To Kill A Copyright

One of my biggest pet peeves in life is when people somehow get their hands on the rights to work which isn't theirs. Honestly, I don't care how terrible I think something may be, if you were the one who came up with it I can at least respect the fact you had a moment of creativity, but if all you did was let someone else do the work and swoop in once the copyright expired then I see you as more of a vulture than anything. It is why I can't stand comedians who do jokes which other people wrote and why I don't respect people who buy the rights to music and then sell it for licensing rights. (Seriously, hearing Beatles music in a commercial trying to sell me a mattress still annoys me.) For example, last week there was a big news story about how Hulu had lost the rights to all the old episodes of "Saturday Night Live" and they would now be owned by Yahoo. Why do I get the feeling that all the people who actually wrote those skits won't be seeing any of that money? I just don't think artists should be forced to sign away ownership just to have their work be seen and it really shouldn't change hands just because an arbitrary amount of time has passed. That was why I was a little bummed out this weekend when I saw the story that "To Kill A Mockingbird" author Harper Lee had lost the copyrights to her classic story and was forced to sue to regain those rights. How does the universe let this happen?

I'm going to be upfront about something right away - I hated this book when I was told to read it in school. All I heard from my English teacher was how amazing it was going to be and instead I found it to be a pretty standard read. Part of it could be from the fact that I was forced to read it as an assignment and I am the type of person who immediately despises anything I am told I have to enjoy against my will. (If anything "To Kill A Mockingbird" should be flattered it is in such good company as I hated a large chunk of the books I was ordered to read for my English class. At first you may think less of my taste in literature, right up until you remember I actually won an award for voluntarily reading the most books in a school year. Clearly, I like books, so I feel like this speaks more poorly about the assigned choice of reading materials than me.) I thought time would help heal my bias against the books but even as I look back now years later I fail to see what the big deal was. That is why I have begun to suspect it is one of those books which no one actually likes but everyone claims they do to appear cultured. But with all that being said, there is no question that Harper Lee should be the only one who profits from the fact that millions of schoolchildren are forced to read her book every year. Allegedly Lee signed over the rights back in 2012, but she contends she was tricked into signing the documents because she was in poor health and hasn't received any royalties in years.

Now, there is part of me that thinks a chunk of this is Ms. Harper's fault because when you have only written one thing you should be a little more careful about keeping track of stuff like this. It is not like she had a massive catalog to protect. (Seriously, "To Kill A Mockingbird" was her only novel. She started two other books but never finished them. I'm not sure if that is more a case of wanting to go out on a high note or fear that the new stuff was never going to live up to the first book. Either way I think it is pretty clear she needs these royalties because she doesn't have anything else coming in.) I can't help but wonder how this literary agent thought he was going to get away with this move because even people who don't like this book know who wrote it. It would be like trying to pass off the statue of David as your own. Trust me, if you want to get the rights to a book and not put up with too much of a fight, find a struggling author who would only be too happy to sign their rights away for the chance to be published (it should take a Google search of approximately .5 seconds). If the book becomes a best seller you make a ton of money and if you low-balled them for the rights they will not be able to afford a lawyer who would mount a credible argument as to why they should be able to get them back. Seems like a much easier plan.

Of course, none of this would be an issue if they changed a few of the archaic copyright laws which exist today. I just feel like the only the people who create something should be able to say how it is then used. I'm not trying to say the two things are equal, but you wouldn't want someone coming in and telling you how to raise your child just because a few years had passed. Even more frustrating is that the laws vary wildly from one country to another, so all someone has to do is hide behind the idea that they didn't know they were breaking a law and more often than not they will get away without much of a fine. This is only going to get worse in the future because the current tech-savvy generation has been raised with the idea that copyrights aren't worth anything. Not only do they want to be able to download the stuff for free, they don't care where it came from or who they may be stealing it from and they blow past copyright warnings like they aren't even there. At this point I think I am one of the few people who still pays for music online. This is extra ironic considering that thanks to the internet these days people are producing more original content for more people than any point in history. Unfortunately, the only way that is going to change is if a few more people have some of their work stolen from them and ironically that isn't going to happen when they are forced to waste time reading old and over-hyped books.