A new Goldman State Podcast drops every Friday!
Copyright Laws Expire: Gentlemen, You May Start Your Thievery
Taking credit where credit is done
By Ed Goldman
For those who grew up in an “open-source” world—believing they could plagiarize any piece of writing they liked and “sample” (steal) any bars of music they craved for their imbecilic, lame-brained, lousy-rhymed, woman-hating rap song—news that the copyright laws just expired on some notably iconic characters and great works of literature may mean nothing to them.
As for the rest of us, we can now rip off with impunity the following works, among others:
- “A Farewell to Arms” by Ernest Hemingway and “The Sound and the Fury,” by William Faulkner;
- The characters of Mickey Mouse, Popeye and the French character Tintin as they appeared in specific cartoons;
- The songs “Singin’ in the Rain” and “Tiptoe Through the Tulips,” though I’m not sure who’d want to include the latter on a hip-hop album; and
- George Gershwin’s amazing “An American in Paris,” honking car horns and all.
The plagiarize is the thing
The question is: Why would anybody want to steal and even take credit for something they couldn’t have come up with if they lived to be 127? The writers and artists who dreamed up their books, cartoons and music deserve better than having some louts pretend to have been as clever, timely or dexterous as they’d been.
If my tone sounds a bit sinister, Mr. Marlowe (I just “sampled” that from “The Big Sleep”), it’s because I’ve had my own stuff pirated a number of times over the years, by writers both minor and established. Whenever it’s happened, I found myself remembering these words from the great musician, actor, wit and self-admitted neurotic Oscar Levant. “Imitation,” he declared, “is the sincerest form of plagiarism.”
When I created a jingle to accompany the radio and TV commercials I wrote for Serrano, a golf course community in El Dorado Hills, we sent off a recording of me warbling it to a music production house in Florida, which in turn found a Billy Joel sound-alike to record it. It was wonderfully exciting until I looked closely at the CD the company had mailed us: it credited the owner of the studio with having composed the music and written the lyrics that I’d composed and written.
I threw one of my rare tantrums about it and the developer Bill Parker (bless his soul) swiftly called the guy in Florida and told him to correct his “mistake.” But our graphic designer thought it was “no big deal” and even laughed at my rage. I don’t think he’d have felt that way if he saw that one of the type fonts he’d invented or brochures he’d created had been claimed by someone else. Non-writers just don’t seem to get this sense of violation.
Right about now, some of you may be thinking I should switch to decaf. My response: Only when they pry the cup of dark French roast from my cold, dead hands, to paraphrase Charlton Heston (who was speaking of a rifle, not a reliable pick-me-up). If so, let me give you a few no-doubt over-the top comparisons:
– Your child or grandchild is the valedictorian at his or her Harvard graduation ceremony. Someone sitting a few aisles from you says, within earshot, “What a speech! That’s my kid!”
– Someone who sits in a cubicle two feet from yours overhears your dictating some new ideas for the company’s growth into your phone. But when you walk into a meeting with your boss and peers a few hours later, he beats you to the punch and states all of your ideas as his own. Among the thoughts that race through your mind at that moment are:
(a) Should I speak up—but how can I prove that the ideas were mine?
(b) What’s the maximum penalty for beating someone over the head with a Roku?
(c) What would Popeye do?
Ed Goldman's column appears almost every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. A former daily columnist for the Sacramento Business Journal, as well as monthly columnist for Sacramento Magazine and Comstock’s Business Magazine, he’s the author of five books, two plays and one musical (so far).