http://www.sun-sentinel.com/entertainment/columnists/sfl-shsp1aug01,1,5007636.column?coll=sfla-entertainment-col

Lizzy wrote:
“you cannot simultaneously defend the legal or moral rights of copyright holders and vilify them for wanting some control over how their work is presented to the world.”

Sure I can. In the late 1930s journalist Alan Cranston (later Senator from California) believed that the official English translations of Hitler’s Mein Kampf were misleading and did not accurately reflect how extreme were Hitler’s views. Cranston and some associates created their own inexpensive, and illegal, abridged edition. Hitler’s official publisher sued for copyright infringement and won. The court ordered the destruction of thousands of unsold copies.

In hindsight we probably can find fault with the way Hitler’s U.S. publisher exercised control over “how [the] work [was] presented to the world.”

An author’s good-faith desire for accurate editions is not inherently blameworthy. An author’s use of copyright and contract law, where they can be used, to give effect to this desire is also not necessarily wrong in every case. But that doesn’t mean that an author’s use of these tools is never in any circumstances unwise, ham-fisted, or morally objectionable.

my point was that a case like this is emphatically *not* about money. often, the reason copyright holders object to reprinting is not monetary; it’s the integrity of the work.

having been respsonsible for copyright clearances and reprint permissions for many years, i can honestly say we never asked for a cease & desist until permission could be obtained because of money. it was always about misprints, misattributions and a lack of quality control in the reprint.

There is, however, something terribly wrong with insisting that artists and publishers should get *complete* control over how their work is used. Free the work a little bit, and you’re likely to create a vibrant subcommunity of fansites like Green Plastic that *encourage* people to buy the work of artists. Complete control, at least in this case, seems to work *against* the needs of the artist.

i think that we need to back off, often, in this battleground. copyright holders who monitor the use of their intellectual property are by nature ogres and are very often simply trying to protect the integrity of something they worked very hard to produce and are proud of.

you cannot simultaneously defend the legal or moral rights of copyright holders and vilify them for wanting some control over how their work is presented to the world.

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