How about limitations on copyright?
The problem isn’t the new version. The problem is censoring the old version.
The problem isn’t the new version. The problem is censoring the old version.
There's a legal+technical+cultural problem where people aren't purchasing immutable copies of books or other media anymore, instead they're purchasing a complicated license that grants access to whatever they say the thing is at the time you request it. That problem can have a legal solution, or a technical+culutural solution (the technical solution alone is insufficient since there's still the cultural issue that most people don't care most of the time).
But there's also a separate purely cultural problem, which is that people felt like these changes to these books were a good idea in the first place. To me that's at least as concerning as the first problem. The sorts of changes made here--e.g. expunging usages of the word "fat"--are totally disrespectful to the author and the readership. There is already an established pattern for making material changes to a book for the sake of young and/or sensitive readers: Publish an abridged version. Make it clear that it is abridged, and sell it as a separate product. I remember reading a handful of classics as a very young kid in a format like this, which I'm sure I couldn't have managed at that age otherwise.
That second problem is emphatically not a legal problem, or even a much of a moral problem. Nobody should be prevented from behaving this way. But it's still evidence of a cultural problem. You don't make material modifications to a wildly-successful author's books and publish them like it's just another printing. That wasn't the way things were done two decades ago, and it's starting to be the way things are done now. Not illegal, and maybe not even morally wrong, just... not good.
I recall when I was at school decades ago at a time when the use of certain words in public was much less acceptable than now that our Shakespeare texts had certain words expunged from them as they had been deemed unacceptable for our 'delicate' ears.
We highschool students were completely oblivious of the fact until to save costs I found a copy of my father's Shakespeare text which he had kept from his schooldays and used it as my textbook. When following its text in class I found my copy contained a paragraph that had been omitted from the authorized school edition.
Suffice to say, my edition became a sensation amongst the kids, everyone wanted to read the 'naughty' bit. It's so long ago that I can't remember chapter and verse but the word we delicate little flowers weren't supposed to see was bastard. Big deal!
What was immediately obvious to me even at that young age was that bannings, prohibition and censorship is counterproductive and it's much more likely to have the opposite effect of what's intended.
Around that time there was much controversy over the publication of D. H. Lawrence's† Lady Chatterley's Lover which was deemed by the Wowser Brigade as obscene. This only had the effect of multiple 'clandestine' copies turning up in the school playground with us boys huddled in small groups reading the 'naughty' parts.
Several years later a similar controversy erupted over Philip Roth' Portnoy's Complaint, and even later I came across that strange and most peculiar of works W.S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch at a secondhand book sale which shocked even my somewhat blunt sensibilities (its controversy was somewhat before my time but its notoriety still lingers even now).
It is almost certain that I would never have come across any of these works let alone bothered to have read them UNLESS public attention had made them notorious—the fact is I just don't read this sort of stuff unless controversy has first thrust it into the public limelight. There's a lesson here to be learned with respect to this Dahl affair.
Methinks there may be somewhat more to this controversy than just protecting young minds. There's nothing like a controversal beat-up to improve sales.
I'm almost certain that our censored Shakespeare texts had no impact on our morals whatsoever, if anything it made us kids more worldly and less naïve after we'd found out that we'd been censored.
We adults underestimate both the intelligence and resilience of kids, they know and don't forget when we've been hoodwinking them. No doubt, kids definitely need protection but overprotection can ill-equip them for the realities of a harsh world.
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† Incidentally, in hindsight, it's interesting to note the double standard that applied when I was at school. On the one hand, our Shakespeare was censored over a nonsensically trivial matter, at the same time we had to study and be examined upon controversial novelist D.H. Lawrence's novel Sons and Lovers.
Whilst Sons and Lovers was a slightly saucy novel for that time it was somewhat of a joke that we kids had to study it around the time that the publication of Lawrence's more notorious novel was the subject of court action—that is, it was in the news for all the 'wrong' reasons. The dichotomy was damned obvious, even to us kids.
Take Harry Potter, for example, or Star Wars. End copyright at death of creator might give people some ideas on how to deal with ideas of canon.
Or take JK Rowling right when HP started to be popular. Who'd profit if she died then? Probably the publishers that are already having the books set, printing and deals with bookstore chains already signed. I don't think "sudden death" should be something that ever enters a business strategy meeting.
Or just natural death at that moment would leave her family just as poor, quite obviously contrary to her wishes.
When a prominent writer dies, their output should become zero.
What’s really morbid is when a writers next of kin keeps finding and editing works long after their death.
J.R.R kept publishing new work until his son Christopher died. All of it merely “edited” by Christopher, or course.
When a key creative talent dies, there are consequences. I don’t see why eliminating copyright is especially bad.
Problems with canon are possible regardless of copyright, and changing copyright durations does not add or remove these problems.
If it is made clear that any changes or new works made due to modified canon are not the work of the original (now dead) author, then this may mitigate some of these problems somewhat.
Abolishing copyright makes it easier to improve too, since then if someone thinks they have a better idea (which might or might not be true, but it can be judged by people after it is done, and it is OK if people do not all agree) then they can do it without a lawsuit. (Just, you will have to be clear than these are now new works rather than the original works. The original canon is not to be changed, but you can make up new ones which are based on them.)
Imagine a fairly young but successful author dying suddenly. If their family was relying on them for income their exclusive rights to sell their books shouldn't just end immediately on their death - that could really screw people over. Making things unpredictable should be avoided.
And it does. To migitate that and other similar circumstances this we have social safety nets. What is it with this expectations that not just authors of creative works but also their descendants should have this special ability to profit from their labor long after it was performed.
Meanwhile every company "selling" digital content wants that content to be bound to a single living person and go poof once that person does.
I think Keanu Reeve's approach in restricting digital edits to his acting via contracts is the best interim solution until the world converges on something.