If Eugene Gant set copyright policy…
Here in the States, Thomas Wolfe’s Look Homeward Angel (1929) hasn’t been freed for public-domain reading in cyberspace, but Eugene Gant, the protagonist, undoubtedly would have a few feelings on the matter. Consider a snippet of dialogue between him and an Indianpolis woman visiting his small town in the North Carolina mountains:
“And a library–you have a big one, eh?”“Yes. We have a nice library.”
“How many books has it?”
“Oh, I can’t say as to that. But it’s a good big library.”
“Over 100,000 books, do you suppose? They wouldn’t have half a million, would they?” He did not wait for an answer, he was talking to himself. “No, of course not. How many books can you take out at one time? What?”
The question goes unanswered in Look Homeward Angel. But there’s little doubt how Eugene would have felt about a cyberlibrary from which he could enjoy as many books as he wanted, at once.
If Bill Gates were less gadget- and software-crazed, he would just might understand–and help finance the legal uploading of modern classics that the greedsters in DC have denied the Net. Perhaps more caring philanthropists will. Think of all the classics, such as Look Homeward Angel, with strong regional roots. A North Carolina millionaire, for example, or group of them, could pay for LHA’s posting in cyberspace. Such arrangements would be more practical with an infrastructure of the kind that TeleRead could provide.
Of course, the best solution in LHA’s case would be for Congress to overturn the scandalous copyright-term extension. Time for this to be an issue in the 2004 Presidential campaign? Just happens that Sen.John Edwards, one of the main Democratic candidates, is a Tar Heel. Mightn’t he just want to take a library-friendly stand–if he hasn’t already–to demonstrate some independence of contributors from the entertainment industry?
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