Will The Supreme Court Give Steinbeck's Heirs Back The Rights To Some Of His Works?
from the watch-this-space dept
Michael Scott points us to an interesting discussion over whether or not the Surpreme Court will take on a case concerning whether or not the rights on certain John Steinbeck books should be returned to his heirs. There have been a series of cases involving similar challenges. A quick summary is that copyright law in the US has long held the right for the original creators to terminate earlier grants of their copyright at certain defined periods of time. Basically, the reasoning was that early on in a content creator's career, they may need to grant the copyright to a large company (publisher, studio, etc.), but later on, after a certain amount of value is established, they should have the right to reclaim the copyright from whoever they granted it to. This seems problematic on a whole variety of levels, but it's the law.With changes to copyright law in 1976 and again in 1998, this right was once again reiterated -- along with a clause saying that this right to terminate such grants exists "notwithstanding any agreement to the contrary." The reasoning, supposedly, was that this would stop powerful publishers/studios from getting content creators to sign away such termination rights (which had happened prior to 1976). This has resulted in a series of lawsuits, where heirs of old content creators are trying to reclaim the rights to certain content. Some of the famous cases have involved the characters Superman and the dog Lassie.
The latest battle involves Steinbeck's heirs, and their desire to regain control of certain Steinback works -- mainly for the purpose of selling the movie rights. Different circuit courts have ruled in somewhat contradictory ways on the issue -- which is the sort of thing that is helpful in getting the Supreme Court interested.
That said, it's difficult to see either side having much in the way of moral high ground here. Historically, this wouldn't even be an issue, because the works of Steinbeck should be public domain material by now -- under the terms of copyright when he wrote them. The fact that they're not in the public domain is a huge travesty, and makes the squabbling over which individuals or organizations (who had nothing to do with the actual content in question) should get to profit from these works particularly silly.
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Filed Under: copyright, heirs, john steinbeck, termination
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I am sorry for being an idiot
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Re: I am sorry for being an idiot
But don't worry Steinbeck is probably a few reading levels above you and might put you to sleep if you tried.
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Re: I am sorry for being an idiot
Steinbeck is a famous American author who wrote classics like The Grapes of Wrath
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Sour Grapes of Wrath Eaten by Mice and Men
If my great grandfather built a house and sold it, could I make a claim on the house seventy years later?
Well, gee - I didn't realize it would become such a famous house with people making movies about it and stuff. Otherwise I would've asked for more money when I sold it.
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Sour Grapes of Wrath Eaten
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Re: Sour Grapes of Wrath Eaten by Mice and Men
Copyrights are just a sort of running score on who has power in a society, the present, the past or the future.
Currently, the past is winning.
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It is a highly technical issue, but one that has significance to pre-2978 copyright holders, and especially those holders who are eligible to qualify for extended copyright terms under the Copyright Term Extension Act (the so-called "Sonny Bono Act").
Of course, the Supreme Court has the discretion to determine whether or not to hear the case. Hence, Steinbeck's son and grandchild have retained Ted Olson, the former US Solicitor General and husband of one of the 9/11 vicims of the aircraft that crashed into the Pentagon. As the Solicitor General, Mr. Olson was the USG's point man for arguing cases before the Supreme Court, and has done so on innumerable occasions.
A decision on their petition is still many months away, and will likely draw numerous amicus briefs.
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Re:
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Oooooh ... I am very impressed.
It is a highly technical issue.
I'm probably too stupid to understand it.
So - seventy years ago my greatgrandfather wrote a story.
He then sold the story
And now I want to be paid for my greatgrandfathers work.
Yes, I am too stupid to understand the complexities of the situation ...
ahem .... phhhttttt
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Re: Re:
Based upon the comment, I believe this is likely an accurate assessment.
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Re: Re:
As for your grandfather's story, technically they didn't buy his story, they rented it. Copyright agreements are inappropriately listed as sales. They are not. They are the legal publishing of ideas generated by the originator. Like patents, they exist as intellectual property until developed (in the case of a story, published) you retain the rights to the idea while the company reserves the rights to all publishing as the agreement holds. The law post 1978 provides for the ability to renegotiate, which is no different than the laws that allow for renegotiation of rental agreements after a significant change has occurred on a property, either the discovery of minerals or refurbishment. Not unlike property, back in the hey day of forced intellectual property conversion, the publishing and production companies would force writers into taking bad deals for their works. Many times stealing intellectual property outright and using the laws to their advantage. The legal change was a way to recoup from these disadvantageous deals. In many cases they would force authors to give them all rights and ownership for the price other authors were getting paid for contractual publishing. To think of this in terms of physical property they were buying the house for the price of one months rent. And if the author refused they weren't above strong-arming or publishing freezes where they would have a gentleman's agreement with all the other publishing houses to prevent some authors from publishing. The benefits of the law outweigh the problems.
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What about stolen copyrights?
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Re: What about stolen copyrights?
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Re: Re: What about stolen copyrights?
Justice, does it make any difference? Only if you want to stop crime, drug addiction, and sexual perversion in your lifetime, because I can do that. I have done that. It's easy to fix people's problems. It's easy to be fair to people, too. Sometimes I think that nobody takes any interest out of fear, self-interest, or self-conceit. But may be it's God. God does not reward the righteous, He enriches the pretentious, and forgives those who trespass against us and all things are in His way. Amen? Amen.
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Shorter simpler copyrights
If 25 years of monopoly on your work isn't long enough, who do you think you are? If someone else has a similar idea and publishes it than the market seems to have good competition, 'rip offs' should be decided in the court of public opinion, infractions of that nature will either sell because they are a superior product (which should therefore win on merit), or cost those involved for trying to rip off consumers. It is literally the copying part, not the similarity part, which harms the market and incentive.
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Re: Shorter simpler copyrights
Personally, I would choose to release older works to either the public domain or creative commons long before my death. As long as I was still writing, having older works read more widely could only help sales on future works.
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Re: Shorter simpler copyrights
Of course a print run doesn't last 25 years. If a print run lasted 25 years, that book is probably junk to begin with. In publishing a print run is the "edition" of the book. For a company to have a long print run would mean that its book is bad. For instance, any harlequin romance probably only has a single print run. Whereas Of Mice and Men was in it's seventh edition within three years of it's printing and because of the publishing business decision to change it's practices there is no practical way to determine which edition we are in today. At best guess there are 8 current editions or print runs, and 23 that ran between 1980 and 1995. And at his death there were at least 15 editions making this year at minimum 46 editions of the book. That's a pretty good run on a work. As for older books having short runs it depends on the work, the author, and yes even public opinion. Conan for instance had a very limited number of editions as it was a pulp novel, yet 50 years later it was sold as a movie. If Howard was still alive, by the rules of copyright back then, he would not have the right to his idea being used in a movie, whereas lengthy copyright laws made it possible if he had not killed himself to be paid for the movie rights.
Really no one loses with lengthy copyrights as most authors, if what they say is true, only sue within the first 5 years of their work. And there has been little or no success in suing for rights to works with similar themes or ideas. Literally copyright is meant to impede infringement where a publishing house steals your work outright, not when they publish similar works. The only people who have successfully sued and won when they sued for infringement by a competitor have sued when the competition exactly quotes an author, or if the copyright infringement coincided to trademark infringement like Dungeons and dragons during the eighties.
As for book print runs, of the 30,000 or so books being published yearly for public consumption, according to the press dockets for the big three publishing houses given to congress regarding copyrights, every single one of the non-mass markets will have at least three print runs, and 1/2 of the mass markets are themselves newer editions of older books, making the number of printed books with limited runs insignificant. And according to the same publishing houses for a highly praised book a publishing house may make a profit after 5 years. For most other works they do not see profits for 20-25 years. If copyright was shortened to 25 years it would not be profitable for most publishing companies to purchase the rights of 90% of the works they publish, meaning they would never purchase them.
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A concern leveled against copyright is that such rights, while originating with an author, are typically transferred to a corporation that exploits the copyright for what is now an incredibly long duration. Once transferred the author thereafter receives "diddly". Termination rights, set forth at 17 USC 304, are intended to address this by providing an author or his heirs the opportunity to reclaim the copyright, providing them the potential of perhaps receiving a benefit in excess of "diddly".
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Follow the Constitution
Personally, I don't see how giving grandchildren the right to profit from previously sold works follows along with the Constitution, but IANAL.
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Copyright
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Copyright
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similar situation in an EU country
Spain has a statutory limit on the duration of publishing contracts, that cannot last longer than 15 years (and 10 years if the author doesn't get a fixed amount of money, but a percentage of each work sold).
This has been so since the 1987 copyright reform in Spain. I guess this might be similar in other EU member states and I find it an excellent way to prevent abuses from editors. In fact, I have heard of a case (I'm not a lawyer myself) of a book published in Spain in 1982 (and so regulated by the old law) that got out of print and that the university could prevent publication until the work will pass into the public domain (the heirs will have to negotiate to be able to publish the book again). This abuse could have been avoided if the book would have been published after 1987.
Another interesting feature of such a provision is the ability to publish electronic editions of your work, when in the vast majority of cases, the work has no commercial life anymore.
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creation of an original work
I like this idea because once in public domain it would get a much broader audience. I don't think Hemingways daughters should get royalties from "The Old Man and the Sea". YY
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Irony?
I recall in his autobiographical "Travels with Charlie," he wrote something about how he wasn't terribly concerned about his descendants' futures, with the implication being that they needed to get by on their own.
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Imbalanced Copyright Laws
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