Kenneth Tynan Quotes
How far should one accept the rules of the society in which one lives? To put it another way: at what point does conformity become corruption? Only by answering such questions does the conscience truly define itself.
Tynan, Kenneth. Tynan Right and Left: Plays, Films, People, Places and Events. Atheneum, 1967.
This was a poem on copyright infringement which he held wrong. In American history, there has always been a significant part of the American population who were opposed to copyright on both moral and public policy grounds. In the first decades of existence, the United States did not legally recognize copyright. American publishers copied and republished English works with no compunctions. Benjamin Franklin was one of the worst offenders for people who saw it as an offence. English publishers and some American authors lobbied heavily in America and finally got Congress to pass copyright legislation. However, with every new technology, the battle is fought anew, and large numbers of Americans will use copyrighted material contrary to existing law and feel morally justified in doing so, Publishers and other owners of intellectual property then over compensate and they have lobbied heavily to stop what they call piracy by impinging what used to be the legitimate rights of consumers, readers and scholars—even those who were not violating copyright. It is another of those American political issues that never gets settled and is battled in almost every generation.
Kenneth Peacock Tynan was an English theatre critic and writer. Making his initial impact as a critic at The Observer, he praised Osborne's Look Back in Anger (1956), and encouraged the emerging wave of British theatrical talent. In 1963, Tynan was appointed as the new National Theatre Company's literary manager.
