Thread: What If the Copyright Act of 1909 Was Still Law?
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Old 01-05-2011, 10:38 PM   #97
Gwen Morse
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Quote:
Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg View Post
A great many more will be available from among in-print copyrighted works created in the computerized typesetting era. But books written in the 1930's through 1960's? Not so much, until such time, if ever, when they go under public domain.

I think you underestimate the legal costs of figuring out who owns the copyright in books long our of print. The cost of legal research, plus negotiating royalties, plus paying for proofreaders makes for bigger barriers than I think you acknowledge in the case of the long dead author. Living authors need royalties, or they can't afford to write. Deceased authors need public domain, or society can't afford to make their works available to the public.

I'd like to read about an author who had writers block when copyright ended fifty years after death, but was motivated to overcome it when they added the extra twenty years.
Which is why we need copyright periods that are shorter rather than longer. .

I'm baffled that patents are in place for 20 years and copyright is death +70.

Why are useful devices "only" protected for 20 years? Are the creative arts that much more valuable to society than devices? If patent-holders are compensated well enough after 20 years, then creative artists should have 20 years as well.

Just while the thought is occurring to me, why is software protected by both copyright law (and patents in some cases)...when the source code does not have to be published at some point?

I do understand in order for it to be fully protected it needs to be kept 'secret', but why don't they have to register it somewhere (Library of Congress or where-ever) that it can be recovered from later?

In the case of any other sort of copyright or patents, what you're doing has to be revealed and available for investigation to the public. How the hell does someone copyright (or patent) what they then claim is a trade secret?

I may be wrong about patents and maybe they do publish the source code, but I've only seen software patents shown as "a method to do <blah blah>". I know software explicitly does not have to publish source code to be copyrighted.
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