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Macmillan, Fiona --- "What Might Hans Christian Andersen Say About Copyright Today?" [2006] ELECD 102; in Porsdam, Helle (ed), "Copyright and Other Fairy Tales" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2006)

Book Title: Copyright and Other Fairy Tales

Editor(s): Porsdam, Helle

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781845426019

Section: Chapter 5

Section Title: What Might Hans Christian Andersen Say About Copyright Today?

Author(s): Macmillan, Fiona

Number of pages: 25

Extract:

5. What might Hans Christian Andersen
say about copyright today?
Fiona Macmillan

INTRODUCTION
To ask what Hans Christian Andersen might say about copyright today tends
to suggest that he waxed loquacious on the subject in the mid- to late nine-
teenth century. This is patently not the case. It is likely that along with other
European writers of this period1 he was concerned about the international
protection of his literary works.2 Certainly, his relationship with Charles
Dickens, a famous campaigner for bilateral copyright treaties (see Welsh
1987), is well documented ­ it was even somewhat spiky.3 Whether their
conversations ever roamed over the subject of international harmonization of
copyright protection is not known (or at least not documented).
To attempt, as this chapter does, to address the question of Andersen's atti-
tude to today's copyright regime is a risky business. Aside from what we
know of his own literary and publishing practice, the only evidence we have
of Andersen's likely views on this topic is the moral and ethical positions
and opinions that apparently underlie his famous and extensive collection of
stories. In this chapter I attempt to glean these positions and opinions and to
reconsider the critique of the copyright system contained in my earlier work
(for example Macmillan 2002a, 2002b, 2005) in the light of them. The inher-
ent subjectivity, and scope for error, of this approach is acknowledged from
the outset. There is also an obvious potential for temporal distortion. In the
light ...