4 ms·
Imagine that an author passes away between handing the manuscript to a publisher and the first printing hitting store shelves. Does the publisher owe anything
by kd5bjo 7y ago
Imagine that an author passes away between handing the manuscript to a publisher and the first printing hitting store shelves.
Does the publisher owe anything to the author’s estate? Can another publisher immediately issue their own edition because it’s now in the public domain?
- microtherion 7y agoOr passes away before even getting accepted by a publisher: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Confederacy_of_Dunces https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Confederacy_of_Dunces
- roenxi 7y agoNo, they don't owe an estate anything. We should be steering society away from entrenching intergenerational wealth transfers, not towards them. We want people to be wealthy roughly in proportion to how much they contributed to the economy. The author's heirs can go stand on their own two feet. Life + 70 is about making it attractive to big firms or other organisations to buy the rights to copyright; it removes the risk of the author dying suddenly. The idea is still absurd, as classics that should be generally available are still under this bizarre lock & key system. Tolkien only died in 1970; his legacy should be part of the public system by now. 1970 was a different time and era. Good stories are dying die because nobody can print mass copies of them.
- kd5bjo 7y agoSo the publisher just gets to keep the author’s share of their joint contribution to the economy simply because it hasn’t been realized yet? If you want to stop inter generational wealth transfer, work to limit that directly. This is just moving the profits away from an individual (the author) to a corporation (the publisher).
- roenxi 7y agoNo, because the idea is that the right to a special monopoly would disappear. So the price of a book would drop from print costs + copyright to print cost only via the magical hand of the market. The "authors share" is a wholly legal idea that exists because everyone agrees the authors should get something for their work. There is a reason my fiction bookshelf is 60% 1700s/1800s classics like Wilde or or Austin instead of authors I prefer like Tolkien or Mervyn Peake. Books out of copyright are cheaper (less margin to be extracted) and more easily available from a local bookshop, so I've bought more of them over the years.
- nothrabannosir 7y agoNot if copyright expires at the author's death; then it transfers to society at large because the publisher doesn't have the sole right to publish it anymore. (Not advocating for this per se, just pointing out copyright expiration doens't necessarily transfer wealth to the publisher)
- radiator 7y ago> We should be steering society ... > We want people ... Who is we, may I ask?
- iamnotacrook 7y agoI always laugh when I see people saying "we..". I always think "well, what are you doing on HN (or whatever) typing then? Get on with it! We don't want that!".
- hombre_fatal 7y agoI think they're speaking French.
- DennisP 7y agoSo don't base it entirely on the author's lifespan. We could go back to the original terms: a flat 14 years, plus a 14-year optional extension if the author is still alive.
- ashelmire 7y ago> Imagine that an author passes away between handing the manuscript to a publisher and the first printing hitting store shelves. Why not ~20 years of rights to it like patents? Does the family really deserve to enjoy sole rights to someone else's idea for 70 years?