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This was shared with me on a listserve, and since they received permission to share it, I think it's okay for me to share it with you all:
quote:Kevin J. Anderson posted this in another listserve and gave permission to share it:
For those of you who want to brush up on your copyright knowledge (and, yes, you DO), one of our Superstars lecturers and copyright/IP attorney M. Scott Boone has been posting a weekly series from a copyright class he teaches at his law school. The first two lectures are up at his Writer in Law column: http://writerinlaw.com/2014/01/17/copyright-class-1-originality/
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Beyond the intellectual property law features and the legalese, there's some powerful senses of what constitutes originality in Boone's "classes." I rarely encounter Internet postings or print works about writing in any aspect that I don't have misgivings or disagreements with. Boone's posts are a remarkable exception.
I strongly believe and encourage writers learning about intellectual property law, copyright and trademark mostly, though patent law also may be pertinent in some literature circumstances, is a duty of due dilligence. One foremost reason for doing so is many false gossip and rumor items circulate through literary culture and society's overall culture generally. The Poorman's Copyright is one example of a false rumor. Other false gossips and rumors are what constitutes fair use, incidental use, and dimunition of value. Other areas of great intellectual property controversy and confusion are distinctions between types of plagiarism and copyright, trademark, and patent infringements and each to the other as well as in any category.
For an upcoming thirteen lines challenge I will propose at the beginning of February I've been prospecting among public domain works for comparatively recent short stories that copyright has lapsed on, that have strong voice characteristics suitable for imitation. Public domain stories are essential for the challenge so that we all respect copyrights.
The most recent public domain short story I've located so far was published in 1960. The voice is a catchy noir-type exhibiting both conventions of the form: adventures of a hard-boiled cynic protagonist in bleak settings. The story is a crime mystery science fiction titled "Vigorish" by [John Berryman].
quote:Originally posted by extrinsic:The most recent public domain short story I've located so far was published in 1960. The voice is a catchy noir-type exhibiting both conventions of the form: adventures of a hard-boiled cynic protagonist in bleak settings. The story is a crime mystery science fiction titled "Vigorish" by Gordon Randall Garrett.
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The voice of "A World by the Tale" is not as sharply cynical as "Vigorish." Though the story is still public domain and exhibiting Garret's wicked relish for puns. According to Garret from the Wikipedia article about him "a pun' as the odor given off by a decaying mind.'" Strong sarcasm and irony, though, and not noir, a metafiction and political social commentary instead.
Garret also favors first-person narration and ample" telling," for first-person narration's comparatively easy to digest diegesis and exigesis: summary and explanation. In that regard, he's a writer whose voice is worth studying.
In terms of copyright law, Garret's works being in the public domain at Project Gutenberg are a consequence of copyright prematurely lapsing through an oversight by the digest publisher and the writer.
Significant copyright law changes came about in the '70s and afterward. So early '60s or thereabouts is about as recent as might be expected for works in the public domain. A few later writers managed to get their works published at Gutenberg, before a policy change prevented (mediocre) self-published works from being published at Gutenberg as a marketing ploy.
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Couldn't find it in any Randall Garrett online bibliography (which proves nothing---Garrett was prolific in those days). The story in its appearance in Astounding / Analog was credited to Walter Bupp, a pen name (apparently) for John Berryman, who gets the credit at Project Gutenberg, unless both names are just pen names for Garrett...
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Garrett used dozens of pennames. A forensic analysis of the voices reveals a Garrett-like hand on the tiller. By examining and comparing the narrator--first person--and the implied writer voices, mostly selective uses of mimesis, diegesis, and exigesis, common expression characteristics, and the unique (original, signature) flavors of sarcasm, satire, irony, word play, and puns, Garrett's authorship stands out. The date range of Berryman and Garrett works overlap. Or maybe Berryman closely imitated Garrett or vice versa. John Berryman was otherwise a contemporary poet, if the poet and the science fiction writer are one and the same writer.
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Garrett had part of a collaborative novel under his own name in that issue of Astounding / Analog (June 1960), too. It could be a pen name for Garrett, editors not liking too many stories by one writer in one issue...
A glance through the story shows its one of those "psi powers" stories that used to pop up in the latter end of the Campbell Astounding / Analog...Garrett turned out a number of 'em...but Walter Bupp (a. k. a. John Berryman) is credited with a few more stories for Campbell 'round this era, so, probably, it's his work. (Don't remember the story myself---my subscription to Analog started some years later, it's not among the few back issue I have, and I researched this through something called the Internet Science Fiction Data Base.)
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Whether Berryman and Garret are the same writer might be moot, maybe even if Berryman is the reknowned poet or not as well. The science fiction writers have distinctly similar writing voices; however, that might be a matter of Campbell's guidance or even editorial discretion.
One conclusion I draw is Campbell enjoyed word play, irony, satire, and sarcasm. The word play aspect has not been as popular since then. Word play of the sort published in that era by those types of digests perhaps was overdone and subsequently became deprecated in general. That kind of word play also calls perhaps undue attention to itself for its clever darling characteristics, which disrupt the highly favored Realism convention of imitating an illusion of reality. The writer's cleverness stands out and blunts the participation mystique.
More than Berryman and Garret used the word play card in that era, and similar pun tactics, plus the more generally artful and appealing irony, satire, and sarcasm. Harry Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat and Keith Laumer's Retief come immediately to mind. Whether they individually achieved distinctive degrees of originality or emulated one another is a matter for individual determination. I think they teetered between originality and emulation, weighted a small degree more toward emulation because of marketplace forces. Word play sold copy.
I'm familar with ISFDB. That is a useful research source. and exacting in its detail and objectivity. Analog as it was constituted during the time in its practices of the time bought copyright outright with no expiration clause. An oversight due to digest ownership falling into disuse during one of the ownership changeovers resulted in quite a few short stories not timely renewing copyright and copyright lapsing during the Golden and Silver science fiction ages. Thus quite a few short stories are in the public domain now that otherwise would be still current today under present laws.
Anyway, many of them have been reproduced at Project Gutenberg. I've been trying to read as many as I can. Their voices tend to blur together for me, though. Much summary and explanation, diegesis and exigesis, respectively. My tastes and sensibilities run counter to heavy telling emphasis. One practice I've consequently taken to is mentally developing strategic methods for and recomposing the telling to showing. It doesn't pan out in some cases, mostly due to recognizing word count limits. Showing tends to consume more word real estate than telling. Though when carefully selected expression portrays more with less, I gape in awe at the sublime and profound artistry. I feel strongly that many of the Gutenberg short stories, short stories generally, are too large for their containers.
One recent and popularly and critically acclaimed short story illustrates this word count-expression-showing conundrum most clearly. Joyce Carol Oates' "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been." The story's exposition act is largely summary and explanation, though dramatic, transitioning steadily deeper into imitation in the middle acts, and deeply into close aesthetic distance's illusion of reality by the ending act. That's a common organizing strategy for many, many short stories' substructures, parallel to plot organization. Berryman and Garret used it too. I feel it's nearly universal, and strive to break out of that mold by opening within a sooner emerging illusion of reality development.
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Somehow I managed to miss the point I originally wanted to make. Say the copyright lapsed from failure to renew...what's to prevent the writer (or estate) from reasserting a copyright under the "life plus seventy years" bit if someone makes use of it? Or did I miss an explanation?
John Berryman the poet died in 1972, according to Wikipedia---if this is the same John Berryman, who, according to the ISFDB, published something in Analog as late as 1986---if it's still the same guy...
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U.S. works published between 1923 and 1964 were subject to a twenty-eight year first copyright registration term. At the time, a single renewal term of an additional twenty-eight years was available. Later law changes made the original registration, if timely renewed, term of works between 1923 and 1964 up to life plus seventy years, somewhat uniforming copyright term. All 1923 and prior works are public domain because that was term of the law of the time and well into mid twentieth century.
Doing the math, 1924 plus fifty-six years maximum renewal term reaches year 1980. After 1976, copyright term was extended to seventy-five years of life or life plus fifty years, whichever came first. Later changes omited the seventy-five years of life policy and extended the years of the life plus policy.
Works published in that 1923-1964 interim that were not renewed before the first term registration expired become ineligible for copyright extension. Works under active copyright after 1976 were eligible for the life plus seventy years term with or without registration and with or without publication due to later encompassing changes in the law. In other words, all intellectual property subject to copyright after 1976 automatically is under copyright but not per se registered. For eligible works published before 1976, after 1992 the renewal requirement was dropped. Those works published that were timely renewed and still under copyright under the old twenty-eight year and renewal regime became automatically eligible for the life plus fifty years of the 1976 change and then subsequently the life plus seventy years policy of the 1996 change.
Works for hire having "corporate" copyrights have even longer terms, the life plus seventy still applies if prominently authored by a named person, otherwise 120 years from date of creation or 95 years after publication, whichever comes first.
So 1963 and earlier eligible works not timely renewed passed into the public domain, but not any later works. Doing the math again. 1964 plus twenty-eight years reaches year 1992, the year the renewal requirement was dropped. So no, works between 1923 and 1964 that copyright lapsed on that were not timely renewed are ineligible for copyright.
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Ah! I was wondering why certain works were being reissued in e-book or Project Gutenberg form, and that answers that. (I suppose I can finish reading A Wilderness of Spring with a clear conscience.)
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