But the idea of giving authors the right to take away freedom to read goes against the whole idea of giving the public more good books to read, which I consider the only legitimate purpose of copyright.
Do you think taking down the old books was in the public interest? If so, what interest was served? Some careerist consideration on the part of the author?
Now, it may be that she was ashamed of the her youthful writings for some good reason. I might sympathize personally. But I don't think copyright should be driven by sympathy. I also don't think it should be driven by fiction. Fiction authors so often write a whole book even without having any revenue stream lined up. I think it is nice that copyright lets some tiny number of fiction authors be able to write full-time. But there still would be a lot of good fiction sold (albeit at tiny prices) without copyright. By contrast, non-fiction requiring a lot of research probably won't be written unless someone is willing to pay out an advance on the basis of a proposal. And the death of newspapers will complete itself if they can't put up pay walls. That's where copyright is essential.