Of Mice and Men

 

Earlier this week, a number of well-known literary works passed into the public domain. A random sampling of books includes:

The Mystery of the Blue Train (featuring Hercule Poirot) by Agatha Christie

Orlando: A Biography by Virginia Woolf
Lady Chatterly’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence
Dark Princess by W.E.B. Du Bois
Millions of Cats by Wanda Gág (which I first encountered as a very young child 

    when it was read aloud on the Captain Kangaroo television program. 

    Years later, I read it to my children.)
The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall
All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque (German version)
Story of the Eye by Georges Bataille

The most notable figure in the public domain story is Mickey Mouse.  But the only presentation of that character to make the transition is the physical appearance of the player as he appears in “Steamboat Willie” and “Plane Crazy.”  The name “Mickey Mouse” and the appearance of the glove-wearing, perpetually-circle eared presentation is guarded by a legal firewall that would make the National Security Council jealous.  Although Walt Disney unashamedly ripped off Mortimer Mouse and other well-known cartoons of his day and then copyrighted, trademarked, and claimed them as his own, the Disney Empire has maintained ownership and control of the Mouse family apparently in perpetuity.

Copyright and creative control have their place.  But The Mouse and Sonny Bono have warped both intent and justice in the issue of inventive thinking.

But, did you know that your Bible is copyrighted?  If you are reading anything but a King James Version of the Bible that has no annotations or footnotes, that Bible is almost certainly under copyright.  Even if you have some kind of King James Study Bible (Schofield or Tyndale or Life Application Bibles), the King James text itself is not under copyright, but in all probability the footnotes, marginal notes, introductory articles and other “study helps” in the back of the book are under copyright protection.  The National Council of Churches holds the copyright of both the Revised Standard Version and the New Revised Standard Version.  The American Bible Society has copyrighted The Good News Bible (or what some of us remember as Good News  for Modern Man).

 Now, people can’t copyright the Masoretic Hebrew Old Testament or the Koine Greek New Testament.  But they can copyright translations as their own work.  Those copyrights protect – for a time – the academic work of the translators.  But the copyrights also protect the integrity of the texts.  To copyright a translation of scripture is to give some assurance that the work is accurate.  It also provides penalties for misrepresentations of the translations.  Imagine the mischief that could be caused with the substitution of a few “thou shalts” with “thou shalt nots.”  People have enough difficulty reading and interpreting the Bible without ill-motivated persons perverting the Word of God.

 I would love to see the copyright regulations of our country and the world made more equitable.  But I am grateful for the proper guardrails that these laws provide particularly for the religious community.  I don’t want to draw too close a parallel between Walt Disney and the National Council of Churches.  But sometimes it is a matter of “sauce for the goose.”  I surely would like to see all this made good.