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Samizdat
This past week, my order from Amazon came. Among it was this:
I’m probably going to write a longer post about the experience of re-reading my favorite CYOAs, but the short version is that it’s certainly evident that it was written for kids, but on that level, the writing holds up, and actually has some nice touches to it. It’s also one of the rare CYOAs that lets you play an adult, not a kid.
More pressing is the state of the version I picked up. It was billed as used, obviously, and it’s labeled as in good condition. But it originally came from a school library (the Martin Luther School of Phoenix, Arizona, last checked out in 1994), and the spine of the book has been taped together — not with Scotch tape or anything, but it still is a bit shaky, and definitely needs to be handled gently. I don’t feel cheated or anything, but I do want to find a way to preserve the contents.
Scanning in the pages would destroy the book spine, I think. I wouldn’t necessarily mind re-typing it, and it would be kind of neat to port it to Twee, the same way people have ported the original ADVENTURE to Inform. The problem is, if I did it, I can’t share it with anyone because of copyright.
It would be one thing if the book was still in print, or at least the possibility of coming back into print existed. Chooseco has been reprinting CYOAs, but they seem limited to those that were originally written by R. A. Montgomery (which makes sense, since he’s a co-founder of the company). I would guess that they’re either unable to get permission from Edward Packard, or it’s too expensive.
So if I did get the text into a digital format myself, my options are:
- Keep it to myself. That’s fine enough for me, but what happens if my hard drive crashes?
- Share it with a few people I know and trust, to essentially hold onto for safe-keeping. This is not really that much better than just holding onto it myself — sure, in theory it avoids the issue of a single hard drive dying. But it ’s also hard to explain to people, “Ok, you’ve never heard of this before but it means a lot to me…”
- Put it up somewhere and the moment I get a legal notice, take it down. This basically relies on the copyright holder being lazy — the same way you can download certain gamebooks from a certain abandonware site — but it’s kind of weak sauce, because you’re essentially saying it’s ok to break the law until you get caught.
- Throw it on the Pirate Bay, which — at least for now — seems immune to copyright. Again, not really clear that your average movie/video game/software pirate really would care about a single children’s book published in 1980, and torrents only last as long as people seed them.
All of these choices seem less than optimal… so I’m still thinking it over.
6 comments
That is a good point. I forgot to mention that I had tried to look up contact info for the author, but didn’t get anywhere — and then I realized I should be looking for his agent, not him.
Not really. The only thing that really springs to mind is an unproduced screenplay for Alien 3 purportedly written by William Gibson, which is pretty lame in the grand scheme of things.
It’s tough to find examples because while states do ban books, I don’t of any that have been banned everywhere in the U.S. The closest analogue I can think of are things like The Grey Album (Beatles mashed up with Jay-Z) and The American Edit (pretty well-done remixes of Green Day’s American Idiot) — both could never be picked by a real record label because of IP issues.
I guess you have to have friends in high places. I once read an article, apparently unpublished, by Roland Barthes that I got from professor with connections….
I guess the real problem is figuring out who holds the rights after all these years. Even if you find the authors, they may not actually have the ability to grant you legal permission. I’d go ahead and convert, sit on them for while you make efforts to contact the appropriate parties, and if you simply can’t find anyone to speak for them, go ahead and share. Then, at least, you will have tried. (Please note that trying does not hold up in court)
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Why not request permission from the copyright holder? In my experience, there’s scant reason to EXPECT an author to be unreasonable, and apparently in this case the writer retains the copyright.
Put yourself in the writer’s shoes. No doubt he’d like to see the book available. Some money might change hands, but that doesn’t seem unfair.
Sure, it’s possible the author will want more money than you’re willing to pay. I won’t say it never happens, but it’s also perfectly possible that the author will be more supportive than you expect.