We’ve had the right to adapt longer than we’ve had the right to prevent copying
Basically the printing press introduced the notion of copyright, but we’ve had the right to adapt for ages and ages.
Our modern, Western notion that authorship should be solo and original is comparatively young and culturally bound, dating back only to after we had the ability to make faithful and exact copies at a mass scale. Copyright started evolving into its modern form in the centuries after the invention of the printing press made copying easy. In other words, we’ve had the right to adapt longer than we’ve had the right to prevent copying. I’m grateful for copyright and solo authorship: it’s what allows me, and all the other authors I’ve loved, to make any kind of living. But let’s not pretend that professionalized creativity is the only kind of creativity. There’s a joy in a joke well told, a wicked delight in a delicately stitched swear word, a burning curiosity that can only be quenched by rewriting one’s favorite characters in a new environment—and yes, an exhilaration in riffing together in perfect synchro-meme. —Gretchen McCulloch, Because Internet
- This fits with idea that healthy stories are fluid, not fixed, and we have the option—nay, the right—to change the outcome any time we like.
- see also: all transmission is recreation