4 ms·

I don’t care about the legal aspect. I care about the authenticity. It isn’t the authors work anymore after it has been changed without their consent. It’s abho

• vidarh 4y ago
  Dahl made a choice not to lay down restrictions in his will and not to appoint literary executors who he'd ensured would refuse to change things. He may or may not have disapproved of any given set of changes, but the absence of any such terms is implicit consent for his estate to do as it pleases. I have published books. They'll likely never be worth anything. But the absence of any terms about them in my will is intentional: Once I'm gone, I don't give a shit what my inheritors do with the rights for them. That's their business. As for authenticity, the originals still exist. Nothing has erased them. Deposit laws means the original editions will be on file at relevant libraries even if every customer got rid of theirs. I'm all for ensuring original editions remain at least somehow accessible, but this obsession with changes to books now just strikes me as comical given how long abridged, simplified or simply reimagined versions of classics have existed. Though chances are good that what you've read and consider "authentic" wasn't the original anyway, but one of the earlier revised editions. E.g. the version most people will have read was revised to change the Oompa-Loompas from African pygmies.
  • nemo44x 4y ago
    He made those changes though. Possibly under pressure yes but he still made them. Any alteration to his work after his death is no longer his work. I should add: that may or may not be important to someone. To me it is. I don’t consider the altered version his work any longer but rather a derivative work or more accurately, a vandalization of his work.