George Orwell is out of copyright. What happens now?
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
These include "Such, such were the joys", referenced in the Guardian article when it states: "Neither will anyone be allowed to trespass on all the material that came to light post-1950 and which Davison painstakingly assembled in his compendious George Orwell: The Complete Works (1998). This includes Such, Such Were the Joys, the notorious account of his tribulations at a character-forming Sussex prep school, first published in the US in 1952 but not issued in the UK until as late as 1968, for fear of libel proceedings."
That essay is here, and has been for a long time:
Almost all nations actively shape their image, Russia is one of them. (Just as the usa)
It reminds me of a friend I knew who was terrified that the Chinese would search all his belongings and files once he landed in Beijing. Of course, once he got there he soon realized most people did not give a shit about what a random foreigner was up to
In Canada, the copyright term is life + 50 rather than life + 70, the minimum under the Berne Convention. In Australia, only authors who died after 1955 (Orwell died in 1950) get life + 70; authors such as Orwell are "grandfathered in" to life + 50.
IIRC (although I can't find a source now), this confusing patchwork of copyright was the root cause behind the infamous deletion of some copies of 1984 from Kindles:
https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18am...
Also, life shouldn't even matter once the copyright is not in the hands of the original author anymore. Just give copyright a set length from time of publication (30, 50, or even 70 if necessary), unless it's held by the original author, in which case it's the maximum of life or that number. That already seems way more than necessary. Anything more than that is just monopolisation of culture and has nothing to do with protecting the interests of the author or the initial publisher.
It doesn't. His books are still covered under whatever law set up 95 years since publication, so it's a decade until his earliest releases enter public domain and ~25 for 1984.
(I wonder to what degree my heterodox take on 1984 is due to the fact that I read SSWtJ, in combination with The Spike and other essays, well before having read 1984 itself?)
Not for long, trump pressured us to change to life+70 which is probably coming sometime next year. :(
Though I suppose we’re not above remakes.
It later came to light that the movie had been financed by a CIA project to promote anti-communist art.
That's absolutely not what the book is about, in George Orwell's words it was "un conte satirique contre Staline" (a satiric tale against Stalin), he didn't like the cult of personality that Staling created, it was against him, not against Marxism in general.
When he wrote the book UK and USSR (Stalin) were allied against nazi germans and Stalin was kept in high esteem from British politicians, a fact that Orwell hated.
In schools he is often represented as "anti-soviets" but that is a simplification. He was a very political intellectual who cared far more about the patterns of government and the structures of society in general. Sure, he did despised stalinism, but he did so, because it was a tyrannical, totalitarian system. In the long run it is wiser to read the fable and consider if your own government is run by power hungry pigs.
Other than the usual boring "all socialists are equal, also Bakunin" that brings me back to when I was in school 30 years ago (I wore patches of Gaetano Bresci back then)
Engels, Bakunin, Marx, were alle right on something and completely wrong on other things.
For example Bakunin was against private property and for equal mandatory work for everyone.
He theorised the abolition of money and collectivisation of the means of production.
Exactly like Marx, so why they disagreed?
Because Bakunin didn't believe in the democratic process and the universal suffrage.
He thought that "the State, any State, even the most democratic one governed by the most leftist idealists in the World, can ever give the people what they need" because he didn't believe in the institute of representation (that includes liberal democracies)
He obviously did not believe in "no taxation without representation"
Today he would put every western State in the same "totalitarian oppression of the people" ballpark.
But was this the point of my post?
No, it wasn't.
Orwell himself wrote in letters and other books (for example "Why I write") what story he wanted to tell in Animal Farm and it's not "how is life in Marxism-communism"
The book became a metaphor for every modern political system, where corruption and the betrayal of early ideals of a revolting community are the way to get the power.
Today Animal Farm describes USA or Italy as well as it did 80 years ago about Stalin and the UK politicians that first admired Mussolini in Italy and then Stalin in USSR, because the way they ruled their empire wasn't dissimilar.
So a better description of the video would be "Animal Farm - a contemporary political satire"
Myself, I think that copyright today has been grotesquely distorted away from its original intent; the furthering of the arts. Especially in the U.S. and E.U., the media oligopoly has had enormous success in transforming (cough perverting) copyright into a mechanism that benefits the copyright holder to the detriment of anyone else.
But we see that copyright can also be an effective tool for protection of the arts and sciences; see copyleft. Here we have an ingenious way of turning copyright on it's head, by protecting the rights of all involved parties. (Stallman might be a nutcase, but if that's the case, he's a genius nutcase.)
So I think it's fair to have 'longer' copyright periods. Longer than a year, I mean. The duration we have in patent law (~20 years) seems rather fair to me. Enough to turn (some) profit, not enough to rob four generations of the stories and characters that were an important part of their childhood's culture.
[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Public_Domain_Day/20...
I just started reading “Burmese Days” which reflects his life as a policeman in the British Empire, experiences that affected his views on life.
I found the passage of his life from Eton through Spain to his final books far more interesting than his actual writings(with the possible exception of Road to Wigan Pier).
Also, there were no robots in the book "1984".
No real need to publish anything, we're living a variant of it every day. Without much creativity, we could map so many day-to-day things in 2020 to items in 1984.
If many people are substantially harmed by wasting their time and energy on distractions, then those who waste less time will outcompete them. Whether the mechanism is common wisdom analogous to "don't drink alone or before the evening", parents teaching their kids in certain ways, religions that consider much "wasteful" entertainment to be sinful, or genes that contribute to conditions perhaps resembling autism where colorful flashy video registers as annoying or even painful, the problem seems likely to create its own solutions.
One of the premises of "Brave New World" is that all children are raised by the State, and are forcibly (a) oxygen-deprived in the womb to limit their intelligence and (b) subjected throughout childhood to indoctrination and hypnotherapy to make them say "I'm happy and content with my life, and my only desire is to chase consumer goods". I'm not sure why so many people seem to forget this.
Seems a pretty good summary of the whole wellness/"gratitude"/mindfulness culture that now exists and seems to think that an epidemic of mental ill-health can be fixed through breathing exercises and meditation apps for one's smartphone.
That said, stories and plots have been retold ever since the beginning of literature. Here's a lovely article about various versions of the well-known story about the Baalshem being asked to intercede for a sick child: https://brill.com/view/journals/jjtp/22/2/article-p127_2.xml
And individuals can refer to the books anyway..so what's th point?
Art I understand, it's easy to copy photo or painting and put up a webshop selling a mug with photo of the painting on it.. but again if it's 100 year old painting..isn't there ANY other picture for your cup that is better ?
Surely.
(since it's an entirely new product, copyright starts over)