Re: public domain copyright -- public domain Internet

On Tue, Mar 28, 2000, Eric Eldred <eldred[_at_]eldritchpress.org> wrote:
>
> 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/
> :-)

I don't know about that assertion with respect to post-death works -- people are claiming all the time to have channelled composers and created new works that the composers wrote through them ;-)

Harold Federow
<haroldf[_at_]bsquare.com> Received on Thu Mar 30 2000 - 17:27:18 GMT