Mark Twain the Copyright Villain

Abstract

I've just spent some time reading in Mark Twain's Autobiography to get a feel for his famous zeal for copyright and branding. I was struck by a small anecdote in 1868 that he called the Quaker City Excursion, which has a prelude in 1866. It seems to be one of, if not the only, time that Twain found himself on the receiving end of an entirely valid copyright infringement claim. Twain remains famous as a humorist, it's true, but he was also famous in his day for his very public copyright trolling and continuous conflation of copyright with the putative trademark doctrine of his era. The Excursion story, dictated in 1904, is a fairly unique glimpse into Twain's particular brand of selfishness and uncompromisingly petty heart, but it also offers some real alternatives to perpetual copyright that allow artists to profit without lording perpetual copyrights over their works like Twain wanted. Excuse the aggressive tone. This was an experiment in writing a hostile history piece.