(From WHEC.com) The case: that Sony infringed copyright when actor Owen Wilson used (misquoted) a line from Faulkner’s Requiem for a Nun in the movie, Midnight in Paris.
Wilson’s character, Pender, says, "The past is not dead! Actually, it's
not even past. You know who said that? Faulkner. And he was right. And I
met him, too. I ran into him at a dinner party." Faulkner’s original: "The past is never dead. It's not even past."
Faulkner died in 1962, and we are talking of eight (8) words! This is crazy.
The copyright regime is quite complicated, with each country having its own version of the Berne Convention (either voluntarily or as a result of arm twisting by the ‘big’ boys). In Malaysia, copyright lasts for fifty years after the death of the author; in the US, Europe and some other countries, this has been extended to 70 years. (In Europe there is a proposal on the table to extend copyright of sound recordings to 95 years after the death of the ‘author’). Then, there is the ‘fair use” clause, which is what Sony will surely argue.
Copyright laws are primarily about protecting the rights of economic exploitation of an author’s work. It sounds fair in most cases when the author is still alive, but becomes absurd when applied to cover all works for 50-70 years after his/her death. In Malaysia, alone, there are hundreds of important and wonderful books that are no longer in print and cannot be reprinted due to copyright laws, even if the author is dead, the original publishers no longer exist, or even if they are no longer interested in republishing it. But, will not let others to do it, either. (The laws are, also, deliberately vague in this respect.) This dog-in-the-manger attitude has killed, and is killing, an entire history and culture. Think of its impact worldwide.
Then, in the case of ‘big’ authors there are entire estates and bands of lawyers that live off the works parasitically for 70 years after his death. Am I the only one who finds this ridiculous and obscene? The author belongs to the people. To them, the author is not dead; he continues to live. Imagine a world where the works of Shakespeare, Kalidasa and Confucius continue to be exploited by their estate and no quote or idea can be used without permission. We will surely end up going back to cave-dwelling.
(There is an amazing story I'd like to share. There was a extremely eminent composer in South Indian Carnatic music called Tyagaraja, whose works are still played hundreds (maybe thousands) of times daily. Interestingly, there is also songs attributed to him but he did not write. Apparently, in those days, one of the better ways of getting one's songs performed was to pretend they were his, and many of the apocryphal ones still survive today! Looks like civilisation has had other alternatives to the present copyright regime. Perhaps it is time to re-look at some of them. After all, culture is more important than ownership, exploitation and greed.)
Faulkner’s Requiem for a Nun was published in 1950 and the words “The past is never dead" entered the English language vocabulary years ago, and is used freely and frequently, and in many forms. It, like many other terms, has become an inseparable part of a culture. That is the nature of good literature; it grows culture; it grows language; it’s never forgotten or ignored. Roland Barthe said in his 1967 essay, The Death of the Author, that a literary work is separated from its creator the moment it leaves his desk.
