Copyright does put some restrictions on the free market, but it also adds a great deal of value to it. If the creator had no property rights to their work they wouldn’t be able to get much money when they tried to sell it; no one could afford to pay very much money to market and sell a readily reproducible creative work if anyone else could just copy it. This in turn would greatly reduce the incentive and ability for people to dedicate much time to creative endeavors.

The first market for a creative idea is that of the initial sale by the creator. The copyright laws add a great deal of value to that market, and encourage a great deal more creative work than in those countries that do not have such protections. Although many of the electronics we use today are made overseas, there’s a reason why they weren’t invented there. One of the very first laws passed by Congress was a copyright act, and subsequent American history shows that their priority was not misplaced.

It’s true enough, though, that at some point copyrights become restrictive to the free market. This was recognized by that first Congress, which balanced the interests of the creator vs. the interests of the country by placing a time limit on intellectual property rights. But when the copyright act was passed, there was no concept that a creative act such as a cartoon character that was more than 75 years old might have a multi-billion dollar value. Those billions of dollars buys a lot of influence in the halls of Congress. Putting a time limit on copyright was a way of telling creators, “You’ve made enough money on this idea; time to create a new one, and let all the world use this idea unfettered.” The creator of Mickey Mouse was Walt Disney, not Disney, Inc. He benefited enormously from that creative act, as he very well should have. But he’’s dead and gone, and I see no reason why it’s in the interests of America to protect his creative act more than 75 years later to the benefit of stockholders of Disney, Inc. If that means that Disney, Inc. loses a lot of money, too bad. They knew what the law was and should have come up with some new ideas to replace it.

Two thoughts:

If the translation is fundamentally flawed, and not just a couple of problematic phrases here and there, then, wouldn’t providing a “correct” translation be, in effect, a different book?

Does copyright law protect anything published under the author’s name and title, no matter what the inaccuracy?

Copyright law grants a number of exclusive rights to (initially) the author of a work. One of them is the right to prepare “derivative works’, which include translations. Clearly a new translation is a derivative of the original, not a derivative of the old translation, so would infringe upon whoever now owns this particular right in the original. (As I said above, copyright is infinitely divisable, so it’s possible that the translation right in the original is owned by a different party from the distribution right in the original who might also be different from the rights holder(s) in the first translation, but in practice this kind of division is uncommon.)

A work is a derivative work of another if it contains a substantial portion of the copyrightable expression in the original. Unsurprisingly there is a lot of case law concerning what is “substantial” and what is “copyrightable expression”.

Presuming language differences, “Mary had a little lamb,” translated as “Mary owned a llama fair?” would be protected, and someone would be prevented from providing a poem “Mary had a little lamb?” or anything that involved Mary, and the ownership of an animal?

No, because it is the expression of an idea which is copyrightable, not the underlying idea itself. If there are only a small number of ways to express an idea, then they can’t be copyrighted.

Secondly, why wouldn’t someone simply be able to offer a book in English that critiques the errors in the original”“a book version of this article. Pointing out errors in translation would seem to be fair use of a work, the copyright owners would be able to see the books as a set, making even more money, and people would understand what the new translator/existentialist thinks de Beauvior was trying to communicate. A win/win/win situation.

In my opinion, that certainly would be fair use. It could even quote expansively from both the original and the translation, so long as the quotes were necessary to the critique.

I am not a lawyer. This opinion is worth the money you paid for it.

If the translation is fundamentally flawed, and not just a couple of problematic phrases here and there, then, wouldn’t providing a “correct” translation be, in effect, a different book?

Does copyright law protect anything published under the author’s name and title, no matter what the inaccuracy? Presuming language diffences, “Mary had a little lamb,” translated as “Mary owned a llama fair?” would be protected, and someone would be prevented from providing a poem “Mary had a little lamb?” or anything that involved Mary, and the ownership of an animal?

Secondly, why wouldn’t someone simply be able to offer a book in English that critiques the errors in the original–a book version of this article. Pointing out errors in translation would seem to be fair use of a work, the copyright owners would be able to see the books as a set, making even more money, and people would understand what the new translator/existentialist thinks de Beauvior was trying to communicate. A win/win/win situation.

Why is everyone assuming that the translation critic is correct?

Because I have some background in existentialism and the existentialism of Satre, which formed the basis for Beauvoir’s own work, absolutely categorically totally and wholly disallows for any true inherent nature to be atributed to man or woman.

It is almost literally inconcievable that Beauvoir would have been an essentialist in that sense.

As far as violating the principles of a free market, a market can’t be free if someone doesn’t have the right to sell their work under conditions mutually agreed upon by the buyer and the seller. Otherwise it’s not a free market; it’s a market operating under whatever conditions the people who have the power to do so set.

Copyright isn’t a free market. Copyright is a Government mandated private monopoly.

And Susan, someone else made this point but I’ll make it again- children’s fluency is still fluency according to their age level, or even less if they are second language learners. This is why using children as interpreters is such an awful idea, like leaving your ten in old in charge of talking to your doctor would be.

Take the energy you might otherwise use on denouncing the Horrible Profit-Motivated Bad Publishers, gushing here at Alas about how badly the world is organized and how everyone is Out To Get You and how Men are intrinsically Bad, get off your butts and learn French. (And then a whole world of other literature is thus open to you!!)

It’s not that hard, honest. Think. Every 4 year old in Paris who is not hopelessly retarded speaks and understands French, fluently; every child of 10 in Paris who is not hopelessly retarded reads it. A lot of English is derived directly from French, so you won’t meet any strangers here.

You’re OK. Hang on. So don’t bitch. Just do it. >>

Those four-year-olds and ten-year-olds are completely immersed in French and also spend time learning to speak and read it both at home and in school. Despite that huge time commitment, they can’t read The Second Sex any more than most American ten-year-olds can read The Second Sex in translation. The equivalent would involve quitting my job and jumping into an immersion program for a year or so. In order to merely learn to read French on de Beauvoir’s level, I would require intensive courses for three or four years. That’s a hell of a lot more energy than it would take to, say, write to a publisher or comment a few times on a blog.

Is this a joke? I can’t believe you’re making this argument in earnest. It’s like you’ve never spent any time learning a language.

It’s true that anyone who makes it their number one life’s priority to read The Second Sex can learn French. But those who would like to read it, but who cannot or will not make it their absolute number-one first priority, are not unreasonable for objecting to it not being available in English.

Take the energy you might otherwise use on denouncing the Horrible Profit-Motivated Bad Publishers, gushing here at Alas about how badly the world is organized and how everyone is Out To Get You and how Men are intrinsically Bad, get off your butts and learn French. (And then a whole world of other literature is thus open to you!!)

It’s not that hard, honest. Think. Every 4 year old in Paris who is not hopelessly retarded speaks and understands French, fluently; every child of 10 in Paris who is not hopelessly retarded reads it. A lot of English is derived directly from French, so you won’t meet any strangers here.

You’re OK. Hang on. So don’t bitch. Just do it.

This and this.

These articles espose different views about whether copyright law can be considered a content neutral limitiation on speech, and in the footnotes reference a variety of other law review articles in this topic that may also be of interest.

I don’t see a problem.

The fact that anti-feminism may influence Knopf’s price is irrelevant.

The fact that people want to have read the classics of feminism is irrelevant.

It has apparently been lucrative for the holders of rights to Joyce’s Ulysses to bother to put out a corrected version. Same for Kafka’s Trial - I believe there are multiple “correct” versions published.

“Don’t suppose someone could charge the publishing house with libel, or defamation of character, or misrepresentation, or misquoting, or whatever’s the legalese for perpetuating falsehood and otherwise profiting from misuse and deliberate mistranslation of someone’s words?”

Well, you’d have to prove that the current translation is a mistranslation of the original work, which means you’d have a bunch of translators sitting in front of a jury arguing over the fine points of translating French to English, and then get the jury to agree that the result shows that the Knopf translation is wrong. Then you’d have to prove that Knopf knew the translation was wrong, or even that Knopf arranged for the translator to deliberately misrepresent the original work. Good luck on all that.

“To put it bluntly, it is wrong, and harmful to consumers, and in violation of the principles of both free market and free exchange of information (yes, I do call it censorship), for a publishing house to prevent the widely available existance of an accurate translation in order to continue to profit from a flawed one.”

As far as violating the principles of a free market, a market can’t be free if someone doesn’t have the right to sell their work under conditions mutually agreed upon by the buyer and the seller. Otherwise it’s not a free market; it’s a market operating under whatever conditions the people who have the power to do so set. As you’ve stated, you are still free to learn French. You are also free to hire your own translator, or to convince someone to translate it for free.

As far as calling this censorship, check out my post #45. Knopf is not witholding the publication of a work on the basis of finding it’s content objectionable. It’s simply choosing to exercise it’s rights to not have another translation be made and sold, on a purely economic basis. Unlike a censor, Knopf has not withheld such permission on the basis that such a work would be offensive, immoral, etc. Unlike a censor, Knopf has no power to prevent such a translation from being made and distributed for free.

BTW, everyone, I did a cut and paste wrong; the entry for the Compact Oxford Dictionary should be:

“¢ noun an official who examines material that is to be published and suppresses parts considered offensive or a threat to security.

“¢ verb suppress or remove unacceptable parts of (a book, film, etc.).

I actually knew the denotation of the word censor. I never said that Knopf or any publishing company that legally has copyright to a work is commiting censorship for refusing to allow either translations or further production of any work.

In fact this is what I said:

I see censorship as the government or one of its agents banning a book or discussion of any idea contrary to theirs. This is actually occuring in the middle East and in China.

If Knopf owns the copyright to her work, any new translation would be purely at their discresion. I don’t see this as censorship.

I don’t disagree with your conclusion on this issue. In fact, I don’t think that Knopf or any other publisher is legally obligated to produce works, and a publisher does think in terms of economic interest. For a publisher to be guilty of censorship, their refusal to publish must contain some judgement of the material in question.

And example of censorship in the marketplace would be Wal-Mart and its demand that artists change their work, or not be carried in their store. While this is perfectly legal, I believe this is an attempt at censorship.