3 ms·

> should really have been in the public domain decades ago A good occasion to note the parallel context of books not being reprinted. Last time I wanted to bu

by mdp2021 4y ago

> should really have been in the public domain decades ago A good occasion to note the parallel context of books not being reprinted. Last time I wanted to buy copies of works of a prominent author to gift them around, and was told "Impossible - out of print": weeks ago. Texts which are not protected by "pre-emptive" availability (esp. electronic) somehow disappear - Michael S. Hart (Project Gutenberg) was right.

retrac 4y ago
I recently wanted to look something up related to Mesopotamia. Well into the weeds of scholarship. The only transcription of the text I wanted as far as I could determine was in a book written in the 1930s of which there are only a handful of copies. A local university library had it thankfully. The author died half a century ago. While it would technically be legal here for a library to copy one of their copies for archival purposes should it finally disintegrate, the knowledge is on the precipice of being lost. There's absolutely no justification whatsoever for that book still being under copyright. I doubt harms like that were even considered at all by my own government here in Canada when the copyright term was recently extended 20 years. For some reason when people think copyright they think pulp trash of the last few years. Maybe copyright should only be a few years then?
DennisP 4y ago
Recently I found that John C. Wright's fantastic Golden Age trilogy has gone out of print, and the Kindle version is no longer available either. I know it used to be available because I have the sample; I went to purchase the full copy on kindle and that's no longer possible. Why publishers would do this is beyond my understanding.
- beej71 4y ago
  I think at some point it's simply cheaper for them to let the book vaporize.
  - mdp2021 4y ago
    Which counts as destruction of global wealth - and in the age of reproducibility -, on the ground of "rights" (making works private and not accessible) and "potential eventual exploitation of rights".
  - DennisP 4y ago
    My brother and I wrote a silly little book and put it on Kindle. It sells very few copies but costs us nothing at all, in either money or time.

retrac 4y ago

I recently wanted to look something up related to Mesopotamia. Well into the weeds of scholarship. The only transcription of the text I wanted as far as I could determine was in a book written in the 1930s of which there are only a handful of copies. A local university library had it thankfully. The author died half a century ago. While it would technically be legal here for a library to copy one of their copies for archival purposes should it finally disintegrate, the knowledge is on the precipice of being lost. There's absolutely no justification whatsoever for that book still being under copyright. I doubt harms like that were even considered at all by my own government here in Canada when the copyright term was recently extended 20 years. For some reason when people think copyright they think pulp trash of the last few years. Maybe copyright should only be a few years then?

DennisP 4y ago

Recently I found that John C. Wright's fantastic Golden Age trilogy has gone out of print, and the Kindle version is no longer available either. I know it used to be available because I have the sample; I went to purchase the full copy on kindle and that's no longer possible. Why publishers would do this is beyond my understanding.

beej71 4y ago
I think at some point it's simply cheaper for them to let the book vaporize.
- mdp2021 4y ago
  Which counts as destruction of global wealth - and in the age of reproducibility -, on the ground of "rights" (making works private and not accessible) and "potential eventual exploitation of rights".
- DennisP 4y ago
  My brother and I wrote a silly little book and put it on Kindle. It sells very few copies but costs us nothing at all, in either money or time.