Re: The Leech Woman
Tim O'Connor (oconnort@nyu.edu)
Thu, 20 May 1999 10:58:39 -0400
On Thu, May 20, 1999 at 09:52:58AM -0400, Mattis Fishman wrote:
> Here is a stupid question that has been bothering me. It seems established
> that JM has the right to sell the letters, but does she, or anyone, have the
> right to publish them? Can JDS copyright them? It seems that $60-80K is not
> a lot to pay for material that could be turned into a book which would pull
> in a lot more that that, and besides, since JM says she's only in it for
> the money, I would think that if should could publish them herself, she would.
Not a stupid question at all. She owns the LETTERS; he owns the
content. So, even if he hasn't copyrighted the letters, he could
almost certainly restrain their publication. (In the U.S., copyright
law does not REQUIRE that you register a work for copyright. You
implicitly own the copyright of an original work when it is fixed [e.g.,
written or printed], and Ian Hamilton ran into this when he did his
book. Most people use the belt-and-suspenders approach and additionally
register a copyright for the work, which is what Salinger did for all
the work of his that is held in library collections.)
In fact, I used one rare-books collection that contained several
Salinger letters and other material. The rule on the set was that
I was not allowed even to VIEW the material without prior authorization.
And of course photocopying them was out of the question.
So, even if we collectively dug up US$60K and bought the letters, we
would still have to keep the contents unpublished without the author's
permission.
--tim