As reported in the Guardian, Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital is set to lose a major chunk of its revenue soon. The copyright for JM Barrie’s Peter Pan is shortly due to expire, 70 years after the author’s death.
Cases like these are one of the few times when I find myself siding with the pro-copyright lobby in the debate over extending the life of copyrighted works. Barrie’s altruistic assignment of the copyright in 1929 has provided the hospital with badly needed funds, especially due to the popularity of films such as Hook and Finding Neverland.
Fortunately there’s one silver lining to this cloud - former UK PM James Callaghan campaigned to amend the UK copyright act to provide Great Ormond Street Hospital with a unique right to the royalties from stage performances and other adaptations meaning that the hospital will continue to receive funds from Peter Pan after the end of the year - but only in the UK.
Guardian Article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2007/dec/28/gtormondst?gusrc=rss&feed=networkfront
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