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The Missing 20th Century: How copyright protection makes books vanish
- kiba 15y agoIf you're gunning for book immortality, one of the worst thing you could do is to copyright it.
- ktizo 15y agoIs very hard to find a large audience for a novel without some level of commercial publishing being involved and they will want standard copyright terms. An interesting exception to this is in the comic book industry where there are a few successful self publishers.
- hack_edu 15y agoIn the States, the act of copyrighting a book makes it eligible to be stored in the Library of Congress. This more-or-less guarantees its immortality.
- kylec 15y agoWait, if a book isn't copyrighted, it's not eligible for inclusion in the LoC? How does that make any sense at all?
- gte910h 15y agoIn the United States, writing a book makes it copyrighted. It's impossible to not. You can then grant it to the public domain, but it was still copyrighted at conception.
- rprasad 15y agoCopyright here has two different meanings: the default copyright which applies to all works from the moment of creation, and registered copyright, which the above post is referring to. Registering a copyright includes depositing a copy of the work with the LoC.
- gte910h 15y agoNo, copyright doesn't have two different meanings. He was talking about registering his copyright on a book, which is what does what he's talking about, not copyright.
- rprasad 15y agoFor legal purposes, there is very much a difference between a default copyright and a registered copyright. One is actionable and allows for damages without proof of injury, the other is not actionable (in the U.S., though EU copyright law differs).
- gte910h 15y agoYes, registration does makes getting damages easier. However, that's not the point, the point is that the poster who I originally replied to thinks copyright is copyright registration. Copyright is granted upon creation in the US. Registration is something you can do with a copyrighted work to make damages easier to gain. While the state grants a car title and a car registration, they're different things. Same with copyright. Copyright before the modern era required eventual registration to be valid, and I believe that's where much of current misunderstanding on the topic comes from: http://copyright.cornell.edu/resources/publicdomain.cfm http://copyright.cornell.edu/resources/publicdomain.cfm
- robryan 15y agoDoes it matter if it sticks around forever if it isn't being read?
- kstenerud 15y agoHow would you determine that a book isn't being read?
- robryan 15y agoWell if the author/ copyright holder stops publishing the book and no one else is allowed to it is going to quickly fade into irrelevance, even though there are a few copies out there being kept safe indefinitely. Whereas if the book is in the public domain, the quality of the book and popularity will decide whether it continues to be read, rather than anything artificial.
- tzs 15y agoI haven't watched the video, so this question is just based on the article: does he take into account multiple sources for the same book? For instance, when a book is still under copyright and is available on Amazon, it is usually available from one publisher. When a book is not under copyright and is available on Amazon, it is often available from several different publishers. If one book is available from 10 publishers, will it be counted 10 times in his numbers or just once?
- JulianMorrison 15y agoIn other words, it has taken the ridiculous cultural productivity of the internet era to even balance out the downward drag of copyright. Copyright and patents need to be completely destroyed. They are not worth the price.
- yuhong 15y agoCopyright terms that are too long are not worth the price. Copyright renewal would be much better.
- JulianMorrison 15y agoDo you think that graph would look any better with a mere 50 years of suppression? Or even a minuscule 20?
- slowpoke 15y agoThere is no period of time that is short enough. Even a year, three months or a week is too long. Copyright can't keep up with the speed of our culture anymore. The same goes for patents and progress, essentially. It's time to get rid of this artifact of the 20th century (along with the eternally backwards industries around it), it's holding us back.
- JulianMorrison 15y agoThe shortest time worth considering is a full publishing cycle - from pitch to advance to raw product to publication to break-even to profit. Given all the queues in each of the pre-publication phases and the slowness of making back the cost of preparing a work, I doubt you could squeeze that under 20 years. Otherwise it's just a cruel tease.
- slowpoke 15y agoIf this way of publication can't keep up with reality anymore, then I'm afraid it's not a viable business model, and should be scrapped, not kept on life-support with increasingly ridiculous monopoly laws which ultimately harm humanity as a whole.
- beambot 15y agoIf copyrights and patents are "(intellectual) property" and valued accordingly, how much revenue could the government obtain if they made companies pay annual "property taxes" on them?
- davidw 15y agoHow would you value it? One way would be to look at the revenue generated each year... It turns out they already tax that, though.
- gte910h 15y agoThey can set the value at whatever they want. And the government, or anyone, can buy the rights at that value, 5 years after creation of the work.
- m_for_monkey 15y agoValue the same way as in case of copyright infringement. One song worth $1000 or some other absurd amount.
- Tycho 15y agoIt seems we are now in the midst of an all out assault on the concept of intellectual property. A lot of people see no reason why their right to consume should be limited or why creators should have some control over the use of their creations in an advanced civilisation.
- Produce 15y agoMaybe because it's effectively free to duplicate said property without depriving the original owner of it? Intellectual property to physical property is apples to uranium. Our economic system is out of date in many aspects and needs an overhaul.
- Tycho 15y agoIt depends on what your basis of physical property is. I don't want to expend thousands of words discussing the matter so I'll just direct you here if you're interested: http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/patents_and_copyrights.html http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/patents_and_copyrights.htm... Personally I am uncomfortable with the parasitical nature of taking somebody else's artistic creation, for its entertainment value, without any sort of consent/compensation involved.
- Produce 15y agoThanks for the link. >An idea as such cannot be protected until it has been given a material form. And here, in the very first and central assumption, in my opinion, lies the problem. An idea is not a physical object. It does not have the properties of a physical object and does not act like one either. It has often been said that knowledge is power and, by extension, granting monopolies on knowledge also grants a monopoly on power. Funny how these monopolies are considered to be for the greater good when they directly harm it. >Personally I am uncomfortable with the parasitical nature of taking somebody else's artistic creation, for its entertainment value, without any sort of consent/compensation involved. As someone who creates art, I welcome this with open arms. The "pay what you want" business model for artistic creations has been demonstrated to work better than the old model (e.g. http://bigthink.com/ideas/41602 http://bigthink.com/ideas/41602). Yet it's not just the people who pay the equivalent to the full price who benefit but everyone - rich or poor. It's an inclusive model which respects peoples' financial status and removes the cultural pay-walls. Open Source Software has also been proven to deliver robust, high quality products without bleeding everyone's pockets dry. The Creative Commons is taking off and I suspect that it will be another such success story. How can our society be so comfortable with putting a price on culture when it's our intellectual bread and butter? By limiting the supply of food, we starve innovation and ensure that what's here today is what's here tomorrow. I don't know about you, but I want humanity to evolve, not revolve. For further evidence, exhibit B - http://www.fair.org/blog/2012/03/30/the-one-graph-that-explains-why-copyright-is-too-long/ http://www.fair.org/blog/2012/03/30/the-one-graph-that-expla...
- MPSimmons 15y agoExcept for piracy, which gives information when the government won't allow copyrights to expire.