[drunkpotato]

Why? They’re dead. Not trying to be flippant, I honestly don’t get why the deceased’s desires should be elevated over the living’s. It’s a moral choice I don’t agree with and don’t entirely understand.

[jzb]

They weren't deceased when they expressed the desire. You usually don't know when, exactly, you're going to die. Nobody would argue, I hope, with "I'm going on a trip, don't publish anything I'm not done with until I get back and finish it." This just happens to be a very long, one-way trip.

That said, I do think once someone is dead, there's some argument whether you have to respect that. But I at least understand the desire.

[hosh]

This is less about the deceased's desires over that of the living and more about creative control. Any creator will want to polish their work. It's already difficult enough to articulate and express the source of inspiration, and even polished, the material expression almost never matches its source.

[ghaff]

I can see both views. On the one hand, authors aren't always the best judges of their own work and executors can hire someone who may do a good job of polishing. On the other hand, there are unfinished works that are relatively mediocre (True at First Light) or just clearly unfinished (The Last Tycoon).

Of course, a movie studio is almost certain to finish off a movie if a director dies and may remove them for other reasons.

[vidarh]

I've published two novels, and I have tons of notes for all kinds of things, and frankly while there is lots I have written that I don't want to publish until/unless I rework it, and some things I don't want to publish at all, I couldn't give a shit what gets published after I'm dead other than to the extent it'd harm or embarrass anyone I care about. I don't think I have anything that'd harm anyone, but I do have things that might embarrass some. Like love poems written in my youth that has sentimental value for me, but might be embarrassing to my present or then girlfriend, for example.

Frankly, all I'd ask of a literary executor would be that they 1) humor my requests while I'm alive, 2) respect the wishes of my family. Other than that, whether they actually follow through on my wishes? Put it this way, if I find myself in an afterlife, as an atheist, I doubt whether my executor stuck my wishes will be high on my list of things to care about. And without an afterlife it's not as if I'd be able to care. Or know,

[BeFlatXIII]

…but destroying it deprives a future creative from putting in the polishing touches. Shoulders of giants and all.

[westhanover]

Do I have permission to desecrate your corpse? You are dead after all.

[itishappy]

Does this apply to inheritance too? Why should we care what happens to our kids once we die?

[drunkpotato]

While we’re alive, we care. When we’re dead, it’s up to our children to care. Inheritance wishes are generally respected, but also can and do get overridden. I’m not saying that an author’s wishes shouldn’t be taken into account, the living still care about how they felt while they were alive, but it shouldn’t be the one and only priority that gets respected. Again, the dead can’t care anymore. Only the living can.

[hosh]

It’s interesting you bring up kids.

In a belief system where there is a Creator, and the Creator is a Mother, all of Creation are her children. Thus, as humans, raising and nurturing a child is as much of an act of creation as art, music, etc. And conversely, our artistic creations tend to develop a life of its own.

[nottorp]

But but... our copyright lords at the Mouse's castle have decreed that copyright lasts 75 years after the author's death.

That means it's illegal to not respect the dead person's wishes. The copyright is theirs, not their descendant's.

[pfdietz]

Copyright lasts for that period, but it doesn't continue to belong to the dead person.

[brigandish]

Because other people's wishes - especially about their own stuff - are to be respected?