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Originally Posted by Elfwreck
I'm aware that this means that copyright based on "publication date" is more than a bit of a mess, too. Date of author's death, while possibly not available, is at least *fixed.* That part is simpler; I just don't think that simplicity overrides the good of supplying public access to the millions of abandoned and orphaned books that *could* be reprinted, translated, made into movies or songs, or used as background for new works, if picking up a book would let you *know* if it was in the public domain.
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The biggest problem isn't that publication dates are a mess, it's that this method would provide NO protection to a lot of works.
Kali mentioned screenplays as an example. Songwriting is another very good example - hundreds of people might lay eyes on a song long before it ever gets "published", and "published" doesn't even mean the same thing in that industry.
People seem to keep coming back to the book model, when copyright affects a heck of a lot more than books. That's why the "publish date" method can't be effective - it doesn't apply in that way to a lot of things that are protected by copyright and even when it does, it comes far too late.