Copyright Absurdity: School Play Canceled Over Copyright Due To Minor Performance Changes
from the creativity-canceled dept
There’s a great deal that is absurd about copyright law in America, but its most basic absurdity remains the length of time for which the copyright monopoly applies. The length of copyright protection a work gets depends on a number of factors. Was the work published before or after 1978? Was it renewed, if the former? Was it published anonymously or by a named individual? Was it work for hire? The answer to all of these impact the term length of copyright for an individual work. Keep that preamble in mind as we go through the rest of this conversation.
Fanin County High School in northern Georgia had scheduled a two day, two play production of The Crucible, the famed play by Arthur Miller which tells the story of the Salem Witch Trials as an allegory for McCarthyism. The school canceled the second day’s production, however, due to what it said is a copyright issue.
In a statement released by the high school, Principal Dr. Scott Ramsey and other school leaders said they’d “received several complaints as to an unauthorized change in the script of the play.”
While the changes themselves were not detailed, and Channel 2 Action News has reached out for more information, school officials said the copyright violation from their license of the play made their decision for them.
“Upon investigation, we learned that the performance did not reflect the original script. These alterations were not approved by the licensing company or administration. The performance contract for The Crucible does not allow modifications without prior written approval. Failing to follow the proper licensing approval process for additions led to a breach in our contract with the play’s publisher,” school officials said. “The infraction resulted in an automatic termination of the licensing agreement. The second performance of The Crucible could not occur because we were no longer covered by a copyright agreement.”
Unfortunately some key details here are hidden behind the school’s vague statements. What were the changes? That seems important, as it would be good to know just how substantial these changes were. Who discovered the changes and raised the alarm over the licensing? Was a member of the licensor really in the audience during the first performance and blew the whistle? Did the school do this proactively, indicating some sort of chilling effect?
While those are all valid questions, let’s really take a step back to get a sense of how absurd this is. A school made apparently some material performance changes to a play and that violated its licensing agreement such that performances would then violate the play’s copyright. A play, mind you, that was first published in 1953 and the author for which died in 2005. So, in a world where The Crucible is 72 years old, 23 years from its copyright expiration, and the creator dead for two decades… a group of high school children can’t put on the play they worked so hard to prepare for because of vague changes to the performance?
In what world would we call that copyright sanity?
Filed Under: arthur miller, copyright, fanin county high school, georgia, remix, the crucible
Comments on “Copyright Absurdity: School Play Canceled Over Copyright Due To Minor Performance Changes”
You’re leaving out a few key details to turn this in to a diatribe about copyright…
The cancelation seems actually to have been triggered by a parent complaigning about a dance sequence at the beginning of the play with thegirls summoning spirits that they regarded as “demonic”
It’s tecnically not part of the script, because there’s no dialogue… and such sequences seem to be optional, but not uncommon.
When asked, the licensing company said it wouldn’t have been an issue…
So it seems that copyright here is a smokescreen for the school system bowing to some triggered evangelical’s heckler’s veto.
https://www.friendlyatheist.com/p/georgia-high-school-cancels-the-crucible
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Shutting down a production of “The Crucible” because of Satanic Panic is a magnificent piece of irony.
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It’s almost is if they got so triggered by the beginning,they didn’t stick around for the end.
Re: I misunderstood the flag icon
I thought the flag icon meant your comment would be highlighted for others to see. It’s after I clicked it, it said marked for abused and I didn’t see an undo option. Misunderstanding aside thanks for the info. (Nitpick techdirt: Flags can mean positive things, in fact they are mostly regarded positively. Even bad ones like pirate flags.)
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When you mouse over it literally shows you what it means…
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This is true, but it’s not something you’d notice if you aren’t looking for it, or are too quick to click, so I totally understand that commenter’s confusion.
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Showing your age lol. You can actually long-press it on mobile to see the mouse over text, but I don’t know if that’s actually in line with the way people use stuff anymore.
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Just click it again to unmark.
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Click it again before closing your browser and it will undo.
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Ahh okay that sounds way more like the Georgia I know.
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I’m shocked a person of faith would try to impose their belief system on others, shocked I say!
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When an ex of mine ended her church affiliation (in Germany, that is a thing because the government collects church membership taxes), her mother, a devout Catholic that regularly attended rosary prayer rounds expressed her relief because she had been worried about the possibility of a church wedding which she would have considered inappropriate for her daughter because of her lack of beliefs.
And that was not a sign of disrespect: she loved and respected her daughter (a rather erudite scholar fully supported by the family). She just felt that the foundations of her faith did not relate to her.
In contrast, I had met other “devout” Catholics who considered it amiss for another relative of mine not to “deal with” a child conceived accidentally without any prospect of wedlock before the mother’s state became conspicuous. They considered it irresponsible that she decided to get and raise the child (few years later, she did marry someone who was on board with taking over the responsibilities of a father).
The difference between considering religion as something setting standards for yourself as opposed to entitling yourself to impose appearances on other people in your orbit was really striking to me.
It taught me that devotion does not need to imply the desire to meddle in other people’s lives and does not need to come loaded with hypocrisy.
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There’s some irony (or something) in the fact that the dancing scene that was meant to be the catalyst for the whole Witch Trial thing that followed was criticized for being “demonic”. As I recall, the premise is that the residents (incorrectly) interpreted the dancing as demonic, which was a reason they suspected witchcraft in the first place.
I feel like the woman completely missed the entire point of the play.
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She is the entire point of the play. Of course she can’t see it.
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Or she did see it and she didn’t like how much she saw herself in it.
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These are the same sorts of people who will whine about schools making the civil war “political”.
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I would argue that this is still an indictment of the state of copyright, if a parent’s complaint about something being supposedly demonic can believably be covered up by a claimed copyright concern, then copyright is broken, regardless of the validity of the claim. The fact that it’s believable is problem enough.
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If your read the news and blog coverage on it, it’s pretty clear that just about nobody actually believed it was copyright…
To quote the On Stage Blog…
“But anyone paying attention can see through the fog machine.”
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“It doesn’t matter if it was true, as long as I could believe it was true!”
OK.
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Perhaps if the dance had summoned whiskey, bourbon, cognac, vodka, and others of that ilk, the parents might have been satisfied? I shudder to think of such a creature in the audience of MacBeth or the Tempest …. Second Witch. By the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes.
Open, locks, Whoever knocks! “
Stopping theater kids really promotes progress!
I found another blog post that has slightly more details about what happened. On the day of the cancelled performance, the principal claimed it was due to parental complaints about the show being too “demonic”. It was only when they were pressed for more details by the public that the copyright explanation came out. The blogger also opined as to what was so problematic that it turned the performance infringing:
Furthermore, it sounds like parents even called the licensing company responsible for granting licenses for The Crucible, and every rep pretty much claimed that it not only didn’t sound like copyright infringement, but that they wouldn’t even shut down infringing performances on such short notice.
And let me take this moment to remind you that the US’s first copyright law had the preamble, “An Act for the encouragement of learning”, and that the Constitutional underpinnings for such a law say the purpose of copyright is “to promote the progress of science and useful arts”. School theater programs are the very place where children learn about theater and the arts (even if the “arts” mentioned in the Constitution is not referring to that kind of art). And as a former theater kid myself (who now is active in a local theater group), if this supposed copyright violation was what shut down the performance, it seems antithetical to everything copyright law supposedly stands for, and the only lesson kids will likely take away from this is certainly not one that will engrain a respect for copyright laws. And when the author is dead and the work is only a few decades away from being public domain, tell me how this benefits anyone? The playwright isn’t going to be motivated to make more works because it was shut down, because he’s dead. It makes me think the playwright is rolling over in his grave over this, but not due to the supposed unauthorized alteration of his work!
Simple. Put this in the playbill.
“Enjoy our production of The Crucible, but understand this- our production of this play was made under threat of arrest/lawsuit from the licensing guild. We may need to hire out bodyguards/lawyers to prevent their goon squad from coming after us or our actors, so if there is a donation box, you’ll understand why.
Enjoy the show!”
They didn’t shut it down because of minor alterations to the original content.
They shut it down because they saw themselves in the original content and didn’t like the reflection.
This is the absurdity of Mickey Mouse copyright protections.
Can’t change anything that would offend the profiteering inheritance.
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Nah. The kids need to be hung. They hurt some rich pedophiles feelings which is the only thing the law is about anymore
At a guess, Id say it’s post-performance censorship. The play makes the point that authority can go horribly wrong, and so one should not believe everything any given authority says, just because said authority says it. The “demonic” excuse worked until it didn’t, thereupon, the censors pulled out the copyright excuse. And that worked, because the copyright maximalists have built up such a fervor of terror over “copyright infringement” that it’d work on a deaf, dumb and blind kid, even if he was the world’s greatest pinball player …
The demons were hiding in the audience.
School Play
Folloow Copyright Law. What don’t you get about that?
If you dislike copyrights, then Google, FB and anything having to to with Elmo should be completely open sourced
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By all but the school administration account, they did follow copyright law.
Nobody believes the Administration.
The article should be about how the School Administration didn’t follow the Constitution.
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This is not the horrible idea you seem to think it is. But there’s also lots of patents involved that would make that very difficult.
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Technically, this seems to be a licensing issue, not a copyright issue per se. Copyright law doesn’t dictate whether you can make modifications to the script. The license did.
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Technically, that is correct, but the right to demand license terms depends on holding the copyright. But, as noted above, the copyright holders did not object to the changes. So the school closed the play for reasons more technically called ‘bullshit.’
Respectfully disagree.
I must respectfully disagree with your characterization here. There’s nothing ridiculous about owners of property specifying how that property may be used.
This wasn’t just a copyright issue… and the school mischaracteriEs it as such. It’s. Matter of contract. When the license agreement specifies “as written”, then the licensee is bound to comply with that directive. Unauthorized changes are specified as a terminating event that renders the license void. So then, a production of the play becomes unauthorized, e. g. Copyright infringement.
Bottom line, if a school (or any producer of a play) doesn’t like the content for some reason, it has options. It can choose other material, or, it can request and negotiate for permission to make the change. What it can’t do, is impose its will over the creator of the work.
Playwriting is an art. Artists have a right to require that their work not be altered without permission. Doing so changes the art. Sometimes in subtle ways, sometimes more overtly. Either way, it’s not OK unless the artist says so.
Would we say that a famous painter shouldn’t complain if a museum decided to hang the painting upside down and shine only sickly green light on the work?
In the academic theatre environment, in particular, we should be teaching students the importance of respecting the art and the artist. And sure, there’s room for a robust discussion of where the boundaries should be, but deliberate violations should not be tolerated.
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Arthur Miller has been dead for 20 years.