3 ms·
People have always told the same stories over and over, updating them with tweaks along the way. Most if not all of Shakespeare's works were "remakes" of older
by skywhopper 9y ago
People have always told the same stories over and over, updating them with tweaks along the way. Most if not all of Shakespeare's works were "remakes" of older versions of the same tales. Operas, ballets, and religious music of the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries retread the same source material over and over. The main difference now is that we've entrapped ourselves into a false idea that perpetual copyright is a cornerstone foundational right, not only for creators, but for their kids, grandkids, and great-grandkids.
- WorldMaker 9y agoRight, we've allowed large corporations to gatekeep so much of our culture.
- TheOtherHobbes 9y agoLarge corporations are far more of a problem than copyright is.
- kolpa 9y agoWe didn't entrap ourselves. Disney bribed our government officials.
- wahern 9y agoFor decades there's been a growing vein of economic and legal scholarship that goes something like: 1) Strong property rights are good: they make economic transactions efficient and promote investment 2) Copyrights are property rights 3) Strong copyrights are good: they make economic transactions efficient and promote investment The scholarship is literally just that simple, and almost completely discounts or ignores all the obvious costs and caveats. This type of reductionism and equivocation is endemic to the modern economic and legal academies and doesn't show much sign of abating anytime soon.
- emodendroket 9y agoBut I think an important difference is that in classical literature and in Shakespeare the author does a lot to put his own spin on the story, including often substantially changing the plot (Ovid's Metamorphoses is notable for doing this... which also happens to mean we're not sure what the "real" version of myths that we only have in Ovid now are). Does every new Spider-Man film really have something new to say?