Mark Twain: Copyright Maximalist Who Also Believed That Nearly All Human Utterances Were Plagiarism?
from the contradiction-or-satire? dept
In copyright circles, Mark Twain's speech to Congress in 1906 is well known as being the point at which he made clear his desire that copyright should be vastly expanded to make sure his kids kept earning money:My copyrights produce to me annually a good deal more money than I have any use for. But those children of mine have use for that. I can take care of myself as long as I live. I know half a dozen trades, and I can invent a half a dozen more. I can get along. But I like the fifty years' extension, because that benefits my two daughter, who are not as competent to earn a living as I am, because I have carefully raised them as young ladies, who don't know anything and can't do anything. So I hope Congress will extend to them that charity which they have failed to get from me.He later argues for infinite copyright:
The English idea of copyright, as I found, was different, when I was before the committee of the House of Lords, composed of seven members I should say. The spokesman was a very able man, Lord Thring, a man of great reputation, but he didn't know anything about copyright and publishing. Naturally be didn't, because he hadn't been brought up to this trade. It is only people who have had intimate personal experience with the triumphs and griefs of an occupation who know how to treat it and get what is justly due.Some have argued, somewhat convincingly, that Twain as actually doing a somewhat brilliant satire, which not everyone understood. That would be awesome, if true, and there are some hints that it may very well be. However, it does appear that Twain himself was somewhat more conflicted on this particular issue. Siva Vaidhyanathan has an entire chapter (pdf) of his excellent book, Copyrights and Copyrwrongs, devoted to Twain's fluctuating views on copyright. However, he does suggest that later on in life -- from 1898 onward basically -- Twain appeared to be a strong maximalist.
Now that gentleman had no purpose or desire in the world to rob anybody or anything, but this was the proposition--fifty years extension--and he asked me what I thought the limit of copyright ought to be.
"Well," I said, "perpetuity." I thought it ought to last forever.
So it's interesting to then discover, via Joe Betsill, that during that same period, Twain argued that "the substance, the bulk, the actual and valuable material of all human utterances—is plagiarism" and that this wasn't a bad thing. The specifics are that Twain was writing a letter to Helen Keller, who a decade earlier (at 12-years of age) had just gone through a controversy in which she was accused of plagiarizing heavily from another book for her own work, The Frost King. Twain wrote to Keller, with whom he was friendly, after learning about the plagiarism accusations:
Oh, dear me, how unspeakably funny and owlishly idiotic and grotesque was that "plagiarism" farce! As if there was much of anything in any human utterance, oral or written, except plagiarism! The kernel, the soul—let us go further and say the substance, the bulk, the actual and valuable material of all human utterances—is plagiarism. For substantially all ideas are second-hand, consciously and unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources, and daily use by the garnerer with a pride and satisfaction born of the superstition that he originated them; whereas there is not a rag of originality about them anywhere except the little discoloration they get from his mental and moral calibre and his temperament, and which is revealed in characteristics of phrasing. When a great orator makes a great speech you are listening to ten centuries and ten thousand men—but we call it his speech, and really some exceedingly small portion of it is his. But not enough to signify. It is merely a Waterloo. It is Wellington's battle, in some degree, and we call it his; but there are others that contributed. It takes a thousand men to invent a telegraph, or a steam engine, or a phonograph, or a telephone or any other important thing—and the last man gets the credit and we forget the others. He added his little mite—that is all he did. These object lessons should teach us that ninety-nine parts of all things that proceed from the intellect are plagiarisms, pure and simple; and the lesson ought to make us modest. But nothing can do that.That was sent in 1903. Yet just three years later, he was arguing to Congress that ideas were property and should remain in the possession of those that created them forever:
Then why don't we unwittingly reproduce the phrasing of a story, as well as the story itself? It can hardly happen—to the extent of fifty words except in the case of a child; its memory-tablet is not lumbered with impressions, and the actual language can have graving-room there, and preserve the language a year or two, but a grown person's memory-tablet is a palimpsest, with hardly a bare space upon which to engrave a phrase. It must be a very rare thing that a whole page gets so sharply printed on a man's mind, by a single reading, that it will stay long enough to turn up some time or other to be mistaken by him for his own. No doubt we are constantly littering our literature with disconnected sentences borrowed from books at some unremembered time and now imagined to be our own, but that is about the most we can do. In 1866 I read Dr. Holmes's poems, in the Sandwich Islands. A year and a half later I stole his dedication, without knowing it, and used it to dedicate my "Innocents Abroad" with. Then years afterward I was talking with Dr. Holmes about it. He was not an ignorant ass—no, not he; he was not a collection of decayed human turnips, like your "Plagiarism Court;" and so when I said, "I know now where I stole it, but whom did you steal it from," he said, "I don't remember; I only know I stole it from somebody, because I have never originated anything altogether myself, nor met anyone who had."
To think of those solemn donkeys breaking a little child's heart with their ignorant rubbish about plagiarism! I couldn't sleep for blaspheming about it last night. Why, their whole lives, their whole histories, all their learning, all their thoughts, all their opinions were one solid rock of plagiarism, and they didn't know it and never suspected it. A gang of dull and hoary pirates piously setting themselves the task of disciplining and purifying a kitten that they think they've caught filching a chop! Oh, dam—
So if I could have convinced that gentleman that a book which does consist solely of ideas, from the base to the summit, then that would have been the best argument in the world that it is property, like any other property, and should not be put under the ban of any restriction, but that it should be the property of that man and his heirs forever and ever, just as a butcher shop would be, or--I don't care--anything, I don't care what it is. It all has the same basis. The law should recognize the right of perpetuity in this and every other kind of property.Now, plagiarism and copyright are not exact equivalents -- though there can (and often is) significant overlap. But it's difficult to see how the same person can reasonably argue both points. Perhaps that lends some credence to the claims that the Congressional hearing was, in fact, satire. Either way, I think I like the 1903 Mark Twain waxing poetically on how all ideas are plagiarism much more than the 1906 Mark Twain whining about how his children are too useless to do anything and need to keep making money from his books long after he's dead.
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Filed Under: copying, helen keller, mark twain, plagiarism
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UMAD CRsupporters? Ur children's are trash, says Mark Twain.
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Difference Between Twain and Masnick
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Re: Difference Between Twain and Masnick
I think its time for you to take a trip to IRC and get some seasoning as a troll, so you can learn to be more effective in the real world of trolling.
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Re: Difference Between Twain and Masnick
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Re: Difference Between Twain and Masnick
Jealousy suits you well.
(Better than that cheap suit in your photo, anyway.)
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Re: Difference Between Twain and Masnick
Thanks for crawling out from under your rock the day before Mother's Day. I didn't know you actually had one of those.
(That insult is plagiarized but it sooooo useful in situations like this!)
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Re: Re: Difference Between Twain and Masnick
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If that's not satire, I don't know what is. Does anyone think he would literally stand before Congress and, in all seriousness, speak about his daughters like that?
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Mickey Mouse is less central to the lives of kids today than he was when I was young. In 50 years, will he still be relevant at all? Or will he have collapsed under the weight of all the characters who get free advertising through the internet equivalent of word of mouth?
We as creators will always have to wrestle our internal demons of desire for control, but we don't have to let greedy corporations sit like the devil on our shoulders, telling us to make unrealistic choices and alienate our fanbases.
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Though to be perfectly honest, his Congressional speech has all the hallmarks of a Twain in full sarcasm mode.
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Life has always been a double edge sword of which we stab or prick ourselves with daily.
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its a bit disturbing to see a woman buying her kids pedobear teddybears and shirts.....but funny as well.....
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Keep it classy, my man.
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Because judging them based on ALL of their actions, and not just the ones that paint them in the light we prefer?
THAT is unforgivable.
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It makes sense
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In today's vernacular, stripped of its elegance, he was telling Congress "Thank you so very much for deigning to provide me a bit more time associated with all of my literary works, you arrogant arses. Hey, I have an idea. Why don't you set limited timeframes for the ownership of everything else that does not comprise literary works? If what you are doing is a grand idea for what I do, why not apply it as well across the board?"
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Charles Dickens had little use for copyright extremism in the United States. As far as he was concerned, in modern parlance, the entire American publishing industry were pirates because they didn't respect his copyrights on books which sold by the shipload in the States and which he didn't make a dime from.
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Sec.5 And be it further enacted, That nothing in this act shall be construed to extend to prohibit the importation or vending, Reprinting or publishing within the United States, of any map, chart, book or books, written, printed, or published by any person not a citizen of the
United States, in foreign parts or places without the jurisdiction of the United States.
Copyright was available for persons who were not citizens of the United States if the above conditions were met.
What many may not realize is that in many cases US publishers did remit monies to the authors of works that were not secured under US law. While they may have had the right to publish and distribute with impunity, many chose not to rely upon the letter of the law to "screw" the foreign authors.
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All I'm saying is that legal or not, and I'm aware that it was entirely legal, in today's terms the American publishing industry of the time were pirates in the opinion of rights holders who were citizens of other countries.
Secondarily that having "found religion" concerning respecting international IP in the late 1960s, if memory serves, that the United States now wants to export the extremist views of the USCofC, Hollywood, American publishers and the likes of our good buddy Ronald J. Riley to to the rest of the planet is just a touch hypocritical.
Despite the fact that Dickens made more money touring the States than he did from his copyrights on books sold in the British Empire (most of those, outside the UK itself, in Canada, Australia and New Zealand) he hated what he felt US publishers were doing to him by not remitting. (Still Dickens did illustrate some of the axioms that Mike repeats here about competition outside of the mamma's dress of IP law and make a good living at it.)
Other countries and artistic communities have long memories about things like who "pirated", even legally, in the decades before the Internet. Particularly legally. People are funny that way.
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One obvious aspect of US copyright law that gives many "heartburn" is the DMCA, with likely most of them believing that the DMCA is original to the US. Actually, it is not. The issues addressed in the DMCA find their genesis in a pair of treaties associated with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). While there are strong, diverging opinions on many of the matters addressed in the DMCA, it is generally acknowledged that its "safe harbor" provisions were beneficial improvements and have found favor within the European Union. Interestingly, it is posited that the "anti-circumvention" provisions in the DMCA are less restrictive that what are the EU's counterpart provisions.
Thus, when I see all this righteous indignation expressed by many in the internet crowd, especially within the EU, about the US being a copyright bully in the international arena, I have to wonder if any of them are even aware of where these provisions of copyright law originated. It seems somewhat farcical for the EU Parliment to whine about ACTA when it bears a significant amount of the responsiblity for having created them in the first place. Europe is rich with history, but apparently the recollection of legal history is not one of its strong suits.
One can pick all day at specific provisions of US law, but in my view what is proposed to be exported from the US is a body of legal principles that in substantial measure ameliorate some of the international excesses that were necessarily imported when the US finally agreed to join Berne.
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While they didn't help by creating the fundamental groundwork, I don't think they can be blamed for 'causing' it. The US is the one who decided that none of it was enough and more had to be done in all sectors of IP.
It's arguable that asking for some basis of unified IP protection is akin to completely locking down the entire system. There is a middle ground that exists between full-on police-state copyright enforcement and total IP anarchy.
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To say that the US is now "exporting" is not really accurate. "Re-exporting" would be a more appropriate term.
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Why you, Mr. Masnick, think there's some contradiction in his two very different lines of thinking -- one on plagiarism and one on copyright -- is beyond me. And how you could categorize his very excellent reasoning as whining is also beyond me. The clarity of it, when compared with most political arguments, is very refreshing to me.
So, why not remove the limitation on copyright, as he suggests? Or, perhaps, limit it to the life of the blood-line, until no heir to the throne comes forth, as it were? What would be the down side, other than that those media corporations which you, Mr. Masnick, are always complaining about, would not have any right to profiteer off work that is not their own?
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So, the fact is that he wants to be compensated for his original work that he also admits is just an amalgam of other peoples work which he plagiarized. The argument doesn't really make sense.
I just wish people would treat copyright law as it should be. Not as some right to benefit from every copy made from a piece of work you did, meaning that he is getting money from every book that sells, when his actual work was in writing only one, but as a privilege given to them by the government to help them temporarily earn money for their creative works helping to give individuals more incentive to create, and ultimately, to give the public more to learn from.
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More problematic is the case for ideas, you can't own them forever, that implies that others who have the same idea and got there by themselves have no rights to what they thought, you are depriving further generations of their own benefits and that is not human, normal, moral or sensible in anyway, that is why Mr. Masnick correctly pointed out Mark Twain's double speak, he knew that he could not create anything without having stole from others a thousand times and still had the gal to go in front of congress and lobby for perpetuity for a granted monopoly, the man clearly was cognitive dissonant to say the least, giving him the benefit of the doubt because the alternative is that he knew what he was asking and he didn't care which makes him a douche.
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Indians invented hospitals, dentistry, the zero, plastic surgery and a lot of other things, how do you think other countries would feel to have to pay royalties for the use of those inventions?
Oh that is right nobody would do it.
Mark Twain was obviously a sad man, for whatever reasons he had probably because in the US nobody cared about copyrights at the time and they stole everything, which is why there is a publishing industry in this country to begin with otherwise Americans probably have British publishers in power today.
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http://archive.org/details/PimpsAndFerretsCopyrightAndCultureInTheUnitedStates1831-1891
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It was clearly satire, not a sincere desire to "protect his daughters". If taking care of his daughters was his chief concern, he would have protected them by giving them the necessary tools, skills, and even money himself instead of leaving them so bereft of these things that they need a kind of welfare to survive.
Oh, but wait, one daughter, Clara, was a successful concert singer. Another, Susy, was a successful actress, and the third suffered from epilepsy, was cared for by the family, and died at the age of 29.
So none of them needed perpetual royalties to "protect them".
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For one the morals and customs of the day were completely different, women had no rights at the time, they were not viewed as working people, they didn't need a job they needed to be ladies and that is what he said there.
Those were different times I there is a very good chance that this is not a joke or satire, it looks ridiculous because today we think different about things but in those days those words would not be seen as funny.
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We haven't changed all that much it turns out.
Reading for "tone of voice" from the quote I'd say he was still in full satire mode when he said it. After all it's well known that he had no use for Congress and little more for his publishers.
Like today he could count on the majority of congress critters being so full of self-importance that they'd miss satire even if he unloaded with a full broadside of it.
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Perhaps so, but in the case if Clemen's daughters, they did in fact have successful careers for themselves, so his description of his daughters situation was factually inaccurate. Thus, he's either lying or satirizing.
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Twain/Clemens
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And this is proof that he knew it, people back then knew it, and people still know it to this day:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVzOcuyN0JA
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Mark Twain was being entirely serious, whereas Samuel Clements was being highly sarcastic
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Pirates!
To think of those solemn donkeys breaking a little child's heart with their ignorant rubbish about plagiarism! I couldn't sleep for blaspheming about it last night. Why, their whole lives, their whole histories, all their learning, all their thoughts, all their opinions were one solid rock of plagiarism, and they didn't know it and never suspected it. A gang of dull and hoary pirates piously setting themselves the task of disciplining and purifying a kitten that they think they've caught filching a chop! Oh, dam—
I think I'll call IP maximalists "hoary pirates" from now on. ;-)
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Of course he can
Self interest is a powerful motivation, which is why an "independent" judge and jury and not victims of crime get to decide on guilt and set the punishment. There is always a problem when the people with the most direct interest get to set the boundaries. Objectivity in law is dying a sad, painful and drawn out death in most western democracies.
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No offence intended to anyone who takes this speech seriously, but with a sentence like this I cannot imagine any man, let alone Mark Twain, giving it outside the context of satire.
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Twain knew that as soon as his work went to public domain the publishers were going to be making money off of his book, since the no longer had to ask permission or even send royalties.
they were the criminals in his mind, the leeches as it were.
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Dickens went to his grave considering the US publishing industry nothing more than what the American (and other) publishing industry today would call pirates. On the other side of that equation is the reality that Dickens made a tidy sum of money touring the United States as did many other British authors of the period. More than he'd ever have made on his copyrights.
Clemens himself would make more from his tours and live appearances across North America and Europe that he'd make on his copyrights alone.
Twain was intelligent enough to know that the extension of copyright to 50 years that he'd made so much fun of was not what copyright was intended for but he'd take it if congress critters were corrupt enough to pass it. After all there were those uneducated and useless daughters of his to consider. In an era where educating girls was considered a waste because they were doomed to end up barefoot and pregnant, chained to the kitchen. And clearly cooking wasn't a marketable skill.
It's sad that Twain made the same arguments about "perpetual" copyright while satirizing them in Congressional testimony are used today to defend the notion that heirs to an author should profit on their ancestor's talent alone, if possible. No need for creativity, talent or skill for them! Just the royalty cheques, please and thank you.
We've come such a long way, haven't we? ;-)
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Twain's Money Woes
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This seems to be a rather perfect summary of his feelings on the matter. Which leads me to believe that his speech was satirical or he believes that IP is the only way to make people modest about the things they create.
That last conclusion may be a side effect of the first one.
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Hellen Keller's handshake
" The guests were brought one after another and introduced to her.
As she shook hands with each she took her hand away and laid her
fingers lightly against Miss Sullivan’s lips, who spoke against them
the person’s name. When a name was difficult, Miss Sullivan not only
spoke it against Helen’s fingers but spelled it upon Helen’s hand with
her own fingers – stenographically, apparently for the swiftness of
the operation was suggestive of that.…
" After a couple of hours spent very pleasantly, some one asked if
Helen would remember the feel of the hands of the company after this
considerable interval of time, and be able to discriminate the hands
and name the possessors of them. Miss Sullivan said “Oh she will have
no difficulty about that.” So the company filed past, shook hands in
turn, and with each handshake Helen greeted the owner of the hand
pleasantly and spoke the name that belonged to it without hesitation."
Wouldn't it be just dandy if our own works were as carefully questioned and examined as a handshake with Hellen Keller? Innocent plagiarism is protected by Word Neutrality. We agree everything we create has a sense of character that reflects on our entire life. We're putting everything one may attribute to us into a single piece. I think Twain only wanted to keep a copyright cemented in stone as far as it made up his character, not his words. I think we need to stop thinking of copyright extensions as a bad thing. It's patent extensions that we need to worry about. Patents don't consider character, only facts. The fact remains though; just who copied from whom? This is what I like so much about the GNU Public License. Everything's documented. Expand that paradigm into commit logs, then we have a highly detailed history of programming in general. If that's the case, then we should have every tool to figure out just whom we have copied from.
For every handshake with Hellen Keller we have poetry and words. You can't uncopyright that.
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you're missing the point!
They don't get a penny from that money..
Should we completely cancel copyrights and have everything created get stolen and SOLD for profit, without compensating the original creator?
It's not about ideas - these cannot be copyrighted. But actual creative works? Why would a writer let someone claim ownership on his hard work and profit from it, while he still struggles to pay his/her rent?
Get over yourself - it's not about the freedom of speech, it's about a person's right to make sure NOBODY is profiting from his work unless he says so.
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Nice astroturfing for your site, though; did you pay for the privilege to advertise?
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Breakdown of Society
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This is either a very good piece of satire or one of the poorest justifications for copyright extension I've ever seen.
Now on the subject of copyright, my beef with it is less about length and more about fair use, especially within the context of education.
While currently we're still enjoying some good will from most copyright owners in the form of educational discounts, it wasn't that long ago that you had to pay full price to use anything at all.
I fear that with the deepening of this global financial meltdown those days will come back, and poorer students will be once more forced to choose between breaking the law and getting a sub-standard education that leaves them unprepared.
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