Lost Girls

This morning’s BBC Radio four Today programme (listen here – 08.23) reported on the contestation surrounding Alan Moore too Melinda Gebbie’s Lost Girls. This graphic novel imagines a coming together betwixt Wendy (of Peter Pan), Alice (of Alice inwards Wonderland) too Dorothy of The Wizard of Oz) 1 time they convey grown up. According to the publisher’s website:

"Now similar us, these 3 lost girls convey grown upwards too are cause to direct us again, this fourth dimension through the realms of our sexual awakening too fulfilment. Through their familiar fairytales they part amongst us their nearly intimate revelations of wishing inwards its many forms, revelations that polish out radiantly through the nighttime clouds of nation of war gathering to a greater extent than or less a luxury Austrian hotel. Drawing on the rich heritage of erotica, Lost Girls is the rediscovery of the ability of ecstatic writing too fine art inwards a sublime matrimony that alone the medium of comics tin achieve. Exquisite, thoughtful, too human, Lost Girls is a operate of breathtaking compass that challenges the real notion of fine art fettered past times convention. This is erotic fiction at its finest".

However, Great Ormond Street hospital, which has a perpetual correct to a royalty inwards abide by of uses of Peter Pan, thank you lot to a bequest past times JM Barrie too s.300 of the CDPA too is non happy. In particular, they object to a connector amongst paedophilia since they are a children’s infirmary (at 1 betoken Lost Girls intimates that a paedophile is present). Dark words were beingness said inwards the interview concerning Lost Girls beingness banned inwards the Great Britain and/or Europe.

thinks that the hospital’s approach is flawed for a issue of reasons. Under criterion copyright law, it seems improbable that simply taking a graphic symbol too placing her inwards a novel setting would establish taking a substantial utilisation of the copyright work. Copyright inwards Peter Pan expires inwards 2007 (70 years afterward Barrie’s decease inwards 1937). After that date, the infirmary volition convey to revert to s.301, but that department alone gives the infirmary a correct to royalties, non the amount rights of a copyright owner. This would hateful that the infirmary could brand coin from the novel, but non that it could halt its distribution. In whatever event, it seems undesirable to foreclose such parodies too equally for the connector betwixt the infirmary too paedophilia, the IPKat doubts whether the bulk of Earth are aware that the infirmary is the copyright owner, too and then a link betwixt the mass too the infirmary is unlikely (but is made to a greater extent than in all probability if infirmary publicly objects to the publication).