Speakin o'piracy....

[unixronin]

... I do be noticin' somethin' of late that do annoy me consibader ... considaberab ... consabid ... Oh, devil take that word.  Anyway, it do annoy me much, it do.

See, it do go like this.  Ye takes an old story as everyone knows, like There Was An Old Landlubber Woman As Swallered A Fly, and ye changes the names of all the animals as she swallers, right?  An' then ye takes it ter a book-publicker, see, and they gives ye lots o' money and tells everyone as 'ow it's a wonderful new story.  Or ye takes Goldilocks an t' Three Bears, and ye doesn't change one bit o'the story, but ye just changes a few words here and there when it do be describin' stuff, like ye changes 'black sails' to 'red sails', only not with sails, iffen ye knows what I be meanin'.  And ye takes it ter a book-publicker, and they gives ye lots o' money, and afore ye knows what, it do be gettin' showered with awards and declared a Notable Book or some such bilge-rot.  And fer what, says I?  Or then again, ye be's going to one o'they fancy colleges, an' be writin' yerself a paper, and ye copies a pragaraph or two from sommat as somebody else wrote, and ye doesn't bother to say as ye copied it, follow me?  And they be callin' it plagiarism, and throwin' ye out on yer ear, and tellin' ye to never darken their doors again.  Or ye be writin' for a newspaper, and ye do copy a piece what some other scrivener do 'ave wrote, and not tell as 'ow it do be 'is work, and that do be plagiarizin' too.  And ye better be believin' thy job do be in jeopardy iffen ye get caught, ye scurvy swabbie!

So what I do want to be knowin' is this, me hearties.  'Ow come that when a lad in college do it, it do be plagiarism, but when an author do it for money, it do be award-winnin' literatchur?  One standard for all, says I.  What be sauce for the goose, do be sauce for the gander, iffen ye know what I do mean!  This business o' takin' good old Grimm's fairy tales an' filin' the sea-ree-ual numbers offen 'em don't be real authorin', it do be copyin' an' stealin', just like what they do call plagiarizin' if it do 'appen somewheres else.  It do be enough to make an honest pirate be blushin', I tell 'ee!  Why, it do be no better'n copyin' another pyrate's treasure map, changin' a few lines, and be passin' it off as thy own!  And ain't no treasure at the end of a copied map, neither.  But it do seem there be treasure at the end o' a copied book, as long as the original scrivener be fast away in Davy Jones' locker....

Now to be reprintin' a dead author's stories, under his own honest name, that do be fine.  But to be changin' a few words and passin' it off as a new book, an' gettin' awards for it?  That don't sit right, me hearties.  That do be a coward's kind o' pyratin'.

What says I?  I says we should make'em all walk the plank, yarrrr!  Or string'em from the yard-arm!  Who do be with me, me fine buckos?

Comments

[perspicuity.livejournal.com]

what book or books and/or authors are the problem? perhaps i didn't catch your wind.

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[anda.livejournal.com]

Quite honestly, I do see a difference between those situations.

1) Students in school are there to learn (something besides "stealing is ok") and writing their own original words is part of that learning process.

2) Most journalists are supposed to be doing research on current, individual, factual stories. Taking words from other folks without citation generally doesn't fit with that.

3) You can bitch about The Mouse strongarming Congress into extending copyright protection periodically and preventing works from becoming public domain OR you can bitch about people recasting and retelling public domain stories. To maintain both positions is not reasonable.

4) At the root of things, there are only so many stories to be told. The details may vary (and that's why journalism differs, because the details ARE the news there), but the basic stories remain.

5) You haven't even brought up the matter of cookbooks - recipes themselves aren't copyrightable, from what I hear.

[tww1fa]

3) You can bitch about The Mouse strongarming Congress into extending copyright protection periodically and preventing works from becoming public domain OR you can bitch about people recasting and retelling public domain stories. To maintain both positions is not reasonable.

Except that The Mouse does both. They pillage the public domain, producing "Disney's <insert name of public domain story here>", and then make damn sure that they never give anything back.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Exactly.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

If we want students in school to write their own original words, don't we sort of weaken the lesson by showering people with awards for filing the serial numbers off of other people's? "Recasting and retelling" a public domain story is one thing. Getting showered with literary awards for doing nothing more than making minor changes to one and presenting it, unchanged in all significant respects, as a new work is quite another. And then when we turn around and tell our kids, "Don't do that, that's bad," while half the books on their shelves are classics "rewritten" by Joe Schmoe, well ... let's just say it sends a mixed message.

I also roll to disbelieve that the pool of untold stories has been exhausted, or is even close to exhaustion. Many, many, many new books are published every year that involve imagination and creativity on the author's part, rather than just taking a story everyone already knows and changing a word here and a name there.

As far as Eisner Enterprises goes, it's not just that they constantly lobby to extend copyright without limit and prevent anything of theirs (or anyone else's) from ever becoming public domain; they are, for most practical purposes, actively removing material from the public domain in effect by taking it over, bowdlerizing it, and then putting the bowdlerized version under eternal copyright. Kipling's Jungle Book and Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan both entered the public domain, then Disney effectively took them back out again. Yet even Disney at least does something original with what they, er, abduct; they may be strip-mining the public domain for characters and settings, but then they're creating original works and using the characters to tell new stories. (Even if it is largely to maintain their franchise.)

On the other hand, hell, my two youngest kids could take the Old Woman who Swallowed a Fly and change the names of all the animals in the story. (They probably wouldn't get a book contract or an award for doing so, though.) It offends me that there's authors out there producing good, original work who can't manage to sell their books because they can't find a publisher who's looking for that kind of story this month, while publishers are saying "Sure, here's a pile of money, take a few literary awards while you're at it" to people who just took a Grimm's fairy tale, altered three or four words on each page, and substituted their own illustrations for the ones in the edition they learned it from.

(The gripping hand is, I thought Goldilocks and the Three Bears was a better story with a better object lesson in the original form anyway, in which the Three Bears came home, found Goldilocks sleeping after pillaging and plundering their home, and ate her.)

[k-crow.livejournal.com]

While I can see objecting to this with some types of books, I disagree with doing so about fairy tales. One of my favorite things about that genre is how you can take a fairy tale, file off the serial numbers, and use the framework of that story to tell another one that can fit or poke holes in (or both if the author is truly creative) the current zeitgeist. I'll agree that just changing 3 or 4 words isn't enough, and should be sneered at as uncreative and amateur, but the Brothers Grimm aren't the end-all, be-all for fairy tales. The fairy tale has too much usefulness as a way to shape and explain the current social order, and it is even better in many ways at questioning and undermining that order.

I would refer you to the fairy tale anthologies by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling as prime examples of how filing off the serial numbers intelligently can make for some amazing and creative stories. See also Red as Blood by Tanith Lee.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Now, see, Tanith Lee's is a clever adaptation. And I don't have a problem with that. Datlow and Windling, I'm not familiar with.

[k-crow.livejournal.com]

They have a series of fairy tale anthologies, I *think* the first is titled Snow White, Rose Red. Other titles I can remember are Black Thorn, White Rose; Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears; Snow White, Blood Red; Black Swan, White Raven. There's a number of these anthologies. They have contributions from all sorts of authors, including Tanith Lee and Neil Gaiman.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Neil Gaiman is of course another who re-interprets things creatively, instead of just changing the names and places or altering the occasional adjective.

[bbullock.livejournal.com]

Gottam! but yer in a mood!

[ithildae.livejournal.com]

One of the greatest serial number filers in all english literature is Billy the Bard. Sure the story frameworks were old, but the way he told them was fresh and wonderful. I remember the way Roger Zelazny wrote the story of Pandora's Box, his was a fresh perspective with a wonderful twist at the end. Orson Scott Card did a bit on Sleeping Beauty, interesting. Lloyd Alexander did some really good stuff with Welsh stories.

There is always room for an author to add personal strengths to a story with individual style.

As for the reporters and students, they are not paid/paying for storytelling, they are paid/paying to find out stuff they didn't know, and explain it. Using a great explanation is perfectly fine, as long as you say where you got it.

Different purposes yield different results.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

One of the greatest serial number filers in all english literature is Billy the Bard. Sure the story frameworks were old, but the way he told them was fresh and wonderful.

Exactly. But the books I'm talking about, the "re-writer" didn't actually add ANYTHING of value. No new vision, no different perspective, no clever twist, just file the numbers off and submit it as a new work.