CHICAGO – I’m here at the Association of Writers & Writing Programs Annual Conference & Bookfair in the Windy City, which fortunately hasn’t been too windy so far. Lucinda and I are here exhibiting and providing free resources to writers and writing teachers. I’m in my element here; during my freelance writing career I attended many such conferences. Writers intrinsically understand the importance of copyright, but because they focus their creative energies on their craft they don’t always understand just what those rights are or how they can put them to use. We’re happy to help.

One story I heard today was very interesting. The author heard not long ago from a would-be playwright. He said he had written a play based on her novel. Now of course we know that is a derivative work, and he needed her authorization, but he had done it anyway and wasn’t calling for permission, merely to inform her. Naturally, she wasn’t very happy.

She really wasn’t happy when he sent her the play. The play opened with a character created by the would-be playwright basically saying to the protagonist of the novel, “So, I hear you have an interesting story to tell.” The rest of the play was select dialogue and action lifted straight from the novel. Hardly transformative.

There was another problem, said the author: “The play was really, really boring.”

We do not have moral rights in this country. Unless she had negotiated this privilege ahead of time, the author wouldn’t have been able to control the development of the play once she gave authorization for it to be made. But copyright law does say she has to give permission before a derivative work is made.

How did she handle it? She is the author of two books, one of which she owns all rights, with the other’s rights currently held by her publisher. It was the latter the would-be playwright was using. She looped the publisher in and they decided not to say no outright. They offered the would-be playwright a licensing fee of $500.

The would-be playwright said no and dropped the play.

The author was very lucky that the would-be playwright contacted her, even if it wasn’t to seek permission. She was also lucky he chose not to proceed after turning down the licensing deal. This kind of “remix” happens every day without the author even knowing, like a high school drama teacher in Tucson, Arizona, producing terrible plays based on popular movies like “Erin Brockovich.”

I understand that in this digital age it is very easy to re-work someone else’s creative work. Many creators don’t see the need to create a work from scratch when they can simply re-work someone else’s creation. But the novelist reminded me that people have wanted to re-work others’ creative works for a long, long time; nothing the would-be playwright did had anything to do with the power of digital technology, but it was a derivative work just as many digital works are.

As another writer told me at our booth today, writers’ rights are under siege today like never before. (He is both a writer and a songwriter, so it’s a double whammy for him.) He is right.

But writers are fortunate in that by having the right to produce derivative works, it gives them some sense when beginning that creative process that the end result – so much a part of them – doesn’t have to end up being used in a way they can’t support.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, February 12th, 2009 at 4:34 pm by Patrick Ross and is filed under creators, events, licensing, property rights. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.