Quote:
Originally Posted by Elfwreck
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.
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Totally agree with you, mate. I'm kinda playing devil's advocate here, and because I detest the self-righteous attitude I see all over the net by those who equate copyright-infringement to theft.
The attitudes displayed by those who are happy to discuss this matter at length on the internet are not (in my experience) representative of the population at large. Things may be different in the USA, but I fix computers for a living, and the number of otherwise perfectly law abiding citizens, housewives and pensioners, who see nothing wrong with piracy, or who say "i know it's a bit naughty, but everyone does it" far outweighs the number of people who feel the need to get on a soapbox about it.
Commercial violation of copyright? Sure, that should be prosecuted. But authors and publishers would do far better by making it cheap and convenient to download books - the iTunes model - than twisting the law to their favour.
Right now, Mickey Mouse is the largest influence on our intellectual property laws, at least as they apply to written works and video media, and that is wrong. I see no need that the grandchildren of Tolkien, Beatrix Potter and A. A. Milne should be
continuing to live rich of their legacy.
A copyright of 10 years, 25 years at most, would be far more suitable. J. K. Rowling would not be in the poor house if the copyrights on her books were to lapse today.