Comments Elsewhere

From Jesse Walker: http://reason.com/blog/2013/03/01/free-sherlock-homes Of course nothing at all should be copyrightable under any circumstances, but Jesse’s post stakes out an interesting neighborhood of logical space to argue about. “Posts like this tend to set off debates in the comments about whether copyright laws should exist at all, but let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that they should. Can anyone give me a good reason for applying copyright to a character, as opposed to a story about that character? It shouldn’t be difficult for the fans of, say, Star Wars to tell which stories about Han Solo have George Lucas’ input or blessing and which ones do not. Why shouldn’t you have the legal right to circulate your own Han Solo films or novels on more than a semi-clandestine amateur basis without asking permission first, competing head to head with Disney to see who can tell the better stories about the characters and settings that Lucas invented? I can see why Disney’s shareholders wouldn’t like that, but why should their preferences be law? . . .”