A story that promised so much delicious irony that it seemed too good to be true, has been proven to be too good to be true. George Orwell’s estate, owners of the copyright on his works and intellectual property, have not been using bureaucracy to destroy fans’ wishes to wear t-shirts emblazoned with ‘1984’ after all.
The seminal novel, first published in 1949, imagines a terrifying dystopia where surveillance is absolute and anyone wishing to bring down Big Brother will face down his or her worst fears in the mythical Room 101. So when a story broke earlier this week that Orwell’s estate had tried to block the sale of ‘1984’ t-shirts, the Internet jumped to conclusions, assuming money-grabbing descendants were using powerful forces to crush an individual’s attempt to destroy groupthink.
“Nobody can own a number!” appeared repeatedly in comment sections, but as Orwell himself knew, the truth is rarely so black and white.
A screengrab of the t-shirts that were previously on sale on Cafepress
Bill Hamilton, the executor for Orwell’s estate, has revealed that while an issue was raised, it was not the desire of the estate for things to escalate as they did; a website called Cafepress, an online retailer that allows users to upload their own designs which can then be reconstituted onto a number of different pieces of merchandise, was selling items with long sections of Orwell’s copyrighted text, as well as photographs.
Hamilton explained that he asked Cafepress to stop selling those specific goods, but that Cafepress responded by taking down everything that was even obliquely Orwellian, including the 1984 t-shirts.
“I am well aware that there is no copyright in titles or names, and that some Orwell phrases are in the public domain,” like ‘Big Brother is Watching You’, Hamilton told Quartz.
Hamilton also revealed that the Orwell estate does not license merchandise based on the British writer’s works, claiming that the dystopian novelist’s word is powerful enough on its own.
“We have to take care because Orwell can so easily be quoted in favour of causes that he didn’t espouse,” Hamilton said.
