Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10 beta 3/9/83; site sdcrdcf.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!we13!ihnp4!zehntel!tektronix!hplabs!sdcrdcf!barryg
From: barryg@sdcrdcf.UUCP (Barry Gold)
Newsgroups: net.flame
Subject: Re: Copyright, Mark Twain, and the search for Truth
Message-ID: <1003@sdcrdcf.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 14-Apr-84 07:51:16 EST
Article-I.D.: sdcrdcf.1003
Posted: Sat Apr 14 07:51:16 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 17-Apr-84 06:54:24 EST
References: <208@harvard.UUCP> <1123@sdchema.UUCP>
Reply-To: barryg@sdcrdcf.UUCP (Barry Gold)
Organization: System Development Corporation, Santa Monica
Lines: 30



Here's some more on Twain's view of copyrights.
From Rudyard Kipling's interview with Twain, as quoteed in Kipling's FROM
SEA TO SEA.

	"The proper way to treat a copyright is to make it exactly like
real-estate....If Congress were to bring in a law that a man's life was
not to extend over a hundred and sixty years,...that law wouldn't concern
anybody....A term of years in copyright comes to exactly the same thing.
No law can make a book like or cause it to die before the appointed time....

	"Let Bill Smith, equally with Mr. Shakespeare now deceased have
as complete a control over his copyright as he would over his real-estate.
Let him gamble it away6, drink it away, or--give it to the church.  Let
his heirs and assigns treat it in the same manner."

	Twain went on to say this would not create artificially high
rates for great books.  "the book that will live for ever can't be
artificially kept up at inflated prices.  There will always be very
expensive editions of it and cheap ones issuing side by side."

Kipling ends by remarking, "What I saw with the greatest clearness was
Mark Twain being forced to fight for the simple proposition that a man
has as much right to the work of his brains (think of the heresy of it!)
as to the labor of his hands.
-- 
	Barry Gold
	usenet:         {decvax!allegra|ihnp4}!sdcrdcf!ucla-s!lcc!barry
	Arpanet:        barry@BNL