Wasn’t Animorphs like 20 years ago?
2 Likes
Oh, it’s ridiculous but also disturbingly plausible for a ridiculous scenario. Copyright is increasingly getting distorted into something unrecognizable, as is trademark - to the point where they end up meeting in the middle and overlapping in function, neither acting as they were originally intended to work. (But now serving, more and more, the interests of large corporations looking to colonize the commons with profit-generating schemes and lay claim to anything that even vaguely resembles something they own.) And part of that is the acceptance I see, especially among younger people, that of course a company should be able to have completely control over how anyone talks about, depicts or thinks about a product they make (even if it’s not something that traditionally was remotely covered by copyright), and that it’s perfectly acceptable for corporations to own text on the level of individual words.
5 Likes
I remember reading a short story with a similar premise, Les Hauts® Parleurs® by Alain Damasio. Huge companies have copyright on words, you are free to use them but have to pay for their public use.
Sadly I don’t think it’s been translated in English ?
3 Likes
Growing up in the 1970s I had to wade through depressing crap like “Kestrel for a Knave” (“Kez”) and WW1 poetry. I guess that, at least, modern distopian writing includes some empowerment. 
1 Like
Dystopian YA is especially hot right now, but it’s always been a thing. A lot of teens like super bleak stories, and a world where the adults in charge are evil is a perfect proving ground for teenage heroes.
5 Likes
Falling to his depth sounds painful! (yes, it’s just a typo, but sometimes typos are remarkable bits of poetry in their own right)
1 Like
Spellfecker is one of my favourite modern poets.
2 Likes
Looks like right after it ended 9/11 happened. Coincidence?
1 Like
Deliciously ironic. The first book has two legal disclaimers; one real, one fake.
The real legal disclaimer begins:
All Rights Reserved
As in the title of the book, then continues:
Copyright © 2017 by Gregory Scott Katsoulis
All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees…
As in the usual legal disclaimer. I suspect it is the first legal disclaimer of a book I have actually read on purpose; I would have prefered it if it were not seperated from the contents of the book by two pages of adverts and an acknowlegements page, but still mildly entertaining. I wonder if the author and publisher realises the irony of a copyright warning on a book whose contents disavow copyright law, and whose acknowlegements thank Mr Doctorow for “firing them up on the topic of Copyfight”.
The fictional legal disclaimer, is somewhat disturbingly not that far away from the actual legal disclaimer, just a lot longer.
4 Likes
When words have taxable value speculators would jump in and language would evolve at a destructive pace. Premium words would have to shift to keep consumer interest and stay profitable. And there will always be cheapskates, especially among the rich. Very cool concept.
3 Likes
Anyone interested in this book migh also be interested in Claire North’s new book 84K. While the central idea is different, there are other similarities; the U.K. run by The Company, anyone other than the rich or those working for The Company are more or less slaves…
I sense an opportunity here for any country that is willing to put their language in the public domain to get it to be the new world language, and that is always an advantage in trade and diplomacy.
1 Like
See “The Freelancer” by Robert Zacks, Galaxy Science Fiction, September 1955.
2 Likes
Dunno, but the double n-dash is the official style book m-dash at Project Gutenberg, that bastion of sharing culture and ASCII text editing. Perhaps the m-dash is a tool of the proportional type-face cabal, who are in league with the Corporate CamelCase perverts? Down with medial capitals! Proportional orthography steals from the commons! You know what to do!
But, as much as I might make a bit of fun of Cory tropes, in some ways the dystopia in “All Rights Reserved” is all too believable.
1 Like
Thought this sounded like a detail from a Little Nemo comic. Turns out the richest guy on Mars owns all the words.
2 Likes
That’s a great wrinkle to add to the setting. I guess it would kick off the Language Wars; with such countries being invaded and their words being taken back in to private ownership, because Freedom (the most expensive word there is).
I think ‘revolution’ would be the most expensive. Priced so high that no one can use it.
2 Likes
You can still occasionally find it on special if you look hard enough.
I dunno, it seems you can start a revolution with some third hand weapons and some will power, while Freedom requires the expenditure of billions of dollars bombing the crap out of some foreign nation that doesn’t want to sell its oil for dollars or refuses to set up a central bank.
