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Old 08-25-2010, 04:47 PM   #59
Ben Thornton
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Join Date: Jan 2010
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Quote:
Originally Posted by meromana View Post
I don't buy that. If a book is no longer in print, anyone who has previously paid for the item should have permanent access to it, ie, in your library example, the library should be able to loan the book out forever, but can they make 12 copies and loan those out, too? I would say no. If they needed more copies, they should have bought more when it was for sale; now it's too late.
But it's OK to make copies of, say, Dickens - right? So, the problem is how we draw the boundaries in the space between things in the public domain that are already old, and stuff that's currently for sale from a living author. Most people would agree about those two extreme cases, it's how we deal with the middle that's more difficult. In my view, once an author is dead, there is little justification for copyright (perhaps a limited number of years to protect their dependents). What about orphaned works? What about stuff that's PD in one country, not another? It's all a bit of a mess, really.
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