Quote:
Originally Posted by Giggleton
Yes, useful effort should be given useful reward, this is not what we are attempting to discuss here. Given the tone of the OP I do not think we are even discussing the merits, supposed or otherwise of copyright.
Might I submit to you the plight of future virtuosos, who might not be able to afford the work of virtuosos past because of copyright? And therefore might not be able to become as virtuous as they could have, had we not NOW implemented a new version of copyright?
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You are right, of course. There are certainly negative effects of copyright, there is no getting around that. It's one thing for me to pay (and subsequently complain about) the price of an ebook, but the truth is that I can afford it. There are many people in the world who simply can't. You can't expect a medical school in a developing countries to train physicians with public domain medical textbooks, nor can you expect each student to spend $400/semester on textbooks like an American student. Publishers
do make efforts to work around this in the textbook industry (international editions of textbooks are often up to 50% cheaper), but it is still not enough and textbook piracy is rampant in many places and has been since long before ebooks (I read a book by a South Korean author who attributed part of Korea's meteoric rise from developing to developed to widespread book piracy in the 70s and 80s). And piracy will of course only get worse as computers, ebooks, ebook readers, and the internet become more widespread.
On the one hand, of course textbook writers and publishers should be paid for their work. But on the other, high prices clearly have a very detrimental effect in poverty-stricken countries as they prevent people from having access to necessary materials. Personally, I believe that book piracy in poor countries helps far more than it hurts, but I'm not sure content-producers feel the same way. In any case, there's no clear or easy answer to this problem.