Controlling the Lewis Legacy

by Mike Perry

In the US, copyright isn’t based on an extension of property ownership. It’s based on a public interest in seeing that the creators of new works are sufficiently rewarded to encourage them in their work. Seventy-five years takes in virtually anyone’s adult life, and life + 50 years would take in the life of the spouse even if the author died young. Beyond a certain point, there’s less and less return to society in retaining copyright privileges. We often end up with a few decadent descendants living off grandfather’s talent and a much larger collection of books that simply drop out of print because the demand for them simply isn’t great enough to pay royalties and the high cost of keeping a book in (paper) print. Electronic texts provide a way to keep an author’s work alive and widely available without any of those difficulties. And if at some time in the future interest in the author grows, a small publisher can quickly bring out a print version based on the electronic text.

Douglas Gresham objected to my placing Spirits in Bondage on the Internet where it would be available in countries where the copyright is still valid. I strongly doubt there were any legal grounds for his complaint. EU law simply doesn’t govern what people do in the U.S. Print books have always moved quite freely across national borders in “defiance” of national laws. A few years ago there was an embarrassing book the British government banned under their Official Secrets Act. Yet the U.S. publisher was shipping copies by the caseload to government offices in Britain where officials wanted to read the expos. The same is now true of electronic books. It is becoming increasing difficult for national governments (or a few TV networks or newspaper chains) to decide what people see and read. That has both good and bad effects.

I’ve never been able to make much sense of Doug Gresham’s attitude. He seems not only to think that everything Lewis wrote ought to be under the control of Lewis Pte, but that God added an 11th commandment to that effect. In his case, money doesn’t seem to be the prime motivation, Spirits can’t be earning much in comparison to Mere Christianity or Narnia. Preserving the text as written also does not seem to be the rationale. It is Lewis Pte that has authorized the publication of poems that differ substantially from the versions published during Lewis’ lifetime. Doug has never suggested that my e-text was going to be inaccurate, simply that it existed outside Lewis Pte’s control. Personally, I think Lewis Pte would actually earn its investors more money if they were less obsessed with what others are doing and more generous with Lewis fans.

At its core, there seems to be an obsession with control in which some people almost seem to think that they have become Lewis. Researchers who have wanted to study Lewis, have turned to other writers in despair after discovering that permission to publish is far more restricted with respect to Lewis than with almost any other author. Lewis is popular enough that all his collected papers should have been placed on microfilm that would be freely available to any library that wanted a copy. That hasn’t happened. Permission to publish two excellent children’s books that add to the Narnia tales has been refused. People who wanted to give a few other Lewis fans a copy of a much cherished letter they received from Lewis have been harassed. Control, control, control. Lewis himself was not one-millionth that obsessed with controlling his literary legacy. In fact, he neglected it terribly in his last will, devoting more attention to an old family portrait.

Unless there are later books that fell into the public domain early and weren’t restored to copyright by GATT, Spirits in Bondage will be the only book by Lewis posted on Internet in the United States for quite some time to come — unless Lewis Pte gives permission. (In 15 years, all of Lewis’ works published during his lifetime will enter the public domain in “life+50” countries like Canada, but no more will have entered the public domain in the U.S. by then, assuming current laws don’t change.)

AFTERWORD by Kathryn Lindskoog

Because of his enthusiasm about C. S. Lewis, Rodney Loewen invested about six months in creating a free website at http://www.geocities.com/EnchantedForest/6710 called “Friends of Narnia.” Then it occurred to him that he should ask permission, and he did. “The Curtis Brown [literary agency] then replied to me denying me permission to do so because they ‘…are currently discussing the possibility of setting up a dedicated Narnia website in conjunction with Harper Collins.'” When Loewen sadly announced on MERELEWIS that he would terminate the website in a week, giving people one last chance to see it, he was promptly advised by a couple of readers that no permission is needed for websites, books, or articles about Lewis. As a result, his impressive “Friends of Narnia” is still flourishing and delighting people, unimpeded.

The experiences of Mike Perry and Rodney Loewen are not uusual. It is the nature of many businesses and the people who work for them to try to maximize their control over things, and they like the public to think the law grants them more control than it really does.

In 1997 a British High Court judge ruled that a person’s name or alleged signature is in the public domain and cannot be claimed as an exclusive trademark. That is good news.