Re: copyright expiration as a spur to creativity

Michael Scarpitti <mscarpit[_at_]asnt.org> wrote:
>
> Here's a radical concept:
>
> Force publishers to keep a book available "in print" so long as the
> copyright still is in force. If they no longer wish to "print" the
> book in the conventional way, they should be forced to make available
> some form of copy at a very reasonable price. After all, they get
> nothing from second-hand sales! Otherwise, their copyright would
> lapse. Any takers on this one?

As others have pointed out, this is an impractical approach. Writers--the people who create the works--have little control over whether or not their works are kept in print by publishers. I've never met a writer who didn't want most of his work kept in print. The problem is economics, and hopefully electronic publication will soon make it practical for low-demand works to remain permanently available and for mid-list authors to continue to see some return on their labor over the course of the copyright term.

On the topic of the restriction of copyright terms: The big problem for me (as a reader, writer, and editor) about the continuing extension of copyrights is that it makes it increasingly difficult to reprint works of limited interest. Often one can't locate or even determine who has rights to the material in question. I think a better approach than the one pushed in Congress by the Military-Industrial-Entertainment Complex (to quote _X-Files_ <g>) would be to require a copyright renewal within a specific time period following the death of the owner/creator (five years?) for individuals, with additional registrations every ten or twenty years up to some limit. (I don't have an easy solution for abandoned corporate copyrights; perhaps someone here does.) This would allow active estates and corporations to continue to profit from their properties without restricting public access to the 99% of copyrighted material with little commercial value. In conjunction with this, another useful innovation would be some sort of central copyright clearance office similar to ASCAP in the music industry.

Of course since U.S. copyright law is now shaped by international treaties, any shortening of the copyright term is very unlikely.

Pat Adkins
<treasure.mountain[_at_]mail.sstar.com> Received on Wed Jul 29 1998 - 02:50:26 GMT