The Return Of Book Bannings

[Fahran]

It seems there is another effort on the make it appropriate parade. Ian Fleming.

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-ente ... 89747.html

I wonder how they will handle Pussy Galore?

It is fun how much people are buying the wokefication narrative instead of the obvious practical explanation of it being a cynical way of extending copyright on a body of work.

I mean... there's a reason why they're bringing in sensitivity readers to do this rather than selecting another method. There's a decent number of institutionally powerful people who do actually believe in this stuff, which likely reflects the growing prominence of this outlook.

[Stellar Colonies]

It seems there is another effort on the make it appropriate parade. Ian Fleming.

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-ente ... 89747.html

I wonder how they will handle Pussy Galore?

I'd love to see how they'd try to tackle Ringworld.

[Nilokeras]

It is fun how much people are buying the wokefication narrative instead of the obvious practical explanation of it being a cynical way of extending copyright on a body of work.

I mean... there's a reason why they're bringing in sensitivity readers to do this rather than selecting another method. There's a decent number of institutionally powerful people who do actually believe in this stuff, which likely reflects the growing prominence of this outlook.

The reason why they're going through this is really quite simple, and does not require the invention and invocation of 'institutionally powerful people'.

Take James Bond, for example. The James Bond books written by Ian Fleming went out of copyright in Canada and a number of other countries in 2015, where the terms of copyright for works like this to are the lifetime of the author plus 50 years. The estate of Ian Fleming can of course print and sell the 'Casino Royale' book, but there's no stopping Joe Shmoe doing the same. So if you're an enterprising estate run by a team of lawyers for the benefit of an author's grandkids, what are you to do?

Well you need to find a way to make the books 'new' works again so that the clock of the copyright timer can be wound back. If your grandpa left a trunk full of notes and letters corresponding with his editor, you can hire a ghostwriter to throw together and edit his doorstopper fantasy novels to be the 'Revised and Expanded Edition' or the 'Author's Edition' - then they become brand new creative works. You let the old, unmodified version go out of print and then the 'Revised and Expanded Edition' gets to live on as the only edition people know, which pays for the great-grandkids to go to Harvard.

What if you don't have giant doorstop novels, copious notes or other unfinished work to mine for novelty? You can't just print the books again under new editions, that's not adding anything to the work and wouldn't renew the copyright period. Well you could hire sensitivity readers and ghostwriters to tweak and modify the work, then reissue them as 'the 21st century edition' or somesuch. The changes to the text are creative additions after all, and can be spun as new works not just re-prints. Perhaps unsurprisingly this blew up in the publishers' and the Dahl estate's face since people love to get their panties wadded about wokeness, but it won't be the last attempt at drawing out copyrights in this vein.

[Fahran]

The reason why they're going through this is really quite simple, and does not require the invention and invocation of 'institutionally powerful people'.

It's not really an invention when we can point to other examples of this ideological impetus involving important institutions.

Take James Bond, for example. The James Bond books written by Ian Fleming went out of copyright in Canada and a number of other countries in 2015, where the terms of copyright for works like this to are the lifetime of the author plus 50 years. The estate of Ian Fleming can of course print and sell the 'Casino Royale' book, but there's no stopping Joe Shmoe doing the same. So if you're an enterprising estate run by a team of lawyers for the benefit of an author's grandkids, what are you to do?

Well you need to find a way to make the books 'new' works again so that the clock of the copyright timer can be wound back. If your grandpa left a trunk full of notes and letters corresponding with his editor, you can hire a ghostwriter to throw together and edit his doorstopper fantasy novels to be the 'Revised and Expanded Edition' or the 'Author's Edition' - then they become brand new creative works. You let the old, unmodified version go out of print and then the 'Revised and Expanded Edition' gets to live on as the only edition people know, which pays for the great-grandkids to go to Harvard.

What if you don't have giant doorstop novels, copious notes or other unfinished work to mine for novelty? You can't just print the books again under new editions, that's not adding anything to the work and wouldn't renew the copyright period. Well you could hire sensitivity readers and ghostwriters to tweak and modify the work, then reissue them as 'the 21st century edition' or somesuch. The changes to the text are creative additions after all, and can be spun as new works not just re-prints. Perhaps unsurprisingly this blew up in the publishers' and the Dahl estate's face since people love to get their panties wadded about wokeness, but it won't be the last attempt at drawing out copyrights in this vein.

Granting that this is true, and it very likely is, the means by which the estate chose to do this is itself revealing. In the 1980s or 1990s, you may well have gotten newer editions that removed racially abusive language or morally indecent themes, such as cannibalism or sexual references. The sort of editorial censorship that is deemed acceptable at a given point in time can speak to the salience of particular sets of values within culture at said given point in time. And I suspect many of the same people who get their boxers in a bunch over this feel much the same way about older examples of censorship.

[Nilokeras]

It's not really an invention when we can point to other examples of this ideological impetus involving important institutions.

You quite literally invented the 'institutionally powerful people' here. If you have more concrete examples elsewhere that's good for you and all but it really doesn't change that fact, or that you're engaging in pure presumption.

Granting that this is true, and it very likely is, the means by which the estate chose to do this is itself revealing. In the 1980s or 1990s, you may well have gotten newer editions that removed racially abusive language or morally indecent themes, such as cannibalism or sexual references. The sort of editorial censorship that is deemed acceptable at a given point in time can speak to the salience of particular sets of values within culture at said given point in time. And I suspect many of the same people who get their boxers in a bunch over this feel much the same way about older examples of censorship.

Bowdlerization is as old as the Victorian weirdo who invented the idea. Fahrenheit 451 was bowdlerized in 1967 in a student edition that changed whole sections of the plot, removed all of the swears and references to abortion, among other things. Bradbury himself noted that this was common practice for publishers. This bizarre ahistoricism and willful blindness to the conservatism and censoriousness of the past keeps rearing its head in your posts.

[Fractalnavel]

... Bowdlerization ...

Huh - was not familiar with that term. Search led to https://www.ala.org/advocacy/intfreedom ... ionlibrary. Really should settle the issue of should or should not, but, sadly, it doesn't...

"Follow the money": Somehow that makes it worse, since maybe ideology alone could be argued.

[Kerwa]

It seems there is another effort on the make it appropriate parade. Ian Fleming.

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-ente ... 89747.html

I wonder how they will handle Pussy Galore?

I'd love to see how they'd try to tackle Ringworld.

Change physics to make it stable?

[Fahran]

You quite literally invented the 'institutionally powerful people' here. If you have more concrete examples elsewhere that's good for you and all but it really doesn't change that fact, or that you're engaging in pure presumption.

Editors and publishers wield a good bit of institutional power. I'm not certain why that acknowledgement has been greeted with stubborn denial. If you would like to discuss their particular motives, we can absolutely do that, but, unless you have a tidbit of legal knowledge I lack, I might feel inclined to accuse you of presumption as well.

Bowdlerization is as old as the Victorian weirdo who invented the idea. Fahrenheit 451 was bowdlerized in 1967 in a student edition that changed whole sections of the plot, removed all of the swears and references to abortion, among other things. Bradbury himself noted that this was common practice for publishers. This bizarre ahistoricism and willful blindness to the conservatism and censoriousness of the past keeps rearing its head in your posts.

And bowdlerization is not principally about avoiding copyrighted materials passing into the public domain. It originated as and has historically been a form of censorship, generally of lewd or offensive material, that seeks to replace texts through the publication of sanitized and censored editions. You'll note that your mention of Fahrenheit 451 lines up with this quite well, though the political bent and intentions of the censors differs somewhat in that case.

Let's circle back around to the claim about the copyright issue though. Under British law, at least in so far as I understand it, the life of a copyright is the author's life plus an additional seventy years. Roald Dahl died in 1990. As such, none of his work would pass into the public domain until 2060. The average book in use has a lifespan of five to ten years, with library books surviving a little bit longer. In terms of pure economics, republishing bowdlerized/censored editions of his works doesn't really achieve anything of use. If anything, it will likely lead to cannibalization of existing sales and perhaps even an active loss in total earnings by the publisher and estate. This only pays off if people and institutions who otherwise would not have purchased the uncensored editions make a show of purchasing the censored editions. And, supposing they do, we're then left with the question of why people would buy bowdlerized editions.

I've actually read a couple articles by book critics bemoaning the outcry as wrong-headed or pearl-clutching, but, based on the venom present throughout said articles and the explanations provided for why this decision was motivated by copyright or economics, the impression I got was that they largely had issues with Roald Dahl himself, horrid, ill-reputed brute that he was, and his original works, viewing them as insensitive, mean-spirited, and nasty. In short... exactly the reason I'm alleging some have sought to bowdlerize the works in question. It is a thrust against both the original works and the culture that produced and popularized them.