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03 October 2002
A Brush With Madness

Today I'm taking a break from analyzing Dr. Burt's article. Don't worry, though; the other shoe will drop. Just not today.

Today's brush with madness emanates from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. For starters, George III is coming quite close already to violating international law with his continued diatribe against Iraq. One of the principles of declaring war is that the reasons for doing so must be clearly stated, and when denied by the other party must be supported. This is part of what got the Japanese military government in trouble over the resumption of hostilities in 1941: not only was their "declaration" delivered late, it was virtually incomprehensible. That's not a great example for us to be following.

Next, George III says that he needs the authority to ignore normal work rules in the new Department of Homeland Security (an ominous-sounding name itself), including abrogating collective bargaining agreements. Well, George, there already is a part of the government not subject to collective bargaining agreements that you could use for this purpose. Even better, it's already at least 1/3 of the way trained for the job (which is about 1/4 more than anybody else). It's called the uniformed services, George. Or is this a not-so-subtle way of increasing military/paramilitary strength without committing the political blunder of increasing the size of the armed forces when there is no opposing superpower? Inquiring minds want to know! (In reality, they don't; but it sounds good.)

I guess I'm just wedded to this "rule of law" thingy. Some militarists are fond of saying that "the Constitution is not a suicide pact." I'm not suggesting that by any means. However, it is Constitutional suicide to eviscerate it from within as much as it is suicide to ignore a real outside danger. Something needs to be done about governments that harbor terrorists. That something is not, at least not at this stage, a frontal assault resulting in tens of thousands of needless casualties, when the argument is with the government and not the entire culture.

Of course, I'm actually far more ruthless than that. Just as in chess, the objective is not the destruction of the opposing army; it is the forced capture of the king. Admittedly, that does create a danger of an opponent doing the same ("create" is, perhaps, an overoptimistic word). Thus, the better approach is to make the king's position untenable. Which brings us back to the rule of law.

For a while now, George III's advisors have been counselling him not to join in the new multilateral treaty establishing a standing international war crimes tribunal, on the grounds that US soldiers could be hauled before it in political show trials. (Frankly, given the speed at which these things happen, that's about as likely as me being named to replace Chief Justice Rehnquist.) Yet such a tribunal is exactly where those who create atrocities, such as the gas attacks on Kurds and Iranians in the 1980s and 1990s, can be excoriated. Lady Justice, after all, bears a sword—not a shield.

05 October 2002
Parts and Wholes, Part IV

A more fundamental problem with Dr. Burt's analysis is that it assumes that one can read a short passage and, without knowledge of the complete context, determine how strongly that passage relates to the overall intensity of interpersonal relationships in a work. Consider, for example, the first of the two passages quoted above. The form of that work is one of the "IP" novel. However, its central concern is the inability of the protagonist to truly engage in interpersonal relationships. Conversely, the second example, although it includes a great deal of descriptive material, and has an outward form that variously mirrors The Canterbury Tales and Keats, begins a four-book serial novel whose ultimate theme is the power of interpersonal relationships over the mere physical world. Arguably, then, the second example has a stronger emphasis on interpersonal relationships. However, scoring the works in question as a whole results in a score of 83 for the first work, and 29 for the second. ¹

This is one example of the contrast between analyzing parts of a work and analyzing the whole. Literature is not a laboratory experiment; it does not have discrete parts that create identifiable independent and dependent variables. A work is inherently more than the sum of its parts. That is not to say that there is no value in polishing the craft and art of a given part; it is only to say that polishing that one part may or may not have a corresponding effect on the overall value of the work. Consider, for example, E.E. "Doc" Smith's Lensman series. ² So many parts of Smith's work are seriously flawed that they certainly could stand a lot of improvement. For example, one of the fundamental conceits of his work is that all one need do to achieve essentially unlimited velocity is make matter "inertialess" (even though a competent physicist of even a decade before they were written would have questioned this, as "inertia" was and is believed to be an inseparable manifestation of the "quantity" of matter). Revising this concept so that it is scientifically plausible would not be at all a bad idea. However, this one change alone—however artfully done—cannot save the overall work from bad writing, wooden characterization (where it exists at all), idiot plots, reliance on deus ex machina, racism, and a host of other failures.

On the other hand, making an already excellent aspect of a novel even better, without paying attention to the other flaws, is no more likely to prove helpful, and may in fact be harmful. Dr. Burt cites Orson Scott Card's Speaker for the Dead as a high-scoring science fiction novel on his IP scale. ³ However, Speaker for the Dead does not earn a perfect (100) score, or even come close to the top "IP novels," scoring only 61.

The interface between quantum and classical physics provides an excellent illustration of this difficulty. It is theoretically possible to model a classical-sized mass of a few hundred constituent particles using only quantum physics quantities and operations and approximate the behavior of that mass in the classical frame. However, we don't learn anything more from doing so, nor can we improve predictability by doing so. Whether some form of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle also applies in literary structural analysis is an open, and interesting, question, but we need not go that far, except insofar as a weak form of the Whorf Hypothesis ("language influences the perception of reality") has a similar foundation. In other words, by looking for "IP" issues, those issues get inordinate attention and appear to have inordinate weight.

«««««««« notes »»»»»»»»»

1. The score for Simmons' work is approximately the same for either Hyperion itself or for the four-book serial novel (Hyperion, Fall of Hyperion, Endymion, Rise of Endymion) as a whole.
2. E.E. "Doc" Smith, Triplanetary; ——, First Lensman; ——, Galactic Patrol; ——, Gray Lensman; ——, Second Stage Lensman; ——, Children of the Lens. Whether George Lucas's Star Wars sequence comes perilously close to infringing on various aspects of Smith's sequence is left as an exercise for the reader.
3. Card's work as a whole is only nominally science fiction. It is, instead, virtually the epitome of "speculative fiction." See, e.g., Harlan Ellison, "Introduction: Thirty-Two Soothsayers," in Dangerous Visions (New York: Doubleday, 1967). This difficulty with "category" becomes more and more dominant as works move closer to satire and polemic, cf. L.P. Hartley, Facial Justice (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1960); Pete Davies, The Last Election (London: Penguin, 1986), or to explicit Gedankenexperiment, cf. Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange (London: Heinemann, 1962).

09 October 2002
Parts and Wholes, Part V

Now, I am afraid, we come to the more-theoretical problems with Dr. Burt's approach. Unfortunately, although these problems are not something ordinarily taught in writing classes, they are nonetheless critical. Part of the difficulty is that literary theory has a well-earned bad name. There is an awful lot of crap in literary theory, which is no more immune from Sturgeon's Law than is anything else. Consider, for example, much of the Freudian criticism of Shakespeare (and in particular of King Lear and Macbeth), Marxist work on the Lost Generation of America writers, and a variety of other excesses. Much of the problem with literary theory is inherent in its origin: the struggle for tenure of junior professors and for endowed chairs of more-senior professors, which leads to the staking-out of positions that even their proponents often do not believe. A more fundamental problem with literary theory, though, is that it seldom acknowledges context. It is ludicrous, for example, to propose a deconstructionist interpretation of Gilgamesh, because that work comes from an oral tradition and has no established text. That is not to say that deconstruction and its cousin poststructuralism cannot provide insights; it is only to say that they are not sufficient to provide a complete explanation.¹

By no means is all literary theory out of touch with reality. For example, the "show, don't tell" epigram—one that is grievously misunderstood by the community of writing instructors—comes to us directly from literary theory.² Actually considering why "showing" is ordinarily a better choice in storytelling than is "telling," and what the distinction between "showing" and "telling" is (and is not), would greatly benefit some horribly misguided writing instructors.³

The most-important error underlying Dr. Burt's method is that it ignores the distinction between "showing" and "telling" that is inherently intertwined with "interpersonal relationships." The concentration on interpersonal relationships inherently requires greater use of "tagging" in speech, in descriptions, and in authorial intrusion. While I am no fan of rigidly saying that "telling is always inferior to showing," this seems a curious and dubious advantage. ⁴

This last problem begins to reveal the difficulties one runs into when attempting to analyze one aspect of fiction and compare that aspect across disparate works. No part or aspect of fiction is truly an independent variable. In fact, the better the work of fiction, the less ability one has to isolate any variable (whether it is dependent or independent), because the mark of great fiction is how well it integrates all of its aspects into a single whole.

«««««««« notes »»»»»»»»»

1. See Paul Armstrong, "The Conflict of Interpretations and the Limits of Pluralism," PMLA 98(3): 341 (May 1983); cf., e.g., Richard F. Hardin, "'Ritual' in Recent Criticism: The Elusive Sense of Community," PMLA 98(5): 846 (Oct. 1983); David D. Cooper, "The Poet as Elaborator: Analytical Psychology as a Critical Paradigm," Critical Inquiry 6(1): 51 (Autumn 1979); W.J.T. Mitchell, "Spatial Form in Literature: Toward a General Theory," Critical Inquiry 6(3): 539 (Spring 1980); John Reichert, "Critical Response (III): Making Sense of Interpretation," Critical Inquiry 6(4): 746 (Summer 1980); Stanley Fish, Is There a Text in This Class: The Sources of Interpretive Authority (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980). These works are not all cited with approval; several of them are downright laughable.
2. The critical work remains Wayne C. Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction, 2d ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983). A writer who wants to write well and understand how the different aspects and tools of fiction work—or not, as the case may be—can do worse than study this work carefully.
3. Ibid., 3-20, 169-240. Rather than engage in namecalling here and risk deflecting attention from my actual point, I'll defer identifying some of these twerps to another screed.
4. Ibid., 271-374, 401-57.

 
13 October 2002
Bronzy

Another break from literary theory today. The next installment is somewhat delicate, as it involves criticizing a scientist's experimental design. As I'm in the midst of shredding AOL's brief in Harlan's appeal with my teeth, it won't be a fair criticism.

Baldrick once remarked that irony is just like goldy and bronzy, but it's made out of iron. Because this is a matter of public interest, I am quoting the following news bulletin from Publisher's Weekly in its entirety.

CCC Goes After FLA Outfit

Copyright Clearance Center is again helping the charge against what they say are illegally packaged coursepacks. The group has joined Wiley, MIT Press and Elsevier Science to sue an outfit called Custom Copies, which they say has been re-packaging material without permission.

The Gainesville, Fl., company is alleged to have distributed these materials to students on the campus of the state school in that city. The plaintiffs say they still don't know the depth of the alleged operation. They also expressed shock that such places still exist. "After the Kinko's case of a few years ago, it surprises us that copy shops so close to campus still operate like this," said Elsevier general counsel Mark Seeley.

Source: PW Newsline, 11 Oct. 2002.

The bronzy here is the quotation from Seeley at the end of the second paragraph. Pardon me, but it surprises me that after Tasini issued last year, Elsevier's general counsel would have the gall to make such a statement about noncompliance by a nonparty, given that Lexis-Nexis (a division of Reed-Elsevier) has done very little to implement Tasini. Seeley implies that any responsible copy shop would be aware of decisions from another circuit, primarily the Sixth Circuit (covering Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee)—but that his company need not make similar efforts to follow a non-appealable decision from the Supreme Court in which it was a party and earned an adverse judgment.

My guess is that Mr. Seeley's law license is in New York, because the ethics rules in New York allow a lawyer to get away with this kind of nonsense—but, in most of the rest of the country, a lawyer cannot make such statements. See Model Rules of Professional Conduct 3.1, 3.6. Shame on you.

16 October 2002
Chickenheart

It's not that I'm too chicken to continue on with the Savagery. Well, maybe it is, but I've got a better excuse: Life. Between migraines, throwing opposing briefs across the room because they misrepresent authority, waiting for phone calls, dealing with kids, and so on, I'm exhausted.

But—unfortunately for some—not too exhausted for a couple of acerbic comments.

Microsoft gets a big fat raspberry for its mishandling of the spy-field exploit of all versions of Word from 95 on, including 2002 (part of the XP package). Not only did it take forever for the 'softies to even acknowledge the problem, their explanation of the patch is so innocuous that many people will fail to install it. That it goes across so many versions of Word indicates to me a fundamental flaw in Visual Basic for Applications, which should surprise nobody.

Apple, however, gets a couple of rotten tomatoes for its current deceptive advertising campaign involving all these former PC users who've switched (bringing to mind, for us old fogeys, Benson & Hedges' cigarette ads proclaiming "I'd rather fight than switch" of the 1960s) to the current version of the Macintosh. Which, ironically enough, throws away everything from earlier versions of the Mac operating system except the user interface in favor of a Unix underlay (yes, the operating system that invented the concept of "user hostility"). Which, if one traces Windows far enough back, is a common ancestor in terms of basic operating system design. OS-X is, indeed, a major advance. However, the previous Mac operating system structure went from versions 1 through 9, which by my count is three more major versions than has Windows in about the same time. You can draw your own conclusion about the actual stability indicated by that upgrade pattern.

18 October 2002
Parts and Wholes, Part VI

No scientist likes to be criticized for improper experimental design. However, Dr. Burt's data-gathering and analysis has some pretty serious problems.

Statistically, the samples are simply inadequate. Within each book, a sample of ten units is chosen and scored to represent an entire book consisting of typically a couple thousand such units. Ordinarily, a "real world" statistical sample of a population this size requires at least thirty samples. Thus, the scores shown have a relatively low confidence level as to the accuracy of how well they represent each book, fairly near 50%. To correct this flaw, one would need to look at thirty truly random units of three paragraphs in each book. Comparing the populations to each other is equally flawed, as there are not enough of any classification of book delineated in the article to accurately represent the population of that classification.¹

The choices of works to represent various classifications stretch across far too great a time, even within speculative fiction. For example, the fantasy books range from Tolkein to a year ago—the entire lifespan of the commercial fantasy novel. However, nobody could get away with writing today like Tolkein does, even aside from accusations of pastiche. Even worse, the "social fiction" is represented by only six novels—one in translation, four American (one misclassified), and one British—spanning two centuries. Looking at the samples arbitrarily to compare works only to their contemporaries creates further problems.²

Perhaps most disturbingly (from the standpoint of experimental design), there appears to be no attempt to define or provide a control group. What criteria might one choose—frequency of use in undergraduate literature courses, annualized unit sales to date, public library penetration at least five years after issue (perhaps average population serviced of the bottom quartile of libraries that actually maintain the work in their circulating collections), a blue-ribbon panel of editors in each of the classifications proposed? The difficulties of creating a control in this context pale next to the statistical and experimental problems raised by not having a control at all.³

Regrettably, I can only conclude that the experimental design here is inadequate to test any hypothesis with a reasonable confidence level—aside from the intrinsic problems with the method. Not all is lost, however, because the null hypothesis Dr. Burt sought to test is one that is certainly worth asking.

«««««««« notes »»»»»»»»»

1. Unfortunately, this situation is made worse by another sampling flaw discussed previously: the requirement to choose both the first and last units of three paragraphs as scoring items. Thus, the real confidence level is even lower.
2. Burt, "Having Relationships" at 33.
3. Of course, in this context the very nature of the chosen control will be outcome-determinative. If the control group is "the novels of Danielle Steele," one will come to a very different conclusion (that virtually every book on the list is so far superior that fine distinctions are statistically insignificant) than one will with a control group composed of the thirty unique general fiction titles with the greatest sales from 1997 through 2000 inclusive (that the books selected as controls would generally fall in the first or second quintile of this measurement system) or a control group composed of American fiction written between 1985 and 2000 was nominated for at least one of the NBA Book Award, NBCC Book Award, and Pulitzer Prize (given the chaos in these awards over the last few years, I have no idea what this might be—except that it would be different).

22 October 2002
Parts and Wholes, Part VII

Given the problems outlined above, does Dr. Burt's article enable one to reach with any sound and valid conclusion? Yes, but not the conclusions that he suggested one could reach.

Dr. Burt first asserts that "relationships" is an observable difference between "great SF" and "ordinary SF." The problems with the method he used to test this null hypothesis undermine only his proof, not the value of a restatement of this hypothesis. This statement is so much a truism that one one might question the need to test it. Dr. Burt's analysis points out that a good scientist tests even basic postulates of a theory, even if the analysis itself is flawed. Dr. Burt's data actually points toward a slightly different conclusion: that works of speculative fiction that can gain recognition as "literature" emphasize "relationship" in a manner, if not necessarily to an extent, similar to that of the post-Edwardian literary canon. This is in some sense a circular argument, and necessarily so, because there are no defensible standards of what makes "great" literature as a whole, let alone how to rank two works of literature or deconstruct the works to components, analyze it component by component, and come up with a valid overall evaluation by some operation on the individual component scores. One is reminded of the notorious "J. Evans Pritchard, PhD" essay so effectively lampooned by Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society, that attempts to mathematically define literary greatness. (Sad to say, I've seen a fair number of essays that make precisely this error, failing to understand that error in the measuring instrument drowns out any conclusion to be drawn from the measurements—and the essay lampooned in the film appears to be a synthesis of several early-1950s works.)

That said, making speculative fiction "more like" literature commonly accepted as "great" is not entirely a bad idea. As the Savage Reviews and the other essays on this site should make clear, that is where my values lie. Many of the so-called "classics" of speculative aren't "classic." They should instead be classed as, and respected as, "pioneers" (an argument for another essay, no doubt). They are important steps in the development of the category's works, but they are not worthy of emulation, for a very simple reason: emulating them ignores everything else learned since. For example, to commit an obvious act of heresy, I detest the vast majority of Heinlein's works as literature (curiously, Dr. Burt's analysis excludes Heinlein), and would not accord them status as "classics." However, I cannot deny that one must recognize certain works, such as "Universe," as pioneers in their own way, despite their overwhelming flaws.¹

Dr. Burt next asserts that failure to understand relationships leads to flat (and presumably unsatisfying) characters. This is a necessary, but not sufficient, consideration, if one not supported by the data presented. For example, one of the highest-rated works—Keyes's Flowers for Algernon—includes a number of critically important characters who are nonetheless flat, particularly Charlie's coworkers. Dr. Burt's assertion unfairly and incorrectly implies that there is no place for any flat character in a great work of literature, while that is clearly not the case. Even in "real life," a great many "characters" remain flat to us. For example, how many of your college classmates—even in just one lecture-based class—remain "flat" to you in this sense? It is certainly true that "great characters" cannot be flat, and that understanding their relationships is one important element of their "greatness"—but it is far from a sufficient condition. A character is part of a whole, and includes a cornucopia of other aspects that lead to that evaluation. That "characteristic" and "character" come from the same root word is not a coincidence.

Dr. Burt's final assertion—that "[t]rue relationships will manifest themselves throughout [a work of fiction], since people important to a character will remain important"—is in many ways the most problematic. The concluding clause is the most obvious difficulty, as several well-known "great" works of fiction depend upon an initial relationship becoming unimportant, at least in a relative sense. For example, much fiction (e.g., Dr. Zhivago; Briefing for a Descent Into Hell; The Recognitions; Gravity's Rainbow) emphasizes that one must learn to throw away the relationship with a dead/lost person or go insane. One can more easily argue that change in relationships' importance is more central to literary value than is the constancy of their role. In some great literature, too, the deterioration of a character's ability to relate to others is a central issue, such as in King Lear and Hamlet.²

One conclusion that Dr. Burt does not reach, but that ironically enough is better supported by his data than any of the three that he does, concerns integration of character into the remainder of the work, in particular character and theme. The "IP" works selected for analysis are certainly not the only "IP" works available. By the definition offered in the article, the crass works of (for example) Ann Beatty are "IP" works. One of the principle reasons that Beatty's writing doesn't work—not just "doesn't work," but is downright awful—is that the characters seem to exist completely independently of the theme of the works. What happens to, around, through the characters doesn't matter to thematic development. Conversely, despite purported "plotlessness," Amy Tan's characters and their relationships are so intertwined with thematic development that I remain unsure if separating them is possible.³

That I profess the integration of character and theme to be a valid measure of a work's value, and painstaking analysis of one aspect of character to be invalid, should come as no surprise—particularly given the title of this rant. Voltaire's parable on the statue so beautiful that it caused an angel to repent of destroying a city of sinners, but that was made mostly of base materials, is instructive here. However valuable or beautiful an individual component may be, it is meaningless outside its complete context. It is one thing to demonstrate methods of improving a particular aspect of craftsmanship, such as laying on a lacquer finish. No matter how much that aspect is improved, however, it can be thoroughly undermined by other failings, such as poor joinery—or, more often, that a lacquer finish was not the right choice for that particular application.

«««««««« notes »»»»»»»»»

1. Defining "pioneer" in detail will have to wait for another time, at much greater length. The "short form" of such a definition might be a work (or author) that provides a fundamental advance in one or more aspects over previous works (or authors) that has since been built upon by other fundamental advances to create the current state of the art. As obvious examples, Plato, More, Swift, Bellamy, and Butlers are all "pioneers" in utopian fiction, but only Swift (and perhaps, but only perhaps, Plato) qualifies as a "classic."
2. Perhaps more important, the richness of such works is a direct consequence of evolution in relationships, which is poorly measured by how much those relationships are discussed.
3. See generally "Thicken Plot Soup" for a discussion of "plot." That the accusation of "plotlessness" is invalid is left as an exercise for the reader.

25 October 2002
The Day the Left Wing Died

We've just lost one of the few members of our elected government I would invite for dinner. Paul Wellstone represented my interests much better than do the anti-University Congresscreature, the former prosecutor senior Senator, or the whacked-out right-wing junior Senator. Senator Wellstone was one of the more literate and considerate members of the Senate. During Desert Shield/Desert Storm, when he was newly elected to the Senate, I was the duty officer at Andrews, handling high-ranking passengers that day. Due to an aircraft problem, Senator Wellstone and several others whom I will not name were sitting in the lounge. Senator Wellstone was engrossed in a debate with his colleagues on whether we should declare war on Iraq. I watched him politely listen to others around him, and question them to ensure he understood their positions. (He even asked the poor captain sitting by the telephones trying to make sure that they'd be met at the other end. Of course, I couldn't answer, both because I was not a policy-making officer with the right to express that opinion while in uniform, and because of special knowledge I had of the situation.)

What was really interesting, though, was that he used what he heard as a foundation for further discussion, not as a springboard to be twisted into supporting what he wanted to talk about. That is extraordinarily rare among elected officials; they almost always use their audience merely to get to their own point. Paul Wellstone counted Jesse Helms among his friends in the Senate, despite their vastly diverging points of view (perhaps only Strom Thurmond is farther from Wellstone in philosophy).

Meanwhile, we've been stuck with Thurmond, Helms, and a host of other dinosaurs who haven't had the good grace to retire when their medieval approaches became impediments. That's not to say that no conservatives should be in the government—far from it, because better policy and better law comes from exchange of ideas. As a staunchly left-wing former military line officer (now there's an interesting image), I nonetheless believe in the diversity of ideas as the only acceptable means to avoid tyranny. It's not very far from enforced conformity to Stalinism.

This really makes the Senate an interesting place to watch at the moment, as there is now no majority party in the Senate—and the Vice President breaks all ties. At least until after the election, when the special election in Missouri will seat a Senator immediately (as opposed to 3 January when other newly elected Senators will be seated).

28 October 2002
The Mouse That Squeaked

After reading the transcripts of oral argument in Eldred, I do not think it will be reversed. In other words, The Mouse will win. This is not so much due to the quality of the arguments themselves—both sides were vastly better than either side in the last major copyright case that the Supremes heard, Tasini—as the interaction between the justices and the lawyers. Of course, this is far from certain; in the College Savings Bank cases, there was a great deal of veiled hostility toward the state infringers, but the states won.

Probably the best that can now be hoped for is a split decision: that extending the term of not-yet-created works is acceptable, but that extending the term of works that already exist—particularly those that were snatched back from the public domain—is not. Even this is an iffy proposition, because I don't think that Breyer and Ginsburg were convinced that this is a question of constitutional dimension. The majority of the justices seemed unconvinced that continually extending the term of copyright protection is a wise practice. However, "wisdom" (or, for that matter, "stupidity") is exclusively in the province of the elected branches of our Federal government; the Court can only strike the extensions if it finds them unconstitutional, even if it finds that the policy considerations in favor of the extension are corrupt.

We would be much better served by establishing a uniform flat rate. Non-executable copyrighted matter (just about everything except instructions, including computer programs) should be protected for the longer of 75 years after creation or 60 years after first publication, sale, or other public display; executable copyrighted matter should be protected for 10 years after creation. No distinctions between "natural" and "corporate" authors, or works for hire (a concept unique to the US), or other dancing around. No nonsense about compilation copyrights not serving as adequate registration of constituent parts for purposes of filing suit. Bluntly, any property sufficiently valuable to suffer from loss of copyright after that long is probably better protected under trademark theories anyway; that's why Mickey Mouse wasn't going into the public domain in just over a year—while "Steamboat Willie" would be, Mickey himself would not. In other words, one could freely reproduce "Steamboat Willie," but not create a derivative work from it without worrying about trademark issues.

This is just one of the problems with the copyright system that we have. However, these problems are incremental; IMNSHO, we don't need to completely overhaul copyright as we did in 1976. We only need to keep the rats from gnawing away at the boundaries of intellectual honesty and social utility. Unfortunately, that's still a tall order, given the size of some of those rats.

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