Neil Gaiman

If I’m only allowed to enjoy or interact with authors who think like me my pool of books and authors is going to shrink enormously and I would have fewer authors to help me find out what I think and feel and react to from the ways it differs from what they create.

I don’t think there were any EC tropes. There were lots of D.C. comics characters though.

Fine. It was 50 years ago. It wasn’t a thing.

It’s impossible to tell. Neil Gaiman doesn’t have any social media.

Tell her I’m so sorry to hear that. There’s too much death and dying out there, and each of us only gets a lifetime. I hope she is not in too much pain, and that she has people she lives around her.

If this Tudum event is anything like last year’s (the one where we dropped the teaser for Sandman) it would all have been filmed in June or July and is going to be concentrated exclusively on things that will be happening in the year to come. It wouldn’t matter if Sandman was renewed or not, it wouldn’t be mentioned on Tudum.

kurtbusiek:

nicolabarth:

neil-gaiman:

avayarising:

neil-gaiman:

marikorawralton:

neil-gaiman:

shiplocks-of-love:

neil-gaiman:

It’s too long. 70 years after death feels wrong. I’m good with 50 years, though.

It should be zero. What good is extended copyright after death of the creator in the 21st century? The right to be asserted as the creator of a work should be separated from the economical value from that point. All it’s doing now is filling the pockets of greedy companies.

And it’s also feeding loved ones and children after the death of the person who made the art has died.

Here’s a blog I wrote long ago about creators having wills. And a sample will. http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2006/10/important-and-pass-it-on.html?m=1

Important. And pass it on...

John M. Ford was pretty much the smartest writer I knew. Mostly. He did one thing that was less than smart, though: he knew he wasn't in the

journal.neilgaiman.com

I like the idea of feeding Ash (he’s four and not yet able to work) with my stories after I’m dead. I’m not good with feeding my great grandchildren.

As an author, I don’t agree with this argument at all. Why should your past works support your family anymore than anyone else’s?

A man who works his body day in and day out and pays his taxes every year to support his family gets nothing when he dies. Most he gets is an insurance plan out of pocket.

Why should I get that sort of luxury? How am I better than the working man? How am I better than someone who worked dozens of times harder than me?

Even then, how are you sure the money is actually going to your estate? How would you make sure your family continues your legacy through hardwork, and not through old money?

It’s something I don’t exactly agree with. I think there are more ways to support your family after you’re gone, and I don’t know if extension of copyright is it.

So you’re arguing for a world in which no property of any kind, physical or intellectual lasts longer than the death of the person who bought it or made it? In which houses, stocks, comic book collections, all become part of the commonweal? Because right now, you can leave your property to your children or your loved ones. Touchable property and intellectual property. You can leave them money, too.

Anthony Burgess (who wrote, among other things, A Clockwork Orange) was told (wrongly) he had months to live. He wanted to support his family after he was gone, so he wrote books, fast and well.

He was lucky. It was a misdiagnosis and he didn’t die.

But I’m on the side of Anthony Burgess in this. I’m glad that Douglas Adams’ books took care of his daughter Polly when she was a small child whose father had just died, and more so when, a decade later, her mother died as well.

I’m a writer. What I do is write. I have adult children who are taking care of themselves, and a four year old who can’t. I’m in a couple of Covid risk groups, and could in theory be dead in a couple of weeks. (I hope I’m not.) PWhile there are “more ways to support your family after you’ve gone” that aren’t based around things I’ve made up and written down, I didn’t actually want to stop writing and making things up in order to do them.

I think the current copyright laws (death plus 70 for individuals, 90 years after creation for corporate things) are too long. But I don’t think you should lose your property, physical or intellectual, when you die.

I agree that copyright should last somewhat beyond the author’s death. Otherwise it sucks that money that would have been paid for this work is no longer being paid just because you’ve died. I think even 50 years is too long though. 25 years is plenty of time for dependents to find another source of income. Even infant children will be fully grown after that point.

I’d also be happier with copyright that counted from the creation of the work, rather than from the death of the creator. 50 or 70 years after the creation of the work will still do all that, avoid the sudden cut-off at death, and release creations into the public domain in a reasonable timescale.

Mm. I’m on the advisory committee of the Authors League Fund. We give money to authors in dire need. A lot of the authors who get the money are old. Some of them you’ve heard of.

I like the idea that when I’m in my seventies the work I did in my twenties will still be in copyright, and will still feed me and my family.

I don’t like the idea of creators in their seventies, eighties and nineties (or older) suddenly seeing their work put in the public domain and out there making money for other people, while they (possibly quite literally) starve. It seems both shortsighted and honestly a little entitled.

I feel like a lot of people imagine copyright running out as the work being put up in an archive where everyone can read it for free. And yes, works might end up on project gutenberg or something, but the reality is that they’ll also continue making publishers money. There’ll be fancy new hardcover editions, there’ll be audio books, there’ll be movies. All of this you’d still have to pay for after the copyright ran out, because you’re not paying for the story itself, you’re paying for the packaging or an interpretation of the story.

And all of that will be making companies money. So who would you rather want to make money from an author’s work? Some companies or the author’s children?

If you get rid of copyright after an author’s death, it’ll be the companies. And they’ll absolutely butcher the author’s work for profit, because that’s what big media companies do.

So if you want to enjoy people’s work for free, your problem isn’t with copyright, your problem is with capitalism

I’d be fine with copyright lasting life-plus-20 years, or 25, myself.

But aside from the sensible arguments Neil makes, I also think copyright shouldn’t expire on the death of the author, because that could have the uncomfortable effect of encouraging the unbalanced to hasten the death of the author in order to get access to their work.

If killing off an author means you have to wait 25 years before the work goes into the public domain, it’s not likely worth it. If you can get the rights to your favorite novel series immediately, though, simply by committing a judicious spot of murder, well, that might be a bit too enticing for some. Especially if they think the author is either not doing enough with the characters, or worse, mishandling them.

Rather than giving people reasons to kill off authors, I’d rather see copyright revised to make it in everyone’s interest to preserve the life of the author – for instance, in cases of company-owned copyright, if their ownership of the work was still tied to the life of the author, then for some valuable property, they’d have good reason to try to keep the author healthy and long-lived, in order to own the work for longer.

That might be tricky to work out, but I like the sprit of it, at least.

Let’s make it worth everyone’s while for authors to live a long time…!