Advance copies of a banned book have been withdrawn from internet
auction site eBay. The book in question, “The Wind Done Gone,” was
an unauthorised sequel to “Gone With The Wind” and is the subject
of a high-profile copyright versus freedom of speech dispute in the
US courts.
The publisher of the new book by Alice Randall has been granted
the right of an expedited appeal against an injunction granted last
week at the request of the Mitchell Trust, which owns the
copyrights in Margaret Mitchell's original work.
In granting the injunction, the judge described the new novel,
an account of life at a plantation narrated by the daughter of a
black slave woman and the white plantation owner, as “unabated
piracy” of the original. Randall argued that it was a parody of the
original and should be protected under the First Amendment to the
US Constitution.
Four copies of the Randall novel were offered on eBay, with bids
reaching $485. The company removed the auctions at the request of a
lawyer for the Mitchell Trust who feared that the whole book would
end up being published on-line.
