Still, he's gone and done something pretty bold for the film rights to his seventh novel, "You Don't Love Me Yet."
He's offering the rights, for free (and a percentage of the back-end) to whoever comes up with the best proposal.
On his Web site, he offered an option on the film rights free to the filmmaker who presents him with the best proposal by May 15. In return, the filmmaker will agree to pay Lethem 2 percent of the film's budget when the film receives a distribution deal, and allow the rights to the novel to return to the public domain -- for the free use of anyone, including other filmmakers -- within five years of the film's release.
Lethem also wrote an essay for the February issue of Harper's called "The Ecstasy of Influence," in which he argues for a new approach to copyright law, based on the recognition that "appropriation, mimicry, quotation, allusion and sublimated collaboration consist of a kind of sine qua non of the creative act."
Salon.com continues a fine tradition of iconoclastic and interesting arts journalism today with a very interesting interview with Lethem by Amy Benfer.
What struck me reading this interview is that I've now heard three or four really, really interesting conceptualizations of how copyright and rights should work in the new era. They've all been from writers and artists. The only proposals you ever hear from the people on the other side of the table are proposals that benefit big corporations and demand clunky DRM schemes; all these things that accrue no benefit to the user whatsoever.
Half of us have entered the new world and are trying to figure out how to make it work. The other half have lawyers plunging 300-page fingers into ever widening holes in the dyke. After me, the deluge...
2 comments:
2% of $50 million (say it's a modest movie with Ed Norton) is $1 million. Not bad acquisition rights for the author. Plus some of the back end which, depending on the accounting, could be a few more dollars. Seems a sound proposition to me. In the range of what he would get under the current sorts of arrangments?
The copyright issue of most urgency to writers is the proposition that you hand over internet distribution add ons for nothing. That's certainly the CBC's position.
Coming from prose writing, mass distribution without a purchase price feels like sabotage. Isn't copyright supposed to motivate artists to create by making the creation their property, not some corporations property? If that incentive goes away, the motivation for an independent artist/writer would more than likely come from just wanting attention. . .
Post a Comment