Quote:
Originally Posted by Shaggy
Current technology is breaking the old model already. The business model for how to make a profit needs to adapt.
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Adapt, yes. But the day that my only hope to make money off of a novel is to sell a T-shirt, I'm turning the PC off.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Shaggy
Authors need to figure out what value they provide to consumers other than production/distribution of the book that will let them make a living from the labor of creating the book. That's the piece that's still missing, and finding the answer is not going to be easy.
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This reduces the role (and value) of the author to that of a typist. Thanks loads.
Quote:
Originally Posted by radleyp
I agree with you. Incredibly (or perhaps not so incredibly) Congress has gone to great lengths to protect what you call the "distributor" in lengthening, at very times over the past years, the term of copyright. This is a boon to companies like Disney that can now tie up their wares for ever longer periods, which was not the intention of the drafters of the Constitution.
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One of the things the drafters of the Constitution understood is that Times Change, and laws must be flexible enough to change with them. That's the beauty of the American Democratic system: It is designed to be malleable.
The catch is, you have to be diligent, intelligent, and cooperative, to make that malleability work. That combination has become hard to come by lately, but it's not impossible. It just requires people to stop avoiding the issue, rolling over to government malaise, and allowing the Disneys of the world absolute control over the system.
All the talk about "killing off old copyright laws," "giving up on the old system," is just defeatest and lazy, and ultimately would be a disaster. The copyright system can be adapted to the new digital world. All we have to do is commit to getting it done properly. That's all.