> How does it encourage public access? The artist is dead for 70 years when it becomes public domain How could an author afford to write if selling a single co

> How does it encourage public access? The artist is dead for 70 years when it becomes public domain How could an author afford to write if selling a single copy of their work gives the buyer the ability to legally copy the work and distribute it for free or for a lower price? Why would a publisher, say O'Reilly Media, pay an author to write a technical book if anyone could just drive the price of the book down to zero (or to the cost of distribution)? I pay $500/yr for 'Reilly Online because I get more than $500/yr worth of value from it, but if someone took all that content and distributed it as conveniently at a much lower price, I would probably stay with O'Reilly for a while, but as the price rose, the rate of new content decreased, and the reliability of the interactive services fell, I'd probably give up and switch to the content-thief platform until the content was too stale.