Re: thought for the week

From: Lance Purple <lpurple[_at_]netcom.com>
Date: Sat, 31 Jul 1999 08:06:50 -0700 (PDT)

On Fri, 30 Jul 1999, Albert Henderson <noblestation[_at_]compuserve.com> wrote:
>
> On Thu, 29 Jul 1999, Lance Purple <lpurple[_at_]netcom.com> wrote:
> >
> > It's very nice for Irving Berlin's grandkids to get money without
> > having to work for it; but do we -really- need to keep the other 90%
> > of works from those years copyrighted, when there is no economic benefit
> > to the author, the publisher, -or- the public ? Either put these "dead"
> > works into the public domain where they belong, or at least declare it
> > fair use to copy them, until such time as the publisher sees fit to
> > fulfil their end of the copyright bargain.
>
> If the other 90% had no value, no one would want them. Reprints
> would not sell.
>
> You can't have it both ways.

If they have value, why haven't they been reprinted in 70 years?

The copyright holder can't have it both ways either. U.S. law grants them a monopoly on the right to copy the work, in order to encourage them to PUBLISH the work, and not keep it secret. But that's exactly what's happening to older works. The law clearly isn't doing its job, and needs to be modified.

Lance Purple

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| lpurple at netcom dot com |

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Received on Sat Jul 31 1999 - 15:07:29 GMT