Word: copyright
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There is no doubt that Beckett had good grounds to win a lawsuit against the theatre. Under U.S. copyright law, an author of a work has the right to control adaptations, condensations, and translations of his work. Although great legal cases on the subject do not abound, federal statute explicitly gives the author of a performing work control over where, when, and, to a lesser degree, how his wore is performed. For example, Edward Albee recently forced the cancellation of an Arlington, Texas community theatre production of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, because Albee opposed the theatre's plan...
...traditional rationale for copyrights has been an instrumental one: that such protection is needed to provide people with an economic incentive to create. This justification for copyright sidesteps the more difficult issue of whether an author should "own" his writing the same way he owns his typewriter. It leaves copyright as a weak property right, an ugly stop-sister to the better accepted property interests in land and capital. By this standard, literature strikes us as something public which we have 'privatized' merely for the sake of economic incentive...
...have told ourselves that this is what copyright is about for so long that we almost believe it. When the author makes demands about the purity of his creation, he is often cast as a petty tyrant; an artist who has allowed his limited property right to go to his head and is now oppressing performing artists selflessly serving the public and the Muses...
...countries like France and Germany, these interests on the author's part are ex-politically recognized. They are called the "moral rights" of the copyright owner. Even after the author has sold all of his economic interests in a work, he retains inalienable rights to prevent distortion or changes in the work, especially if they could damage his reputation. The creation is recognized as a reflection of, indeed a part of, the creator...
Despite the heavy publicity surrounding the first copyright law suit two years ago, Harvard has not been the rarest of any similar legal actions. Undertaking the publicity efforts...