Here's a note from a newsletter I received from my friend Garry Garrison of Dramatists Guild of America:
'Please keep in mind that one person may not publish another person’s material, whether in print, on the web, or in any other format, without the author’s permission. Simply put, the publication of any part of an author’s work is among the “bundle of rights” enjoyed by authors as owners of their copyright. Such infringements—irrespective of advertising—are punishable by up to $150,000 in statutory damages per infringement. In our view, arguments about “educational use” or “fair use” are misapplied, in this context'.
When will some of our writers, editors, actors, producers, instructors who teach theatre arts, the so called runners of various academies, self-styled historians and other kinds of specialists - learn to honor copyrighted work and respect intellectual copyrights? Why has it become such a common practice of translating American or Western plays, novels, short stories, poems without any compunction? Why the Gujarati literary establishment ignores such travesty? Sure, this is a rhetorical question. We all know why this is happening. One reason is the fact that no one cares and no one has any respect for authours or poets rights.
A balnkate roon-swikar of my predecessors is a disingeneous way to justify plagiarism.
May be this is one of the issues that needs to be raised or heard at various diasporic and non-diasporic Gujarati Sammelans, Adhiveshans, Parisamvads and Parishads frequently hosted in big cities like New York, Philadelphia and Washington DC or in London or in Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Mumbai and other enclaves in India.
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