Comments on: Protest Rowling?

By: loudmo ppi

loudmo ppi — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 15:08:50 +0000

Between me and my lazy husband, I won the argument on this subject because he did not agree with you.. 🙂

By: Harry Lewis

Harry Lewis — Wed, 07 May 2008 12:37:42 +0000

Finnegan's Wake was published in 1939 and the Skeleton Key was published by Joseph Campbell and Henry Robinson in 1944. The Amazon description says, "The authors break down Joyce's "unintelligible" book page by page, stripping the text of much of its obscurity and serving up thoughtful interpretations via footnotes and bracketed commentary." If Rowling wins, it seems to me that it would be risky for any future Campbell to write a similar analysis of any future Joyce's work.

By: Tom Welsh

Tom Welsh — Wed, 07 May 2008 00:02:14 +0000

Although I haven’t read any of J K Rowling’s books, I can see her point too. Your mention of “Finnegan’s Wake” is not necessarily apposite, because I believe that book has been out of copyright for a while (I could be wrong though). The case of Google is entirely different, because the ethics of the Web are not those of traditional publishing. Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the Web, still has a page on the W3C Web site stating that no permission is required to link to any of his Web pages. The reason? Since the whole point of the Web is that pages link to one another, forbidding that is fundamentally futile. It’s like ordering a car with square wheels. At best, it’s utterly selfish; seeking to use the Web, which TBL gave away for nothing, to earn money while preventing others from benefiting. In a way, it’s like the difference between the ways the law treats alcohol and tobacco versus newer drugs like cannabis. Arguably, the older drugs are more harmful; but their use is sanctioned by immemorial custom. Likewise, printed books benefit from protections that do not (and should not) apply on the Web.