Here's the announcement. Go read it.

Okay…maybe I've lost my mind here, but help me. Here's a bit from it.

The filmmaker and I will make an agreement to release all ancillary rights to the film (and its source material, the novel), five years after the film's debut. In other words, after a waiting period during which those rights would still be restricted, anyone who cared to could make any number of other kinds of artwork based on the novel's story and characters, or the film's: a play, a television series, a comic book, a theme park ride, an opera – or even a sequel film or novel featuring the same characters. For that matter, they can remake the film with another script and new actors. In my agreement with the filmmaker, those ancillary rights will be launched into the public domain.

First up…I want to say up front that I respect Lethem's decision (not that he would give a shit one way or the other what I thought, naturally) and respect his right to do whatever the hell he wants with his book and the rights to it.

But here's what I don't understand. Back when I was offering up short stories for sale to magazines, you would sell a certain amount of rights to it. For example, First North American Serial Rights. That basically meant that you, North American magazine, would get the right to publish it first in North America before anybody else. You could sell any set of rights you wanted. World Serial Rights. European Serial Rights. Whatever.

Now, I've never had the burden of having to deal with film rights to one of my writings. So there could be a perfectly plausible explanation for these things. I'm sure that in a standard movie deal you're selling every right under the sun to your book apart from the right to keep on printing copies of the book. They get sequel rights (a standard bit of the contract that Stephen King finally killed after Children of the Corn XVI) and probably remake rights and hell, I don't know, breakfast cereal rights.

But if you wanted to offer somebody just the film rights, you could do that, right? Without having to send things into the public domain, I mean. Without having to put a five year cap on it. In theory, Lethem could sell the film rights to one group and the collectible card game rights to another group. Right?

Granted, if I'm Paramount, I'm going to want it all. But a smaller group of folks would probably realize that no, they never wanted the musical-on-ice rights to the thing and forego that.

Anyway, if this goes public domain I think I might just create a collectible card game out of it just for the sheer hell of it.

Found via Boing Boing.