A commercial decision to bury a set of works, made by the corporation that owns the exclusive rights to Dr. Seuss's creative output, falls into a completely different conceptual category, and bringing it up here is the kind of whataboutism that only serves to muddy the waters.

Or, to put it another way, invoking a concrete example of the kind of cultural loss that's an inevitable result of the ongoing erosion of the public domain does not actually function very well as a counterpoint to a defense of one of the primary virtues of having a vigorous public domain.

> falls into a completely different conceptual category, and bringing it up here is the kind of whataboutism that only serves to muddy the waters

Does it though? Seeing several comments in this vein of "it's fine to put your own spin on a classic because the classic still exists" but it's clear that publishers do in fact have the power to stop producing new copies of classics

What then? Is it still whataboutism if the publisher says "we're no longer publishing new copies of the original and will only make this new revised (read: sanitized) edition available"?

Because it's a fact that over time the originals in circulation will dwindle and it will eventually become a near forgotten work. And we in society will have lost something with it

The easy solution seems to be to only let a work retain copyright so long as it's obtainable from the holder of the copyright.

Reminder here that we were originally talking about fairy tales.

The post you were responding to includes this sentence:

> I agree with what you wrote mostly but I think you are dismissing the criticism of sanitizing stories too easily.

Bringing up Dr. Seuss is not whataboutism, nor is it muddying any waters. It is directly relevant, your preference to focus more narrowly notwithstanding.