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Originally Posted by 6charlong
Your premise is false as regards United States at least. The sole authority granted the government to control books is in Article 1, Section 8: "The congress shall have power...To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
The government lacks authority to take control of intellectual property. Eminent Domain applies to land because all land in every nation since ancient times until the present, all land belongs to the sovereign. Your purchase of land is the purchase of a freehold to develop the land, which you do own, but ownership of the land itself belongs to the sovereign and the sovereign always retains the right to reclaim what is his. (In a democracy the whole people are sovereign.)
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Actually, the government absolutely has the authority to do this. All it takes is passing a law. Just because a right has been granted in the constitution, doesn't mean that the government can't/doesn't have any other rights.
Just as governments can nationalize private companies, they can also declare an expiration to the copyright of any work they want to.
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In the United State the Bill or Rights expressly forbids the government to interfere with the free speech of the people or with the publishing of ideas. (Yeah, they were pretty well radical those founders.)
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And putting a work into the public domain even just a year after first publication does nothing to interfere with free speech or publishing of ideas. It just allows for other people to exercise the same speech and publish the same ideas, as well.
Not that I support any of that, but to say the government
can't do it is a bit naive.