Should the heirs of creative artists control the interpretation and production of works written by long dead authors? Should the law allow Shakespeare's heirs to determine how the Bard's works are to be staged?

The New York Times visits this issue here.

Well, even the creative artist themselves shouldn't control anyone else's interpretation or production of their published work - whether alive or dead.

That doesn't stop them making any guidelines and rigorous stipulations for those who'd like to 'interpret and produce' as the original artist intended.

Similarly, any other interpretation or production cannot claim to adhere to that of the original artist - unless it does.

People have got to learn the difference between the unethical, commercial privilege of control and the ethical, moral right of truth. The public will rightly disobey the former and enforce the latter.

Not only can the artist make such guidelines, but they can make money by bestowing official blessing on some derivative works. Their pronouncement of something as "authorized" or "approved" by the original author is something that actually has natural scarcity, meaning they could charge for access to that (as well as simply withhold it from anything not meeting their approval).

Of course, unauthorized works can still flourish -- they already do, despite sometimes legal obstacles. Unauthorized fan sites, biographies, and suchlike abound also. But even without any copyright at all, they could still be distinguished from authorized ones. Keep trademark law, for instance, and only authorized derivatives might be given permission by the original author to put a "So-and-so's Seal of Approval(tm)" logo on it, or "part of the official Foobar Expanded Universe(tm)", or whatever. Of course, all kinds of agreements might govern use of such marks; for example, to avoid confusion and clutter all works in some official EU might get just the one logo, instead of one for every author whose contributions were referenced. Lengthy lists of contributors are for the "acknowledgements" section anyway (and for scholarly type works, the reference sections at the rear with their lists of citations).

Of course, completely new takes on fiction (rather than "expanded universe" meant to be consistent with the original's interior ontology and history) might have their own derivatives, and some might get the "new take" author's approval but not the original's, or even vice versa. With trademark protections and various agreements on the use of marks, various flexible arrangements can be managed, all without copyright law, and people know whether they are getting a particular author's ideas or an interpretation they approve of, or not. Throw in antiplagiarism laws (unoriginal work copied verbatim that you don't either attribute to the author, or to "unknown" or whatever where you know it's unoriginal but not who it's from, is trouble; perhaps a type of fraud?) and the author's "moral rights" are respected without resort to intellectual monopoly or artificial scarcity.

In exactly the way you can rip off the appearance, food types, and whatnot of Pizza Hut as long as you call your own chain of restaurants something else, so people can clearly distinguish Pizza Hut franchise members from your unofficial, unauthorized clones.

There are some problems with trademarks (overreaching), but yes Suzzle, I agree.

That's easy to fix -- just enshrine the "moron in a hurry" guideline in law: if a moron in a hurry wouldn't mix up your ostensibly-infringing foobar with their brand, then you can get any infringement suit speedily dismissed and the other guy pays all the associated fees without your having to do much, and with your being able to countersue for malicious prosecution or whatever.

And get rid of the notion of "dilution". Companies should like it when trademarks become generic -- everyone now uses their brand name to refer to the product category generally, and still they're the only ones allowed to call it that on actual packaging and suchlike. Coca-cola is a case in point: expensive, but still successful, partly because "a Coke" has become a very common term for a cola beverage. It's free advertising!