Quote:
Originally Posted by Strolls
I'm not sure if I'm following your argument correctly, but even if you were to destroy the Van Gough, this is not analogous to the publisher taking the book off the market or allowing it to go out of print.
If the publisher takes the book off the market or allows it to go out of print, they only do so for the duration of copyright - they're not destroying every copy of the book. Once the copyright expires anyone can make copies of the book, and the work of art is returned to the public.
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Books, no... but there are 70-year-old movies turning to dust in their canisters, because the copyright owners won't allow them to be converted to digital without ridiculous fees and restrictions, and won't do it themselves.
And while very few books are being "destroyed" by not being reprinted, they are falling into such obscurity that they're effectively destroyed. Adventure novels set in the context of the Korean War are currently just barely relevant; in another 50 years, nobody alive will remember any of the events they refer to. Collections of letters written to soldiers in the Vietnam war, or newspaper editorials about the ERA movement, still connect to people who are alive today; by the time they fall into the public domain, nobody will be able to say, "see, child, your grandmother didn't always live alone in a house with three cats."
Copyright law is stripping away our cultural heritage, keeping it restricted so that every bit of history and art relating to living people is owned by someone--probably a corporation, because even heirs don't live as long as copyright lasts. The art & science & history of our grandparents doesn't belong to us yet.
When I'm feeling particularly rebellious, I consider lobbying for public schools in the US to restrict all student materials to public domain & creative commons/open source materials... because why should they have to learn from books they might not be able to get access to when they're adults? (I'm aware this is not a practical idea. Still, I like to think about it occasionally... why shouldn't public-for-all education be limited to public-owned content?)