The Costs of Copyright

Kevin J. H. Dettmar has a fascinating piece in the August 4, 2006 Chronicle of Higher Education on the unintended consequences of intellectual property law. He discusses what happens when, as a result of changes in taste, a work becomes fashionable, and an author, or his or her heirs, decide to increase the price for the rights to reprint that material. That price may decide whether students down the road read the material or not. Dettmar points out that the Schloss lawsuit against Stephen Joyce, heir of James Joyce, now pending in federal district court, may begin to resolve some of the questions.  After discussing his own problems with getting permissions for Joyce pieces, he notes that costs for particular W. H. Auden selections, considered necessary for the anthology he is putting together, have ballooned to nearly nine thousand dollars by themselves.

The essay is Writers Who Price Themselves Out of the Canon, in the Chronicle Review, Aug. 4, 2006.