Re: public domain copyright -- public domain Internet

On Fri, Mar 24, 2000, Edward Barrow <edward[_at_]plato32.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
> On Thu, Mar 23, 2000, Eric Eldred <eldred[_at_]eldritchpress.org> wrote:
> >
> > But I don't want anyone to exaggerate the role of
> > copyright. Today the problem is not so much that
> > authors are not compensated, but that publishers
> > are attempting to keep all the compensation and
> > control, even at the expense of new authors.
>
> Look to the economics of supply and demand in the distribution
> channels, not copyright law (which generally gives no rights to
> publishers) for the causes of the problems you perceive.

oh, i'd be willing to do so if the publishers did too. but they don't seem to agree with you. in the u.s. they pushed for a 95-year term for works first published after 1922 -- few authors will benefit from that change unless there is some sort of resurrection of the dead. (and it hardly gives an incentive to those authors to produce more works, now does it?) and in the u.k. a 70-year term after death was quietly adopted: i don't believe too many authors write many new works 70 years after they are dead -- but publishers hang on to some copyrights that long, and they sure enough want to force the rest of us to pay them, no matter what the economics of supply and demand say. (if that is not true, then argue with the publishers who made the claims, not me.)

i call this a temporary monopoly enforced by the state for good purposes, that has turned into essentially a permanent monopoly for the wrong purposes. i wish the free market could decide, but it isn't being allowed to do so.

wouldn't you like to be able to view a DVD in England that has been released in some other region -- but the copyright laws wouldn't allow you to do so, even if you own it? i call that control by publishers not authors and definitely a monopoly not a free market, and not one that is economically correctable, but one that might be corrected by an appropriate copyright law.

oh of course you will say you can move to some place where you don't have to use computers or you can just not buy that movie on DVD. that sounds reasonable, but i don't know if the market would agree with you -- they aren't given any choice -- it's take it or leave it. soon, if you want to read a book from a big publisher, it will be a locked up and encrypted "eBook". authors don't want that, but publishers do.

(well, most publishers -- you can read my eBooks for free at
http://www.eldritchpress.org/
:-)

-- 
"Eric"  Eric Eldred  Eldritch Press
mailto:Eldred[_at_]EldritchPress.org
http://www.eldritchpress.org/EricEldred.vcf