681–690 of 992 posts
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So, if the publisher changes a single word in a new copyright, and the old one expires, can the publisher sue someone who shared the old version? It'd only be one word off, so they could argue it's effectively infringement...
No. If that trick worked, you'd have seen it happen to at least one extremely popular public domain work (e.g., the King James Bible) by now.
I think both should be accessible but perhaps the edited version is most practical today. To me this is similar to Star Wars. I enjoy watching the original trilogy as it was released, but the updated version and its FX just work better today and for today’s viewers IMO.
Except this version isn't pushed forward by the right, but by the left.
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We gonna edit all books so kids don't take the crazy parts at face value? Swift? Dickens? The Bible? The Torah? There have been thousands upon thousands upon thousands of children's books written in the last sixty years. Leave the classics the fuck alone, especially when the authors are unable to defend their work.
> The Bible? The Torah? Funny examples you list there, where reinterpretations still happen after 2000+ years. The approach in your comment is very pop culture or mainstream religion view of this, not an actual, historical one.
It is worthwhile to meditate on Nassim Nicholas Taleb's idea that the most intolerant minority tends to win.
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> It is forbidden to say being fat is unhealthy, undesirable or to pathologize it at all. Does that seem sensible?
There was a time, back about five hundred to a thousand years ago, when being fat was a positive trait because it was a social sign that you had the means to surplus nourishment. But whether it's acceptable to be fat or not, it's ultimately a social measurement that changes like the wind. Objectively and biologically, being fat is not good for one's health. Period. There is no room for argument here. Being fat is unh…
It's not about the relative merits of more or less body fat, it's about overweight people constantly being told they need to do something, either in person or in the media. Worse, people will try to shame them into action, probably on a weekly basis, taking the moral high ground that they didn't allow themselves to gain weight, despite having no idea what conditions or mental issues have led to that state.
It's just tiring for people who are a little different (height, skin, fat, ability, etc.) to constantly be reminded of it and ignored as a person because of it.
The old books will continue to exist. But just like we don't tell our kids everything their beloved grandpa said, we do the same with the media they consume. Publishers making these changes are just adding value through convenience, making a calculated bet that it's in demand.
I read these books as a kid in the 80s and was definitely happy in my early years to join in with jokes about differences in people. Took longer than necessary to realise that wasn't funny for them.
People will complain about political correctness, but this is just the market and intellectual property law in action. In my experience, the ‘left’ doesn’t want the public sphere to become coddled and inoffensive. Advertisers and media companies do. It’s risk aversion. Ideally, our shared cultural legacy would not be subject to the whims of corporate executives.
I don't think advertisers and media care if you their consumers are rightist or leftist as long as they consume and the company find out what they are willing to pay for, be it weapons, "organic" food, propaganda t-shirts, survivalist stuff or magic stones.
My point being, regardless of the exact details of the zeitgeist, busy bodies editing famous works to make it "more palatable" is a constant.
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> It is forbidden to say being fat is unhealthy, undesirable or to pathologize it at all. Does that seem sensible?
There was a time, back about five hundred to a thousand years ago, when being fat was a positive trait because it was a social sign that you had the means to surplus nourishment. But whether it's acceptable to be fat or not, it's ultimately a social measurement that changes like the wind. Objectively and biologically, being fat is not good for one's health. Period. There is no room for argument here. Being fat is unh…
The people in america we're talking about can barely walk. They are not just fat, they're morbidly obese.
I'm a gay man and I think we are going to far with this PC nonsense. I had a hard time growing up in the 90s knowing I was different and being tormented by my peers, so I'm happy to see gay "normalized" in current pop culture more because I think it teaches the younger generation to accept themselves and others. However I feel that it's going to far, for example I started reading a novel the other day but gave up a t…
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Yeah; I don’t know why it’s taken people so long to realise this. I know it seems to people on Twitter that everyone is on twitter, but that’s really not true. About 10% of people in the USA use Twitter daily - which is a huge number of eyeballs. But that still leaves the remaining 90% of people choosing instead to enjoy our short time on this planet. If anything, I wouldn’t be surprised if the outrage over Hogwarts…
I have seen this a few times even as a dev, where people put way to much focus on twitter. I think its because there is a class of people that use twitter and they think twitter is really really important. But some random person on twitter tweets "@company x is bad" and its taken much more seriously than say an email, slack message, or whatever. Most people don't use twitter ever, most people on twitter rarely use tw…
I've seen actual physical protests with people on the streets with placards that appear to get less attention from the press. It's incredibly lazy!