That makes more sense to me. The idea of renewing copyright with just a few tweaks seemed to invalidate the idea of an end of copyright to me. Like Disney could just colorize “Steamboat Willy” and call it a day.
This is touchy, though, because you have to figure out the cutoff for what is a children’s book but also have to keep in consideration that some children will read books for adults. I worry that it could potentially lead to an argument for keeping certain books away from kids. I agree about being mindful of language in books, but my feelings about the whole of the matter are complicated.
We often fight to preserve the author’s intent, but the end result might be a compromise that we were never aware of. In these discussions we ignore the contributions, for better or worse, of publishers and editors who are also in the mix. We’re preserving the original release of a book. We don’t know how close to the author’s vision it was. What we got already may have been, for the time, more “culturally sensitive” than the author had intended it to be.
I’m fine with wanting to preserving the work as it is. The argument for artistic intent for what is ultimately a commerical work that may have been altered before print just doesn’t seem right to me.
