Quote:
Originally Posted by kennyc
Assuming they can find what they like (or even find out what they like) amidst all the sh*t.
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Ah, we have come to the "how will we sort through all the crap" part of the thread. This has more to do with the institution of publishing than it does with intellectual property or copyright. Publishers may persist in a post-copyright regime. Indeed, even with the enormous amount of free stuff out on the internet, most readers, like kennyc and harryt, still rely on publishers to sort through all the crap. The reason why publishers will persist is not because they will be necessary to the printing and distribution of texts, but because they will enforce a rigorous process of sifting through texts, employing educated and well-qualified editors and literary agents, to chose and produce works which will appeal to their given demographics. Publishers will become or already are name brands that people turn to for guaranteed high quality works.
Publishers can also cease to exist in the existing copyright regime. Authors could easily decide to self-publish or to join guilds or form new organizations to help them produce quality texts, and social networking (and the dedicated few who are willing to read anything) would act as the filter. Even under these new forms of publishing that does not mean that writers will relinquish their copyrights. Even texts with creative commons licenses applied to them are still copyrighted works; the author has just chosen to exercise only some, instead of all, their rights.