Copyright and Other Fairy TalesNow here's a bit of serious, scholarly fun. It comes in the form of a book published by this year by up-and-coming IP publishers Edward Elgar: Copyright and Other Fairy Tales, edited by Helle Porsdam (below, left).
Publisher's blurb:"Once the preserve of a few legal specialists, the wider implications of copyright law are more and more the concern of literary scholars and cultural analysts as well as of increasingly sceptical lawyers. Helle Porsdam is to be congratulated on assembling and editing this interesting collection of essays, which rightly opens up even further the debate on the cultural role of copyright law, one in which every one of us should participate.’ (Ruth Towse, Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands).
The present state of copyright law and the way in which it threatens the remix of culture and creativity is a shared concern of the contributors to this unique book. Whether or not to remain within the underlying regime of intellectual property law, and what sort of reforms are needed if we do decide to remain within this regime, are fundamental questions that form the subtext for their discussions".
What the IPKat says: the book's subtitle, "Hans Christian Andersen and the Commodification of Creativity", gives a clue as to what's in store. There are some cracking good chapters, which is no surprise given the calibre of the work's contributors. Uma Suthersanen's "Bleak House or Great Expectations? The literary author as a stakeholder in 19th century international copyright politics" is an enjoyably provocative romp that leaves the reader with the uncomfortable feeling that he hasn't spotted all the literary allusions that the author has placed before him. Also of note is the thought-exercise of Marieke van Schijndel and Joost Smiers, who urge us to imagine a world without copyright. Er, says Merpel, I think a lot of people who inhabit the blogosphere have been imagining this for quite a while now.
Bookish details. Hardback, ISBN 1845 426010, £49.95 (£44.96 if you buy it from the publisher's website). Rupture factor: minimal. Extent: vi + 172 pages of printed stuff, plus 12 blank pages of your very own for colouring in with crayons ...More on Hans Christian Andersen, Arthur Andersen and Lale Andersen.
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